Bob Pettit

Bob Pettit was famously cut from his high school basketball team as a freshman — a rejection that reportedly fueled his obsessive approach to skill development that ultimately made him one of the greatest players in NBA history.

He was the first player in NBA history to score 20,000 career points — a milestone that came at a time when the significance of the achievement was not yet fully understood, but which has only grown in stature over decades.

Pettit won the 1958 Finals MVP in the game that denied Bill Russell his first championship — scoring 50 points in Game 6 to clinch the title in one of the greatest individual Finals performances in NBA history.

He retired in 1965 at the peak of his powers with a 26.4 career PPG average — a number that would rank among the all-time greats in any era of basketball.