The Miami Heat have won 23 games in a-row and are looking for #24 tonight, but Greensboro’s Jim McMillian and his L.A. Lakers still have the record

*****LeBron James and the Miami Heat have won 23 straight NBA games and they will go for number 24 in a-row tonight, as they travel to Cleveland to take on LeBron’s old team, the Cavaliers…But, we all know who has the NBA record for most consecutive wins, and we all know that Greensboro’s Jim McMillian was a very big part of the L.A. Lakers 33-game winning streak back in 1971-1972 and Jim’s team went on to win the NBA title that year and it all started one day in November of ’71, when McMillian replaced L.A. legend Elgin Baylor, in the Lakers’ lineup…..*****

That game and win would be the first of 33 straight with McMillian starting — the longest winning streak in major league U.S. professional sports history. The Lakers finished the regular season with 69 wins, an NBA best until the Chicago Bulls won 72 games in 1995-96.

Greensboro, North Carolina’s Jim McMillian:
from Ivy League Black History:(CLICK HERE to read all, MyIvyLeagueBlackHistory)

The most amazing thing was that his Lakers won their first 33 games with Jim McMillian in the starting lineup.

For most, replacing one of the greatest players in NBA history on a day’s notice is a daunting task. Columbia basketball great Jim McMillian took it all in stride.

McMillian was at home in his Los Angeles apartment the afternoon of Nov. 4, 1971, when Laker captain Elgin Baylor abruptly ended his 13-year Hall of Fame career just nine games into the 1971-72 season, mentioning in his retirement speech that he felt he was “depriving Jim McMillian of playing time.”

“We had a game the next day and nobody said a thing,” McMillian recently told the L.A. Times. “Nobody called me. Nobody said, ‘OK, Jim, get ready, you’re going to be starting.’ Nothing. We get there, we get dressed, and in the team meeting finally the coach [Bill Sharman] says, ‘Jim, you’re going to be starting and you’re going to be guarding so-and-so.’

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh, OK. Thank you.'”

The 23-year-old McMillian, in only his second year in the league, coolly stepped into the Laker starting lineup that night alongside three future Hall of Famers — Jerry West, Gail Goodrich and Wilt Chamberlain — and scored 22 points, with 13 rebounds and five assists, as the Lakers beat the Baltimore Bullets 110-106 at The Forum, snapping a two-game skid.

The rest is history. Literally.

That win would be the first of 33 straight with McMillian starting — the longest winning streak in major league U.S. professional sports history. The Lakers finished the regular season with 69 wins, an NBA best until the Chicago Bulls won 72 games in 1995-96.

“An amazing trip,” McMillian told Jerry Crowe of the L.A. Times. “It was a situation where you walked onto the court, you knew you were going to win, and the other team knew it too.”

McMillian and the Lakers capped off one of the greatest seasons in NBA history with a World Championship, defeating the New York Knicks in five games to win their first NBA title since moving to Los Angeles in 1960.

The 6-foot-5 forward finished the season as the team’s third leading scorer with 18.8 points per game — behind the deadly backcourt tandem of Goodrich and West who both averaged over 25 points apiece — and the third leading rebounder with 6.5 rebounds per game — behind Chamberlain and Happy Hairston.

McMillian would go on to play seven more seasons in the NBA, where he built a reputation for being a steady, cerebral force — with Jerry West once likening his game to that of fellow Ivy League great Bill Bradley.

“He’s probably the easiest player I’ve ever played with,” West told the New York Times in 1973. “He’s tremendously intelligent. He plays a lot like Bill Bradley. He’s there, he’s steady.”

But the legend of Jim McMillian was born on the night of March 5, 1968, when Columbia defeated Princeton in the Ivy playoff game. In front of a packed house of more than 6,000 spectators at St. John’s’ Alumni Hall, McMillian went off, scoring 37 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in a performance he later called “the best game I’ve ever had.”

McMillian would go on to close out his college career as one of the greatest players in Ivy League history. He was three-time All-Ivy and All-American, and also the first three-time recipient of the prestigious Frank J. Haggerty Award, awarded to the most outstanding player in the New York metropolitan area.

Today McMillian, a retired clothes manufacturer, makes his home in Greensboro, N.C. where he spends much of his time with his family, fly-fishing and volunteering at his church. He returned to Morningside Heights last year and was on hand to be inducted into the inaugural class of the Columbia University Athletics Hall of Fame.

His legacy at Columbia will be that of a great basketball player, but more importantly, a better human being. His coach, Jack Rohan, said of McMillian in a 1973 New York Times piece, “I’ve been associated with Columbia since 1949 as a student and coach and I don’t recall anybody who commanded greater respect on campus than Jimmy. We had some great athletes, but he was a superb person.”

*****Info link on the Jim McMillian from Ivy League Black History www.ivy50.com/blackHistory/story.aspx?sid=2/9/2007*****