Dave Stallworth obit

The greatest Shocker, Dave Stallworth, dies at age 75

 

He was not on the list.

Dave Stallworth, regarded by most as the greatest Wichita State basketball player, died Wednesday night at the age of 75. Stallworth, a 6-foot-7 forward from Dallas, carried the Shockers into their greatest era. He earned Associated Press All-America honors in 1964 (first team) and 1965 (second team) after helping the Shockers become a nationally prominent program. Shocker legend Dave Stallworth died Wednesday night at age 75.  “He was the icon of Shocker basketball,” said former Shocker Ron Mendell, who got to know Stallworth in the late 1960s and played pickup games with him at Levitt Arena. Funeral services are pending. A family friend and former teammate Bob Powers confirmed his death on Thursday.

“Dave Stallworth would rank as the best of all my players,” former coach Ralph Miller told The Eagle in 1985. “He was so smooth that he could pull off some of the great plays you’ve ever seen and hardly get a ripple of applause because it was so easy for him.” Before Stallworth, the Shockers had not won a Missouri Valley Conference title, played in the NCAA Tournament, ascended to a top-10 national ranking or averaged more than 7,000 fans at the arena then known as the WU Fieldhouse. After Stallworth’s arrival on the varsity in 1962, the Shockers did all that, and more. “Stallworth was the most important player to play at Wichita State,” Mendell told The Eagle in 1985. “He made the program as successful as it has become.”

The Shockers won Missouri Valley Conference titles in 1964 and 1965 and played in the NCAA Tournament both seasons. They ascended to the top spot in the Associated Press poll on Dec. 15, 1964, on their way to the 1965 Final Four. Stallworth, nicknamed “Dave the Rave,” ranks third on Wichita State’s career scoring list. He totaled 1,936 points, averaging 24.2 a season. He also averaged 10.5 rebounds and made 53 percent of his shots. His No. 42 jersey is one of five retired at WSU, and he was in the Missouri Valley’s inaugural Hall of Fame class in 1997 — alongside Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Wes Unseld, Ed Macauley, Hersey Hawkins and coach Henry Iba. “The man was unbelievable,” Larry Nosich, a former teammate, told The Eagle in 1990. “They talk about Michael Jordan today, but Dave Stallworth was as good with a basketball as anybody I’ve seen.”

The New York Knicks drafted Stallworth with the third pick of the 1965 NBA Draft. He won an NBA title with the Knicks in 1970 and played eight seasons in the NBA. A heart condition sidelined him for two years in the middle of his career. “I didn’t get a chance to see him play for the Shockers, but I did get a chance to see him play for the Knicks,” WSU coach Gregg Marshall said Thursday in Indianapolis, where his team plays Dayton in the first round on Friday night. “… He was a tremendous gentleman and a true fan of the Shockers. “In my first six or seven years as the head coach, he would be at games, just about every game.

As his health started to fail, he was there less and less. We knew about his illness and we sent a card to him early in the week. We’ll be playing in this tournament with a heavy heart because he was a true gentleman and a wonderful representative of Wichita and Wichita State University.” After basketball, Stallworth returned to Wichita and worked at Boeing. He regularly attended Shocker games, although health problems made his visits less frequent in recent years. WU assistant coach Dick Miller, Ralph’s brother, spotted Stallworth while recruiting Nate Bowman in Texas. Both became Shockers, and Bowman also turned into a first-round NBA Draft choice in 1965. WU, as did many MVC teams, benefited from the refusal of major schools in the South to recruit black athletes.

Stallworth played eight seasons (1965–1967; 1969–1975) in the NBA as a member of the Knicks and Baltimore/Capital Bullets. He averaged 9.3 points per game in his career and won a league championship with New York in 1970.

Stallworth's play for the Knicks in the 1969–70 season came after he had suffered a heart attack in March 1967, during his second season in the NBA; he had posted a scoring average of 12.6 points per game the previous season. Following a period as a coach for a Wichita-based amateur team, Stallworth was told by his doctor that he could return to playing.

A back-up on the 1969–70 Knicks, Stallworth was forced into action in Game 5 of the 1970 NBA Finals after Willis Reed was injured early. He was assigned to cover Los Angeles Lakers star Wilt Chamberlain, and aided in holding him in check when on defense. In a game that the Knicks won after trailing by 16, Stallworth made a reverse layup after driving to the basket on Chamberlain in the final minutes; Wayne Coffey, a New York Daily News journalist and writer called it "one of the single most dramatic moments of the season."

Stallworth was traded along with Mike Riordan and an undisclosed amount of cash to the Baltimore Bullets for Earl Monroe on November 11, 1971. He averaged 11.4 points per game and 6.2 rebounds per game in his 64 appearances for the Bullets in 1971–72, but his statistics declined over the next two seasons and the Bullets traded him to the Phoenix Suns in 1974. Stallworth was released by the Suns without playing for the team, and he returned to the Knicks for the 1974–75 season, playing in seven games.