At seventy-four years old, he was the oldest high-ranking NBA employee by far, the last link to the days of Russell and Cousy, when black players ate at a Greyhound bus station because nobody else would serve them, when you wrecked your knee and were never the same, when you played twenty-seven exhibition games in twenty days because your owner made you. One time I asked Elg how he felt about chartered planes and he flew off the handle. “Sheeeeeeeeeet,” he said. “When I played, we flew coach and carried our own bags! We landed two, three, four times! You ever hear about the time we crashed in
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