He may have been the greatest Native American basketball player of all time. He was a double-digit scorer over seven NBA seasons. He played alongside Oscar Robertson and Lenny Wilkens, and guarded the likes of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Missing a game under questioned circumstances, he inadvertently paved the way for a record-setting offensive output.
And then he was dead at the age of 31, leaving his legacy to fade over the decades.
Phil Jordon, born in Lakeport in 1933, played at Willits High School before moving to Redding. He was the first Redwood Empire product to play in the NBA — and the last, until Casa Grande alum Josh Akognon signed a 10-day contract with the Dallas Mavericks in May.
Akognon has played in three NBA games so far. Jordon played 442 games with four different teams, and yet he is virtually unknown by local sports fans, a result of both his early demise and the less-hyped era in which he played.
Jordon's early life wasn't easy. His family was not well off, and his father, John Jordon, died when Phil was a teenager, leaving his mother, Elizabeth, to care for five children. Phil Jordon had an older brother, Jimmy; two younger brothers, twins Perry and Larry; and a younger sister, Shirley.
John Jordon was Native American, of the Wailaki and the Nomlaki tribes, according to Perry's daughter Lisa Jordon. His children were impressively tall. Shirley is over 6 feet, and all the brothers except for Phil were 6-4 or 6-5, according to Perry Jordon. They probably got it from their mother's side of the family. Elizabeth Jordon, who was white, also stood over 6 feet tall.
"Her maiden name was Short," Perry said with a laugh.
TWO-HANDED WONDER
Phil Jordon grew to 6-foot-10 and was described as having a feathery touch with the basketball. The Ukiah Daily Journal once wrote that Jordon "is known to have hooked in 10 straight baskets with either hand in his college days."
Jordon earned an athletic scholarship to Whitworth College (now Whitworth University), an NAIA school in Spokane, Wash. The website AinsworthSports.com ranked Jordon the No. 1 athlete in Whitworth history.
Whitworth twice went to the National Small College Championships behind Jordon, but he left school after 2? years for "the color and excitement of the barnstorming National Industrial Basketball League," according to a 1962 story in the Daily Journal. An article in the Spokane Daily Chronicle said Whitworth had suspended Jordon.
He played AAU ball for the Federal Insurance team, and then the Buchan Bakers, a team sponsored by a northern-Washington bakery (Jordon was also employed by the bakery.)
AAU hoops was highly competitive in those days, and the Bakers won the national title with a victory over the Phillips 66 Oilers. To get there, they had to get past future Basketball Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor, who was playing for the Westside Ford squad.
The Minneapolis Lakers selected Jordon in the 1956 NBA draft, but he never played for that team. Instead, he suited up for the New York Knicks as a rookie. Jordon would play parts of two seasons with the Knicks, a year and a half with the Detroit Pistons, 1? with the Cincinnati Royals, another 1? with New York and a final season with the St. Louis Hawks in 1962-63.
HITTHEGROUNDRUNNING
Jordon was no bench-warmer. He averaged 14.3 points a game for the Pistons in 1958-59, and 13.4 for the Royals the next year. During those two seasons, and the next split between Cincinnati and New York, he never averaged less than 8.3 rebounds per game.
"He was as good as most of the big men in that era, except for the real outstanding ones like Russell and Chamberlain," said Willie Naulls, 78, his teammate with the Knicks for two full seasons and parts of two others. "But I think he was limited by his (early) competition. ... There wasn't very much local competition where he was growing up, as there is today. He had the physical frame and natural grace and ability to develop into a very competitive athlete."
Jordon's family didn't have the money to get to many of his games.
"I used to come up from Petaluma sometimes, go up to Ukiah because there was a TV station there where his games would be on," said Perry Jordon, 75, who now lives in Talmage. "I did get to see him play a few times, went to a couple games. He was at the Cow Palace (in San Francisco) one time."
THE100-POINT ABSENCE
Strangely, Jordon may be best remembered for an absence rather than an accomplishment.
On March 1, 1962, the Knicks were in Harrisburg, Pa., preparing to face the Philadelphia Warriors in nearby Hershey the next day. According to the author Gary Pomerantz, Jordon spent the afternoon and early evening in the room of teammate Sam Stith, whose wife was ready to deliver their first child. Jordon brought a case of beer and, in Pomerantz's account, drank the whole thing as Stith looked on. When the case was drained, Jordon went out on the town with another teammate, Donnie Butcher.
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