Earl Manigault

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Earl "The Goat" Manigault (born September 7, 1944 in Charleston (South Carolina) , South Carolina , † May 15, 1998 in New York City , New York ) was an American basketball player .

Earl Manigault was born in Charleston, South Carolina but grew up in New York. In the harsh environment of Harlem , he lived with his mother in a small council flat. He started basketball early and entered NYC Junior High School. In the late 1950s he scored 57 points in a game, which meant a new record for junior high. Manigault was the star of his high school squad, and his path to the NBA was mapped out and more or less expected.

During high school he came into contact with drugs, which he used regularly and sometimes excessively from then on. He also drank alcohol to a large extent. One consequence was that he was often absent from school. There are many legends surrounding his nickname "The Goat". One is that he was called "The Goat" (Goat in English) during high school, and another is that a teacher kept mispronouncing him and calling him "Mani-Goat". Furthermore, it is often said that “Goat” is simply the abbreviation for “Greatest of all time”.

Manigault was fond of streetball. To make money, he liked to bet that he would jump a pin-tied bill from the top of a basketball hoop board and take it off the pin with his hand. He won his bets almost without exception.

Manigault had many strengths in basketball. He was tricky, full of cunning, could dunk like no other and had enormous jumping power, which he trained by attaching foot weights. He played streetball with and against greats like Earl Monroe , Connie Hawkins , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain .

When asked about the best basketball player he ever played, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar replied at his farewell game in Los Angeles : "I have to say it was" The Goat. "By that he meant Manigault, which is all the more amazing when considering the fact that he was never active in the NBA.

He was certified by other experts to have a similar talent as Michael Jordan , probably because of the drugs he never made it into the NBA.

In a series of articles on Earl Manigault in the New York Times , The Goat said, “For every Michael Jordan there is an Earl Manigault. We all can't do it. It was me who had to fall. "

Before his death, Earl "The Goat" Manigault was a social worker in Harlem. He tried to use his story to prevent young people from making the same mistakes as himself.

In 1998 he died of a heart attack in New York City, at the Bellevue Hospital Center.

Posthumously, actor (including Emergency Room - Die Notaufnahme ) and producer Eriq la Salle dedicated the film Rebound: The Legend of Earl "The Goat" Manigault , which was shown in 1996 on North American television. The film features a star cast of many well-known African-American actors (including Don Cheadle , James Earl Jones , Forest Whitaker ). NBA professional Kevin Garnett has a guest appearance as Wilt Chamberlain .