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Jerry Lucas

Middletown and Ohio State basketball star who won state, NCAA, Olympic and NBA titles and became a Hall of Fame forward for the Cincinnati Royals.

Born March 30, 1940, Middletown

Jerry Lucas
Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Born
March 30, 1940, Middletown (Butler County) source
Also known as
Jerry Lucas
Known as
Sports

Jerry Lucas is living. This page covers their public life only, from published sources. Correct this page · hello@crackedbuckeye.com

Life story

Jerry Lucas was born in Middletown in 1940, when the town called itself the basketball capital of Ohio. Under coach Paul Walker he led Middletown High School to state titles in 1956 and 1957 and a 76-game winning streak that ended with a 63-62 loss to Columbus North in the 1958 state semifinal, his only high school defeat. More than 150 colleges recruited him; he took an academic scholarship to Ohio State, where with John Havlicek and Bob Knight he led the Buckeyes to the 1960 NCAA title, three straight NCAA finals and a 78-6 record, and he was national player of the year in 1961 and 1962. He won Olympic gold at Rome in 1960, was NBA Rookie of the Year with the Cincinnati Royals in 1964, made seven All-Star teams and won the 1973 NBA title with the New York Knicks. Known for his memory tricks, he later co-wrote the best-selling The Memory Book and promoted memory-based teaching. He entered the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame's charter class in 2006.

Ohio ties

  • Middletown (1940-1958)
    birthplace and boyhood home; played summer games against college players at Sunset Park Butler County · source
  • Middletown High School, Middletown (1955-1958)
    three-time All-State center; state champions 1956 and 1957; 76-1 varsity record and 2,460 points Butler County · source
  • Ohio State University, Columbus (1958-1962)
    academic scholarship; three-time All-American; 1960 NCAA champion; tutored football players for Woody Hayes as a freshman Franklin County · source
  • Cleveland (1962-1963)
    signed with George Steinbrenner's ABL Cleveland Pipers and then a business deal with Cleveland advertisers; sat out the 1962-63 season Cuyahoga County · source
  • Cincinnati (1963-1969)
    forward for the Cincinnati Royals; 1964 NBA Rookie of the Year; 1965 All-Star Game MVP Hamilton County · source

Timeline

  1. 1940 Born March 30 in Middletown. source
  2. 1955 At 15 and already 6-foot-7, joined Middletown's varsity as a sophomore under coach Paul Walker. source
  3. 1956 Middletown beat Cleveland East Tech 99-78 in the state semifinal at Cleveland and Canton McKinley 91-69 for the state title and finished 25-0. source
  4. 1957 Middletown beat Toledo Macomber 70-65 in overtime in Columbus and Kent Roosevelt 64-54 for a second straight title, finishing 27-0. source
  5. 1958 Middletown's 76-game winning streak ended with a 63-62 state semifinal loss to Columbus North, coached by Frank Truitt. source
  6. 1958 Chose Ohio State on an academic scholarship, joining a recruiting class with John Havlicek, Bob Knight and Mel Nowell. source
  7. 1960 Led Ohio State to the NCAA title with a 75-55 win over California and was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. source
  8. 1960 Won Olympic gold in Rome, scoring 21 points in the final against Brazil. source
  9. 1961 Named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, the first basketball player so honoured; Ohio State lost the NCAA final to Cincinnati in overtime. source
  10. 1962 Finished at Ohio State with 1,990 points and 1,411 rebounds after a third straight NCAA final and three Big Ten titles. source
  11. 1963 Signed with the Cincinnati Royals in August after sitting out a season; home attendance doubled in his first year. source
  12. 1964 Named NBA Rookie of the Year after leading the league in field-goal percentage and pulling down 40 rebounds in one game on February 29. source
  13. 1965 Named MVP of the NBA All-Star Game in St. Louis with 26 points. source
  14. 1969 Left Cincinnati for the San Francisco Warriors, using a no-trade clause to choose his team. source
  15. 1973 Won the NBA championship with the New York Knicks, completing titles at the high school, college, Olympic and NBA levels. source
  16. 1974 Retired from the NBA and co-wrote The Memory Book, a New York Times best-seller. source
  17. 1980 Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame with Oscar Robertson and Jerry West. source
  18. 2006 Inducted in the charter class of the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame; in 2012 he received its first Ohio Heritage Award. source

Stories

The basketball capital of Ohio

When Lucas was growing up, Middletown, a town of about 30,000 between Dayton and Cincinnati, called itself the basketball capital of Ohio; its one high school had won five state titles between 1945 and 1955. Former Middies who played in college brought other college players to summer games at Sunset Park, and by 15 the 6-foot-7 Lucas was scrimmaging against them. Middletown's games with nearby rival Hamilton drew more than 13,000 to the Cincinnati Gardens, at a time when crowds that size were rare at any level. In 1956, 12,000 saw him score 53 points against Cleveland East Tech at the Cleveland Arena, and in 1957 more than 15,000 watched Middletown beat Toledo Macomber at Ohio State's St. John Arena. He received scholarship offers from more than 150 colleges.

Source

One loss in three years

Lucas's Middletown teams won two state titles and 76 straight games. The streak ended in the 1958 state semifinal in Columbus, when Columbus North beat Middletown 63-62. North was coached by Frank Truitt, who later joined Fred Taylor's staff at Ohio State and coached Lucas there. It was the only loss of Lucas's high school career. Richland Source, ranking Ohio's greatest high school teams, called Lucas the first GOAT of Ohio prep basketball.

Source

The scholar on the court

Lucas insisted on an academic rather than an athletic scholarship at Ohio State and kept A grades. As a freshman, when freshmen could not play varsity, Woody Hayes asked him to tutor Ohio State football players. From the age of nine he had made up memory games, such as rearranging the letters of a word into alphabetical order on the spot, so that 'basketball' became 'aabbekllst'. In 1963 he received the Big Ten Medal of Honor for athletic and academic excellence. With the Knicks he became known for memorising some 50 pages of the Manhattan phone book, a trick tested by chess champion Bobby Fischer.

Source

Sites to know

Homes, graves, markers, museums and monuments; the numbered ones are on the map.

123
  • 1 Middletown High School (coordinates are the current campus, rebuilt 2017-2018)
    Middletown Butler County · source
  • 2 St. John Arena, Ohio State home court 1956-1998, where Lucas played college games and won a 1957 state tournament game
    Columbus Franklin County · source
  • 3 Cincinnati Gardens, home of the Cincinnati Royals and site of Middletown-Hamilton high school games (demolished)
    Cincinnati Hamilton County · source

Ohio places

Where Jerry Lucas was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Documents

Primary records: patents, letters, court and government files, nominations and old county histories, each at the archive that holds it.

Pictures

Free to use with the credit shown. Select a picture for the original and its license.

  • Professional basketball player Jerry Lucas
    Professional basketball player Jerry Lucas
    Public domain
  • Publicity photo of basketball great Jerry Lucas as he hosted an ABC-TV children's special in 1972.
    Publicity photo of basketball great Jerry Lucas as he hosted an ABC-TV children's special in 1972.
    Public domain
  • Lucas in action
    Lucas in action
    Public domain
  • Jerry Lucas in action
    Jerry Lucas in action
    Public domain
  • Jerry Lucas v Minnesota
    Jerry Lucas v Minnesota
    Public domain
  • Frank Truitt and Jerry Lucas at Ohio State in 1959.
    Frank Truitt and Jerry Lucas at Ohio State in 1959.
    Jekelfoster23 / CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources

Confidence. High: the main facts were confirmed in sources we opened.

Every link goes to the original source. Profile researched 2026-10-15.

Correct this page · hello@crackedbuckeye.com