The Basketball Champion: Walt Frazier + Paul Glimcher

New York Knicks basketball legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier acquired his reputation by exercising a unique combination of court vision, quickness, and size (he stands 6’4″) for a guard. NYU neuroscientist Paul Glimcher studies decision-making, and will try and elicit what goes on in the brain of a player when strategy and tactics meet on the court.
With a nickname taken by a Knicks trainer from the folk-hero robber Clyde Barrow, whose life was chronicled in the film Bonnie and Clyde, Walt “Clyde” Frazier presided over the Knicks for 10 years from 1967 to 1977. As a Knicks player, Frazier scored 19.3 points per game, played in seven NBA All-Star Games, and was named to four All-NBA First Teams and seven NBA All-Defensive First Teams. He is especially remembered for his inspirational performance in the seventh and deciding game of a thrilling 1970 NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. He learned basketball on a rutted, dirt playground, the only facility available at his all-black school in the racially segregated South of the 1950s.