I first saw him play in 1958 while he was at the University of Cincinnati. Our neighbor, Cal Werner, got tickets, and my Dad, Brother, Cal and I drove down to the game. Cal was with GM, and a plant manager of a plant in Dayton. He was an engineer, inventor, had some patents with Kettring, and still did some design work for GM. Often, they would have some new item they needed checked out and would send it down to Cal for his evaluation.
We lived next door, so Dad and I walked over and got in a new Pontiac that had just been shipped to him that day for some testing. We drove over to my Brothers, pulled in front of his house. Cal hit a button and the car raised so that when the door opened it didn't hit the curb. Bud got in, the car lowered, and off we went. A new GM innovation he was testing.
We watched the game, marveled at Oscar and his game, but nothing outstanding, until the game was over, and you realized how many points he had, blocked shots, rebounds, and all that he had done, very quietly, in their victory. That was him, very quiet and unassuming. He was that way his whole career.
Oscar Palmer Robertson (born November 24, 1938), nicknamed "The Big O", is an American former National Basketball Association player who played for the Cincinnati Royals and Milwaukee Bucks. The 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), 220 lb (100 kg) Robertson played the shooting guard/point guard position, and was a twelve-time All-Star, eleven-time member of the All-NBA Team, and one-time winner of the MVP award in fourteen professional seasons. He is the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double for a season. He was a key player on the team which brought the Bucks their only NBA title in the 1970–71 NBA season. His playing career, especially during high school and college, was plagued by racism.
For his outstanding achievements, Robertson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1980, and was voted one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996. The United States Basketball Writers Association renamed their college Player of the Year Award the Oscar Robertson Trophy in his honor in 1998, and he was one of five people chosen to represent the inaugural National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame class in 2006.
Robertson was also an integral part of the Oscar Robertson suit of 1970. The landmark NBA antitrust suit, named after the then-president of the NBA Players' Association, led to an extensive reform of the league's strict free agency and draft rules and, subsequently, to higher salaries for all players.
