YouTube Gold: Wayman Tisdale

Tisdale was great at two things and it was never clear which was really his day job

Most people are lucky to excel in one thing in life and the number of men who have meaningful NBA careers is vanishingly small.

So think about players who go on to another field and excel there at a very high level also. How many can you think of?

While we wait, we’ll give you one name to think about: Wayman Tisdale.

Tisdale grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his father was a pastor. He played bass in the church and was good enough that his college coach, Billy Tubbs, arranged Sunday practices so that Tisdale could play back home in his father’s church.

He had a very good NBA career from 1985-1997, retiring to focus on his music career.

Sadly, Tisdale developed cancer in his knee and his size presented some real issues for the doctors, who had never treated anyone that big before. Essentially, they had to guess at how to administer chemotherapy because no one had ever worked with a man his size (never small and 6-9, Tisdale got quite large after retirement).

He died in 2009 when his esophagus ruptured after radiation therapy, but in a relatively brief professional music career, he really made his mark.