Baylor basically invented the concept of the wing in basketball. Athletic, explosive, creative, prolific; so many players after him, from Connie Hawkins to Zion Williamson, followed the imprint that Baylor put on the game. Big guys like Mikan and Bob Kurland had done a "dunk shot" and Centers like Bill Russell and Wilt dunked with regularity, but Baylor was the first non-Center to play above the rim thanks to his explosiveness and coordination. He was like an alien that came out of space ship and reinvented the game.
In his book, Baylor writes about his life growing up around racism in Washington DC. He was a sensation as a teenager playing at a segregated high school when after his junior year, he was told by an ex-girlfriend that he had fathered her child. As was the custom at the time, Baylor married the girl and moved in with her and her mom, dropped out of high school and got a job moving furniture. He wrote in his book about how he would go to the basketball court at night and watch his former teammates play and cry. It was not until a year later, when by chance a relative who worked at the hospital told Baylor that the mother of the child gave birth at an earlier date than she told Elgin, did the story come out that he was not the father and he was able to get divorced and returned to finish his senior year of high school.
During his senior year he was easily the best player in the country, but nobody knew about it. The mainstream press didn't cover Black schools and recruiting was really in its infancy. Shortly after a white student set the city record for points in a game and got a giant spread in the Washington Post, Baylor smashes the record and opens up the paper the next day to see a spread on him and his performance...and sees that he only gets a tiny blurb.
Due to his hiatus from basketball and the lack of press coverage, he is hardly recruited. He ends up going to College of Idaho, a community college to play basketball and football, a sport he never played. In Idaho he is taken aback at first by the relative lack of racism and becomes friends with future 49ers Wide Receiver RC Owens. After football practice his basketball coach sees him dominate a pick-up game and tells Baylor he is never going to play football. After one season at College of Idaho, they fold the basketball program and Baylor sits out another year to become eligible to play at Seattle University. He dominates at Seattle, leads them to the NCAA Championship game, where Seattle loses to Kentucky. He is drafted #1 by the Minneapolis Lakers in the 1958 draft.
As a rookie he is immediately one of the best players in the league, averaging 25-15, and the Lakers surprise the defending champion St. Louis Hawks in the playoffs and make it to the Finals, after finishing last the previous season. They lose to the Celtics that season, which unfortunately become a theme for Baylor, who lost in the Finals to the Celtics 7 times in his career, never winning a ring.
In 1961 Baylor is drafted into the army and gets stationed at a military pace in Washington state. Making use of weekend passes, Baylor manages to play in 48 games for the Lakers that season, traveling from Washington to LA or wherever the team was on the road (often times a cross-country flight or train ride). He averages 38-19 that season. Truly one of the most remarkable performances in NBA history.
In 1965 Baylor blows out his knee, and due to the surgical limitations of the time he is never the same player. Most players at the time would have had their career ended due to the injury, but Baylor was not a regular player, and even a 70% effective Baylor was better than most NBA players. After a lost season where he had to learn to play differently without his trademark explosiveness and hang time, Baylor spent the next four seasons averaging 24-12, passing the torch to Jerry West but still remaining one of the best players in the league.
Injuries began piling up in 1970, limiting him to two games. The following season he gets off to a slow start and the Lakers ask him to come off the bench. Disinterested in being just a regular player, Baylor retires. The Lakers win the title later that year.
Today Baylor isn't forgotten, but unlike his contemporaries, he lacks something that kept him relevant to subsequent generations. Russell had his rings, Wilt had the statistical records, West became The Logo and became an NBA power-broker, Oscar has the triple-double, Baylor had...a long time spent working as a GM for the worst owner in sports. He didn't even get a book written about him until he published his auto-biography in 2018.
Only MJ and Wilt averaged more points per game for their careers than Baylor, and that includes the years Baylor spent rehabbing his knee. He is 10th all-time in rebounds per game as a 6'5" forward. He was All-NBA in 10 out of the 11 healthy years of his career and an All-Star every one of those years. Only Wilt averaged more PPG in a single-season than Baylor's 38.3 ppg in 1961-62. Not to mention the fact that Baylor basically invented the use of athleticism in basketball.
FWIW Baylor said that he really didn't have a higher vertical than everyone else. His secret was that he had an endless series of hesitations and fakes that through defenders off balance and caused them to jump earlier than him; so when they were falling back down he was reaching his apex, giving the impression he was "floating" above the defense. RIP.