Growing up I knew my uncle was special I knew he played basketball but he was my uncle to me. Unfortunately he died last week and today I went to the funeral. He was an awesome man and an incredible athlete....I won't post the obituary but here is an article I found.
The funeral was and repast was nice. The UNLV team from 66-67 was there. A state assembleman of ours here in Nevada Harvey Munford was my uncles best friend he also played college and NBA ball. The repast was at his house and I got to speak with him a couple hours about the state of my state, county and city. He was also a government teacher at a local high school for 36 years so it was great to hear his perspective on how children have changed. He said the best decade he taught in was the 80s. The worst by far was the 90 he said.
Anyway I'm just here to brag about the awesomeness of my uncle and the connection I made. So I'm done now....read this article on him, he was fucking SICK!
PIP Uncle Elburt
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/10/shotmaker-extraordinaire-el-kabong-miller-66-dies/Sez Me …
There are times when I simply can’t allow a passing to pass. There are people we know, people we have loved, people we simply have enjoyed, who have left indelible, India ink images on our lives, and we press them as though they were petals between the pages of our memory.
Elburt Miller, who died of as-yet-to-be-determined causes Dec. 4 in Las Vegas, was one such person. He was 66.
Elburt — at times Elbert, perhaps depending on his mood — was a year ahead of me at San Diego High, where he was an all-county performer in 1963. He then went on to star at San Diego City and then break out at Nevada Southern, now UNLV.
Elburt was quiet. At times I saw him mumbling to himself on campus. But, when he stepped onto a basketball court, he was a cacophony, a rock star, the greatest prep shotmaker and entertainer I’ve seen. There were bells and whistles and yet a magnificent calm to his game.
Our Bill Center, who went to Crawford High — San Diego’s arch nemesis at the time — and then attended City with Miller, will tell you exactly the same thing: “The greatest high school shotmaker I ever saw.”
He could shoot from long range — oh, had there been a three-point line back then — but when he had the ball inside is when he went to work. He’d have defenders yo-yoing, and he’d put stuff up soft, often with English, ŕ la Elgin Baylor.
My late friend Mario Taormina nicknamed Miller “El Kabong,” after the Quick Draw McGraw cartoon character, and when Elburt made a shot the gym would erupt with a “Kabong!”
The sad part of it all is that he was a center/forward who maybe reached 6-3. He played 6-9 — by the time he arrived in Vegas he was spring-loaded — but although drafted by the San Diego Rockets his junior year at Southern and then by the Milwaukee Bucks following his senior season, he never played in the NBA.
But I’ll always be convinced that, if he were three or four inches taller, he would have been a tremendous pro. “He may have been the best athlete to play at UNLV,” Cliff Findlay, Miller’s teammate and roommate, told Steve Carp, who wrote the obituary for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
An inaugural member of the UNLV Hall of Fame, Elburt remains Vegas’ all-time leader in season scoring average (31.9) and career average (29.3), and holds single-game marks for field goals made (25) and free throws made (22). On Feb. 12, 1967, he scored 55 on Portland and remains the only Rebel (at a school that has produced great players) to have scored 50 points in the game.
Perhaps you recall the Elvin Hayes Houston team that defeated the great 1967-68 John Wooden/Lou Alcindor outfit in that famous match in the Astrodome (the Bruins later got revenge and then some in the NCAA final). Miller scored 35 on that Houston team.
