Norm Baker

Norm Baker (1923 to 1989) was a Canadian professional basketball and lacrosse player. He began at the age of ten with the Nanaimo Mosquitoes and became the youngest player to win a Canadian senior national championship when the team won in 1939. As a sixteen-year-old he led the Mosquitoes to a win over the Harlem Globetrotters, whose founder Abe Saperstein called him one of the greatest natural players he had seen. He won more championships with the Mosquitoes in 1942 and 1946, and in 1943 with the Pat Bay Gremlins while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Turning professional in 1946, he played four games for the Chicago Stags of the Basketball Association of America, then 70 games for the Vancouver Hornets, averaging 28.0 points, and later toured as an opponent of the Harlem Globetrotters. He played lacrosse for the Westminster Adanacs in 1947. Voted Canada's most outstanding player of the century in 1950, he was inducted into the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1966 and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1978, and he later worked as a police officer and coached basketball and lacrosse.