1959 NBA All-Star Game

Result

MVP: Elgin Baylor & Bob Pettit (tie)

Box score

Bench (10+ points): Dolph Schayes (13), Woody Sauldsberry (14)

Bench (10+ points): Jack Twyman (18)

Game context

The 1959 All-Star Game, played January 23 at Detroit's Olympia Stadium, produced the first tie in the MVP award's short history, with rookie sensation Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers sharing honors with St. Louis's Bob Pettit as the West rolled to a 124-108 win. Baylor, in the midst of a rookie season that was already reshaping expectations for what a forward could do athletically, scored 24 points on 10-of-20 shooting with 11 rebounds in 32 minutes, an early sign of the acrobatic, high-scoring game he would bring to the league for the next decade-plus. Pettit matched him with 25 points on 8-of-21 shooting, a near-perfect 9-of-9 from the free-throw line, and a game-high 16 rebounds — his third straight standout All-Star performance in as many years, following his 1956 MVP campaign and his 1958 co-headlining effort. The West controlled the game from the opening tip, leading in every quarter (27-31 lead swing in Q1 actually favored the East before the West took over, then 34-21, 30-32, and 33-24 across the remaining periods) en route to the 16-point win. Cincinnati's Jack Twyman gave the West further scoring punch off the bench, hitting an efficient 18 points on 66.7 percent shooting in 23 minutes, and St. Louis's Cliff Hagan chipped in 15. For the East, Philadelphia's Paul Arizin led all scorers on that side with 16 points, and New York's Kenny Sears shot a sharp 55.6 percent for 15 points, but Syracuse's Dolph Schayes had an uncharacteristically inefficient shooting night (13 points on 21.4 percent) despite still grabbing a game-high 13 rebounds. Coaching that year again followed the pattern of rewarding division-leading teams' coaches: Red Auerbach took the East bench for what was already becoming a near-annual assignment, while Ed Macauley — the very same Ed Macauley who had been the East's first-ever All-Star MVP back in 1951, now retired as a player and coaching the St. Louis Hawks — led the West. This marked the second time the Pistons franchise hosted the game, having previously done so in 1953 while still based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before relocating to Detroit; the Pistons would host once more in Michigan two decades later, in Pontiac, in 1979. The dual-MVP result, coming as it did in Baylor's rookie season, offered an early signal of the changing of the guard already underway in the league's frontcourt hierarchy, with Baylor soon to join Pettit, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell as the faces of the sport's next great generational stretch.

Sources

• Basketball-Reference — NBA All-Star Game History
• Basketball-Reference — NBA & ABA All-Star Game MVP (Kobe Bryant Trophy)
• Wikipedia — 1959 NBA All-Star Game