Voting Station

Hank Luisetti

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Basketball Player

The Resume

    (June 16, 1916-December 17, 2002)
    Born in San Francisco, California
    Birth name was Angelo-Giuseppi Luisetti
    Forward for Stanford (1935-38) and the Philips 66 Oilers (1939-42)
    Three-time NCAA All-American (1936-38)
    Two-time Amateur Athletic Union All-American (1941-42)
    Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (1959)

Why he might be annoying:

    He gave himself the nickname ‘Hank’ so other players wouldn’t shorten his actual first name to ‘Angie.’
    The New York Knicks had planned to make him the cornerstone of the team after World War II, but health problems prevented him from playing.
    A statue at Stanford honoring him was vandalized, with the left (non-shooting) arm cut off at the shoulder and stolen (1999); despite the offer of a reward, the arm was never returned.

Why he might not be annoying:

    In an era when the two-handed set shot was standard, he popularized the one-handed jump shot.
    He was the first player to score 50 points in a game, during a 92-27 blowout of Duquesne (January 1, 1938).
    When he graduated Stanford, his 1,596 points were the college record.
    According to basketball promoter Ned Irish, he was the only player of his day who could sell out Madison Square Garden on his own.
    While serving as a Naval officer during World War II, he contracted spinal meningitis. The sulfa drugs used to treat the meningitis caused heart damage, which kept him from returning to basketball after the war.
    In an Associated Press poll, he was named the second-best basketball player of the first half of the 20th century, behind George Mikan (1950).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying