Slater
Nelson "Dugie" Martin Jr. (October
22, 1925 – October 18, 2012) was an American professional basketball player and coach who was a playmaking guard for 11 seasons
in the National Basketball
Association (NBA). He was born in Elmina, Walker County, Texas and
played in seven NBA All-Star Games. Martin
was one of the NBA's best defensive players in the 1950s, playing for the George Mikan-led Minneapolis Lakers that
won four NBA championships between 1950 and 1954. In 1956, he joined Bob Pettit's St. Louis Hawks and won another NBA title in 1958. Martin
was an alumnus of Jefferson
Davis High School in Houston, where he led his school to two
state basketball championships in 1942 and 1943. He is also a graduate of University of Texas at
Austin, where he set a scoring record in 1949 with 49 points in a
game for the Longhorns against Texas Christian University (or
TCU). Throughout his career with the Longhorns, he
averaged 12.7 points per game.[4] His former high school now holds an annual fund
raiser in his name, the "Slater Martin Golf Tournament", which
successfully raises tens of thousands of dollars each year for high school
student clubs and athletic teams. He was head coach of the Houston Mavericks of the American Basketball
Association in the 1967–68 season and part of 1968–69, and led the Mavericks into the 1968 ABA Playoffs. Martin was inducted into the Naismith
Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on May 3, 1982 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
He is the only Longhorn to be so honored. His jersey number 15 was retired by
the University of Texas on January 31, 2009, making him only the second
Longhorn basketball player to have his number retired. He died of a brief
illness on October 18, 2012, in Houston, Texas, aged 86, and is survived by sons Slater Jr.
and Jim.