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| Yardley is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. As captain during his senior year, he led the Cardinal in scoring with 423 points, averaging 16.9 points per game. The third-team All-American was a walk-on who never received a scholarship. He played three years of AAU basketball with Stewart Chevrolet and then enjoyed a highly productive NBA career at the Los Alamitos Naval Air Base, earning All-Star honors six times while playing for three different clubs. The NBA's top scorer during the 1957-58 season (27.8 points per game) was the first player in league history to top 2,000 points in one season and was the first NBA rookie to stage a contract holdout. After rejecting a $6,000 offer by the Ft. Wayne Pistons, he eventually signed once the Pistons upped the offer to $9,600 (more than double the average rookie salary) and tossed in a $1,500 signing bonus in 1953. | |||||||||||
