Richard Eugene Garmaker (October 29, 1932 – June 13, 2020) was an American

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

player who played professionally in the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...

(NBA) from 1955 to 1961.

College career

Garmaker was a 6'3" guard/forward from the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. He was a 1955 consensus All-American for the

Golden Gophers The Minnesota Golden Gophers (commonly shortened to Gophers) are the college athletics, college sports teams of the University of Minnesota. The university fields a total of 25 (12 men's, 13 women's) teams in both men's and women's sports and com ...

, along with Sihugo Green (Duquesne),

Tom Gola Thomas Joseph Gola (January 13, 1933 – January 26, 2014) was an American basketball player and politician. He is widely considered one of the greatest NCAA basketball players of all-time. Gola was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball ...

(LaSalle),

Bill Russell William Felton Russell (February 12, 1934 – July 31, 2022) was an American professional basketball player who played as a center for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) from 1956 to 1969. A five-time NBA Most Va ...

(San Francisco) and Dick Ricketts (Duquesne).

Professional career

He was drafted by the NBA's

Minneapolis Lakers The Los Angeles Lakers franchise has a long and storied history, predating the formation of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Founded in 1947, the Lakers are one of the NBA's most famous and successful franchises. As of summer 2012, th ...

twice (in 1954 and again in 1955) and joined the team for the

1955–56 NBA season The 1955–56 NBA season was the tenth season of the National Basketball Association. The season ended with the Philadelphia Warriors winning the NBA Championship, beating the Fort Wayne Pistons 4 games to 1 in the NBA Finals. Notable occurrenc ...

. In his four-and-a-half seasons with the Lakers, Garmaker appeared as an

NBA All-Star The National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star Game is an annual exhibition basketball game. It is the main event of the NBA All-Star Weekend. Originally, the All-Star Game featured a conference-based format, featuring a team composed of ...

four times. He had his finest season in 1956–57, in which he ranked tenth in the league in points per game (16.3) and earned a spot on the All-NBA second team. In 1960, he was traded to the New York Knicks for

Ray Felix Raymond Darlington Felix (December 10, 1930 – July 28, 1991) was an American professional basketball player. He was born in New York City. He played high school basketball at Metropolitan High School in New York and college basketball at Long I ...

and a draft pick, and he retired with the Knicks in 1961, having scored 5,597 career points.

Death

Dick Garmaker died at age 87 on June 13, 2020.

NBA career statistics

Regular season

Playoffs

References

External links

Career stats
@basketball-reference.com 1932 births 2020 deaths All-American college men's basketball players American men's basketball players Basketball players from Minnesota Hibbing High School alumni Junior college men's basketball players in the United States Minneapolis Lakers draft picks Minneapolis Lakers players Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball players National Basketball Association All-Stars New York Knicks players Shooting guards Small forwards Sportspeople from Hibbing, Minnesota {{1930s-US-basketball-bio-stub