Medical School and Semi-pro Basketball
On graduating from high school, Burton announced he was not interested in playing in the NBA and would instead continue his studies at the University of Michigan Medical School. Despite Burton’s stated intention, the Detroit Pistons selected him as the 73rd pick in the 1959 NBA Draft. The Pistons offered Burton $15,000 a year to play in the NBA, but Burton declined. He later recalled that, in 1959, the NBA did not offer an income that could compete with a career as a medical doctor. He noted:
“The money made my decision earlier. Even the Pistons general manager at the time admitted that a degree in medicine would be worth more to me in five years than a career in basketball.”
While turning down the NBA, Burton did play semi-pro basketball to help pay his way through medical school. In the summer of 1959, he toured with an All-Star team playing against the Harlem Globetrotters. During his first two years of medical school, he played on weekends for the Holland Oilers in the Midwest Professional Basketball League (“MPBL”). He also played for the Battle Creek Warriors in 1961 and the Toledo Tartans in 1962.
Burton graduated from medical school in 1963 and accepted an internship in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he supplemented his income by playing for the Grand Rapids Tackers of the MPBL. In 1964, Burton was inducted into the U.S. Navy. He was stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where he was permitted to play the 1964-65 season for the Grand Rapids Tackers in the newly-formed North American Basketball League (“NABL”).
Burton’s Naval duties prevented him from playing in the 1965-66 season, but he returned to the Tackers from 1966-1969. During the 1967-68 season, he led the Tackers to the NABL championship, led the league in rebounds, was third in scoring, and was selected as the NABL’s Most Valuable Player.
Read more about this topic: M. C. Burton, Jr.
Famous quotes containing the words medical school, medical, school and/or basketball:
“One fellow I was dating in medical school ... was a veterinarian and he wanted to get married. I said, but you’re going to be moving to Minneapolis, and he said, oh, you can quit and I’ll take care of you. I said, “Go.””
—Sylvia Beckman (b. c. 1931)
“They said I’d never get you back again.
I tell you what you’ll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as these
struck leaves letting go.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“He had first discovered a propensity for savagery in the acrid lavatories of a minor English public school where he used to press the heads of the new boys into the ceramic bowl and pull the flush upon them to drown their gurgling protests.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)