correction
An earlier version of this article misidentified Jacksonville University as the University of Jacksonville. The article has been corrected.
Bob Lanier, a powerful center who was an all-American at St. Bonaventure University and among the most dominant professional players of the 1970s during a 14-year NBA career with the Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks, died May 10 in Arizona. He was 73 and a resident of Scottsdale, Ariz.
His death was announced by the National Basketball Association, which did not state a cause. The Athletic, a sports news website, reported in 2019 that he had bladder cancer.
Few players worked harder to achieve basketball stardom than Mr. Lanier, who did not make his high school team as a sophomore. Through determined work and his overpowering physique — he was 6-foot-11 and 265 pounds — he made himself into one of the most formidable big men of the 1970s. He played in an era that included such standout centers as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Artis Gilmore, Moses Malone, Nate Thurmond, Bill Walton and Wes Unseld.
Known for his soft left-handed hook shot and his tenacious rebounding, Mr. Lanier was an eight-time NBA All Star and averaged 20.1 points per game and 10.1 rebounds over the course of his 14-year pro career. He is still Detroit’s all-time leader in scoring average, at 22.7 points per game.
In college, Mr. Lanier was largely responsible for making St. Bonaventure, a small Catholic school in Upstate New York, a nationally recognized basketball powerhouse. During his three seasons — freshmen were not eligible in those days — he led the Bonnies to a 65-12 record.
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In his final game, Mr. Lanier suffered a serious knee injury as St. Bonaventure defeated Villanova to advance to the Final Four, held in College Park, Md. He was unable to play in a much-anticipated against Gilmore and Jacksonville University, which advanced to the final game against UCLA.
“I would have been much better off — and our team would have been much better served — if I had just sat out that year and worked on my knee,” Mr. Lanier told NBA.com in 2018. He played through the pain, making the NBA’s all-rookie team and leading the Pistons to their first winning season in 15 years.
Throughout much of his career, Mr. Lanier played with pain, including a broken hand, chronic back and shoulder injuries and several operations on both knees.
“It was a rougher game, a much more physical game that we played in the ’70s,” Mr. Lanier said in 2018. “You could steer people with elbows. They started cutting down on the number of fights by fining people more. Oh, it was a rough ‘n’ tumble game.”
During his second season, he had a career high scoring average of 25.7 points per game. The next year, he had a career-best 14.9 rebounds per game. He was the most valuable player at the 1974 NBA All Star game.
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The Pistons, who also had Hall of Fame guard Dave Bing on the team, were up and down during Mr. Lanier’s years in Detroit — 52-30 in 1973-74, then 30-52 in 1978-79. He played for eight coaches during his nine-plus years in Detroit before asking for a trade in the 1979-80 season.
He became a role player for a talented Milwaukee Bucks team that included Sidney Moncrief and Marques Johnson, but Mr. Lanier never played in the NBA Finals or won a championship before retiring in 1984.
Throughout his career, Mr. Lanier used his bulk, his elbows and shoulders to find an edge against the NBA’s other big men. He knocked out one player in 1971 and, in 1983, broke the nose Detroit’s Bill Laimbeer with what Laimbeer called a “cheap shot.” (They later patched up their differences.)
“I haven’t been blessed with great jumping ability or speed, so I’ve had to utilize my assets,” Mr. Lanier once said. “Without being physical, I wouldn’t have survived in this league.”
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Robert Jerry Lanier Jr. was born Sept. 10, 1948, in Buffalo. His father had a small trucking business, and his mother was a homemaker.
By 14, Mr. Lanier was already 6-foot-8, but he was so clumsy that he did not make his high school team. He dedicated himself to jumping rope, practicing footwork and shooting baskets hundreds of times a day.
“I was down and out, but I turned the situation into a positive,” he told the Buffalo News in 2000. “My self-esteem went up. I started feeling I was someone who could do things. By my senior year, I felt good about who Bob Lanier was.”
The next season, as a junior, he was an all-city player, and he led his team to two straight city championships. When he graduated from high school, he was recruited by more than 80 colleges and chose St. Bonaventure, about 80 miles from Buffalo.
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After Mr. Lanier’s junior season, he turned down a $1.2 million contract offer by the then-New York Nets of the newly formed American Basketball Association to stay in college. In his senior season, he averaged 29 points and 16 rebounds in leading the Bonnies to a 25-1 record before their loss in the Final Four. His career scoring average of 27.6 points a game is still the best in school history. He received a bachelor’s degree in business in 1970.
Lanier received the NBA’s J. Walter Kennedy Citizenship Award in 1978 for community service and was president of the NBA Players Association in the early 1980s. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992. His uniform numbers were retired by St. Bonaventure (No. 31) and by the Pistons and Bucks (No. 16).
After his playing career, Mr. Lanier had an advertising business and was an assistant coach of the Golden State Warriors. He led the team, as interim head coach, to a 12-25 record at the end of the 1994-95 season.
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Mr. Lanier was married two times and had four children from each marriage. A complete list of survivors could not be confirmed.
Beginning in 1988, Mr. Lanier began to work for the NBA commissioner’s office. He launched the league’s Stay In School program (later called Read to Achieve) and traveled the world as an ambassador for the league.
During his time as a player, Mr. Lanier was often reputed to have had the largest feet in the NBA — size 22.
“They’re really size 19,” Mr. Lanier said in 1970, “but sometimes I tell people they’re size 30, just to get them off my back. Some of them believe me.”
A bronzed pair of his shoes are also in the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.
“The shoes made it to the Hall before I did,” he said.
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