50 Greatest NBA/ABA Players Not In the Hall Of Fame
By Phil Watson
(Photo by Hy Peskin/Getty Images) (Set Number: X3429)
Larry Foust’s NBA career got off to a strange start, but he recovered to put up a very solid career over 12 NBA seasons.
Selected fifth overall by the Chicago Stags in the 1950 NBA Draft, Foust found himself a man without a team when the Stags folded just weeks before the 1950-51 season began.
Instead, Foust was selected in a dispersal draft by the Fort Wayne Pistons and went on to earn two All-NBA nods and help the Pistons to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 1955 and 1956.
He led the NBA in rebounding in 1951-52 and in field-goal percentage in 1954-55.
Foust was traded in September 1957 to the Minneapolis Lakers and played parts of three seasons in Minnesota before being traded to the St. Louis Hawks in February 1960.
He spent his final two seasons as a backup for a Hawks squad that reached the NBA Finals in both 1960 and 1961, but Foust never won a title as a player.
In 12 seasons, he averaged 13.7 points and 9.8 rebounds in 29.2 minutes per game over 817 NBA games, averaging 15.0 points and 10.9 boards in 32.9 minutes over his seven seasons with Fort Wayne.