Baylor had an extraordinarily wide variety of shots: as Jerry West once said, more "percentage shots" (shots he could make) than any other player. Most of these were off the drive, where he was effective moving to both the left and the right, going very quickly, hesitating, spinning around, jumping or delaying the jump, and faking his defender(s) "into the popcorn machine" (Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn's expression). When I was nine years old, I persuaded my parents to let me stay home alone on a Saturday evening instead of attending some family event—and I was privileged to watch Baylor's 61-point championship finals performance against the Celtics. In a half-hour highlights video from Hoop-Heaven.com, you can see an assortment of many of Baylor's different approaches, styles, and follow-throughs, as well as some of his fantastic, length-of-the-court passes.
A few years ago, in a new biography of West, Heinsohn called him the best forward of all time—ahead of Bird and Erving—and, along with West, one of the top five players all-round.
In a Wide World of Sports interview done in 1976 with Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali runs down the reasons why he considered himself the greatest, and a lot of it had to do with his artistry in the ring; in other words, it wasn't just his stats. You could say the same about Baylor: a consummate artist on the basketball court. He also played a very important leadership role on and off the court, showing exemplary courage and at the same time a wonderful sense of humor.
Perhaps unlike Ali, though, (!), he was very modest. In the same video I mentioned above, on about 17 different occasions, he credits another player, whether a teammate or an opponent, rather than himself.
Fifty-four years after he was an NBA rookie, there is still no full-length book about him, which is hard to believe.