Len Chappell

Leonard Roy Chappell (January 31, 1941 – July 12, 2018) was an American basketball player who spent ten years in the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association and was selected to one NBA All-Star Game.

Chappell was born in Portage, Pennsylvania, where his father John worked as a coal miner. He attended Portage Joint High School and played on the basketball team, scoring 522 points as a sophomore in 1955–56 and 741 points as a junior in 1956–57, a 32.2 points-per-game average that ranked third highest in Pennsylvania. A 6 ft 8 in, 230 lb center, he was the second-leading high school scorer in the United States as a senior in 1957–58.

He played college basketball for Wake Forest University in the Atlantic Coast Conference from 1959 to 1962. Chappell was named ACC Player of the Year twice and led the conference in scoring and rebounding in the same season twice. He earned first-team All-ACC honors three times and led Wake Forest to two ACC tournament championships, taking Most Valuable Player honors in both. As a senior he was a consensus All-American and carried his team to the NCAA Final Four in 1962.

Across his decade as a professional, Chappell competed in both the NBA and the ABA. He died on July 12, 2018.