E.C. Coleman

One collector is trying to find a single signature from every man who ever played for the Jazz — all 370 of them, from the 1974 New Orleans team to today. For many of them, this page is the only one on the internet. Here is E.C. Coleman: what he did on the floor, a few things most people never knew, and every card that carries his name. If you have a better example of his signature, or a story about it, the note at the foot of this page still stands.

A sharecroppers' son from Flora, Mississippi, E.C. Coleman worked twelve-hour days in the fields before a high school coach talked him into basketball. He became Houston Baptist's all-time leading rebounder, then an original New Orleans Jazzman via the 1974 expansion draft — and one of the NBA's premier defensive forwards. Rick Barry said no player in the league gave him more trouble, and Coleman made the All-Defensive First Team in 1977.

Grief shadowed his final seasons: his brother Mack, a former college teammate, died in 1977, another brother the same year, and his mother in 1978. Afterward he worked as a Four Seasons doorman and limousine driver, saying he never felt he had stepped down because he 'hadn't taken that many steps up.'

HOW HE CAME & WENTThe expansion Jazz took him in the 1974 expansion draft, and within two seasons he was the team's best defender and one of the last originals still in uniform.

Full name

E.C. Coleman Jr.

New Orleans Jazz tenure

1974–77

Position

Forward

Born

1950, Flora, Mississippi

Height

6′8″ (203 cm)

Weight

225 lb (102 kg)

College

Houston Baptist

Drafted

1973, 3rd round (No. 51), Houston