Walter Palmer

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 Walter Palmer: what he did on the floor, a few things most people never knew, and every card that carries his name. If you own something he signed — or you know who might — there is a note at the foot of this page.

A 7-foot-1 center from Dartmouth — hardly a common NBA pipeline — Palmer was Utah's second-round pick in 1990 and played 48 league games for the Jazz and Mavericks, scoring exactly 100 points. He kept playing in Europe and South America, and that journey changed his life's work.

Palmer became a pioneering labor organizer for athletes: co-founder and general secretary of Germany's first basketball players union, general secretary of EU Athletes representing more than 25,000 European athletes, a department head at what is now the World Players Association, and briefly the NBA players union's director of international relations.

HOW HE CAME & WENTThe pick that became him arrived in the three-team Jeff Malone trade, and Utah used it on him 33rd overall in 1990. Treated as a long-term project behind Mark Eaton, he was waived in October 1991.

Full name

Walter Scott Palmer

Utah Jazz tenure

1990–91

Position

Center

Born

1968, Ithaca, New York

Height

7′1″ (216 cm)

Weight

216 lb (98 kg)

College

Dartmouth

Drafted

1990, 2nd round (No. 33), Utah