During his 14 years as a professional basketball player, point guard Nate "Tiny" Archibald routinely lit up the boards with both his scoring and deft passing. In 1972-73, he became the only player in NBA history to lead the league in both scoring (averaging 34 points a game) and assists (averaging 11.4 per game) in the same season. In 1981, he helped propel the Boston Celtics to an NBA championship.

But Tiny never forgot where he came from: the streets of New York City. During off-seasons, Tiny always returned home, running basketball clinics for kids, coaching amateur teams and even buying equipment for young people.

After his basketball retirement in 1989, Tiny went home to stay, taking a job as a junior high health and physical education teacher at an inner-city public school in Harlem. Many of his pro basketball Hall of Fame peers went on to lucrative careers in business, broadcasting, and coaching. But Tiny shunned that big-money kind of work to make a better, longer-lasting investment in people.

"People wonder why I'm back here," he explained during his ninth year as an educator, "but I just love kids.… These kids need positive people to take an interest in them."