Frank Burlison
Frank has long been considered one of the premier basketball writers anywhere, evidenced by his induction into the United State Basketball Writers Association Hall of Fame during the 2005 Final Four in St. Louis. Burlison has written about high school, college, NBA and grassroots basketball since he was a teen-ager himself, getting his start at the Long Beach Press-Telegram while still attending Gahr High in Cerritos, CA. He started the Press-Telegram’s “Best in the West” selections in 1977, largely the forerunner to much of the recruiting/high school basketball coverage that we see today via both “traditional” and “modern” media outlets. He is an “original” (1977) member of the McDonald’s All-American Selection Committee and now also serves as a selection committee member/advisor for the Pangos All-American and the NBPA Top 100 camps. He was both a Lakers’ and Clippers beat writer during his stints with the Press-Telegram and Orange County Register and also covered the USC and UCLA football programs while at both publications. He also covered 30 NCAA Tournaments and Final Fours with the Press-Telegram, the Orange County Register and Fox Sports. He watched and wrote about the bulk of the best basketball players from the early 1970s on since they were in high school, notably the late Los Angeles legend Raymond Lewis, Reggie Theus, Magic Johnson, Isiah Thomas, James Worthy, Ralph Sampson, Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard. Among his basketball “mentors” are the late coaches Jerry Tarkanian and Rick Majerus, as well as Lute Olson and George Raveling. His basketball “coverage highlight” still remains reporting on the 1984 U.S. Basketball trials in Bloomington, IN, following into the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles, with the U.S. Gold medal-winning efforts being led by the legendary Michael Jordan and Cheryl Miller, respectively.
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