Larry ‘Gator’ Rivers, member of Harlem Globetrotters, dead at 73

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Larry “Gator” Rivers, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball troupe who later went on to a political career in his native Savannah, Georgia, died Saturday. He was 73.

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Rivers, who died in Savannah, had been serving as a Chatham County Commission District 2 Commissioner since January 2021, The Savannah Morning News reported. He died of cancer, Commission Chairman Chester Ellis told the newspaper.

Rivers was a player and coach for 16 years with the Harlem Globetrotters beginning in 1973, WJCL-TV reported.

Rivers once told WTOC-TV that when he tried out for the Globetrotters, Marques Haynes led him into a closet filled with tables and folding chairs. Handing Rivers a basketball, he told Rivers, “Let’s see you dribble around this.”

“So I was dribbling around chairs, under tables, doing anything I could do to impress him,” Rivers told the television station.

In Savannah, Rivers played basketball at Alfred E. Beach High School, the Morning News reported. He was inducted into the Greater Savannah Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999.

He was a role player for the Bulldogs in 1967 under coach Russell Ellington, the first integrated team to win a state championship in the history of the Georgia High School Association. Rivers was an all-city, all-region and all-state athlete before graduating in 1969, according to the newspaper.

Rivers would earn All-American honors at Mobley Junior College and starred at Missouri Western University, WCJL reported.

In a statement, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said that Rivers “led a life of accomplishment and chose to spend much of that life serving the people of his community.”

U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter said that “Gator’s legacy and commitment to our community will never be forgotten.”

Ellis told WTOC that Rivers was a legend.

“I don’t know when we weren’t friends,” he told the television station, adding that he had known Rivers since they were youths and competed against one another in sports. “Being off the East side, then being on the West side together, then coming to serve together on the County Commission, it was a joy. He was a legend.”