Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of basketball players who died during their careers

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. (non-admin closure) Qwaiiplayer (talk) 12:52, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

List of basketball players who died during their careers[edit]

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List of basketball players who died during their careers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Similar to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of association footballers who died during their careers, this is an unencyclopedic cross-categorization that does not distinguish why it's particularly notable that a number of people who play basketball tragically died young in largely irrelevant accidents, just as people in any other profession (or non-professional activity like for NCAA players) can. Also WP:NOTMEMORIAL since more than a third of the list is non-notable people. Reywas92Talk 17:22, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sportspeople-related deletion discussions. Reywas92Talk 17:22, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Basketball-related deletion discussions. Reywas92Talk 17:22, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 18:58, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - a non-encyclopaedic cross-categorisation so violates WP:NOT; what would be required for an article like this to be kept would be reliable sources discussing in depth the connection between basketball players dying and that death taking place while they are contracted to a team. Essentially, this is just a list of players that died young and, whilst that is certainly tragic, Wikipedia is not a memorial page and we do not need a list article on people of every line of work dying before they were able to retire from that line of work unless online or offline media clearly deem such a topic to be a notable one itself. At the moment, we have a list of deceased sportspeople sourced to obituaries and death announcements but no indication that the intersection itself is notable. Spiderone(Talk to Spider) 19:00, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - Agree with the assessment by Spiderone. Having tried to find a source that would connect the players on this list by way of their deaths while under contract and coming up without any connection except that they played basketball and died leads me to WP:NOT. We can't have a list for every eventual possibility so, unless the topic is clearly defined as notable by reliable sources, it should not be included. --ARoseWolf 20:05, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - This could be an encyclopedic category. Compared to those in most other professions, pro basketball players (and pro athletes in general) are much more likely to have Wikipedia articles and generate substantial news coverage, including upon death. In addition, pro athletes (including basketball players) retire very young relative to those in other professions, so a player dying during his/her career is quite notable. This list should be limited to hoopers with Wikipedia articles. Crossover1370 (talk | contribs) 23:33, 23 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
See comment below —Brian Halvorsen (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It's notable when a basketball player dies during their career, because (a) they're likely to be well known and (b) they're likely to be quite young. So all these deaths have significant newspaper and website coverage. That seems like a strong reason to document on this site.--Mike Selinker (talk) 01:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I don't have an opinion on deleting or keeping the article, but I have to push back on the nominator's assertion that "a third of the list is non-notable people". Lack of a Wikipedia article does not preclude their notability. If that were the case new articles wouldn't be a thing. See WP:Red link —Brian Halvorsen (talk) 03:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • My proposal for only including players with articles was to prevent the list from becoming an indiscriminate list of non-notable high-school and rec-league basketball players who happened to die during their careers. Crossover1370 (talk | contribs) 05:25, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. Same rationale as the association footballers Afd, so the verdict should be the same. People die before they retire, regardless of profession; this is not significant. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:54, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Meets WP:LISTN: The entirety of the list does not need to be documented in sources for notability, only that the grouping or set in general has been. See: 1) "Big-Time Basketball: So Many Tragedies". Baltimore Sun. March 15, 1995. 2) "Sudden Cardiac Death in Famous Athletes, Lessons Learned, Heterogeneity in Expert Recommendations and Pitfalls of Contemporary Screening Strategies". Journal of Atrial Fibrillation. 3) "Collier's death raises NBA heart issue". Chicago Tribune. October 16, 2005. The nomination is misleading, as the cited AfD mainly deleted List of association footballers who died during their careers as a duplicate of another list, which still exists. Per that nomination: We already have List of association footballers who died while playing, which has a clearer, better defined scope. Also, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of American football players who died during their career was closed as "keep", so there's no precedent that this has to be deleted.—Bagumba (talk) 08:24, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    How the hell does an article about Sudden cardiac death of athletes require the listing of car crashes and suicides? That article has a list that could be improved, or List of basketball players who died while playing may be more reasonable than this. Reywas92Talk 21:39, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a matter of content; however, WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. That said, the media can lump any "tragic" death together, regardless of cause: "Death in sports: Kobe Bryant latest on a long and heartbreaking list". The Mercury News. January 27, 2020.—Bagumba (talk) 06:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment The NOTMEMORIAL claim seems tied to the existence of some red links. Per WP:CSC, it can be reasonable to limit the list to notable people—blue links and red links for which a page can be reasonably created. However WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP, so it's another misleading basis to delete. The red links can be cleaned up—either boldly removing it, boldly turing red links into blue or requesting creation at Wikipedia:Requested articles, or otherwise flagging the issue—without resorting to an AfD.—Bagumba (talk) 10:36, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment If you’re going to nominate this one can we also nominate similar lists (like this one and that one) so this isn’t some piecemeal crap done over several months/years? Just make a decision on the whole class of articles. Rikster2 (talk) 11:35, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Bundling failed before here.—Bagumba (talk) 14:19, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I think they should be taken one at a time and evaluated as such. What I find amazing, and sometimes frustrating, about Wikipedia is that consensus on this AfD may not be consensus on another similar AfD. In fact, we are instructed not to say, "If this, then this." Each AfD stands alone. In this case, the subject is not notable. If notability is not inherited then notability is not conferred upon a subject, in this case a list, just because it contains notable subjects as blue links. The reason why we keep lists of geological features is because the "US Geological Survey" and other entities actually keep lists of these features. If reliable sources already had a list containing these players and that was the subject of the source then a list might be appropriate. I could suggest this might be better as a category but that may be for another time and place. --ARoseWolf 15:31, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as it is a notable list because it is unusual that basketball players, at the height of their physical prowess, would die during their career. It is long enough to have a list but not too long that it would be unmanageable. Most basketball players have articles, and their deaths would be well-reported in the press. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 15:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Combining the individual obituaries is not the same as discussion of the list as a whole, so this fails WP:LISTN. Car crash, homicide, and plane crash deaths are utterly irrelevant to basketball or the players being physically fit. Reywas92Talk 21:44, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - per Mike Selinker . 2603:7000:2143:8500:E58F:3052:980D:E15B (talk) 16:26, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A well-definied list with a clear inclusion criteria. Everything is sourced here, and if the issue is the red-links, then form a consensus on the article's talkpage to only include names with their own wiki-article. As a side note, a not too dis-similar list for cyclists is a WP:FL. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - If this list was more specific about players who died as a the result of playing their particular sport, in this case basketball, then it would be "well-defined" and "similar". The fact that they died from completely unrelated causes and played basketball have no correlation whatsoever. No reliable source has been presented that links these players deaths beyond that they all played basketball. This list is completely dis-similar from the List of racing cyclists and pacemakers with a cycling-related death and the List of association footballers who died while playing as the former was specifically about cyclists who died while cycling or had cycling related injuries and the latter is specifically about footballers who died from football related injuries. This list is not about basketballers who died from basketball related injuries.--ARoseWolf 18:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - as per Spiderone. MrsSnoozyTurtle 10:45, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:54, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is a topic of interest in the real world. There's a recent podcast series called "Death at the Wing" which discusses various basketball players who died young. The 2001 book Basketball's Most Wanted had a chapter called "Death in the Afternoon", showing that people were compiling such information long before Wikipedia. Whenever an active NBA player dies, several articles will mention the last time an active NBA player died, as in this article about Bryce Dejean-Jones' death. The discussion about List of association footballers who died during their careers shows little indication that anyone even tried to look for sources, and I'm uncomfortable with that discussion setting a sweeping precedent. Zagalejo (talk) 18:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Zagalejo. This should have never appeared in AFD, stop nominating articles which have clear notability. Wikipedia has tons of lists like this, and many are well written, I fail to see why this one can't be here. Swordman97 talk to me 22:12, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This is an inescapably natural and real-world topic of interest. My view of this coincides with Zagalejo's, but as soon as I saw the AfD in the log, these words spontaneously formed in my mind. Also, I join Bagumba's argument that WP:LISTN has been met, and that the nomination is a little problematic in that it creates an impression of a precedent that isn't factual. — Alalch Emis (talk) 17:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Initially I was a bit dubious about this, but the reality is, its a notable topic for many people, and would have real world interest. Deathlibrarian (talk) 02:08, 13 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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