Grab a courtside seat for a look at the players and programs shaping basketball in Baton Rouge

The list of basketball legends who have graced the hardwood in Baton Rouge is long. At LSU, Bob Pettit and Pete Maravich made magic in the Cow Palace decades before Shaquille O’Neal shattered backboards and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf drained three-pointers in the PMAC. The Lady Tigers stacked up plenty of their own star players, from Seimone Augustus to Sylvia Fowles and Angel Reese. And on the Bluff, dominant players like Bob Love, Bobby Phills and Avery Johnson led the Southern University Jaguars to success before excelling in the NBA.

But this is a list still being written. As the local teams launch into conference play this month, we’re previewing their prospects in the regular season and on into March Madness. We’re also pausing to dig deeper into what drives some of this era’s brightest stars, from LSU women’s basketball guard Flau’jae Johnson to associate head coach Bob Starkey and finally to the Baton Rouge Community College Bears, who are riding high on the heels of back-to-back conference championships of their own.

For a place with such a legacy of success on the court, perhaps the words of Shaq himself explain it best: “Excellence is not a single act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.”