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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Billy James (basketball)

American basketball player (born 1950)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ18044234 ↗
Source-derived summary

Mack William James (born February 11, 1950) is an American professional basketball player. He had played collegiately at Tyler Junior College and Marshall University before joining the Kentucky Colonels in the American Basketball Association in early January 1974. He appeared in one game for the Colonels before being waived at the end of the month to make room for rookie Jim Bradley.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Billy James (basketball)” as american basketball player (born 1950). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950-02-11. The account is most persuasive where Billy, James and basketball can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american basketball player (born 1950). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18044234. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950 and 1974.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Billy James (basketball)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Billy James (basketball) primary sources, Billy James (basketball) archive and Billy research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Billy James (basketball)”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Billy James (basketball)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.