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Mike Niles

American professional basketball player

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 authorityQ3857432
Source-derived summary

Michael Donnell Niles (born March 31, 1955) is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Cal State Fullerton Titans and was selected in the fourth round of the 1979 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers. Niles began his professional career with the Lancaster Red Roses in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) during the 1979–80 season. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Phoenix Suns during the 1980–81 season.

In 1989, Niles was sentenced to life imprisonment for orchestrating the murder of his wife in a 1984 shooting.

Early life

Niles was the second youngest of 13 children and his dad died when he was an infant. When he was aged 8, he broke both of his legs when he fell off a bike. Niles' mother died when he was 12 and he became an orphan who endured homelessness and slept in alleyways. He joined an inner-city gang the following year. Niles developed a reputation for an intimidating hardness which was forged from years of fending for himself.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Mike Niles” as american professional basketball player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mike, Niles and American.

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—1955, 1979, 1980, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1955-03-31. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Mike, Niles and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Mike Niles”, the useful work is to connect “american professional basketball player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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 Q3857432. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1979, 1980 and 1989.

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 “Mike Niles”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mike Niles primary sources, Mike Niles archive and Mike 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 “Mike Niles”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mike Niles” 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.