2008
Elvis Old Bull
Montana’s Magic
Date: 2026
They called him “Montana’s Magic,” and in the gyms of eastern Montana in the late 1980s, no name drew a bigger crowd. Elvis Old Bull, a member of the Crow Tribe, turned Lodge Grass — a town of roughly 430 people — into the epicenter of Montana high school basketball, a place fans would drive through winter storms just to say they’d seen him play.
A 6-foot-3 point guard, Old Bull led the Lodge Grass Indians to three consecutive Class B state championships from 1988 to 1990, earning tournament MVP honors all three years. He finished his career with 1,948 points, nearly 20 points per game, and 484 assists — including a single-game state-record 22 assists. He still holds the Montana High School Association record for free throws attempted in a season, with 329. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named him one of Montana’s 50 greatest athletes of the 20th century, the only honoree chosen on the strength of a high school career alone.
You make the best of what you got in life – Elvis Old Bull’s Grandfather
Old Bull embodied “rezball” — the relentless, full-court, run-and-gun style born on Montana’s reservations — turning packed gymnasiums into something closer to revival meetings. Teammates and rivals alike described a player who saw the game several steps ahead of everyone else, capable of taking over in the game’s final seconds as easily as he threaded a no-look pass through traffic.
He was inducted into the Montana Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 2008. Old Bull died in a car accident on September 30, 2014, at age 42. In the years since, Lodge Grass has continued to honor him — renaming the high school gymnasium the Elvis Old Bull Sr. Complex and establishing an annual Elvis Old Bull Day. He was survived by his children, including Elvis Old Bull Jr., Char Old Bull, and Coral Old Bull.
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