Christian Steinmetz was an American basketball player. He played forward for the University of Wisconsin from 1903 to 1905. He was college basketball's leading scorer in the game's first 25 years from 1895 to 1920. He became known as the "Father of Wisconsin Basketball" and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1961.

The Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year was an annual men's college basketball award given to the most outstanding men′s player in the United States. It was awarded by the Helms Athletic Foundation, an organization founded in 1936 by Bill Schroeder and Paul Helms, the owner of Helms Bakery in Los Angeles.