Sam Perkins

Samuel Bryce Perkins (born June 14 1961 in Brooklyn, New York) is a former professional basketball player, also known by the nickname "The Big Smooth".

Education

High school

Perkins attended Shaker High School in Latham, New York, where he graduated in 1980. In his junior season, Perkins averaged 23 points and 14 rebounds per game.

College

Perkins played basketball for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). During his four years at UNC, Perkins was part of a core that won the 1982 NCAA Championship with Michael Jordan and James Worthy. Perkins played for the Tar Heels from Fall 1980 to 1984, after which he was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks.

Syracuse University coach Jim Boeheim once said that perhaps his most surprising and disappointing recruiting miss was Perkins, whom Boeheim had heavily recruited.

Olympics

Shortly after concluding his collegiate career, Perkins helped lead the United State Olympic men's basketball team to a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. As a team co-captain, Perkins was sixth on the team in scoring, averaging 8.1 points and 5.4 rebounds on a U.S. team that breezed through the competition, winning all eight of its games by no less than 11 points.

Professional career

In the NBA Sam played power forward and center. He was drafted in 1984 by the Dallas Mavericks. Throughout his career, Sam played for several great teams, and always came close but never captured an NBA championship. In Dallas, he teamed up with Rolando Blackman, Mark Aguirre, and Derek Harper to form a late-1980s championship contender, but his team was knocked out by the Magic Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers nearly every time.

After the dismantling of the Mavericks core, Sam went on to play for the Lakers where he joined Magic, as well as former UNC teammate James Worthy. He appeared in the 1991 NBA Finals with the Lakers to face another former UNC teammate , Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls and hitting the shot that would win Game 1. The Bulls rallied back the next four games and won the championship.

After a few more years in L.A., Perkins moved to the Seattle SuperSonics, who were led by a young Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp. In 1996 the Sonics made the NBA Finals, where they would face the Chicago Bulls. For Perkins, this particular series would be a rematch against Jordan, fresh from retirement and having led the Bulls to a NBA record 72-10. The Bulls would beat the Sonics for the 1996 title in six games.

Perkins ended his career with the Indiana Pacers, who made the NBA Finals in 2000, eventually succumbing to the Los Angeles Lakers. Perkins retired after the 2000-01 season, having played for 17 years.

He is listed at 6'9" (2.06 m) and 260 pounds (107 kg).

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