Bill Sharman, Hall of Fame basketball player, Lakers coach, dies at 87
Sharman, who suffered a stroke last week, died at his home in Redondo Beach, said his wife, Joyce.
Sharman was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1976 and as a coach in 2004, joining John Wooden and Lenny Wilkens as the only men honored in both roles, and in 1996 was selected as one of the 50 greatest players of the NBA's first 50 years.
In the summer of 1971, Jack Kent Cooke hired Sharman to coach the Lakers. Seven times between 1962 and 1970, the Lakers had reached the NBA Finals without winning, losing to the Celtics six times in the championship series.
But with Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Gail Goodrich anchoring the team, the Lakers won a staggering 33 consecutive games, a U.S. professional sports record, during the 1971-72 season. They finished the season 69-13 and defeated the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.
Sharman coached the Lakers for four more seasons before becoming general manager then team president and special consultant.
Born William Walton Sharman on May 25, 1926, in Abilene, Texas, he grew up in Lomita, attending Narbonne High School in Harbor City before moving to Porterville in the San Joaquin Valley. He excelled not only in basketball but football, baseball, tennis, track and boxing.
He served in the Navy then became a two-time All-American and Pacific Coast Conference basketball player of the year at USC.
A good enough outfielder to have been drafted by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950, he played professional baseball for five years. Called up to the major leagues at the end of the 1951 season, he watched from the dugout as Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hit the “shot heard 'round the world,” beating the Dodgers in a playoff for the National League pennant.
But Sharman, to his regret, never made it as a major leaguer. Basketball was his forte. Originally drafted by the Washington Capitols, he became an eight-time All-Star with the Celtics, averaging 17.8 points a game and winning four titles during an 11-year NBA playing career.
As a player, Sharman may be remembered most for his uncanny free throw shooting. He made 88.3% of his free throws, seven times leading the league in free throw percentage.
“Bill Sharman with the basketball at the free throw line was a sports work of art,” Jim Murray, the late Times columnist, wrote in 1994. “Ruth with a fastball, Cobb with a base open. Dempsey with his man on the ropes. Hogan with a long par three. Jones with a short putt. Caruso with a high C. Hope in a ‘Road' movie. Shoemaker on the favorite. Sinatra with Gershwin.
“When it was Sharman at the line, the next sound you heard was swish! It was as foregone as the sun setting.”
From 1950 to 1955, Sharman played professional baseball in the Brooklyn Dodgers minor league system. He was called up to the Dodgers late in the 1951 season but did not appear in a game. He was part of a September 27 game in which the entire Brooklyn bench was cleared from the dugout for arguing with the home plate umpire over a ruling at the plate. This has led to the legend that Sharman holds the distinction of being the only player in baseball history to have ever been ejected from a major league game without ever appearing in one. However, although Sharman was among the Dodger bench players that had to go to the clubhouse, none of them were actually barred from playing in the game. In fact, in the top of the ninth, one of the other dismissed players, Wayne Terwilliger, was used as a pinch-hitter in the game.
Sharman was drafted by the Washington Capitols in the second round of the 1950 NBA draft.
Career history
As player:
1950–1951 Washington Capitols
1951–1961 Boston Celtics
As coach:
1961–1962 Cleveland Pipers
1963 Los Angeles Jets
1966–1968 San Francisco Warriors
1968–1971 Los Angeles / Utah Stars
1971–1976 Los Angeles Lakers
Career highlights and awards
As player:
4× NBA champion (1957, 1959–1961)
8× NBA All-Star (1953–1960)
NBA All-Star Game MVP (1955)
4× All-NBA First Team (1956–1959)
3× All-NBA Second Team (1953, 1955, 1960)
NBA anniversary team (25th, 50th, 75th)
No. 21 retired by Boston Celtics
Consensus first-team All-America (1950)
2× First-team All-PCC (1949, 1950)
No. 11 retired by USC Trojans
As coach:
NBA champion (1972)
ABA champion (1971)
ABL champion (1962)
NBA Coach of the Year (1972)
ABA Coach of the Year (1970)
3× NBA All-Star Game head coach (1968, 1972, 1973)
As executive:
10× NBA champion (1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2010)
Career playing statistics
Points 12,665 (17.8 ppg)
Rebounds 2,779 (3.9 rpg)
Assists 2,101 (3.0 apg)
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