Alphonso Ford

Alphonso Ford
Player information
Full name	Alphonso Gene Ford
birthday	October 31, 1971
place of birth	Greenwood (MS), USA
date of death	September 4, 2004
Place of death	Memphis (TN), USA
size	192 cm
position	Shooting Guard
college	Mississippi Valley State
NBA draft	1993 , 32nd Pick Philadelphia 76ers
Clubs as active
1989–1993 MVSU Delta Devils ( NCAA ) 1993–1994 Tri-City Chinook ( CBA ) 1994 Seattle SuperSonics 1994–1995 Tri-City Chinook 1995 Philadelphia 76ers 1995–1996 CB Peñas Huesca 1996–1997 AS Papagou 1998–1999 Sporting Athens 1999– 2001 GS Peristeri 2001–2002 Olympiacos Piraeus 2002–2003 Montepaschi Siena 2003–2004 Scavolini Pesaro 00000 00000

Alphonso Gene Ford (born October 31, 1971 in Greenwood , Mississippi , † September 4, 2004 in Memphis , Tennessee ) was an American basketball player . Even during his student days, Ford was one of the best and most consistent points collectors in the history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I. After the end of his studies, he was only able to play a few appearances in the highest-endowed professional league, the National Basketball Association (NBA). After he otherwise played in the " Minor League " CBA , he moved to Europe in 1995, where he played after a station in Spain, especially in Greece . At the end of his career he played two more seasons in Italy . Ford usually achieved an average of more than 20 points per game in Europe and was in the first two seasons of the ULEB Euroleague as the " top scorer " the player with the best points average of all players. After Ford had to sit out a full season in the 1997/98 season due to a leukemia disease, he continued his competitive sports career anyway. Ford passed away in September 2004 at the age of less than 33, although he had played until recently and had announced his retirement only a few days beforehand. The trophy for the best point collector in a season in the highest European club competition, the Euroleague, was named in his honor as the Alphonso Ford Top Scorer Trophy .

Career

Ford went to study at Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena , which had been founded as an educational institute for people of racially segregated African American descent . There he played from 1989 to 1993 in the college team Delta Devils in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) of the NCAA . Neither the SWAC basketball teams in general, nor the Delta Devils in particular, are counted among the leading teams in Division I of the NCAA. Ford managed to achieve an average of almost 30 points in his first year as a " freshman ", which he increased to almost 33 points per game the following year. This was only surpassed by Kevin Bradshaw in Division I that season . Ford was able to place itself in each of its four college seasons among the "top ten" in the category of the best average point collector and achieved a total of 3,165 points in four years, the fourth best point total of all players in the history of Division I. Despite his individual best performances, it was enough for the Delta Devils only won a championship tournament in the SWAC in 1992. Then they eliminated in the national NCAA finals in the first round against the Buckeyes of Ohio State University , who were number 1 in the regional group, with 56:83.

In the " Entry Draft " of the highest endowed professional league National Basketball Association (NBA) Ford was selected after the end of his college career in 1993 in the second round in 34th position of the Philadelphia 76ers. Here he did not make it into the final season squad and was released from his contract at the start of the NBA season in 1993/94 . Ford joined the Tri-City Chinook from Tri-Cities (Washington) in the " Minor League " Continental Basketball Association (CBA). From mid-March 1994 he got two consecutive short-term contracts with the Seattle SuperSonics and thus still to his first six appearances in the NBA in his " rookie " season as a professional. In the NBA play-offs , in which the main round first Sonics with over 60 wins this season and the German NBA All-Star Detlef Schrempf in the squad almost sensationally eliminated in the first round, Ford was no longer under contract. During the break of the season, Ford got a contract with the Los Angeles Clippers , which, like the year before, was terminated shortly before the start of the season. After Ford had played again with the Tri-City Chinook in the CBA, his personal story from the previous year was repeated when he got two short-term contracts from the 76ers at the end of March 1995, which, however, did not make it for the play-offs of the NBA 1994 / 95 could qualify. Here he got significantly more playing time in five missions, but without being able to use it particularly productively.

After Ford could not fix himself in an NBA squad for a long time and his CBA team Chinook had been disbanded after the end of the 1995 season, Ford continued his professional career in Europe, where he worked for the club CB Peñas from Huesca in the 1995/96 season played in the Spanish league ACB . For this team, with an average of just under 25 points, he was the second best point collector of that season behind John Morton , who had played in Huesca the previous year. As in the previous year, the relegation could only be achieved in a play-down elimination. Subsequently, however, after eleven years of uninterrupted membership in the top national league, the club voluntarily withdrew to the second division and awarded the license to Baloncesto Fuenlabrada . Ford therefore moved to the top Greek division A1 Ethniki to AS Papagou from the capital Athens for the following season . After being promoted again a year earlier, the team improved to seventh place and met in the pre-play-offs under reversed signs again on Sporting Athens, which they were subject to as in the previous year. At Ford, with just under 24 points per game top scorer in the highest Greek division, leukemia was found at the end of the season , so AS Papagou terminated the contract and Ford paused the entire following season to cure the life-threatening illness.

Apparently recovered, Ford signed a contract with Sporting Athens for the 1998/99 season, which could only improve slightly to eleventh place and were eliminated in the pre-play-offs against Iraklis Thessaloniki . On his return to the top Greek league, Ford was again top scorer with almost 23 points per game and has now got a contract with league competitor GS Peristeri, who were also regular champions in European club competitions in the 1990s. In the Korać Cup 1999/2000 they reached the last sixteen, which was lost to CB Estudiantes . In the national championship they achieved their best result in three years in fifth place, but in the play-offs Ford, who was A1 Ethniki top scorer for the third time, was eliminated in the first round against PAOK Thessaloniki . After the conflict between the leading clubs from the southern European leagues and FIBA Europe over the organization of the European league had escalated and the newly founded ULEB association had secured the previously unprotected trademark rights to the European league, a bizarre haggling now ensued over the participants and higher recognition in the competing FIBA Suproleague and ULEB Euroleague competitions . While most of the national champions, including defending champion Panathinaikos Athens , continued to compete in the FIBA ​​competition, except for Italy and Spain , Peristeri slipped into the field of participants in the new ULEB Euroleague 2000/01 together with other Greek teams as fifth last year . After a strong second place in the preliminary round behind the Italian champions Paf Bologna , Peristeri was eliminated in the round of 16 play-offs against TAU Cerámica . Ford, the top scorer of the first season with 26 points per game, was selected as shooting guard for the "All-Euroleague First Team" . In the Greek championship, in which Ford was top scorer for the third time in a row, Peristeri reached a historic second place after the main round, tied with the defending champion and First Panathinaikos Athens, but had to defeat Olympiacos in two games in the play-off semi-final series give who subsequently lost the final series in five games.

In the 2001/02 season Ford moved to runner-up Olympiacos in Piraeus , who had not won anything significant since the 1997 triple and were ultimately always inferior to arch-rivals Panathinaikos in the national championship. At the European level, the ULEB had the better arguments, i. e. the financially strong partners on their side and the FIBA ​​had to give in, so that the Suproleague was discontinued and in the ULEB Euroleague 2001/02 all European national champions from the strongest or most interesting leagues in terms of marketing started. In the second round Olympiakos had to deal with Master Panathinaikos, later master AEK Athens and the Slovenian master and later ABA league winner KK Union Olimpija in a Greek "group" . Panathinaikos retained the upper hand with only one defeat in Piraeus, while Olympiacos were eliminated, and subsequently won the competition. Ford was once again elected top scorer of the Euroleague with an average of just under 25 points and was elected to the “All-Euroleague Second Team” of the ten best players of the season. After winning the title in the Greek Cup competition, Olympiacos prevented defending champion Panathinaikos from winning again in the semi-final series of the national championship, but had to admit defeat in the final series AEK Athens, although they had won the first two finals.

Ford moved to the 2002/03 season in the Italian Lega Basket Serie A to the emerging club Montepaschi from Siena . In the ULEB Euroleague 2002/03 they were able to leave defending champion Panathinaikos behind in the second round and reached the Final Four tournament somewhat surprisingly . There they lost the semi-final against the Italian champions Benetton Treviso , but secured third place in the highest European club competition with a success in the "small final" over PBK ZSKA Moscow . With just under 18 points on average, Ford missed the award as the best scorer in the Euroleague for the first time, but he was the only player from Siena to be selected for the season's “All-Euroleague First Team”. Also in the play-off semi-final series of the Italian championship, Siena defending champions Treviso had to admit defeat. For the following season 2003/04 Ford got a contract with the league competitor Scavolini from Pesaro . The club, twice Italian champions in the 1980s, was not represented in any European club competition after a 13th place in the previous year. Scavolini returned with a fourth place in the main round among the best Italian teams, but had to admit defeat in the play-off semi-final series Ford's former team Montepaschi Siena, which then won the Italian championship for the first time without defeat in the play-offs. After Ford had decided to extend his contract in August 2004 in Pesaro, who had qualified for the ULEB Euroleague for the first time after finishing fourth, he announced shortly afterwards at the end of August that he would not retire from his career due to an acute relapse of his leukemia disease could continue. Just ten days later, Ford died at the age of less than 33 in a hospital in Memphis. He left a wife and two sons. At the initiative of fans as well as the Greek and Italian media, the ULEB decided in his honor to donate a trophy named after him for the best average point collector of a Euroleague season.

Web links

• FORD, ALPHONSO - Statistics on the websites of the ULEB ( English )
• Legabasket: Alphonso Ford - player profile on the websites of the Serie A ( Italian )
• Alphonso Ford player stats on: Basketball Reference website; Philadelphia, PA, 2000-2017. Retrieved August 2, 2017 (in English).

Footnotes

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 2013-14 NCAA Men's Basketball Records - All-Time / Year-by-year Individual Scoring Leaders. (PDF (721 KB)) National Collegiate Athletic Association , December 9, 2013, pp. 15 & 23 , accessed on January 28, 2014 . 
2. ^ Tri-City Chinook Fold. The Spokesman Review , May 21, 1995, accessed January 28, 2014 . 
3. ↑ ACB.COM: Alphonso Ford. Liga ACB , accessed on January 28, 2014 (Spanish, player profile). 
4. ↑ Ford was drafted by 76ers in '93. ESPN , September 7, 2004, accessed January 28, 2014 . 
5. ^ Eurolega, intitolato a Ford il titolo di miglior realizzatore. Lega Basket Serie A , November 2, 2004, accessed on January 28, 2014 (Italian, repro of a message from Il Messaggero ). 

Remarks

1. ↑ Ford's size is indicated quite differently. In the profile of the Basketball-Reference.com listed under web links, his height is specified as 6 feet and 1 inch , which would correspond to a height of 185 to 186 cm. The ULEB, which is also linked, leads him with the 192 cm specified here.