Sam Perkins

Sam Perkins
Player information
Full name	Samuel Bruce Perkins
Nickname	Big Smooth
birthday	June 14, 1961 (59 years 78 days)
place of birth	New York City , New York , United States
size	206 cm
position	Center / Power Forward
college	North Carolina
NBA draft	1984 , 4th pick, Dallas Mavericks
Clubs as active
1984–1990 Dallas Mavericks 1990–1992 Los Angeles Lakers 1992–1998 Seattle SuperSonics 1998–2001 Indiana Pacers

Samuel Bruce Perkins (born June 14, 1961 in Brooklyn , New York ) is a retired American basketball player. Perkins won the gold medal with the US Olympic selection at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles .

NBA

Perkins was brought into the NBA in fourth place in the 1984 draft by the Dallas Mavericks . He reached the playoffs in 13 of his 15 professional years . This was also the case in his first year as a professional, in which he was elected to the NBA All-Rookie Team with 11.0 points per game (an average of 18.8 points in the playoffs) and 7.4 rebounds . In the following years with the Mavericks, "Big Smooth" was able to improve his points and reached the Western Conference Finals in 1988 with the Mavericks.

When his contract expired in 1990, he joined the Los Angeles Lakers , where he played alongside his former college teammate James Worthy . In 1991 he reached the NBA Finals with the Lakers, where you could only win one game and the Chicago Bulls around superstar Michael Jordan (also a former college teammate) were thus defeated 1: 4. In the only victory of the Lakers, Perkins scored the decisive three-point throw in the last second of the game.

In the 1992/93 season, the Lakers wanted to rejuvenate and swapped Sam Perkins on February 22, 1993 for Benoit Benjamin and Doug Christie to the Seattle SuperSonics , where he played up to and including 1997/98. During this time he slipped more and more into the role of the banker. In 1996 he reached the NBA Finals for the second time, now wearing the Seattle SuperSonics jersey, only to be defeated by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls .

On January 21, 1999, Sam Perkins signed with the Indiana Pacers . With the team he reached the 2000 NBA Finals for the third time in his career, in which his team was defeated by the Los Angeles Lakers. In the following year he no longer played a major role in the Pacers squad and was therefore released on September 17, 2001. This ended Sam Perkins' professional career. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 2018 .

Web links

• Sam Perkins - player profile on NBA.com
• Sam Perkins at Basketball-Reference.com
• Sam Perkins in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )