University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Catching Up With Sam Perkins
July 6, 2003 | Men's Basketball
July 6, 2003
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more suitable nickname in the Tar Heel lexicon than the "Big Smooth" that affixed itself to Sam Perkins.
The New York native is big--he's six-foot-nine. And talking to him recently as he took a break from a Carolina Pros-organized basketball camp at Chapel Hill High, he's undeniably smooth. The hair that curled on top of his head when he was a Tar Heel now is swept back in dreadlocks. With his even, low voice, he projects the image of someone whose pulse is flatter than J.R. Reid's flattop.
Longtime Carolina basketball fans, however, will remember a time when Perkins's heart rate increased dramatically. On the evening of March 29, 1982, it was Perkins who caught the basketball as time expired on Carolina's 63-62 national championship victory over Georgetown. Overjoyed with the victory, Perkins hurled the ball to the Superdome ceiling.
"Finally we got that monkey off Coach Smith's back," Perkins said. "We had lost in 1981 and were very disappointed. To win it in '82 made '81 seem OK, like we had gotten a reprieve. If we had lost again, we would have been very disappointed, not just for ourselves but also for Coach Smith."
Perkins went on to become one of the original big men with outside touch in the NBA. When he entered college, 6-foot-9 players who could shoot from beyond ten feet were a novelty. By the time he left the NBA in 2001 after a stellar 17-season professional career, big men were freely roaming beyond the three-point line and hoisting up three-pointers just as quickly as their more diminutive counterparts.
The Brooklyn native, who finished his pro career with a 12.3 points per game average, knows the outside shot added a couple years to his career.
"Now, there are a lot of versatile guys who play two or three positions," he said. "But when I first came into the League, there weren't too many guys who could do that. It prolonged my career, and I probably have to thank George Karl for that."
Karl, another former Tar Heel, coached Perkins in Seattle, a place where the long-armed forward put down the deepest roots during his journey through the NBA. He still hosts a charity event that benefits the Pediatric AIDS Foundation in that city.
"I really found a niche in that community," Perkins said. "I was on a radio station there and worked with the AIDS Foundation. That team was special because we played hard and played together because we had Coach Karl as a coach. Those six years were special."
These days, Perkins--whose career also featured stops in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis--bounces all over the country operating SOHO Productions, a concert promotion group that keeps him hopping from Dallas to Seattle to Los Angeles, where he is considering buying a home. SOHO stands for Sam On His Own, but Perkins is rarely alone. He devotes a considerable amount of time to charitable endeavors both in his home state of New York and across the country, and was recently back in Chapel Hill to participate in the Carolina Pros camp, where the proceeds were earmarked for breast cancer research.
It was his second stop in the state this year, as he also attended the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament in March. The league was honoring members of its 50th Anniversary team, and Perkins was recognized at halftime of one of the semifinal games. For the rest of the day, he was a normal--or as normal as a 6-foot-9 former superstar can be--fan, taking in the game from a seat in the Carolina section and attracting plenty of attention from Tar Heel fans.
"I get more people recognizing me from Carolina than any of my different NBA teams," Perkins said. "There's a lot of people who are a little older--they're not in the senior citizens' homes quite yet--who remember me from Carolina. I'd never been to a Tournament other than when I played here, and since I was scarce for a few years, I was someone people hadn't seen in awhile, so I think they appreciated that.
"You kind of reminisce. I went through the entrance where all the fans come in instead of the players' entrance, and it was nice to get that perspective. There were people all around me cheering for their own teams."
He'll hear more cheers in August, when he returns to Chapel Hill for Jerry Stackhouse's alumni game at the Smith Center. Until then, he'll remain active with SOHO and with several summer basketball camps.
After all, being the Big Smooth can keep you busy.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
