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Although
his scoring prowess has won him the most fame, King led the
SEC in rebounds two seasons and had a career average of 13.2
per game. Three-time All-SEC honoree, King ranks as the Vol's
second all-time scorer with 1,962 points in three seasons.
He was selected 7th overall in the 1977 NBA Draft by the New
York Nets, who in months later relocated from New York to
New Jersey and became known as the New Jersey Nets.
At
6'7" and 205 pounds, King epitomized the NBA small forward
of the 1980s. King was known as a tremendous scorer, leading
the NBA in scoring in 1985 with 32.9 points per game. He was
twice selected to the All-NBA First Team and three times to
the NBA All-Star Game.
In
1977-78, his rookie season, he set a New Jersey Nets franchise
record for most points scored in a season with 1,909. He would
later surpass this record with his 2,027 point season in '83-84,
earning the first of his back-to-back All-NBA selections.
In
1984 as a New York Knick, King made history by becoming the
first player in twenty years to score at least 50 points in
consecutive games. The next season, still with the Knicks,
he became just the tenth player in NBA history to score more
than 60 points in a single game.
At
the peak of his career, however, King suffered a devastating
knee injury. It required major reconstruction, causing King
to miss all of the '85-86 season and all but the final six
games of the '86-87 campaign. Despite averaging 22.7 points
per game during his first six games back, he was traded to
the Washington Bullets where he raised his scoring average
each year and returned to the All-Star Game in 1991, his final
full season in the NBA. After a year-and-a-half hiatus and
a brief 32-game stint with the New Jersey Nets at the end
of the '93 season, knee problems forced King into retirement.
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