 |
| |
|
The Official Web Site of the WVU Varsity Club |
|
|
|
Profile: Rod Thorn
Consider the case of West Virginia University two-time All-American guard Rod Thorn, whose 1,785 career points rank fifth on the school’s all-time scoring list. Thorn was a terrific basketball player, a terrific student, and the perfect gentleman. But for a time, he couldn't escape the shadow of being compared to Jerry West. The pressure of being one of West Virginia's most prized athletic commodities was almost unbearable. Thorn had the misfortune of continuing his collegiate basketball career right after West – the school’s most prolific player who scored 2,309 career points in three seasons from 1958-60. Thorn, like West, attracted nationwide attention after a high school career in Princeton, W.Va., that saw him average more than 30 points per game as a senior. He was a three-time all-state selection and was a two-time High School All-American. More than 100 schools made direct contact with him -- some as early as his sophomore year of high school. One school offered to pay for medical school, another was willing to supply him with a car. A third offered extra money. In the end, he whittled his college decision down to West Virginia University and Duke University. His father, Joe, the town police chief and the primary architect of Rod’s athletic career, wanted him to go to Duke. Joe was once a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals farm system and advanced to Triple-A before a sore arm ended his career. So instead, he put all of his energies into his son, raising young Rod with the hopes of him becoming the professional athlete he wasn’t. His first memory of playing basketball was as a six-year-old for the Rinky Dinks -- a touring basketball team made up of mostly eight-to-10-year-olds except for Rod. The team was coached by his father. And while Thorn was showing an amazing proficiency in basketball, it was baseball that really caught his father’s attention. He played basketball in the autumn and winter and baseball in the spring and summer. In between Rod was a straight-A student. Thorn’s academic average was good enough to get him into any school in the country. A three-man committee from Duke led by its basketball coach Vic Bubas made one last pitch to sign Thorn. They told him Duke’s medical school was 25 years ahead of West Virginia’s. There was no way he could get the same type of education at West Virginia University. Fred Schaus, West Virginia’s highly successful basketball coach coming off an NCAA championship appearance against Cal in 1959, came at Thorn a different way. Schaus told him if he wished to become a doctor in West Virginia, what better way to do so than by going to West Virginia University? Being well-known in West Virginia would help him achieve that goal. Giving Rod a little extra push was the West Virginia state legislature’s decision to pass a resolution naming him one of the state’s natural resources. “For a while that resolution turned me against going to West Virginia University,” Thorn once said. “But then I realized it was a nice gesture.” On a Friday with three weeks before the end of high school, Thorn made up his mind to attend West Virginia University. The legislature's resolution and the mail from people throughout the state helped him make his decision. Thorn’s arrival in Morgantown in 1960 was an eagerly anticipated event. He was given the same uniform number as West (44) and he led the freshmen team to an undefeated season. He scored more than 20 points per game and also was a star first baseman on the baseball team. His academic average for his freshman term was a 3.63 and he was ranked sixth in his class. Wrote Newsweek Magazine: “When All-American Jerry West graduates in June, West Virginia will be ready to replace him with Rod Thorn, a freshman. The Mountaineers insist that Thorn is as good a player as West was at the same stage." Thorn wasn’t so sure. “I had my private doubts when I came to West Virginia,” he once said. “I had so much favorable publicity up to that time with grades and basketball that I didn’t want to blemish that record.” Thorn, uneasy about following West’s footsteps and even more apprehensive about taking pre-med classes in the fall, began his sophomore season with great trepidation. Privately, his goal was to make the starting five. The rest of West Virginia had considerably greater expectations. Thorn scored 12 points in his very first varsity game against William & Mary and averaged close to 22 points per game midway through the year. Yet fans expected even more. He’d hear someone yelling from the stands about men in white coats coming to get him, or opposing fans calling him “Psycho” or “Bugs.” Most often, he heard people telling him that he couldn’t carry Jerry West’s shoes. Thorn never wanted those shoes in the first place. “The bottom line is that there was only Jerry West,” says Thorn, “and I wasn’t him. And I knew I wasn’t.” To compound matters, his school-work was suffering. Long road trips required him to miss important classes and his “A” average was becoming more difficult to maintain. By the end of the year, Thorn had had enough. He dropped out for the remainder of the semester to regain his strength – both physically and mentally. It was rumored during the spring that he was going to transfer to Duke and some schools actually contacted him about transferring, but he decided to return to summer school to make up his class work and finish what he started. Thorn packed on nearly 20 more pounds to his 6-foot-4 frame and he looked a much stronger 178 pounds. He averaged close to 24 points per game as a junior in helping the Mountaineers to an outstanding 24-6 record and another Southern Conference championship. He was named to the Helms Foundation and Sporting News All-America teams. Thorn had an awkward two-handed shooting style people called the “Thornderbolt.” He learned to shoot that way as a young kid because he wasn’t strong enough to shoot the ball with one hand. In addition to his outstanding shooting touch, Thorn was more than adequate as a ballhander and ranked among the team’s top rebounders each season. He finished his career with 912 rebounds in 82 games for an average of 11.1 per game. Thorn’s good fortune continued as a senior in 1963. He burned the nets for an average of 22.5 points per game and led the Mountaineers to another 20-win season and a Southern Conference title. His two finest games came in the NCAA tournament when he scored 44 points in a second-round loss to St. Joseph’s, and he added 33 points in a regional tournament consolation game the following night against NYU. He was named the Southern Conference Athlete of the Year and earned All-America recognition by Look Magazine, Helms Foundation, Coach & Athlete and Chuck Taylor-Converse. Thorn was the third overall player selected in the 1963 NBA draft by the Baltimore Bullets and he spent eight injury-plagued seasons in the NBA. His best two years came as a rookie in 1964 when he averaged 14.4 points per game for the Bullets and his first year with the Seattle Supersonics in 1968 when he averaged 15.2 points per game in 66 contests. Those were the only two times during his career he managed to score more than 1,000 points in a season. In eight years, he scored 5,012 career points in 466 games for an average of 10.8 points per game. He was known around the NBA as an intelligent player and a ferocious competitor. In addition to Baltimore and Seattle, Thorn also played for the Detroit Pistons and the St. Louis Hawks before retiring in 1971. He remained in the game as an assistant coach with the Sonics and the New York Nets of the ABA before taking the head coaching job with the Spirit of St. Louis in 1976. Later as a general manager for the Chicago Bulls, Thorn was in the boardroom on draft day in June of 1984 to utter the unforgettable phrase, “Take Jordan.” He was rewarded for his brilliant decision by being fired in March 1985 when Jerry Reinsdorf bought the Bulls and installed his own man, Jerry Krause. Soon afterward, NBA commissioner David Stern asked Thorn to join his staff as vice-president in charge of operations, a post he held until the summer of 2000 when he assumed the title of head of basketball operations for the New Jersey Nets. Since then, he turned that once woeful franchise into one of the NBA’s best with a run to the finals in 2002. He was awarded the NBA’s Executive of the Year by Sporting News – an honor also once bestowed upon Jerry West. Today both are considered among professional sports top executives. Thorn was inducted into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1992. Thorn serves on the school's board of governors and was the keynote speaker at WVU's commencement in December, 2002. |
Celebrity
can sometimes be a form of cruelty. |
This site is the property of the
Mountaineer Sports Network, 2004 |
|