Men's basketball to honor Lionel Hollins, Byron Scott at Feb. 17 tilt
Coach Sendek and the Arizona State men's basketball team will honor Lionel Hollins and Byron Scott by raising their respective jerseys to the rafters in Wells Fargo Arena at the Feb. 17 game against Washington, the school has announced.
Both Hollins, who played at ASU from 1973-75, and Scott, who donned the Maroon and Gold from 1979-83, garnered All-American honors with the Sun Devils and are members of the ASU Hall of Fame. Scott was Arizona State's initial inductee into the Pac-10 Hall of Honor in 2002, while Hollins was welcomed to the hall in 2006.
The game against the Huskies tips off at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 17.
The Sun Devils paid homage to Joe Caldwell's No. 32 earlier in the season at the men's basketball home opener Nov. 20 against UAB.
A 1986 ASU graduate with a degree in sociology, Hollins is a 1975 charter member of the ASU Hall of Fame and was a two-time team Most Valuable Player who started every game in his two-year career and led ASU to a 43-13 (.768) record. He was the leading scorer at 17.3 points per game in 1973-74 as the Sun Devils went 18-9 and then averaged 16.7 points as ASU went 25-4 in 1974-75 and tied for the Western Athletic Conference title with a 12-2 record. In 1975, Hollins was a first-team All-American by The Sporting News and Converse Yearbook and earned third-team honors by the Associated Press and the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC).
A two-time All-Western Athletic Conference first-team selection, he led ASU to the NCAA Tournament in 1975, as ASU beat No. 10 Alabama (97-94 in Tempe in front of a building-record crowd of 14,733) and 16th-ranked UNLV (84-81 in Portland) before falling to top-ranked UCLA 89-75 in Portland.
He also led the team in assists and minutes per game in both his seasons with 3.1 assists in 31.1 minutes per game in 1973-74 and 5.1 and 31.4 in 1974-75. He was the ASU Holiday Tournament Most Valuable Player in 1974, as ASU beat Montana and Nebraska. ASU went 14-0 in his senior year (1974-75) at home in the newly-opened University Activity Center.
A 6-3 guard, Hollins played two years at Dixie Community College in St. George, Utah, before his stellar Sun Devil career. He was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the sixth pick overall in the 1975 NBA draft. He earned All-Rookie honors in 1975-76 and one year later, Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas and Hollins led the Blazers to their first and only NBA championship and. In his five years with Portland, he averaged 13.6 points per game, was a three-time All-Defensive team pick and played in the 1978 NBA All-Star Game. The Trailblazers retired his No. 14 jersey April 18, 2007.
After a decade in the NBA that included three NBA Final appearance and stints with Philadelphia (1980-82), San Diego (1982-83), Detroit (1983-84) and Houston (1984-85), Hollins returned to Arizona State as an assistant coach for the 1985-86 and 1987-88 seasons. He has more than a dozen years of coaching experience at the NBA level, serving as an assistant coach for the Phoenix Suns (1988-95) and Vancouver Grizzlies (1995-1999), helping the Suns to a 394-180 overall record as they posted at least 50 wins and reaching the playoffs in seven straight seasons. The Suns reached the 1993 NBA Finals and won Pacific Division titles in 1993 and 1995. He is currently the head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.
Hollins also served as the Grizzlies interim head coach during the 1999-2000 season. He also was the head coach of the St. Louis SkyHawks of the USBL and assisted with the Harlem Globetrotters during their 2001 Fall College Exhibition Series. He also served as head coach of the Las Vegas Bandits of the International Basketball League (2000-01), leading the team to a 20-11 record. Twice he has served on the staff of winning NBA All-Star teams, both in Phoenix (1995) and in Salt Lake City (1993).
Scott's teams went 43-11 (.796) in his three Pac-10 seasons and he earned Associated Press Second-Team All-American and All-Pac-10 honors in 1983. He ended his career as ASU's all-time leading scorer and is currently sixth on the list with 1,572 points after leading ASU in scoring in 1981 (16.6 points per game) and 1983 (21.6). He was inducted into the ASU Hall of Fame in 1988.
His 17.5 career scoring average ranks fourth on the ASU career list and he set the ASU freshman record for minutes in a season with 936 in 1979-80. He earned Pac-10 Rookie of the Year in 1979-80 after averaging 13.6 points and had his top two freshman scoring games against Arizona, including a 31-point effort against the Wildcats on Feb. 23, 1980 in Tempe.
A 6-5 guard, Scott also earned honorable mention All-America honors from The Sporting News and Street & Smith's in 1983, honorable mention All-American from Street & Smith's in 1981 and ASU Holiday Classic Outstanding Player honors in 1980.
En route to a 24-4 record in the 1980-81 season, he led ASU to one of the largest defeats of an Associated Press top-ranked team when he played 40 minutes and scored 25 points as ASU defeated No. 1 and unbeaten Oregon State 81-61 on March 7, 1981, in Corvallis on the final day of the regular season.
Scott was the fourth overall pick in the 1983 NBA Draft by San Diego and was a three-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers in 1985, 1987 and 1988. Scott averaged 14.1 points in his 14 seasons in the NBA and was part of the famous "Showtime" Laker teams with such greats as James Worthy, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He coached the Eastern Conference All-Stars at the 2002 NBA All-Star Game and is currently the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
He is a native of Inglewood, Calif., and his non-profit organization, the Byron Scott Children's Fund, has raised more millions of dollars over the past decade with proceeds going to various children's charities.