1983 Basketball Star Lorenzo Charles Passes Away

from gopack.com

Lorenzo Charles, whose unforgettable dunk at the end of the 1983 NCAA championship game against Houston gave NC State its second men’s basketball title, died Monday in an accident on Interstate-40 near Cary, according to a Raleigh police spokesman. He was 47.

Charles, a forward from the Bronx, N.Y., emerged as an important piece of Jim Valvano’s Cardiac Pack, scoring the winning points in three of the Wolfpack’s nine postseason victories en route to the championship.

But one play will always be remembered: On the night of April 4, 1983, Charles grabbed a rebound of Dereck Whittenburg’s airball with just a few seconds remaining in the tied game and jammed it through the basket while he was still in the air. The sophomore forward landed, paused to make sure the basket counted and ducked to the sidelines, looking for obscurity while his teammates celebrated on the court.

The dunk gave the Wolfpack a 54-52 victory that shocked the college basketball world and left Houston’s Phi Slama Jama speechless on the court of The Pit in Albuquerque, N.M. The play has come to define the excitement of March Madness and will always symbolize the triumph of the underdog over a heavy favorite.

“It was kind of a David and Goliath thing,” Charles remembered some 20 years after the famous play.

Charles grew stronger and bigger during his final two years for Jim Valvano’s Wolfpack, earning first-team All-ACC and All-America honors his senior season. He was taken with the 41st pick of the 1985 NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks and played professionally in the NBA and overseas for more than a decade.

When he retired, he returned to Wake Forest, N.C., where he became a bus driver for various transportation companies in the Triangle. Monday, he was driving a bus for Elite Coach of Apex, N.C. According to reports, there were no passengers on the bus and no other injuries were reported in the accident.

Charles was a regular at NC State basketball games after he returned to the Triangle, usually taking a seat behind the team bench. He always smiled and listened to every fan who had the nerve to tell him exactly what they were doing when he scored the dunk that made him famous.

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