Rod Thorn
American basketball player (born 1941)
Rodney King Thorn (born May 23, 1941) is an American basketball executive and a former professional player, coach and Olympic Committee chairman with a career spanning over 50 years. In 2018, Thorn was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Early life
Thorn attracted nationwide attention after a high school basketball career at Princeton High School in his hometown of Princeton, West Virginia 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.
Thorn was also a highly regarded high school baseball player, before a head injury took him away from the sport for a time.
Thorn was looking at colleges, including Duke University, when the West Virginia State Legislature passed a resolution designating Thorn as a state Natural Resource. This in order to persuade him to emulate native Jerry West and attend West Virginia University. Thorn did just that.
College career
Thorn attended West Virginia University. He wore #44, the same number as Jerry West, who had just graduated.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rod Thorn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.