Samuel Vincent

James Samuel Vincent (born May 18, 1963) is an American former professional basketball player and coach. Vincent won the State of Michigan "Mr. Basketball" award in 1981, the first year the award was given. He attended Lansing's Eastern High School, where he scored 61 points in one game as a senior, breaking the previous city scoring record of 54 set by Magic Johnson at Everett High School. A 6'2" point guard, Vincent followed in the footsteps of his older brother Jay Vincent, attending Michigan State University and earning Sporting News All-America honors in 1985. After graduating from college, he was selected by the Boston Celtics with the twentieth pick of the 1985 NBA draft. He played two seasons for the Celtics, winning an NBA Championship ring as a reserve in 1986, before joining the Seattle SuperSonics, who promptly traded him to the Chicago Bulls for Sedale Threatt. After one-and-a-half solid seasons with the Bulls, he was selected by the Orlando Magic in the 1989 NBA expansion draft, and he finished his NBA career with the Magic in 1992. He scored 3,106 points and tallied 1,543 assists during his seven-year tenure in the league. Shortly after retiring, Vincent worked at Disney's Wide World of Sports in Walt Disney World. During the late 1990s, he coached basketball in South Africa, and he has also coached in Greece, Netherlands, Nigeria, and the NBA Developmental League; he went to the league finals in the NBADL twice, winning once. At the 2004 Summer Olympics, he led the Nigerian women's basketball team to a 68–64 victory over South Korea, which was the first ever victory by an African nation in an Olympic women's basketball contest.