No. 12: Quinn Buckner
12 QUINN BUCKNER | Two-sport star at Thornridge was winner at every step of his career
Quinn Buckner picked up the phone in the three-bedroom house in the working-class neighborhood of south suburban Phoenix, where he grew up. It was a newspaper reporter calling to tell him that he was the first junior to be named Chicago's basketball player of the year.
Buckner, on his way to becoming one of the most decorated athletes in state -- if not national -- history, hung up the phone, stunned. Then he picked up his basketball and walked to a nearby court, not even bothering to tell his mother the news. She learned about the honor from a neighbor.
''I went down to the playground to work on my game,'' Buckner said. ''I knew everybody was coming; everybody was coming after me. Once you get that kind of accolade, you really have to get a lot better because everybody is going to play a lot harder against you.''
His story reads like a fairy tale. Buckner, who was named the 12th Greatest Athlete in Chicago History by a Sun-Times panel, was one of the most decorated two-sport athletes in state history after his high school career at Thornridge helped produce a mythical state football title in 1970, state basketball titles in 1971 and 1972 and the then-longest winning streak (54 games) in Illinois prep basketball history. He was a two-sport athlete at Indiana before focusing on basketball and becoming a cornerstone of the fabled 1976 team that went undefeated and won the national championship. He won an NBA title with the Boston Celtics in 1984.
Buckner is one of three players to win titles in high school, college, the Olympics and the NBA. Magic Johnson and Jerry Lucas are the others.
''It's almost like an out-of-body experience,'' Buckner said. ''It's one thing to be one of three people to do something, but three people in the history of the sport? I don't belong in that class with those guys. The things they've done? I don't deserve to be with those guys.''
His father, who played on Indiana's Big Ten-winning football team in 1945, knew his son was an athlete when he saw him doing flips over a sidewalk. Nobody could have predicted that he would be a high school All-American in football and basketball, though, or that he would lead a team that eased racial tensions at Thornridge after integration. Not even his father, an educator, knew he would be one of the most sought-after recruits of his generation.
Despite the accolades, Buckner didn't always feel like a success.
''I never felt like I was good enough,'' he said. ''I wasn't a guy who scored a lot of points, which was the standard. I wasn't as proficient of a shooter as some. My tendency was to latch on to something that nobody could stop me from doing. Maybe they can block my shot, but they can't stop me from competing, from learning how to play with everyone on the floor and encouraging them to do what they didn't do well. I made winning the goal.''
Buckner whittled down more than 200 scholarship offers to UCLA, Cincinnati, Kansas, Michigan and Illinois. Legendary UCLA coach John Wooden told Buckner he could play football and basketball for the Bruins but wouldn't come to his home. Wooden didn't visit recruits, regardless of how celebrated they might be. If Buckner wanted to see the ''Wizard of Westwood,'' he would have to go O'Hare Airport, which was a deal-breaker for his father.
His dad went to Indiana. His sister went to Indiana. Finally, his father handed him a letter of intent and told him to sign it. Quinn was going to Indiana, too.
''My God, I'm so glad it's finally over,'' Hoosiers coach Bob Knight's then-wife, Nancy, said when she heard the news. ''When my 7-year-old comes home from school every day for the last three months and asks if Quinn has decided yet, you know the whole thing has gone too far.''
Buckner played football his freshman and sophomore seasons but was good enough in basketball to start less than a week after football ended. He was good, all right, but he never would be great, Knight told him, if he didn't choose between the two.
Then-Indiana football coach Lee Corso didn't want to lose him.
''He's the finest athlete I've seen in 17 years of coaching,'' said Corso, now a college-football analyst for ESPN.
Finally, Knight issued an ultimatum: choose.
''Don't worry about me,'' Knight told him. ''If it's football, I'll be your biggest fan.''
Buckner chose basketball and never looked back, although the Washington Redskins drafted him in 1976. Being a member of the last undefeated national champion in college basketball, a team that captured the hearts and imaginations of Indiana fans and still is revered in that state, was far from the end.
He lived it. Looking back on it now, however, it seems unreal. Somehow, he feels unworthy.
''It was a bit of a fairy tale,'' he said. ''I even have a hard time believing it, if you want to know the truth.''
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