WORTHY, James Ager

(b. 27 February 1961 in Gastonia, North Carolina), basketball player who helped his teams win championships at both the collegiate and professional levels, and was named one of the National Basketball Association's fifty greatest players.

Worthy was one of a large family born to Ervin Worthy, a minister, and Gladys Worthy, a registered nurse. He was raised in Gastonia, where he attended Ashbrook High School and became known as an outstanding basketball player. His ability was so pronounced that when he attended a University of North Carolina (UNC) summer basketball camp in eighth grade, he was pitted against older boys to even the competition. Worthy graduated from high school in 1979.

"James Worthy was one of a very few young men I ever looked at as a high schooler and felt certain was going to be a college star and pro player," wrote the legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith. "He had incredible quickness." The six-foot, nine-inch forward seriously considered offers from the University of Kentucky; University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); and Michigan State University; but eventually chose to play for Smith at North Carolina. Worthy broke his right ankle in 1980, and was forced to sit out the second half of his freshman season; he returned to help his team advance to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship games in his sophomore and junior years.

The Tar Heels lost the 1981 title contest to Indiana University, but came back with a vengeance the following year. On 29 March 1982 Worthy scored 28 points on 13-for-17 shooting, as UNC defeated the Georgetown University Hoyas 63–62 for the NCAA championship. Ironically, despite Worthy's excellent performance in this game, he was best remembered for intercepting an errant pass from the Georgetown guard Fred Brown in the closing seconds, sealing UNC's victory. Already a first-team All-American, Worthy was also named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, an honor that put him on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and was named the National Player of the Year, along with the University of Virginia's Ralph Sampson. He also got a measure of revenge against a high school rival Eric "Sleepy" Floyd, one of the Hoyas star players whose team had beaten Worthy's Ashbrook High School squad in the state finals.

Worthy decided to forgo his senior year at UNC to enter the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft in 1982. He was selected first overall by the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, which teamed him with the established professional stars Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And with the widely respected Pat Riley taking over as his coach in place of Dean Smith, the transition could not have gone more smoothly. Worthy's fast-break style was perfectly suited for the "Showtime" Lakers, and he immediately became a big contributor for his new team.

As a rookie Worthy repeated history by breaking his left tibia just before the 1983 NBA playoffs, ending his first season as a professional just as he had finished his freshman year in college. Continuing the pattern, Worthy returned to help the Lakers advance to the championship series in his second and third seasons, winning his first NBA title in 1985, as Los Angeles beat the Boston Celtics in the finals, four games to two.

Although he was nearly traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Mark Aguirre following the Lakers 1986 playoff loss to the Houston Rockets, Worthy remained in Los Angeles and won two more NBA championships in 1987 and 1988. In game seven of the 1988 NBA finals against the Detroit Pistons, Worthy recorded his only career triple-double with thirty-six points, sixteen rebounds, and ten assists, propelling the Lakers to their fifth title in nine years and securing his nickname "Big Game James." He was named the Most Valuable Player of the series.

Los Angeles returned to the finals again in 1989 and 1991, but the Lakers era of dominance was over, and they were defeated by Detroit (4–0) and Chicago (4–1). Worthy retired from basketball on 10 November 1994, after playing his entire twelve-season professional career with the Lakers. He finished as a seven-time All-Star, with 16,320 points and three NBA championships. Worthy's number 42 jersey was retired by the Lakers on 10 December 1995, and his number 52 jersey was retired at UNC and at Ashbrook High School. Worthy was also inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

Off the court, Worthy and his wife, Angela Wilder, whom he married in 1984, raised two daughters. After retiring from basketball, he founded the sports marketing firm Big Game James, and began work as a television basketball analyst. Actively involved in charitable endeavors, the only blemish on Worthy's career was a 1990 arrest for solicitation of prostitution in Houston. He pleaded no contest to a pair of misdemeanor charges, after he allegedly offered money to two plainclothes policewomen posing as prostitutes. Worthy was sentenced to one year's probation and forty hours of community service, and fined $1,000.

In 1996 one of Worthy's championship uniforms—complete with his trademark goggles—was placed in theSmithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. That same year he was also named one of the NBA's fifty greatest players as part of the league's fiftieth anniversary celebration. Of his basketball career, Worthy was quoted in the commemorative book the NBA at Fifty (1996) as saying, "I had my areas where I knew I could get to and what moves I was going to make when I got there. If you defended me three or four different ways, then I had three or four different moves. It was something I worked at, but I always believed I was quicker than most forwards I played against."

Information about Worthy's early career can be found in North Carolina National Championship, 1982 (1982), and Dean Smith, A Coach's Life: My Forty Years in College Basketball (1999). Photos and quotations of the players honored at the NBA's fiftieth anniversary celebration, including Worthy, are in Mark Vancil, ed., The NBA at Fifty (1996). Details on his arrest and sentencing appear in the Orange County Register (15 Dec. 1990).

Jack Styczynski