Phil Ford

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Men's Basketball
Olympic medal record
Gold	1976 Montreal	United States

Phil Jackson Ford (born February 9, 1956 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina) is a former professional player in the National Basketball Association. He graduated from Rocky Mount Senior High School in 1974.

Ford played four years of basketball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After his sophomore season, Ford started for the U.S. Olympic team that won the gold medal in 1976. While a senior, he averaged 20.8 points a game during that 1977-78 season. He is Carolina's all-time leading scorer with 2,290 points. A consensus All-American in 1976, 1977, and 1978, he was named college player of the year by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association in 1978, when he also won the Eastman, USBWA College Player of the Year and John R. Wooden Awards.

Ford was the National Basketball Association Rookie of the Year with the Kansas City Kings in 1979. He retired in 1985. In 482 NBA games, Ford scored 5,594 points, an 11.6 average, and had 3,083 assists, an average of 6.4 per game. In 1988 he returned to North Carolina as an assistant coach, a job he held through the 1999-2000 season.

While he was an assistant coach Ford was arrested twice for DUI in a three year period. ^[1] Ford and the rest of Bill Guthridge's coaching staff were let go in 2000, when Matt Doherty took over as head coach with his own coaching staff. ^[2]

Ford was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in May 1991. Phil Ford currently works for the Educational Foundation, the fund-raising arm of the University of North Carolina athletic department. As of 2006, Ford is an assistant coach to Isiah Thomas for the New York Knicks.