Kim Perrot
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Kim Perrot (January 18, 1967 — August 19, 1999), was an American basketball player. She played in the WNBA for the Houston Comets.
A guard who attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Perrot was the regular point guard for the Comets, helping them to win WNBA championships in 1997 and 1998. Her best friend was Comets star Cynthia Cooper. Perrot wore jersey number 10 with the Comets organization, which has since retired her jersey. She averaged over seven points and four rebounds per game during her two seasons as a member of the Comets. On her last game with the Comets, exactly one year before her death, she scored ten points against the Los Angeles Sparks.
In February 1999, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, which later extended to her brain. While she was not on the basketball court with the Comets that year, many of her teammates considered her to be a spiritual uplifting force for the team.
Perrot went to Mexico to seek alternative methods to battle cancer; many attribute her death to that move, although the virulent type of cancer gave her little chance of survival with conventional medicine. In Mexico, she was joined by Cooper. Two days before her death, she took a Medevac flight back to Houston from Tijuana, with Cooper and members of the Perrot family flying along. She became the first active player in the WNBA to die.
After her death, the Comets went on to win a third straight WNBA title, and a tearful Cooper celebrated what the team called "#3 for #10". She was posthumously awarded a third championship ring, her #10 jersey was retired, and Comets fans raised money to create "Kim's Place", an area at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where kids with cancer can play games, sports and relax.
Two awards have been named after her: the "Kim Perrot Leadership Award" and the WNBA's "Kim Perrot Sportsmanship Award".
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