Jones, Samuel
Basketball
b. June 24, 1933, Wilmington, NC
As a boy, Jones played neighborhood football games with future tennis great Althea Gibson. But his future was in basketball. Though he was virtually unheard of as a player at little North Carolina College, the Boston Celtics made him their number one pick in the 1957 NBA draft.
Jones became one of the Celtics' top scorers after a three-year apprenticeship as a substitute. He averaged more than 20 points four consecutive seasons, his best in 1964-65, when he scored 25.9 points a game. The 6-foot-4, 205-pound guard liked to bank his jump shots off the backboard from an angle, 15 to 20 feet away from the basket. One of the fastest players in the NBA during his prime, he also excelled on Boston's fast break.
In his twelve seasons with the Celtics, Jones played for ten championship teams. In his last playoff series before retiring, the 1969 NBA finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, he hit what was probably the most important shot of his career. The Celtics were down, two games to one, and losing 88-87 at home with seconds remaining when Jones hit an off-balance, 18-feet jump shot to win the game. The Celtics went on to win the championship, and Jones retired when it was over.
In 872 regular season games, Jones scored 15,380 points, an average of 17.6 per game. He added 2,909 points in 154 playoff games. Jones was one of the ten players named to the NBA silver anniversary team in 1971. After retiring as a player, he coached at Federal City College in Washington, DC, and at North Carolina A & T University.