Lorenzo Charles

Lorenzo Emile Charles ( born November 25, 1963 in Brooklyn, † June 27, 2011 in Raleigh, North Carolina ) was an American basketball player.

He graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in his hometown, where he also played basketball. He then went to the North Carolina State University and came to their basketball team from 1981 to 1985 in a total of 126 games as a power forward for use. In 1983 he won with the team the championship of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Moreover, coached by Jim Valvano team won on April 4, 1983 in Albuquerque, the final game of the NCAA Men 's Division I Basketball Championship and thus the college national championship against the hochfavorisierte team of University of Houston in which, among other things, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler played. The game-winning dunk by Lorenzo Charles to the final score of 54:52, two seconds left in the game, is considered one of the most famous and iconic moments in the history of the NCAA Basketball Championship. The sports journalists from the Associated Press voted him in the same year for the All-American.

Lorenzo Charles was in 1985 in the second round of the NBA Draft selected by the Atlanta Hawks, for whom he in the 1985/1986 season a total of 36 games completed in the NBA. From 1986 until the end of his professional career in 2001, he was active for several minor league teams and for teams in Europe and South America. He then worked briefly as manager of the resident in Fargo, North Dakota Minor league teams Fargo - Moorhead Beez in the Continental Basketball Association.

In June 2011, Lorenzo Charles came at the age of 47 years was killed when he crashed with a steered by him bus on Interstate 40.