Lester Allen Conner (born September 17, 1959) is an American professional basketball coach and former professional basketball player, who played for numerous NBA teams. On the floor at the collegiate level the 6'4" Conner was a "swingman," playing both the shooting guard and small forward positions, earning high collegiate honors as the 1982 Pac-10 Player of the Year.
Conner was the 14th selection in the first round of the 1982 NBA draft, selected by his hometown Golden State Warriors, for whom he played the first four years of his 12-season NBA career. In the NBA Conner was a "combo guard," playing both the shooting guard and point guard positions. His NBA career was interrupted by one year played with the league champion Rapid City Thrillers of the Continental Basketball Association.
Following his retirement at the end of the 1994–95 season, Conner turned his attention to coaching, beginning as an assistant to Boston Celtics head coach Rick Pitino in 1998 and continuing for more than 15 years.
Biography
Conner was born September 17, 1959, in Memphis, Tennessee. He grew up in Oakland, California, where he attended the ethnically diverse Fremont High School.[1] Although he played high school basketball for the Fremont Tigers, he was far from a star at the time, starting sporadically.[1] No elite collegiate basketball programs beat down his door, and Conner found himself relegated to pursuing an alternate path forward in his chosen sport.
Collegiate career
Junior College
In 1978, Conner enrolled at Los Medanos Junior College in Pittsburg, California, where his game expanded dramatically. Conner achieved star status, averaging 25.2 points per game in leading his team to a 24–7 record.[1] He moved on to Chabot Junior College in Hayward, California, for the 1979–80 season, achieving similar results in becoming the co-recipient of the California Junior College Player of the Year honors.[1] From being a largely unheralded high school player, Conner found himself a blue chip prospect as a transfer player, pursued by some of the leading collegiate programs in America.
1980–81
One chief suitor included Jerry Tarkanian, head coach of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, whose program Conner found attractive.[1] Another was Oregon State University, a program headed by gruff veteran head coach Ralph Miller, a future member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Conner requested that Miller travel to see him play in person, a bold request that one writer has likened to "asking the Pope to say grace at Thanksgiving dinner."[2] Nevertheless, Miller acceded to Conner's wishes and ultimately won Conner's commitment to take a scholarship with the program nearly a month after the end of the April signing period.[1]
Conner quickly won a starting role with the team, opening up the 1980–81 season playing small forward next to future NBA players Steve Johnson, Mark Radford, Ray Blume, and Charlie Sitton.[3] The team was regarded from opening day as one of the powers of college basketball, bringing back the nucleus of a team that had finished the previous year with a record of 26–4 as the 5th ranked team in America.[3] Conner would produce for much of the year off the bench as an invaluable sixth man, gaining notice as a highly skilled passer, gritty rebounder, and lock-down defensive specialist.[4]
Seven wins out the gate brought the Beavers a #2 national ranking, which soon became #1 when Oregon State kept winning while the previously top-ranked DePaul Blue Demons fell to Old Dominion, 63–62, on January 10, 1981.[5] The DePaul result was announced in the midst of an OSU annihilation of the Cal Golden Bears, with the home team up 56–28, bringing the crowd of 10,087 to a deafening standing ovation lasting more than a minute.[6]
The 1980–81 Beavers flirted with perfection, going 26–0 before suffering a shocking 20 point home loss to Alton Lister, Fat Lever, and the 24–3 Arizona State Sun Devils to close the year.[7] The season would then end in unmitigated disaster with a crushing early loss to Kansas State, 50–48, in the 1981 NCAA Tournament.[7] Conner would finish the year fourth on the team in scoring, with an average of 7.0 points per game, and pulling down 119 rebounds — second on the Beavers to star 6'11" center Steve Johnson.[8]
1981–82
Conner's senior season, 1981–82, looked like trouble for Oregon State, with both guards and center Steve Johnson leaving for the NBA, along with two rotation players, with those lost needing to be replaced by athletes of clearly lesser talent. Fully 71% of the offense from OSU's previous season was erased by the loss of the departures, along with 53% of the team's rebounds.[9] The arch-rival UCLA Bruins entered the year with a #2 ranking; expectations for OSU to repeat as conference champions were extremely low.[9]
The Beavers had a new tool in the kit, however, with the addition of an acclaimed 6'8" freshman from Benson High School in Portland named A.C. Green, who narrowly chose OSU over coach George Raveling and Washington State University.[10] Together with the maturation and improvement of pesky defensive guard William Brew and angular small forward Danny Evans, and the return of the versatile Charlie Sitton, the Beavers found themselves with a more than capable roster that racked up a Pac-10 conference record of 16–2 en route to a third straight conference title.[11]
Conner played mostly at the 2-guard position during his senior year, while frequently sharing the chore of advancing the ball against pressure. He proved his mettle as a passer, finishing the season as the Pac-10's leader in assists, with an average of 5.1 assists per game.[12] While the over-achieving Beavers again found themselves knocked out of the NCAA Tournament before they were ready, they won games in their first two rounds before running into Patrick Ewing, Sleepy Floyd, and the Georgetown Hoyas and a 24-point drubbing.[12]
Conner would finish the year as the team's scoring leader, with an average of 14.6 points per game, as well as the team's rebounding leader, with 145 boards — topping power forward A.C. Green's total of 141.[13]
During his two years as a Beaver, Conner helped lead the team to a record of 52 wins and 6 losses, a winning percentage of .897.[14]
Conner was voted the 1982 Pac-10 Player of the Year, following his Oregon State teammate Steve Johnson as recipient of the award,[15] and was tapped as a 1982 AP All-American.[14] He was remembered by OSU boss Ralph Miller as one of the top five defensive players he coached during his 38-season career.[1]
Professional career
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2021)
Conner began his NBA coaching career in 1998 as an assistant to head coach Rick Pitino of the Boston Celtics.[17] Conner credits Pitino with teaching him to project his voice from the bench, shouting instructions that cut through the din of an NBA arena.[17]
He also was twice the assistant coach in Milwaukee for head coach Terry Stotts, leaving after Stotts was fired following the 2006–2007 season.
Conner is considered a protege of former Indiana Pacers head coach Jim O'Brien and has worked under O'Brien on three separate occasions. The first was with the Boston Celtics from 2001 to 2004. The second was as the associate head coach for the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2004–05 season. In June, 2007, Conner moved to Indiana, to once again work for O'Brien and the Pacers.
On Feb. 2, 2010, taking over for one game[18] for an absent O'Brien, Lester Conner instituted a few strategic changes such as moving Roy Hibbert closer to the basket and emphasizing an attacking, uptempo style preferred by the players. The Pacers scored what turned out to be a season-high 130 points in a 15-point victory amid their 32–50 season.
In 2010, Conner joined Larry Drew as his top assistant at the Atlanta Hawks, leaving the team following Drew's termination at the end of the 2012–13 NBA Season. Conner joined the Denver Nuggets for the 2013–14 season as an assistant coach.
Conner has expressed an interest in returning to his alma mater, Oregon State University, as a head coach, but was informed in 2014 by Beaver Athletic Director Bob De Carolis of the university's unwillingness to make the job available to him due to Conner's lack of a college degree.[19] Conner expressed lament at the university's refusal to consider him for what he called "the only university job I want" owing to lack of academic qualification.[19]
"I understand the importance of having the degree," Conner told an interviewer from the Portland Oregonian in May 2014. "But at the same time, that doesn't define who I am or what I am as a coach and as a person."[19]
Footnotes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 K.J. White, Miller's Time: A Legacy of OSU Basketball, 1971–1989. Portland, OR: Highland Times Press, 1997; pg. 65.
↑ The quote is that of K. J. White in Miller's Time, pg. 65.
Amory Tingle "Slats" Gill was an American college basketball coach, the head coach at Oregon State University in Corvallis for 36 seasons. As a player, Gill was twice named to the All-Pacific Coast Conference basketball team. As head coach, he amassed 599 victories with a winning percentage of .604. Gill was also the head coach of the baseball team for six seasons and later was the OSU athletic director.
Gill Coliseum is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the northwest United States, located on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Opened in December 1949, the arena currently lists a seating capacity of 9,301 and is home to the Oregon State Beavers' basketball, wrestling, volleyball, and gymnastics teams. It is named after Amory T. "Slats" Gill, the Beavers' basketball coach for 36 seasons, who compiled a 599–392 (.604) record.
The Oregon State Beavers are the athletic teams that represent Oregon State University, located in Corvallis, Oregon. The Beavers compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Oregon State's mascot is Benny the Beaver. Both the men's and women's teams share the name, competing in 7 NCAA Division I men's sports and 9 NCAA Division I women's sports respectively. The official colors for the athletics department are Beaver Orange, black, and white.
The USC Trojans men's basketball program is a college basketball team that competes in the Pac-12 Conference of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, representing the University of Southern California.
Ralph H. Miller was an American college basketball coach, a head coach for 38 years at three universities: Wichita, Iowa, and Oregon State. With an overall record of 657–382 (.632), his teams had losing records only three times. Prior to his final season, he was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame on May 3, 1988. Miller played college football and basketball at the University of Kansas. His performance on the football team led to him being drafted in the 1942 NFL Draft, but he chose to serve in the military instead of playing in the NFL.
William Donald Enyart, nicknamed "Earthquake", was an American football player. He played fullback for the Buffalo Bills (1969–1970) and linebacker for the Oakland Raiders in 1971.
Charles E. Sitton is an American retired basketball player. He played one season in the National Basketball Association (NBA) with the Dallas Mavericks, who selected him in the second round of the 1984 NBA draft. He went on to play in Europe.
Craig Malcolm Robinson is an American college basketball coach, basketball executive, and broadcaster. He is a former head men's basketball coach at Oregon State University and Brown University. He was a star forward as a player at Princeton University in the early 1980s and a bond trader during the 1990s. He currently is the Executive Director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He is former First Lady Michelle Obama's brother.
Bernard Ray Blume is an American former basketball player. Blume achieved his greatest career success at the collegiate level as a guard for an Oregon State University Beavers men's basketball. During Blume's four-year tenure the team went 86–27 and made the NCAA tournament twice. Blume won All-American honors in 1980 and was All-Conference in 1980 and 1981. He was inducted into the Oregon State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004 and into the Pac-12 Conference Basketball Hall of Honor in 2017.
The Oklahoma State Cowboys basketball team represents Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States in NCAA Division I men's basketball competition. All women's teams at the school are known as Cowgirls. The Cowboys currently compete in the Big 12 Conference. In 2020, CBS Sports ranked Oklahoma State the 25th best college basketball program of all-time, ahead of such programs as Oklahoma and Texas. Oklahoma State men’s basketball has a very rich history of success, having won more national titles and advanced to the NCAA Championship, Final Four, Elite Eight and Sweet Sixteen more times than any Big 12 program other than Kansas. Oklahoma State has won a combined 23 regular season conference titles and conference tournament titles, which is the most of any program in the state of Oklahoma.
The Oregon State Beavers men's basketball program, established in 1901, is the intercollegiate men's basketball program of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Members of the Pac-12 Conference in NCAA Division I, the team plays home games on campus at Gill Coliseum, and the current head coach is Wayne Tinkle.
Seth A. Tarver is an American former professional basketball player who last played for the Passlab Yamagata Wyverns of the B.League. Tarver played for the Oregon State Beavers in college and graduated in 2010 with a degree in business. His brother, Josh Tarver, also played with him all four years at Oregon State. His father is former NFL running-back John Tarver.
Aaron Shawn Holiday is an American professional basketball player for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The guard played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, where he earned All-American recognition. He was selected by the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the 2018 NBA draft with the 23rd overall pick.
Gary Dwayne Payton II is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). As a junior and senior playing college basketball for the Oregon State Beavers, Payton was named first-team All-Pac-12 as well as Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year. He won his first NBA championship with the Warriors in 2022.
The Oregon State Beavers women's basketball team is the official women's basketball team of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. They are one of ten varsity women's sports at OSU. They are a member of the Pac-12 Conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The team's home venue is Gill Coliseum and their official colors are orange and black. The Beavers have made 12 appearances in NCAA Tournaments, most recently in 2021. The current head coach is Scott Rueck, assisted by Jonas Chatterton, Brian Holsinger, and Katie Faulker.
David Grace is an American basketball coach who has coached with a high degree of success at multiple levels such as D1 college, high school, and AAU, and is retired from the United States Air Force. He is currently the Head Coach at Campbell Hall School in Studio City, CA. He was previously Head Coach at Centennial HS in Peoria, AZ. At the D1 college level he was most recently the associate head coach for the Vanderbilt Commodores of the Southeastern Conference under former NBA great Jerry Stackhouse.
Christopher Theoret Duarte is a Dominican professional basketball player for the Sacramento Kings of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He played college basketball for the Northwest Florida State Raiders and the Oregon Ducks. At Northwest Florida State, he was named NABC NJCAA Player of the Year in 2019. At Oregon, he received the 2021 Jerry West Award as the nation's top collegiate shooting guard. He was selected 13th overall by the Indiana Pacers in the 2021 NBA draft. Duarte was selected to NBA All-Rookie Second Team honors.
Kylor Kelley is an American professional basketball player for the Maine Celtics of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the Oregon State Beavers.
Abdul Warith Bolaji Alatishe is a Nigerian-American professional basketball player for the Ontario Clippers of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the Oregon State Beavers of the Pac-12 Conference. He also played for the Nicholls Colonels.
The 1981–82 Oregon State Beavers men's basketball team represented the Oregon State University as a member of the Pacific 10 Conference during the 1981–82 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. They were led by twelfth-year head coach Ralph Miller and played their home games on campus at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, Oregon.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
