Quinn Buckner
Quinn Buckner was born in Phoenix, Illinois, United States on August 20th, 1954 and is the Basketball Player. At the age of 69, Quinn Buckner biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
At 69 years old, Quinn Buckner has this physical status:
William Quinn Buckner (born August 20, 1954) is an American former professional basketball player and coach.
He played collegiate basketball for the Indiana University Hoosiers, and was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 7th pick of the 1976 NBA draft.
He had a ten-year NBA career for three teams (the Bucks, the Boston Celtics, and the Indiana Pacers).
In 1984, he won an NBA title with the Celtics. Buckner is one of only seven players in history to win an NCAA Championship, an NBA Championship, and an Olympic Gold Medal.
He also was a State Champion while playing high school basketball in Illinois. In addition to his playing career, Buckner was the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks for one year, from 1993 to 1994.
Currently, Buckner is a color analyst for the Indiana Pacers television broadcast team on Fox Sports Indiana.
Buckner also was the play-by-play announcer on 989 Sports line of college basketball games for several years.
Early life
Born in 1954 in Phoenix, Illinois, Buckner played basketball at Thornridge High School in Dolton, Illinois. His Falcons lost only one game during his junior and senior seasons and won back-to-back state titles. The 1972 team was undefeated, with no team coming within 14 points of it, and is often cited as the greatest team in the history of Illinois high school basketball. Buckner was also an excellent football player, making all-state in high school. He is the only person ever named Chicago area Player of the Year for both football and basketball.
In 2006, Buckner was voted as one of the 100 Legends of the IHSA Boys Basketball Tournament, a group of former players and coaches in honor of the 100 anniversary of the IHSA boys basketball tournament.
Personal life
Buckner has four children with his wife Rhonda; Jason, Cory, Lauren and Alexsandra.
He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
College career
Under Coach Bob Knight, Buckner decided to play college basketball for the Indiana University Hoosiers. He began his college career as a four-year starter and three-year captain at Indiana, as well as a one-year captain, and he also played football for one year. He seemed to get along with tumultuous Coach Knight better than any other Hoosiers player in history. "I learned early that I respected authority figures, right or wrong," Buckner said in the Dallas Morning News about his Knight-Meet.
Indiana reached the Final Four in Buckner's freshman season, 1972-73, losing to UCLA. In the 1974 FIBA World Championship, he competed for the United States national basketball team, winning the bronze medal. The Hoosiers were undefeated in two seasons, 1974–75, and 1975–76, winning 37-consecutive Big Ten games. The Hoosiers swept the entire Big Ten down by an average of 22.8 points per game. However, the team beat Purdue 83–82, losing consensus All-American forward Scott May to a fractured left arm. With May's injury restricting him to 7 minutes of action, the No. 66 has no fault. In the Mideast Regional, the Hoosiers lost 92-90 to Kentucky. Buckner, as well as three of his teammates, will make the five-man All-Big Ten team.
Buckner played in the NCAA tournament for the entire season and 1976, defeating Michigan 868–68 in the championship game, the following season: 1975–76. Indiana is the last school to be able to do so.
NBA career
Buckner was a tenacious defender, a good playmaker, and a solid solidifier in any lineup over his 10-year NBA career. He played both the team leader and trusty reserve on several occasions.
Despite his college career, Buckner was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 1976 NBA draft, his seventh pick overall. In the 1976 NFL Draft, he was also selected by the Washington Redskins. (Buckner played free safety on the Hoosiers' football team for two years.)
Buckner served on the 1976 Olympic basketball team alongside Adrian Dantley, Mitch Kupchak, and Scott May before joining the Bucks. However, nothing could have prepared him for the NBA experience. In his eight years of high school and college basketball, Buckner's teams had only lost 25 games, and he had never been on a team that had lost more than seven games in a season. Milwaukee lost 52 times between 1976-77, finishing last in the Midwest Division.
Buckner was an excellent NBA player on an individual basis. He was unconservative offensively, averaging 8.6 points from the field while shooting.434 from the field, but defense was a good match, finishing second in the league with 2.43 steals per game.
Buckner's next season saw him rise his scoring by just 9.3 points per game, and he was named to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team. In a Game 7 loss against the Denver Nuggets in the conference semifinals, Buckner tied for his highest point in the Western Conference during the season (1901-1979). Buckner had his three best years in 1978–79, following a similar 1980-1979 experience. For the second time, he made the NBA All-Defensive Second Team and helped the Bucks win the Midwest Division Championship in 1979-80. Milwaukee had a solid lineup under coach Don Nelson, including forward Marques Johnson, center Bob Lanier, and guards Brian Winters, Sidney Moncrief, and Junior Bridgeman.
Buckner played in all 82 games and set career highs in scoring (13.3 ppg), field-goal percentage (.483), and picks (197, third in the league) during his 1980–81 campaign. He appeared on the NBA All-Defensive Second Team for the second time. The Bucks were superb, finishing 60–22 with a balanced offense in which seven players averaged in double figures. Milwaukee had hoped for the season, but Julius Erving's Philadelphia 76ers defeated the Bucks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
Buckner had a reputation as a solid, reliable player with solid fundamentals. He was never going to be a flashy player or a big scorer, and his low-trajectory shot was jokingly said to have more bent rims than Darryl Dawkins' dunks.
In the Boston Globe, he wrote, "My strength is defense." "Another is my overall understanding of the game and being able to get everyone interested in the game." I've never had the impression that shooting is one of my strengths. It was actually a well-known weakness that I had inherited. "You play with a lot of confidence and work hard every night out."
Milwaukee was trying to add a few key pieces that would make the team a championship contender, but the bottleneck at guard made Buckner expendable.
He was drafted to the Boston Celtics for center Dave Cowens before the 1982-83 season. Red Auerbach wrote, "He's a winner, not a leader" when Boston signed Buckner, "He's a winner, not a strategist." He rises to the occasion. He has a positive personality, he's team-focused, and he's disciplined." "I've always loved the Boston style of play, and I think I can do it."
Milwaukee never did win the tournament. Boston, on the other hand, claimed a championship in 1984, with Buckner coming off the bench to spell Dennis Johnson and Gerald Henderson. During the regular season, the Celtics went 62-20 and then nudged the Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game NBA Finals. Buckner's resume was quite impressive considering the fact that he was crowned NBA champion.
Buckner made modest but consistent contributions to a strong Celtics team in three seasons with Boston. The club made it back to the Finals in 1985, but the Lakers wanted revenge, winning in six games.
Following the season, Boston traded Buckner to the Indiana Pacers for guard Jerry Sichting. He started the 1985–86 season with the Pacers but was suspended after 32 games and later retired, bringing his career to an end.
Broadcasting career
He later became a broadcaster for ESPN and NBC. In the early 1990s with Kevin Harlan, he also called college and NBA basketball for CBS Sports, and called games for the Minnesota Timberwolves in the early 1990s, as well as games for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Buckner is the color commentator for Indiana Pacers television broadcasts (on Fox Sports Indiana from 1999 to 2021 and Bally Sports Indiana since 2021). Buckner is active in community relations and is a member of Pacers TipOff, a game preview newsletter that is distributed via e-mail for every home Pacers game.
Coaching career
For 1993-1994, he was named head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. The club had gone 11–71 last season, and the team's name had been in disarray. Although Buckner had no NBA coaching experience, Mavericks owner Don Carter hoped Buckner's charismatic demeanor and lifelong love for winning would rub off on the young team. Buckner outlined his success formula in an interview with the Arizona Republic: "Dedication, love, extreme focus, discipline, and reminding that it can't be done alone, it must be done through the team."
Buckner, who felt that his juvenile charges needed more discipline, was determined to be a stern taskmaster in Knight's style from the start. Knight had told Buckner that if his team had an iron hand, they would only be able to win in the NBA. The scheme fell apart, with several of the participants (including Jamal Mashburn) expressing vocally against Buckner's heavy-handed coaching style. Buckner had even started consulting with Knights during the season, according to NBA analyst Peter Bjarkman. They started 1–23, and for a while it seemed they would smash the 1972–73 Philadelphia 76ers' record for the most games in a season. As the season progressed, Buckner loosened the reins a little, but it wasn't enough to keep the team from finishing 13–69, the worst record in the league, and at the time, the worst record for a rookie coach who survived for a full season was broken by Bill Hanzlik with the 1997–98 Denver Nuggets).
Buckner also enraged Carter and other executives by not instructing them on recruiting assistant coaches; they only learned about those positions when they phoned and asked how much money they would receive for moving expenses. Although Buckner had been on a five-year contract, Carter decided that "too many bridges had been sparked" and fired him after the season.
By then-Indiana governor Mike Pence's appointment in July 2004, Buckner was named Vice President of Communications for Pacers Sports & Entertainment (PS&E), which owns and operates the Indiana Pacers, the WNBA's Indiana Fever, and the Pacers Foundation, Inc.