“Gonna get my baby one time, yeah, yeah” – Little Richard

Stacey King occupied two hour chunks of my teenage years between 1985-1989. I probably saw Stacey King play somewhere between 50-60 games in person, and countless others on the television during that time period. Two hundred hours? Three hundred? I’m not sure, but I don’t know that I saw any one player play more games in person than that of one Stacey King.

Thanks to my dad, who was an assistant coach at Oklahoma at that time, I was there for Stacey’s first two seasons at OU where he struggled to gain playing time and at times looked overmatched on the floor and in the classroom when he was deemed academically ineligible the second semester of his sophomore season.

He cleaned up things in the classroom and then he cleaned up on the basketball floor. I was there for the magical final two seasons when Stacey King went from “not sure this kid’s going to make it” into All-American center for Coach Billy Tubbs and the Oklahoma Sooners, and along the way became one of the most beloved Sooners of all time. So when I heard that Stacey King passed away today at the age of 59, it had my brain spinning back to those days in Norman, Oklahoma. Spinning like many of the opponents who grew weary of the frenetic pace of Stacey King and the OU Sooners basketball program, which was the winningest men’s basketball program in the country the last half of the 80’s.

“It’s like a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.”

The left-handed 6’11” King hailed from Lawton, Oklahoma and played in 114 games for the Sooners finishing with a 17.6 points per game scoring average as well as a 7.2 rebounds per game average. His final two seasons saw him average 22.3 and 26 points per game while being recognized as an All-American. He would go on to be drafted by the Chicago Bulls and spend 1989 – 1997 in the NBA with the Bulls, T-Wolves, Heat, Celtics, and Mavericks before retiring. He won three NBA championships with some guy named Michael Jordan (check out this great piece about King’s good luck routine and how it came to an end quickly once he was drafted and arrived in Chicago with Michael Jordan). Eventually King would endear himself to a whole new generation of Bulls fans as a commentator for the Bulls from 2006-2026.

But Stacey “Sky” King will forever be etched in my 16 year old brain in 1988… sprinting down the floor on another OU fastbreak barreling towards another 100 point game, long strides easily outpacing his opponent giving the Sooners fastbreak numbers, flapping shirt untucked, hands at the ready… ready to receive a pass from Mookie Blaylock or Ricky Grace or Dave Sieger or Terrence Mullins, and then receiving that pass and hammering home a signature left landed slam.

Fellow Oklahoman and All-American, (and left-hander) Wayman Tisdale may have laid the foundation and helped put OU basketball on the map in the early to mid-80s, but it was Stacey King and his band of high-flying Sooners who took the OU basketball program to new heights in the late 80’s. After all, what other collegiate basketball player had a self-proclaimed #1 music video in 1988? Only Stacey King and his OU teammates!

Here with some help from the Little Richard version is the music video produced and released in celebration of the OU Sooners basketball team and shortly before Stacey King and his teammates headed to Kansas City for the 1988 Final Four.

Bye, bye, and so long Sky King. You were one of the all-time greats, and you will be missed.

sincerely,

the80s