Charlie Scott Basketball player

Charles Thomas Scott is an American former professional basketball player. He played two seasons in the now-defunct American Basketball Association (ABA) and eight seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). A 6'5" (1.96 m) guard/forward from the Laurinburg Institute (following one year at New York's Stuyvesant High School) and the University of North Carolina, where he was the first black scholarship athlete. Scott averaged 22.1 points and 7.1 rebounds per game at UNC. He was the first person of color to join a fraternity at the University of North Carolina, St. Anthony Hall, in 1967. Scott was a gold medalist at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Scott was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1970 but he had already signed a contract with the Virginia Squires of the ABA. Scott was named ABA Rookie of the Year after averaging 27.1 points per game. During his second season with the Squires, he set the ABA record for highest scoring average in one season (34.6 points per game). However, he became dissatisfied with life in the ABA and joined the NBA's Phoenix Suns in 1972. At that point, he briefly went by the name Shaheed Abdul-Aleem. Scott continued his stellar play in the NBA, representing the Suns in three straight NBA All-Star Games (1973, 1974, and 1975), then returned to the Celtics for the 1975-76 NBA season where he won a championship ring. Scott would also play for the Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets, and he retired in 1980 with 14,837 combined ABA/NBA career points.