Rodney Rogers

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Rodney Ray Rogers (born June 20, 1971, in Durham, North Carolina) is a retired American basketball player who last played power forward for the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers.

[edit] College career

Rogers played college basketball at Wake Forest University from 1990 until 1993, where he won Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year honors, averaging 21.2 points and 7.4 rebounds. His final college statistics were 19.3 points and 7.9 rebounds and he was the number nine draft pick in the 1993 NBA Draft for the Denver Nuggets.

[edit] Professional career

Rogers played two years for Denver, spending his rookie year primarily as a bench player for a team which was the first 8th ranked team to beat a first-seeded team in NBA Playoffs history,^[1] the Seattle SuperSonics. Rogers had one significant game in his rookie year, on February 8, 1994, against the Utah Jazz.^[2] Near the end of the game, Rogers hit three three-pointers in a span of nine seconds to bring the Nuggets from a 94-86 deficit to a 95-94 lead. However, Utah's Jeff Malone hit a jumper with 12 seconds remaining to give the Jazz the win.^[3]

Rogers became a starter his second season, in large part due to frequent injuries suffered by LaPhonso Ellis. On June 28, 1995, Rogers was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers with draft rights to guard Brent Barry, for the draft rights to forward Antonio McDyess and guard Randy Woods. He would spend four years with the Clippers.

In 1999, Rogers signed with the Phoenix Suns. He averaged 13.8 points per game coming off the bench and won the NBA Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2000. The Suns entered the playoffs that year, but lost to the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers. Rogers remained with the Suns until February 2002, when he was traded to the Boston Celtics, for whom he became a reliable double-digit, mid-range jump shooting forward off the bench.

Rogers signed with the New Jersey Nets, a free agent on August 14, 2002, to fill a gap at power forward. During his first year with the Nets, he averaged only 7 points per game as a bench player. The high point of his season was during a playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks, on April 24, 2003, when he sank the game winning shot, after missing two free throws just prior to the game-winning hoop. The Nets would win the series and go on to make the NBA Finals, where they lost to the San Antonio Spurs. Rogers would see more playing time the next year, mainly due to some frontcourt injuries, but the quality of his play had declined. He signed with the New Orleans Hornets on August 3, 2004 but was injured for much of the early part of that season, but eventually became a starter for the team. On February 24, 2005, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, along with injured forward Jamal Mashburn, for also-injured forward Glenn Robinson. He was primarily used as a backup forward for the '76ers.

Rogers is the cousin of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Tully Banta-Cain. He currently resides in San Jose, California. He went to Hillside High School in Durham, NC.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Rodney Rogers Info Page at NBA.com
• Rodney Rogers Statistics at Basketball-Reference.com
• NASCAR article on Rodney Rogers