Albert King (1959-) - Former NBA Player, University of Maryland All-American, and New York High School Legend

[DaveO]

46 minutes ago, DonRocks said:

Albert King - now *that* was another can't-miss underachiever - he was nearly the LeBron James of his generation coming out of high school. When he was at Maryland, I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for him to become a first-team All-American. I mean, he was great, but not *as* great as I was anticipating he'd be.

One *seriously* over-hyped player from that era was Wayne "Sugar Bear" McCoy 

You've got to give LeBron credit: He lived up to the hype (all-time NBA playoff scoring leader!)

I watched Albert King all 4 years in college. His freshman year was Hunter’s sophomore year.  The entire team underperformed.  King and the team improved in subsequent seasons.

But he clearly was overhyped—-as are many players out of high school.

The Lebron’s and Jordan’s come around very infrequently regardless of what the writers write 

[DaveO]

On 3/18/2018 at 5:17 PM, DonRocks said:

Albert King - now *that* was another can't-miss underachiever - he was nearly the LeBron James of his generation coming out of high school. When he was at Maryland, I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting for him to become a first-team All-American. I mean, he was great, but not *as* great as I was anticipating he'd be.

Albert King was a college all American in both his Junior and Senior years AND was overhyped. 

Now that IS a lot of hype.  I bought into it.  I watched some Terp games during all 4 years of his career.  When he came out of high school the rough consensus was that there were 3 co-equal super duper basketball players who were going to be all time phenomenal stars.  Albert King was one of them, he evidently started getting hype while he was only 13-14 years old.  The second one was Gene Banks, a similar level super hyped super star out of Philadelphia, and the third guy was an obscure fella named Magic Johnson.

In King's freshman year the team was dysfunctional.  Its the only way I can put it.  They mostly didn't play as a team.  You could see the individual talent from players such as JoJo Hunter, King and others, but as a team and on defense they were lousy.  No other way to describe a completely mediocre season with players with obvious high level skills.

In King's subsequent seasons U Md was far better and King actually starred especially his junior season.  In fact in his junior and senior seasons one saw a reasonable and solid version of King as an excellent basketball player.  All that being said, he was not close or ever similar to the sublime players of the game.    Regardless the real star of those teams was Buck Williams, a year younger than King. 

King:  He was an All American and he was WAY WAY WAY overhyped.  Pretty amazing.  I guess you can call that great or really effective writing!!!!