OT: Rest In Peace Phil Sellers
- Thread starter RU4Real
- Start date
Ah geez. Very sorry to hear this. Terrible news although we all knew he was having serious health issues. He really put this place on the map and the leader of the first team I ever rooted for in sports. RIP to one of the all-time greats.
Team should definitely wear patches in his honor this year.
Anyone who didn't get to see Phil play for the Scarlet Knights missed seeing the greatest player ever here.
Sad.
Sad.
RIP to an RU legend. He was the key player on the best RU athletic team, the 1975-1976 BB team that went undefeated until their 2 losses in the final four (semi final to Mich and consolation game to UCLA).
Got to 117k, which leads me to believe it would have maxed out early in the hoops season.
It would be so great if Rutgers was to get even for that Final Four blowout by Michigan in 1976 with a giant upset of Harbaugh's boys.
'His decision to become a Scarlet Knight was initially criticized as Rutgers was a small, unheralded and independent program at the time but Sellers found instant success.'
'Sellers graduated from Rutgers in 1976 and is still the school's all-time leading scorer (2,399) and rebounder. On January 16, 1988, he had his jersey number (#12) retired, making him one of only three Scarlet Knights players to have ever been so honored.'
'Sellers graduated from Rutgers in 1976 and is still the school's all-time leading scorer (2,399) and rebounder. On January 16, 1988, he had his jersey number (#12) retired, making him one of only three Scarlet Knights players to have ever been so honored.'
SIAP….I found this link this morning for services for Phil:
Phillip A Sellers Jr. Obituary (1953 - 2023) | Montclair, New Jersey (echovita.com)
Our two most notable coaches found time to honor Phil with nice words last week...very classy. I hope our school finds a way to officially and suitably honor our fallen Knight. GO RU!
On Wednesday following the conclusion of practice, head coach Greg Schiano began his media availability with a tribute to Sellers.
“Probably the greatest player to ever put on a Rutgers uniform,” Schiano said.
“A tremendous loss for the school and I know for his family as well. Thoughts and prayers are with them.”
Also on Wednesday, Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell released a statement on the impact Sellers had on the program:
“Phil Sellers is Rutgers royalty. He is the greatest player on the greatest team in our program’s history. His jersey is one of three that hang up in the rafters at Jersey Mike’s Arena. He was the ultimate role model for our current Scarlet Knights. Rutgers men’s basketball sends our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones. We love you Phil ‘The Thrill’!”
Phillip A Sellers Jr. Obituary (1953 - 2023) | Montclair, New Jersey (echovita.com)
Our two most notable coaches found time to honor Phil with nice words last week...very classy. I hope our school finds a way to officially and suitably honor our fallen Knight. GO RU!
On Wednesday following the conclusion of practice, head coach Greg Schiano began his media availability with a tribute to Sellers.
“Probably the greatest player to ever put on a Rutgers uniform,” Schiano said.
“A tremendous loss for the school and I know for his family as well. Thoughts and prayers are with them.”
Also on Wednesday, Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell released a statement on the impact Sellers had on the program:
“Phil Sellers is Rutgers royalty. He is the greatest player on the greatest team in our program’s history. His jersey is one of three that hang up in the rafters at Jersey Mike’s Arena. He was the ultimate role model for our current Scarlet Knights. Rutgers men’s basketball sends our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones. We love you Phil ‘The Thrill’!”
Phil Sellers, Whose Basketball Stardom Was Short-Lived, Dies at 69 - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
By Richard Sandomir
Sept. 26, 2023, 12:58 p.m. ET
Phil Sellers, a brash, high-scoring forward who helped transform Rutgers University into a national basketball power in the 1970s, but whose N.B.A. career lasted only one season, after which he led a quiet life in business, died on Sept. 19 at a hospital in Livingston, N.J. He was 69.
His daughter, Kendra Palmer, said that she did not know the cause, but that he had recently had a stroke, an intestinal perforation and other health issues. A GoFundMe campaign raised more than $100,000 to cover the health costs that his insurance did not.
Sellers was recruited to Rutgers in 1972 after averaging 33.2 points and 22.6 rebounds a game at Thomas Jefferson High School in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He was considered the best high school player to come to a New Jersey college since Bill Bradley arrived at Princeton University from Missouri a decade earlier.
“Phil Sellers is the biggest catch in Rutgers history,” Dick Weiss, a columnist for The Courier-Post of Camden, N.J., wrote soon after Sellers agreed to play there.
He rarely disappointed. He was called “Phil the Thrill,” and, with Sellers leading a team that also included Eddie Jordan, Mike Dabney and Hollis Copeland, Rutgers kept improving. During Sellers’s junior year, when he averaged 22.7 points and 9.4 points a game, Rutgers had a record of 22-7 and played in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, losing in the first round.
Rutgers was undefeated in 26 games during the 1975-76 regular season, Sellers’s senior year. Late in a conference tournament game against St. John’s University that preceded the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, Sellers clashed with his coach, Tom Young.
“Give me the ball,” Young recalled Sellers saying when he described the incident to The New York Times in 1983. “I said, ‘Phil, we’re going to run our offense.’ He said it three times, ‘Give me the ball.’”
Sellers scored six points in the next 90 seconds, and Rutgers won.
Rutgers then won its first three games in the N.C.A.A. tournament, despite subpar scoring performances from Sellers, to raise its record to 31-0. But the Scarlet Knights lost the semifinal game to Michigan, 86-70, with Sellers scoring only 11 points against the strong defense of Michigan’s Wayman Britt.
Sellers’s college career totals of 2,399 points and 1,115 rebounds are still Rutgers records.
It was the end of his glory years.
His basketball career ended abruptly, but he understood and accepted that he had another, more everyday life ahead of him.
Phillip Alexander Sellers Jr. was born on Nov. 20, 1953, in Brooklyn, to Phillip and Rita (Bacon) Sellers. As a teenager, he played so much basketball, he told Sports Illustrated in 1975, that “people used to tell me I was going to turn into a basketball.”
He was heavily recruited by colleges nationwide and signed a letter of intent to attend Notre Dame, but his concerns about his academic skills led him to back out of the commitment. Instead he chose Rutgers, whose lead recruiter was Dick Vitale, the future ESPN broadcaster, who was then one of the team’s assistant coaches.
“Dick Vitale was there all the time,” Sellers told The Courier-News in 2010, referring to his high school games in Brooklyn. “He was an Italian guy; he could talk more trash than the guys who lived there.”
Vitale recalled in a text message that Sellers had a “fierce competitiveness that separated him from many,” was “a man playing vs. boys” and “always competed with a chip on his shoulder.”
Vitale’s assessment was borne out: At Rutgers, Sellers was a strong rebounder, despite not being very big for a forward — he was 6-foot-4 and weighed 195 pounds — and he played with a confidence that seemed like arrogance at times, and with a scowl on his face. Sports Illustrated wrote in 1975 that he was “always jawing at referees, teammates and opponents,” and “taking dramatic falls during games.”
As he explained it: “I get involved when I’m playing. Sometimes I just get carried away.”
Sellers became the cornerstone of a strong Rutgers team.
“We weren’t a premier program on the East Coast, but when we got Phil he changed everything,” John McFadden, a Rutgers assistant coach, said in a tribute to Sellers posted on the school’s athletics website.
Sellers, a consensus second-team all-American in 1976, was chosen in the third round of the N.B.A. draft by the Detroit Pistons. Converted from forward to guard, he played in only 44 games, averaging 4.5 points a game.
“I couldn’t play guard,” he told The Times in 1983. “They had doubts. Even me, I had doubts. There was no way I was going to be too sure of myself. That’s probably where the arrogance went.”
He was released before the start of the 1977-78 season but continued to play for a short while, for the minor league Jersey Shore Bullets and for HV Amstelveen, a team in the Netherlands.
After he stopped playing, he was a Rutgers assistant coach for four years and worked at various jobs, including records manager at Chemical Bank and the mortgage banking firm Margaretten; bus driver for New Jersey Transit; and, for about a dozen years, assistant to the chief executive at Northeast Sequoia Private Client Group, a real estate investment firm, where his roles included chief of staff, bodyguard and driver.
In addition to Ms. Palmer, whose mother, Patricia (Robertson) Sellers, married Sellers in 1999 and died 20 years later, he is survived by a son, Phillip III, from whose mother, Jean Edmonson, he was divorced; a sister, Diane Deas; a brother, Tyrone; and four grandchildren.
Although his basketball career ended abruptly, Sellers recognized with clarity that he had another, more everyday life ahead of him.
“I’m not going to be one of those guys sitting in the park saying, ‘I’ve been there,’” he told The Times in 1983, when he was back living with his parents. “Kids ask you, ‘What do you do?’ I tell them, ‘I go to work every day, shirt and tie.’ People see me. They say, ‘Phil’s working.’”
Richard Sandomir is an obituaries writer. He previously wrote about sports media and sports business. He is also the author of several books, including “The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic.”
By Richard Sandomir
Sept. 26, 2023, 12:58 p.m. ET
Phil Sellers, a brash, high-scoring forward who helped transform Rutgers University into a national basketball power in the 1970s, but whose N.B.A. career lasted only one season, after which he led a quiet life in business, died on Sept. 19 at a hospital in Livingston, N.J. He was 69.
His daughter, Kendra Palmer, said that she did not know the cause, but that he had recently had a stroke, an intestinal perforation and other health issues. A GoFundMe campaign raised more than $100,000 to cover the health costs that his insurance did not.
Sellers was recruited to Rutgers in 1972 after averaging 33.2 points and 22.6 rebounds a game at Thomas Jefferson High School in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He was considered the best high school player to come to a New Jersey college since Bill Bradley arrived at Princeton University from Missouri a decade earlier.
“Phil Sellers is the biggest catch in Rutgers history,” Dick Weiss, a columnist for The Courier-Post of Camden, N.J., wrote soon after Sellers agreed to play there.
He rarely disappointed. He was called “Phil the Thrill,” and, with Sellers leading a team that also included Eddie Jordan, Mike Dabney and Hollis Copeland, Rutgers kept improving. During Sellers’s junior year, when he averaged 22.7 points and 9.4 points a game, Rutgers had a record of 22-7 and played in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, losing in the first round.
Rutgers was undefeated in 26 games during the 1975-76 regular season, Sellers’s senior year. Late in a conference tournament game against St. John’s University that preceded the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, Sellers clashed with his coach, Tom Young.
“Give me the ball,” Young recalled Sellers saying when he described the incident to The New York Times in 1983. “I said, ‘Phil, we’re going to run our offense.’ He said it three times, ‘Give me the ball.’”
Sellers scored six points in the next 90 seconds, and Rutgers won.
Rutgers then won its first three games in the N.C.A.A. tournament, despite subpar scoring performances from Sellers, to raise its record to 31-0. But the Scarlet Knights lost the semifinal game to Michigan, 86-70, with Sellers scoring only 11 points against the strong defense of Michigan’s Wayman Britt.
Sellers’s college career totals of 2,399 points and 1,115 rebounds are still Rutgers records.
It was the end of his glory years.
His basketball career ended abruptly, but he understood and accepted that he had another, more everyday life ahead of him.
Phillip Alexander Sellers Jr. was born on Nov. 20, 1953, in Brooklyn, to Phillip and Rita (Bacon) Sellers. As a teenager, he played so much basketball, he told Sports Illustrated in 1975, that “people used to tell me I was going to turn into a basketball.”
He was heavily recruited by colleges nationwide and signed a letter of intent to attend Notre Dame, but his concerns about his academic skills led him to back out of the commitment. Instead he chose Rutgers, whose lead recruiter was Dick Vitale, the future ESPN broadcaster, who was then one of the team’s assistant coaches.
“Dick Vitale was there all the time,” Sellers told The Courier-News in 2010, referring to his high school games in Brooklyn. “He was an Italian guy; he could talk more trash than the guys who lived there.”
Vitale recalled in a text message that Sellers had a “fierce competitiveness that separated him from many,” was “a man playing vs. boys” and “always competed with a chip on his shoulder.”
Vitale’s assessment was borne out: At Rutgers, Sellers was a strong rebounder, despite not being very big for a forward — he was 6-foot-4 and weighed 195 pounds — and he played with a confidence that seemed like arrogance at times, and with a scowl on his face. Sports Illustrated wrote in 1975 that he was “always jawing at referees, teammates and opponents,” and “taking dramatic falls during games.”
As he explained it: “I get involved when I’m playing. Sometimes I just get carried away.”
Sellers became the cornerstone of a strong Rutgers team.
“We weren’t a premier program on the East Coast, but when we got Phil he changed everything,” John McFadden, a Rutgers assistant coach, said in a tribute to Sellers posted on the school’s athletics website.
Sellers, a consensus second-team all-American in 1976, was chosen in the third round of the N.B.A. draft by the Detroit Pistons. Converted from forward to guard, he played in only 44 games, averaging 4.5 points a game.
“I couldn’t play guard,” he told The Times in 1983. “They had doubts. Even me, I had doubts. There was no way I was going to be too sure of myself. That’s probably where the arrogance went.”
He was released before the start of the 1977-78 season but continued to play for a short while, for the minor league Jersey Shore Bullets and for HV Amstelveen, a team in the Netherlands.
After he stopped playing, he was a Rutgers assistant coach for four years and worked at various jobs, including records manager at Chemical Bank and the mortgage banking firm Margaretten; bus driver for New Jersey Transit; and, for about a dozen years, assistant to the chief executive at Northeast Sequoia Private Client Group, a real estate investment firm, where his roles included chief of staff, bodyguard and driver.
In addition to Ms. Palmer, whose mother, Patricia (Robertson) Sellers, married Sellers in 1999 and died 20 years later, he is survived by a son, Phillip III, from whose mother, Jean Edmonson, he was divorced; a sister, Diane Deas; a brother, Tyrone; and four grandchildren.
Although his basketball career ended abruptly, Sellers recognized with clarity that he had another, more everyday life ahead of him.
“I’m not going to be one of those guys sitting in the park saying, ‘I’ve been there,’” he told The Times in 1983, when he was back living with his parents. “Kids ask you, ‘What do you do?’ I tell them, ‘I go to work every day, shirt and tie.’ People see me. They say, ‘Phil’s working.’”
Richard Sandomir is an obituaries writer. He previously wrote about sports media and sports business. He is also the author of several books, including “The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper and the Making of a Classic.”