What makes Dennis Scott emotional is not the thought of his No. 4 jersey being enshrined Friday among Georgia Tech basketball’s other legendary figures. It’s the realization that so many people who helped mold the man wearing that jersey will be at McCamish Pavilion at 8 p.m. Friday to live the moment alongside him.
“Everyone that’s on that list, they’ve touched me,” Scott told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday. “There’s nobody casual in the building. If I grew up with you in Flint Hill (Virginia), and you knew what I went through and how me and my mom struggled, you’re getting a ticket. My AAU coach passed three years ago — his daughter’s coming. She has to be at this game. Those certain people that I know helped me. People in high school ... they gave me and my mom rides to AAU games — stuff like that.”
Scott will be honored for his brilliant career as a Yellow Jacket at halftime of his alma mater’s contest against rival Georgia on Friday. And Scott now can say Tech is indeed his alma mater after the Turner Sports commentator finished his degree in December.
Tech athletics requires former athletes to have a degree from the institute before being eligible to be considered for a jersey retirement. Scott had never considered completing his degree after he left school in 1990 to pursue his NBA dreams and earn a paycheck to put his mom’s financial woes at ease.
But when Scott’s mother, 82-year-old Elizabeth Scott, told her son a few years ago that she wanted to see that No. 4 hang in the rafters, the former Tech guard had no choice but to become a Tech graduate. Elizabeth plans to attend Friday’s ceremony, Scott said.
“She just gave me one of her normal smiles, that, ‘I knew you could do it (look),’” Scott said, recounting the moment he told her the No. 4 would be enshrined.
Scott, 53, was a McDonald’s All-American out of the Flint Hill School in Oakton, Virginia, and came to Atlanta considered one of, if not the, top freshmen in American. After scoring 15.5 points per game as a freshman and 20.3 as a sophomore, with a sweet and true shooting touch, Scott’s game really took off his third season under coach Bobby Cremins.
He credits his former coach for calling Scott, “fat,” during the summer before that junior year. Scott began to work with Mindy Millard-Stafford, a professor at Tech’s exercise physiology laboratory, in the swimming pool — Scott always had loved to swim since his days growing up in Virginia — and got into the best shape of his life.
His game quickly exploded. Scott scored 27.7 points per game during the 1989-90 campaign, was named the ACC player of the year and led the Jackets to the 1990 Final Four.
Scott then made the decision to turn pro, fueled with the knowledge that he would be a top-five pick and comforted by the support of Cremins and his teammates that he had to do what was best for himself and his family. The Orlando Magic selected Scott, appropriately, with the No. 4 overall pick in the 1990 NBA draft.
“Mom was in a one-bedroom apartment, and I was sleeping on the couch when I went home in the summertimes,” Scott recalled. “That summer of my sophomore year, that’s why I went to summer school because I didn’t wanna go home and sleep on the couch. That is why I left school (early), is to take care of her.”
In the more than 30 years since, Scott spent a little more than a decade playing in the NBA, then he joined Turner Sports in 2007 and now appears regularly on NBA TV as an analyst. He also has been inducted into the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame and the Washington, D.C., Hall of Fame. Flint Hill retired his No. 24 jersey he wore while playing there in the 1980s.
And actually, Scott said, he planned to wear No. 24 when he got to campus in 1987. But James Munlyn already wore that number. So after some back and forth with Cremins about who should rightfully get to wear the No. 24, Scott decided to just to drop the 2.
He understands now how simple things like that could have fractured a budding culture that was in the early stages of what would become one of the best programs in the country.
Cremins is on Scott’s pass list of more than 100 guests expected to be at McCamish on Friday. Other notable names on that list include Millard-Stafford, Kenny Anderson, Malcolm Mackey, Johnny McNeil, Tom Hammonds, Duane Ferrell, Bruce Dalrymple and Matt Geiger. (Brian Oliver will be unable to attend because of his broadcasting duties for the Hawks.) Ramona Howard from Tech’s Scheller School of Business has been invited as well.
Scott’s number retirement is the first for Tech since Matt Harpring’s No. 15 in 1998.
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