By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Wayman Tisdale, who scaled the heights in two high-profile careers as a professional basketball player and a chart-topping recording star, died May 15 of cancer at a hospital in Tulsa. He was 44.
Mr. Tisdale first gained renown in the 1980s as a three-time All-American basketball player at the University of Oklahoma. As a 6-foot-9 power forward with a soft left-handed shot, he was practically unstoppable during his college career, averaging 25.6 points a game.
In 1984, he was a member of the gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic basketball team, which included Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing. Mr. Tisdale was a first-team All-American and the Big Eight Conference player of the year in each of his first three years at Oklahoma before leaving the university in 1985 to enter the NBA draft. The Indiana Pacers selected him as the second player in the draft, after Georgetown University’s Ewing. He and Ewing remain the last college basketball players to be three-time All-Americans.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Tisdale family.
