No. 24: Jerry Stackhouse
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Every offseason, we run historical ranking series focusing on North Carolina basketball and football.
The purpose each spring isn’t to make declarative statements, but to have fun offering a subjective look at the best teams and players ever at Carolina. This effort is to generate discourse, debate, and take UNC fans down memory lane.
This season, we are doing something a little different, combining football and basketball, as we offer our take on the Top 40 UNC football and basketball players of all time. The criteria is quite simple: The process includes playing careers with the Tar Heels and professionally, other relevant impacts they’ve had on their sports, coaching, and championships. We also gave a lean toward all UNC accomplishments.
So, this isn’t a UNC-only list, a pro-only list, or a straight up purely best ever list. Some Tar Heels on this list didn’t have great pro careers but were so good and historic at UNC, they simply had to make the cut. Some on this list weren’t stars at UNC, but had outstanding and/or highly distinguished pro careers, that it warranted their place among these 40 athletes.
We hope you enjoy the list and feel free to disagree, as we know many will.
We continue our countdown with:
No. 24: Jerry Stackhouse (1993-95)
Stackhouse was named the Sports Illustrated National Player of the Year in 1995 while also earning consensus first-team All-America and first-team All-ACC honors that season, which ended with the Tar Heels advancing to the Final Four.
He was named the Southeast Region MOP in 1995 leading the Tar Heels past Georgetown and Kentucky to advance to the Final Four. He led UNC with 19.2 points and 8.2 rebounds per game despite being just 6-foot-5. His drive, determination, and ability to play through contact but also initiate contact to his benefit were qualities sometimes overshadowed by his athletic prowess.
As a freshman in 1994, Stackhouse won the ACC Tournament MVP award. As a high school senior, he was named the MVP of the McDonald’s All-America game. His jersey No. 42 is honored in the Smith Center.
Professionally, Stackhouse was selected with the third overall pick in the 1995 NBA draft and played 18 seasons in the league. He was on the NBA All-Rookie team and twice played in All-Star games. He won NBA Player of the Week award twice.
Stackhouse had a four-year stretch from 1999-2003 in which he averaged 24.2 points per game. In 2001, he finished second in the league in scoring (points per game), though he scored more points than anyone else that season.
He averaged 16.9 points in his NBA career, including averaging 20 or more points five seasons with a high of 29.8 points in 2001. Scored 16,409 points in the NBA. He has been a head coach in the G-League and is currently the head coach at Vanderbilt.