Sam Perkins was a freshman at North Carolina when Lawrence Taylor was a senior.

Taylor was already a destructive force on the football field as a defensive force, but he scared people off the field as well.

While appearing Wednesday on NBA SiriusXM Radio with Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine, Perkins, who won an NCAA championship alongside Michael Jordan and James Worthy at the school in 1982 and went on to have a productive NBA career that ended with the Indiana Pacers, relayed a story of his time overlapping with Taylor in Chapel Hill.

“I was at the Student Union and Lawrence Taylor’s girlfriend was there and some guy was talking to his girlfriend a little too long, and he came over and wiped one of those cafeteria tables, or white tables, he slung him the whole way through [from] one side of the table to the other side of the table so everybody’s tray hit the floor,” Perkins recalled.

“So I said, ‘Damn, I’m not going to go anywhere near his girlfriend. So his girlfriend came to me [later] in the club and she went to say hi and everything. She said, ‘Hey, welcome.’ You know some of the other girls, whoever it was, they all said ‘Hi,’ and they were talking to me. It was like, ‘You from New York?’ And blah, blah, blah. I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t want to say much, because I ain’t want this man [to] come over and grab me by the collar and clean the table with me.”

Perkins added: “That was my first impression of Lawrence because I used to watch him every Saturday. He was a monster, he was a dog on the field….I remember that Student Union cafeteria table and then going out to the bar, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is Lawrence Taylor.’ And that’s how you perceive Lawrence Taylor throughout his career….I only had a year [on campus] with him but he frightened every team that we played in the ACC and he’s one of those guys that’s just ahead of his time.”

Perkins was chosen at No. 4 pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, one pick after Jordan. He said he saw some similar leadership traits between Taylor and Jordan, whom many consider the greatest NBA player of all time.

But he never saw Jordan toss a guy across a cafeteria table for talking to his girl.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter and Basketball Insider for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com.