Sam Perkins was a freshman at North Carolina when Lawrence Taylor was a senior.<\/p>\n
Taylor was already a destructive force on the football field as a defensive force, but he scared people off the field as well. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at the Student Union and Lawrence Taylor\u2019s 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\u2019s tray hit the floor,\u201d Perkins recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I said, \u2018Damn, I\u2019m 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, \u2018Hey, welcome.\u2019 You know some of the other girls, whoever it was, they all said \u2018Hi,\u2019 and they were talking to me. It was like, \u2018You from New York?\u2019 And blah, blah, blah. I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 I didn\u2019t want to say much, because I ain\u2019t want this man [to] come over and grab me by the collar and clean the table with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perkins added: \u201cThat 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, \u2018Oh my God, this is Lawrence Taylor.\u2019 And that\u2019s 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\u2019s one of those guys that\u2019s just ahead of his time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But he never saw Jordan toss a guy across a cafeteria table for talking to his girl.<\/p>\n
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Adam Zagoria is a freelance reporter and Basketball Insider for NJ Advance Media. You may follow him on Twitter @AdamZagoria <\/a>and check out his Website at ZAGSBLOG.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n