Dick Gibbs (basketball)
Dick Gibbs is an American retired professional basketball player. A small forward, he played in the National Basketball Association for five teams from 1971 to 1976, posting career averages of 5.2 points per game and 1.9 rebounds per game.
Born in Ames, Iowa, Gibbs attended Ames High School and played on their basketball team in 1967, helping them reach the state championship game. Following a period at Burlington Junior College, he played college basketball for the University of Texas at El Paso Miners from 1969 to 1971. Gibbs scored 10.5 points per game in the 1969–70 season, when the Miners won the Western Athletic Conference championship in their first season in the league. In the last game of the regular season, Gibbs sustained an injury and was unable to play in the NCAA Tournament; the Miners lost in the first round. Their coach, Don Haskins, later said, "Without him, we had no chance to go very far in the tournament."
Gibbs improved his scoring average to 17.4 points per game in 1970–71, and his 10.6 rebounds per game were up from the 8.5 he had averaged the previous season. Both totals were team highs. At the end of the season, he was named to the All-Western Athletic Conference team. As of 2012, he was fourth in Miners history with 9.7 rebounds per game for his career.
In the third round of the 1971 NBA draft, Gibbs was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the 49th overall pick. He was traded to the Houston Rockets in June 1971, the first of five trades he was involved in during his career. After playing the 1971–72 season with the Rockets, Gibbs was on four other teams over the next four seasons—the Kansas City–Omaha Kings, Seattle SuperSonics, Washington Bullets, and Buffalo Braves. With the SuperSonics in 1973–74, he posted a career-high of 10.8 points per game. The next season, he was a member of the Bullets team that reached the 1975 NBA Finals. Following his playing career, Gibbs ran a drug treatment facility in Newport Beach, California.
