James Donaldson (basketball)


James Lee Donaldson III is an English-American retired professional basketball player who grew up in California and played 14 seasons in the National Basketball Association and several leagues across Europe. Born in Heacham, England, Donaldson played high school basketball for Luther Burbank High School before enrolling at Washington State University to play for the Cougars.

Amateur career

Donaldson, a 7'2" center, starred at Luther Burbank High School and Washington State in the late 1970s. In his 4 seasons at WSU he averaged 8.5 points per game and 8.1 rebounds per game in 84 games. As of April 2015 he was the all-time leader in career blocked shots, blocks average, single-season blocks, single-season blocks average and single-game blocked shots. He was inducted into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor and WSU's athletic hall of fame in 2006.

Professional career

After being drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1979 NBA draft he signed a contract with 3A Antonini Siena of the Italian Serie A.
Donaldson played three seasons with Seattle before moving on to the San Diego Clippers. During the 1984–85 NBA season, he led the league in field goal percentage at 0.637 — still one of the ten highest percentages in NBA history.
Donaldson cited Artis Gilmore, Darryl Dawkins, Moses Malone, Truck Robinson and Maurice Lucas as some of the strongest players he played against early in his career.
Donaldson joined the Dallas Mavericks in 1985. He joked with teammates that leaving the lowly, dysfunctional Clippers for the Mavericks was like dying and going to Heaven. He had his finest years while playing for the Mavericks, providing rebounding and shot-blocking to complement Dallas' star-studded line-up, which included Mark Aguirre, Rolando Blackman, Roy Tarpley, Derek Harper, Sam Perkins, and Brad Davis. Donaldson himself earned a spot on the 1988 All-Star Team during a season in which the Mavericks reached the Western Conference Finals before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers. The NY Daily News named him the worst All-Star player ever after a fans voting. Sadly, things fell apart for the Mavericks generally in the late 1980s and early 1990s as their core group was either traded away or squandered vast potential via personal problems and Donaldson became the target for many fans and even his teammates for the franchise's woes, making the end of his otherwise hugely successful tenure in Dallas inevitable.
After brief stints with the New York Knicks and Utah Jazz in the early 1990s, injuries forced Donaldson into retirement from the NBA. He left the league in 1995, with 8,203 career points, 7,492 career rebounds and 1,267 career blocks. He played in 957 NBA games without ever attempting a 3-point shot, a record among players from the 3-point era.
On August 1, 1993 he signed for Greek Basket League club Iraklis. He played in 30 games for Iraklis averaging 12.1 points per game, 12.2 rebounds per game and 2.2 blocks per game. In the 1996–97 season he played for Caja San Fernando averaging 3.5 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. He also had spells with Snai Montecatini, Breogán Lugo and Gymnastikos S. Larissas, retiring for good at the age of 41.

Personal life

Upon retiring, Donaldson settled in the Seattle area, where he runs the Donaldson Clinic, a physical therapy business in Mill Creek, Washington He is also a motivational speaker.
In 2009, Donaldson ran for the non-partisan office of Seattle mayor and came in fourth among the candidates. In 2010, Donaldson joined the College Success Foundation as the Director of the Tacoma College Success Foundation.
In January 2018, Donaldson survived an aortic dissection.