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Chris DudleyChris Dudley (born February 22, 1965) is a former NBA basketball player, who spent sixteen years playing for different teams. Dudley is the grandson of Guilford Dudley, who was ambassador of the United States in Denmark under the Nixon and Ford presidential administrations. Dudley was a star high school basketball player, and he signed with Yale, where he played NCAA basketball from 1983 to 1987. While he was headed for the NBA, Dudley earned degrees in political sciences and economy at Yale. Before heading for college, however, something that changed his life happened, when he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1981, at the age of sixteen. Dudley began daily insulin injection treatment immediately. Dudley began playing with the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 1987-1988 NBA season. He became the only active diabetic in the NBA, a position that he held through his career. Dudley, a 6'11 (83 inches) center, was nagged by injuries most of his career. During his rookie season, he played in 55 out of 82 games. He only averaged three points per game that year. During the 1989-1990 season, he was traded to the New Jersey Nets. He played three years with the Nets, including the 1990-1991 season, in which he enjoyed his best career scoring average for one year (7.1 points per game in 61 contests), the 1991-1992 season, which was the first of only two NBA tournaments in which he was able to participate in each of his team's 82 games, and the 1992-1993 season, when he teamed up with Derrick Coleman and Drazen Petrovic, among others, to help the Nets to their first playoff spot in years. The summer after that season, Petrovic died in a cat accident in Croatia, and Dudley went to the Portland Trailblazers. During his first season and a half as a Trailblazer, he had Clyde Drexler as a teammate. He also played alongside Damon Stoudamire later on. Dudley actually played only six games during his first season as a Trailblazer, because he suffered one of his career's worst injuries that year. Drexler was then shipped to the Houston Rockets in the middle of the next season, and Dudley and the Blazers did make it to the playoffs, but the Rockets repeated as NBA champions. After playing 161 games for the Trailblazers between 1995 and 1997, Dudley went to the New York Knicks, where he played as Patrick Ewing's backup center for three seasons. He kept a home in Oregon, however, and in 1998, he opened the Chris Dudley Organization, a group based in Oregon and aimed at improving the lives of diabetic children. He received an NBA award for opening the organization. In 1999, he reached the NBA Finals for the only time in his career, but the Knicks were defeated by the San Antonio Spurs, four games to one, during that series. Also in 1999, he grabbed his 5,000th NBA rebound, during a game between the Knicks and the Detroit Pistons. After his stint with the Knicks, Dudley went on to play with the Phoenix Suns in the 2000-2001 season, participating in 53 games with that organization. He re-signed with the Trailblazers in 2002, and retired after playing only three games during the 2002-2003 season. Dudley had 3,476 points in 886 NBA games for an average of 3.9 points per game, 375 assists for 0.4 assists per game, and 5,457 rebounds, for a total of 6.2 rebounds per game. External links Dudley, Chris Dudley, Chris
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