A six-foot seven-inch, 205-pound forward from Brooklyn, New York, Bernard King (nicknamed “Burger” at UT) began his distinguished basketball career at Tennessee in 1974. He, together with teammate Ernie Grunfield, comprised the “Ernie and Bernie Show,” a duo so well respected for its prowess on the court that it made the cover of Sports Illustrated. Accusations that King was ineligible to enroll because of a ninth-grade failure to amass sufficient credits were satisfactorily resolved in his favor.
He entered the NBA draft in 1977 and was the seventh pick of the New York Nets (the franchise moved to New Jersey before the 1977–78 season). He then went to the Golden Warriors and then to the New York Knicks (1982). He twice played in an All-Star game as a Knick (1984, 1985) and was named to the All-NBA First Team (1984, 1985). He won the NBA scoring title in 1984–85, averaging a career-high 32.9 points per game. In all, he played in four All-Star games, the last (Washington Bullets) in 1991.
King tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee at the end of the 1984–85 season, missed the 1985–86 season, and missed all but the final six games of the following season. During his career he made 19,655 points in 874 games and shot 51.8 percent from the field.
After retiring from the NBA, he worked in broadcasting and appeared in several television shows. In 1974 he made the first basket in the first Wheelchair Charities Basketball Game. He participates in the Bernard King Basketball Camp, a free basketball camp for Brooklyn youth, and he launched the Knicks Poetry Slam Series at Christopher Columbus High School in Pelham Parkway, New York, in collaboration with Urban Word NYC. An art collector, he has lent works to museums and exhibitions and was instrumental in bringing a production of playwright August Wilson’s to Broadway.
His UT basketball number (53) was retired to a packed house at the halftime of the UT-Kentucky Game on February 13, 2007. He was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in September 2013.
Off the court, King has been controversial. The former student was charged with theft of a videotape machine from Stokely Athletics Center on July 10, 1977, and five days later was arrested for prowling and possession of marijuana at Sutter’s Mill Apartments in West Knoxville. The State requested that the theft charge be dropped. King pleaded guilty to charges of resisting arrest and possession of marijuana. Athletics Director Bob Woodruff wrote a letter requesting leniency, and King was sentenced to a $50 fine and a 60-day suspended sentence on each of the two guilty pleas. He played only 19 games with the Utah Jazz in 1979–80 before seeking treatment for substance abuse. One of several arrests for abuse of women led to withdrawal of his nomination to the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Board in the late 1990s. A charge of spousal abuse led to his removal as an honoree of the Brooklyn Public Library in 2004.