NEW YORK -- Junior guard Michael Jordan of North Carolina Tuesday was named winner of the annual Eastman Award as the nation's top collegiate basketball player and said making the U.S. Olympic team was foremost in his plans for the future.
'I hope to make the Olympic team and that is my immediate goal. I feel I can fit into whatever Coach Bobby Knight might require,' said Jordan. 'Winning is important, not points.'
The 6-foot-6 All-America received Player of the Year honors in a vote conducted by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He joins former University of Virginia star Ralph Sampson as the only players to be named Player of the Year in their junior years. The NABC also picked Sampson when he was a senior.
'I'm happy to receive it for myself and my team. It was not just for myself. Really, I'm shocked,' Jordan said. 'I got off to a slow staert this season and didn't get going until (ACC) conference play then I played more consistently.
'I think that Pat Ewing, Sam Perkins or Chris Mullin had at least as much chance of winning this as I had.'
Jordan, from Wilmington, N.C., was emphatic about waiting until graduation before joining the NBA.
'No questions about the pros or the draft,' he said. 'If I were thinking about the pros I wouldn't have gone to the 1983 Pan American Games.'
Averaging 20 points and six rebounds a game for the Tar Heels since entering college, Jordan's rise to basketball eminence was slow. He did not make his hight school varsity basketball team as a sophomore.
Jordan sharpened his court skills at a summer basketball camp in Pittsburgh, Pa., and made the school boy team his last two years at Laney High in Wilmington.
He was named the United Press International College Player of the Year for 1983-84.
'Michael Jordan can start on over 50 percent of NBA teams and on those that he would need an indoctrination, he would be a starter before the end of his first season,' said Fuzzy Levane, a scout for the New York Knicks. 'He's an outstanding ball player who can only get better.'
