Former Freeport center Kim Hughes was virtually unknown to other area basketball stars before his senior year in high school, yet went on to become Rockford’s most accomplished NBA player before Fred VanVleet.
Hughes died Friday, Aug. 29 from unknown causes. He was 73 years old.
“Back then you didn’t have all of the AAU and summer leagues, so you only saw players from other teams during the winter the couple of times you played,” former Guilford great Dale Greenlee said. “You didn’t get to know your opponents as much as players do now who may even play on the same summer teams.”
Hughes played only one year of varsity basketball for Freeport, averaging 15.5 points in 1970. He didn’t play at all as a junior after breaking his neck in football. As a senior, he and his twin brother, Kerry, were 6-foot-8 twin towers — soon to be 6-11 when they played Big Ten ball for Wisconsin.
No wonder people didn’t know him. He and Kerry stood 5-9 ½ as sophomores. They then grew nine inches in three months.
“It was unbelievable,” said Greenlee, who graduated one year after the Hughes twins and went on to start for a Kansas Final Four team in college. “They were the twin towers of our conference.”
Before VanVleet, now an NBA champion and All-Star, Rockford had ABA All-Star Skip Thoren of East and a few players who played in just a handful of NBA games.
Hughes, picked as the 10th greatest basketball player in Rockford history and third greatest in Freeport history, made a career out of the league. He played one year in the ABA, averaging 8.2 points, 9.2 rebounds and shooting 53% playing with Julius Erving on the New York Nets. He then spent six years in the NBA as a backup center for the New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets and Cleveland Cavaliers, averaging 2.7 points, 4.7 rebounds and 1.1 blocked shots in 341 career games.
He also played nine years in Italy and worked in the NBA for 30 years as a scout, assistant coach and director of player personnel. He was most notably as a well-liked assistant coach for the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers, including 33 games as the Clippers interim head coach in 2010.
Players liked Hughes so much as a coach that Clippers players Corey Maggette, Chris Kaman, Elton Brand and Marko Jaric paid his $700,000 doctor’s bill in 2004 when he had surgery after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. And did so anonymously. “It’s just so touching that those clowns would do something like that,” Hughes told the Register Star seven years later when the story finally came out.
Hughes and his twin also had memorable careers in the Big Ten. Kim Hughes averaged 13.6 points and 11.2 rebounds in three years at Wisconsin — freshmen were ineligible to play then. Kerry Hughes also played all three years, averaging 10.4 points and 7.8 rebounds.
As a senior, the Hughes twins led Wisconsin to a 16-8 record and 8-6 in the Big Ten. That was the only time in more than 30 years — from 1963 to 1997 — that the Badgers won even 15 games and also had a winning record in the conference. That year was also notable for Wisconsin losing to Marquette on a last-second 20-footer by Maurice Lucas. Marquette coach Al McGuire celebrated by jumping on the scorer’s table and egging on the crowd, which led to a famous picture in the Milwaukee Sentinel of the twins’ dad Glenn Hughes, a former president of the Freeport school board, showing McGuire his middle finger.
Kim had missed two free throws with 17 seconds left that could have clinched the game. Marquette fans mailed the newspaper clipping with the photo to the twins at the end of the season.
“It wasn’t funny then,” Kerry Hughes said in a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story in 2017. “Then, after 10 years it was funny; after 20 it was hilarious.”
Nearly 50 years later, people still remember that game. And they remember the Hughes twins, who grew to greatness but also grew so rapidly their legs hurt. “We didn’t know if we could play sports,” Kim Hughes told the Register Star five years ago. “We certainly couldn’t play with that kind of pain and swelling. There was no way.”
When he did come back, Kim Hughes grew into greatness, combining his old skills as a 5-9 ½ point guard with his size as a 6-11 center and a hunger stoked by a year on the sideline. He described himself as a “nasty” player on the court.
He was also highly skilled.
“Size is an advantage,” Greenlee said, “but we have all seen tall players who didn’t even move on to college. You also have to be skilled.”
Matt Trowbridge is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at mtrowbridge@rrstar.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @MattTrowbridge
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Remembering Freeport NBA player, coach Kim Hughes who dies at age 73
Reporting by Matt Trowbridge, Rockford Register Star / Rockford Register Star
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