Manute Bol, one of NBA's tallest players, dies at 47

Manute Bol, who became a basketball sensation in the 1980s as a skeletally thin shot-blocking giant with the Washington Bullets and other professional teams, and who devoted his post-basketball life to improving the lot of his fellow natives of Sudan, died yesterday at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. He was 47.

His cousin George Bol said Bol had internal bleeding and other complications from Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare skin disease that he contracted from a medication he received in Africa.

Bol, one of the two tallest players in NBA history, was also one of its most exotic and endearing - and surely the only one to have killed a lion with a spear. His unusual journey to basketball stardom began in southern Sudan, where he was a cattle-herding member of the Dinka tribe and never touched a basketball until his late teens. After catching the eye of an American coach working in Sudan, Bol made his way to the United States without knowing a word of English.

When the Bullets drafted him in the second round in 1985, he was measured at 7 feet, 6 3/4 inches - usually rounded up to 7-feet-7 - and he weighed a mere 190 pounds. Bol had limited skills, but with a fingertip-to-fingertip span of 8 feet, 6 inches, he proved to be unusually adept at blocking opponents' shots.

Even standing flat-footed, he could extend his hand above the rim of the basket 10 feet off the floor.

The Bullets put Bol on a regimen of weightlifting and pizza, which added 17 pounds to his frame before he made his NBA debut in October 1985. In his rookie season, despite playing only about 25 minutes a game, he led the league with 397 blocked shots, still the second-highest total ever.

His exceptional height and shot-blocking talent made Bol an instant phenomenon, but fans and players were also drawn to him because of his sunny personality. Attendance shot up in NBA cities whenever the Bullets (renamed the Washington Wizards in 1997) came to town. Bol routinely called sports fans "friends."

Some people feared that Bol's stick-thin frame would never stand up to the game's physical demands, but he proved surprisingly resilient. When an opposing center for the Chicago Bulls tested his mettle by throwing a punch, Bol flattened him with a single blow, prompting a bench-clearing brawl.

"When I play, I try to make friends, with my team and the other," Bol said. "If I wanted to look for a fight, I'll go to Libya and join the Marines."

In 1987, when the Bullets signed 5-foot-3 Muggsy Bogues, they had the shortest and tallest players in NBA history at the same time. Bol was traded to Golden State before the 1988-89 season, when he again led the league in blocked shots.

He later played with the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat before briefly returning to Washington in 1994 to tutor the Bullets' new big man, Gheorghecq/fdd Muresan, from Romania. Muresan may have been a centimeter or two taller, but both were listed at 7-7.

Bol appeared in his final NBA game in 1994 and ended his career with 2,086 blocked shots and 1,599 points - the only player with more blocks than points scored.