Georgia’s Alec Kessler enters Georgia Sports Hall of Fame

Bobby Hendley

Willie McClendon

Reg Murphy

John Schuerholz

Hope Spivey

Charlie Ward

Alec Kessler is on a lot of people’s minds this week.

Chad Kessler, his brother, stood atop the mountain peaks of Keystone, Colo., this week and thought about Alec flying down the slopes “80 miles an hour” and beating him to the base on their annual ski trips.

Rod Cole, his teammate, thought about the single light bulb shining down on Kessler’s sandy-blond hair as he studied in an otherwise darkened airplane cabin as the Bulldogs returned from some game somewhere.

And Hugh Durham, his coach, thought about the lanky kid from Roswell who, through pure focus and determination, transformed himself into the best basketball player in the SEC and lifted Georgia to its one and only conference championship in 1990.

“There’s nobody that I’ve coached who was able to establish a goal and stay focused on that goal and not waver and do whatever it took to accomplish that goal better than Alec,” said Durham, the Bulldogs’ all-time winningest coach, now retired and living in Jacksonville, Fla.

“He wasn’t a blue-chipper coming in, but he was a dark-blue-chipper his senior year. Not many in the SEC have averaged 20 (points) and 10 (rebounds). He just kept getting stronger and better as a player because he set a goal to be and he didn’t waver from it.”

Kessler applied that same focus and determination to his pursuits away from the basketball court. He became a world-class saltwater angler, an expert skier and a straight-A student. He graduated from UGA magna cum laude with a 3.9 GPA in microbiology. After his NBA career concluded, he went to medical school — just as he planned — and in record time exited as an orthopedic surgeon.

For all of those accomplishments and more, Kessler is being recognized in Macon this weekend. On Saturday, he will be inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.

Kessler will enter the Hall posthumously. He died of a heart attack in 2007 at the age of 40. His wife, Rhea (pronounced “ray”), and sons Nicholas and Christopher will accept the honor on his behalf. Durham, Cole and Chad Kessler and a host of other family and friends plan to be in attendance.

Others in the 2015 class of inductees are Bill Fulcher, Bobby Hendley, Willie McClendon, Reg Murphy, John Schuerholz, Hope Spivey and Charlie Ward.

All of the inductees enter the hall with impeccable credentials and tremendous accomplishments. Kessler goes in as one of the most decorated players in the history of Georgia basketball. He joins Dominique Wilkins as the only Bulldogs’ only men’s basketball players in the hall.

Kessler left Georgia as the school’s all-time leading scorer with 1,788 points (a record that was broken by Litterial Green the next season). He was named the CoSIDA Academic All-American of the Year — an award that covers every athlete in every NCAA-sponsored sport — in 1989 and 1990. Kessler was the 12th pick in the 1990 NBA draft, taken by the Houston Rockets, who then traded him to the Miami Heat. He played four seasons for the Heat and briefly in Italy before retiring and embarking upon his career in medicine.

“It’s a big honor for him and of course for Rhea and my mom and dad and everybody,” said Chad Kessler, who preceded Alec in playing for the Bulldogs. “Knowing Alec and what he did at the University of Georgia, we all knew he was an exceptional person. Getting inducted into the Hall of Fame just confirms that.”

Kessler was 6-foot-7 and weighed just 170 pounds as a lightly recruited forward out of Roswell High. By the time he left UGA, he was 6-11 and weighed 230 pounds.

“That guy literally worked his butt off,” said Cole, a co-captain on that 1990 team. “He studied all the time, lifted weights all the time, put up shots all the time. For an 18- to 22-year-old guy to be that focused was amazing to me. Most of us were laughing and joking and playing cards and doing what kids do. Alec, he worked his tail off.”

Kessler had settled into a new role as a husband, father and doctor in Gulf Breeze, Fla., when he died in October 2007. He died doing what he loved most, playing basketball in a charity game.

“I just happened to be going through some pictures yesterday and saw one of him from Gulf Breeze as an orthopedic surgeon,” Durham said. “You look at that, and it’s hard to believe he’s not here anymore. It’s been a long time now, but we still miss him.”