Ralph Sampson - Post-NBA Life

Post-NBA Life

Sampson played eight games for Unicaja Ronda of the Spanish League during the 1991–92 season.

Returning to the States, he spent the 1992–93 season as an assistant to head coach Lefty Driesell at James Madison University before coaching a minor league professional team in Richmond, Virginia.

Reflecting back on his career and its three knee surgeries, Sampson admitted that he had attempted to come back too quickly from them, and said that he tried not to think about what could have been.

In 1996, Sampson was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. In 2002, he was named to the ACC 50th Anniversary men's basketball team as one of the fifty best players in Atlantic Coast Conference history – one of only three Virginia Cavaliers so honored.

In 2005, Sampson pled guilty to owing more than $300K in back child support for two children from different mothers in the Northern Virginia area. In 2006, he was sentenced to two months in prison for mail fraud associated with the purchase of an SUV.

On November 22, 2011, Sampson was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. In February 2012, Sampson was honored by Houston Rockets and fans as a member of the Decade Team of the 80s. On April 2, 2012, Sampson was named a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's induction class of 2012.

In October 2012, Sampson joined the Phoenix Suns' player development staff.

Sampson's son, Ralph Sampson III, played collegiate basketball for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers. Sampson's younger son, Robert, currently plays for the East Carolina Pirates men's basketball team.