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Center · 1990–91

Walter Palmer

A 7-foot-1 center from Dartmouth — hardly a common NBA pipeline — Palmer was Utah's second-round pick in 1990 and played 48 league games for the Jazz and Mavericks, scoring exactly 100 points. He kept playing in Europe and South America, and that journey changed his life's work.

Palmer became a pioneering labor organizer for athletes: co-founder and general secretary of Germany's first basketball players union, general secretary of EU Athletes representing more than 25,000 European athletes, a department head at what is now the World Players Association, and briefly the NBA players union's director of international relations.

HOW HE CAME & WENTThe pick that became him arrived in the three-team Jeff Malone trade, and Utah used it on him 33rd overall in 1990. Treated as a long-term project behind Mark Eaton, he was waived in October 1991.

Full name
Walter Scott Palmer
Utah Jazz tenure
1990–91
Position
Center
Born
1968, Rutland, Vermont
Height
7′1″ (216 cm)
Weight
216 lb (98 kg)
College
Dartmouth
Drafted
1990, 2nd round (No. 33), Utah
Signatures in the archive
  • 1990 Star Pics #54 on-card auto
  • 1990 Star Pics Basketball #54 (no COA)
Also on the shelf — unsigned 1990-91 Fleer Update Utah Jazz #U95

No photograph of this signature is online yet.

With the Jazz

WALTER PALMER · 1990–91 · PER GAME
SEASONTEAMGMPGPPGRPGAPGSPGBPGFG%3P%FT%
1990–91UTA283.01.40.80.20.10.1.333.000.667
JAZZ TOTAL1 SEASON283.01.40.80.20.10.1.333.000.667

Season by season, regular season, with this franchise only. More info: Basketball-Reference ↗  ·  Wikipedia ↗

Did you know

WALTER PALMER · 6 NOTES
  • One of the rare Ivy League players to be drafted and play in the NBA.
  • His father Bud Palmer was one of the original New York Knicks and later a famous American television broadcaster.
  • Read Shakespeare on team flights and told reporters he wanted to become a teacher.
  • As a Dartmouth sophomore he blocked 12 shots against Harvard in the new arena's dedication game, an Ivy League record that stood over thirty years.
  • After the NBA he played eleven more seasons in Italy, Spain, Argentina, France and Germany before retiring in 2003.
  • Arriving in Salt Lake City in 1990 he looked up at the Wasatch and told a reporter that Hanover, New Hampshire had no mountains like these.