Former NBL Star Dead

He was one of the hardest working players I have ever been associated with and the basketball world has lost a good one. Former Melbourne Tigers and Brisbane Bullets scoring machine Dave Colbert passed away on the 4th of December in a single car accident.

Colbert was a high school basketball coach at his Alma Mater, John Marshall High in Cleveland.

I used to love watching Colbert and fellow import James Bullock when they were teammates of Andrew Gaze at the Melbourne Tigers.

When he moved to the Bullets I began to hear stories about his legendary individual workouts. He was old school. He would be in an empty gym do shooting drills using chairs as defence and even getting the broom out imagining that Terry Dozier was closing him out.

Besides possessing a smooth jumper, the one thing that I remember the most about Colbert was, he loved to dunk of the wrong foot. Most righthanders will jump off their left leg to elevate upstairs, but "Colby" was at his best off his right.

I got to see his abilities first hand when in 1995 the Bullets called him back to fill in for injured import Chris Monk for a month.

Dave Colbert was truly one of the great scorers this league has seen.

RIP.

Here is a little footage of Colbert when he scored the winning bucket for the Dayton Flyers in an upset win over DePaul.