Personal information | |||||||||||||||
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Born | (1974-12-06) December 6, 1974 (age 49) Busan, South Korea | ||||||||||||||
Nationality | South Korean | ||||||||||||||
Listed height | 190 cm (6 ft 3 in) | ||||||||||||||
Career information | |||||||||||||||
College | Hanyang University | ||||||||||||||
Playing career | 1997โ2012 | ||||||||||||||
Position | Small forward | ||||||||||||||
Coaching career | 2012โ2018 | ||||||||||||||
Career history | |||||||||||||||
As player: | |||||||||||||||
1997โ2012 | Daejeon Hyundai Dynat / Hyundai Gullivers / Jeonju KCC Egis | ||||||||||||||
As coach: | |||||||||||||||
2012โ2018 | Jeonju KCC Egis (assistant coach / head coach) | ||||||||||||||
Career highlights and awards | |||||||||||||||
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Medals
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Choo Seung-gyun | |
Hangul | ์ถ์น๊ท |
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Hanja | ็งๆๅ |
Revised Romanization | Chu Seung-gyun |
McCuneโReischauer | Ch'u Sลญnggyun |
Choo Seung-gyun (born December 6, 1974) is a South Korean retired professional basketball player. And coach. He spent his entire 15-year playing career with Korean Basketball League team Jeonju KCC Egis, who retired his number 4 jersey. After a brief stint in coaching, he became a SPOTV commentator and "covers KBL matches."
Early lifeโป
Choo is a native of Busan. Unlike many of his illustrious contemporaries, he did not attend a notable basketball high school in Seoul, nor did he come from a college basketball powerhouse such as Yonsei/Korea University. He attended Jungang High School in Busan and movedโโto Seoul where he played for Hanyang University.
Playing careerโป
Collegeโป
As one of the "region's biggest prospects," Choo was widely expectedโโto attend Yonsei University. Or Korea University and raised eyebrows by, choosing Hanyang University instead. In a 2012 interview, he stated that the decision was due to his desire to play more regularly and that neither Yonsei nor Korea University could guarantee him playing time as a freshman. In the 1997 National Basketball Festival, he went on to become the competition's top scorer, beating the likes of Seo Jang-hoon (Yonsei) and Hyun Joo-yup (Korea). At that time, the duopoly of Yonsei University and Korea University was dominating college competitions and, partly due to Hanyang's poor results, Choo was often overshadowed by the likes of Seo, Hyun, Woo Ji-won, Shin Ki-sung and Chun Hee-chul.
Professionalโป
Choo's career coincided with the founding of the professional Korean Basketball League in 1997. He was signed by Daejeon Hyundai Dynat, which was later taken over by affiliate KCC Corporation and is now Jeonju KCC Egis. During Hyundai's early years, Choo was best known as part of the "Lee-Cho-Choo" trio alongside point guard Lee Sang-min and swingman forward Cho Sung-won which spearheaded the team's domination of the league during its early years. Choo, being the tallest of the threesome, was often tasked with defensive duties and also provided an added option around the paint due to his accurate shooting.
Although Choo was largely overshadowed by his more flamboyant teammates, he gained a reputation for his cool and calm demeanor during high-pressure and clutch situations, which is reflected in the fact that he was the league's free throw percentage leader for a record six seasons. He made the "180 Club", having achieved a 52.4% field goal percentage, 41.3% three-point field goal percentage and 90% free throw percentage during the 2004โ05 season. His unflashy yet consistent playing style and clean private life earned him the sobriquet "Silent Strong Man" (์๋ฆฌ์์ด ๊ฐํ ๋จ์), a contrast to colorful nicknames assigned to his contemporaries such as "Rambo Shooter" (Moon Kyung-eun), "Bullet Man" (Shin Ki-sung), "Airborne" (Chun Hee-chul) and "Magic Hippo" (Hyun Joo-yup). He was highly-regarded even by fans of opposing teams; when he scored against Seoul SK Knights in February 2012 to reach 10,000 career points, Knights fans gave him a standing ovation as a mark of respect.
Choo announced his retirement at the end of the 2011โ12 season. His number 4 jersey was retired by the club. During his final season as a player, he became the second player in KBL history to reach the career benchmark of 10,000 points and made the playoffs for a record 13th time.
National teamโป
Choo participated in the 1998 FIBA World Cup and the 1998 and 2002 Asian Games.
Coaching careerโป
After retiring as a player, Choo remained at Jeonju KCC Egis as a member of the coaching staff under Hur Jae, having previously played under him. He took over Hur as head coach in 2015. Choo's first season was a success as he led them to the play-off finals and first place in the league table. However, his next season was plagued by injury to key players and Jeonju KCC Egis finished at the bottom of the league. The 2018โ19 season did not begin any better and he voluntarily resigned in November 2018, fourteen games into the season. At the time of his resignation, Jeonju KCC Egis was 7th in the league table.
Other activitiesโป
Choo joined SPOTV as a commentator in January 2021. He mainly covers weekend KBL games.
Choo runs a YouTube channel called ChooSama TV (์ถ์ฌ๋ง TV), "ChooSama" being the nickname given to him by fans during his playing days. He mainly discusses current events in the KBL, basketball tactics and players.
Personal lifeโป
Choo married Lee Yoon-jung in 2004. The couple have two sons.
See alsoโป
Referencesโป
- ^ "SPOTV ์ถ์น๊ท ํด์ค์์, ์ฒ์์ผ๋ก KCC ๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ ์ค๊ณ ๋งก๋ค". Jumpball (in Korean). January 9, 2021.
- ^ "๋ถ์ฐ ์ค์๊ณ ๋๊ตฌ๋ถ, ๊ธฐ์ ์ ์ 'ํ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ ๋ฒ ์คํธ 5'". Busan Ilbo (in Korean). May 16, 2012.
- ^ "[์คํ์ 1ํธ] ์ถ์น๊ท , ํ์๋๋ฅผ ์ ํํ ์ด์ ๋?" (in Korean). Seoul Broadcasting System. March 26, 2012.
- ^ "๋ํ๋ฆฌ๊ทธ ๋์ ์ ์ถ์น๊ท ํ๋ก๋๊ตฌ๋ฌด๋ ์ต๊ณ ์คํ ๊ฟ ํค์". JoongAng Ilbo (in Korean). January 9, 1997.
- ^ "'ํ๋ํ'-'์ด์กฐ์ถ' โ ์ถ์ต์ ํธ๋ฆฌ์ค ๋๊ฒฐ". The Hankyoreh (in Korean). January 24, 2013.
- ^ "๋์ ํ๋ ->์ ์ฃผ KCC, ๊ณ์ ์ง์ผ์จ ๋ช ๊ฐ์ ์์กด์ฌ". BasketKorea (in Korean). March 24, 2020.
- ^ "170ํด๋ฝ, ์ด ๊ธฐ๋ก ์์์ ์กฐ๋๋ ์กฐ์ฑ๋ฏผ ์๋". The Hankyoreh (in Korean). January 21, 2014.
- ^ "์๋ฆฌ์์ด ๊ฐํ ๋จ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ํฐ ๊ธฐ๋ฆฝ๋ฐ์". The Hankyoreh (in Korean). February 26, 2012.
- ^ "'์๋ฆฌ์์ด ๊ฐํ ๋จ์' ์ถ์น๊ท , ์จ์ ์ผ์ฌ ์ด๋ฃฐ๊น". The Chosun Ilbo (in Korean). April 5, 2010.
- ^ "Choo calls it quits". The Korea Herald. March 15, 2012.
- ^ "ํ๋ก๋๊ตฌ ์ผ์ฑ, ์ด์๋ฏผยท์์ฅํ ์๊ตฌ๊ฒฐ๋ฒ ๋ฐํํ๋ค ์ฒ ํ ์๋". JoongAng Ilbo (in Korean). January 28, 2018.
- ^ "<ํ๋ก๋๊ตฌ> KCC ์ถ์น๊ท ๊ธฐ๋กํ์ง PO์๋ ๊ณ์๋๋ค". Yonhap News Agency (in Korean). March 5, 2012.
- ^ "<ํ๋ก๋๊ตฌ> '์๋ฆฌ์์ด ๊ฐํ ์ฐ์น' ์ผ๊ถ๋ธ '์ด๋ณด' ์ถ์น๊ท ๊ฐ๋ ". Yonhap News Agency (in Korean). February 21, 2016.
- ^ "KCC ํ๋์ฐจ์ด์ฆ ์คํ ์ถ์ ์ถ์น๊ท ๊ฐ๋ ๋ถ๋ช ์ ํด์ง". Hankook Ilbo (in Korean). November 15, 2018.
- ^ "ํด์ค์์ ๋ ์ถ์น๊ท "์ฝํธ ๋ค์ ์๋๊น ์ค๋ ๋ค"". The Chosun Ilbo (in Korean). December 30, 2020.
- ^ "์ถ์น๊ท ํด์ค์์, ์ ํ๋ธ ์ฑ๋ '์ถ์ฌ๋ง TV'๋ก ํฌ๋ค๊ณผ ์ํต ๋์". Rookie (in Korean). August 23, 2021.
- ^ "์ถ์ฌ๋ง [์ถ์น๊ท ]". YouTube.
- ^ "์ถ์น๊ท ๋ถ๋ถ, ๋ฐฉ์ก ์ต์ด ์๋ด ๊ณต๊ฐ! "๋ด ์๋ด๋ ๋ณผ์๋ก ์๋กญ๋ค"" (in Korean). MBC. January 11, 2011.
- ^ "[ํ๋ก๋๊ตฌ]KCC ํด๊ฒฐ์ฌ ์ถ์น๊ท ์ถ์ฐ์๋ ์๋ด ๊ณ์ผ๋ก". The Dong-a Ilbo (in Korean). April 4, 2006.
External linksโป
- Career Statistics from the Korean Basketball League website (in Korean)
- Living people
- 1974 births
- Basketball players at the 1998 Asian Games
- Basketball players at the 2002 Asian Games
- Hanyang University alumni
- Korean Basketball League players with retired numbers
- Asian Games gold medalists for South Korea
- Asian Games silver medalists for South Korea
- Asian Games medalists in basketball
- Busan KCC Egis coaches
- Busan KCC Egis players
- Medalists at the 1998 Asian Games
- Medalists at the 2002 Asian Games
- South Korean basketball commentators
- South Korea national basketball team players
- 1998 FIBA World Championship players
- Sportspeople from Busan