Cherokee Bryan Parks (born October 11, 1972, in Huntington Beach, California) is an American professional basketball player.
A 6' 11" (211 cm), 240 lbs (109 kg) center, Parks played his college basketball at Duke University under coach Mike Krzyzewski and won the 1992 national title during his freshman year. After college, he was selected by the Dallas Mavericks in the 1st round (12th overall pick) of the 1995 NBA Draft. In his ten season NBA career (1995–2004), he played for the Mavericks, Minnesota Timberwolves, Vancouver Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio Spurs, Washington Wizards, and Golden State Warriors. He averaged career-highs of 7.1 points per game and 5.5 rebounds per game during the 1997–98 season with Minnesota. Parks came out of retirement in 2011 to play in France.
Parks' mother named him Cherokee in honor of his great-grandmother, who was a member of the Cherokee tribe.
His sister Corey Parks was the original bassist for Nashville Pussy.
Famous quotes containing the words cherokee and/or parks:
“A Cherokee is too smart to put anything in the contribution box of a race that’s robbed him of his birthright.”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)