Aulcie Perry

Aulcie Perry (Hebrew: אולסי פרי‎‎) (born July 3, 1950) is a retired American-Israeli basketball player. He led Maccabi Tel Aviv B.C. to two European championships during his nine seasons with the team. In 1987, Perry was convicted of drug-smuggling.

Perry was born in Newark, New Jersey He attended West Side High School there. He graduated from Bethune-Cookman University in Florida. He played basketball in high school and at college.

The 6 foot 10 inch, 215 pound (2.08 m, 98 kg) center was signed to the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association in 1974. Perry was cut from the team during the 1974–75 season, however, and spent the balance of the season with the Allentown Jets of the Eastern Professional Basketball League (the predecessor to the Continental Basketball Association). The following season he was signed by the New York Knicks, but he never played for the team. Released by the Knicks, Perry returned to the Jets.

During the summer of 1976, Perry was spotted by a scout for Maccabi Tel Aviv while playing at the Rucker courts in Harlem. Maccabi Tel Aviv signed Perry for US$6,000 a month, a small sum by American standards but one of the highest salaries in the European league in which Israel competed. The other players on the team responded to his leadership and the team had what Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff described as "the most extraordinary season in its remarkable history" and what Perry called "the best nine months of [his] life". In 1977 Perry led the team to its first European Cup championship, a prize they took again four years later. Perry played a total of nine seasons with Maccabi Tel Aviv, during which the team won six Israel Cups and was league champions seven times.

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