Alec Kessler, former Georgia basketball star, dies at 40

<p>Alec Kessler, who starred on the court and in the classroom at Georgia and was a first-round NBA draft pick, died after collapsing during a pickup game, the school announced Sunday. He was 40.</p><p>Kessler, a captain on Georgia's 1990 Southeastern Conference championship team, suffered an apparent heart attack Saturday in Pensacola, Fla. He was pronounced dead a short time later at Gulf Breeze Hospital, the school said in a statement.</p><p>When Kessler enrolled at Georgia in 1985, he was a little-known recruit with few other offers from NCAA Division I programs. After a redshirt season, he spent one year as a backup before blossoming into a star for the Bulldogs.</p><p>His senior season, the Bulldogs won the first _ and still only _ SEC basketball title in school history. In his last college game, Kessler became the school's career scoring leader with 1,788 points, a mark surpassed the following year by Litterial Green.</p><p>After graduation, Kessler was picked No. 12 overall by the Houston Rockets, who promptly traded him to the Miami Heat. He played four seasons for the Heat before going into a career in medicine.</p><p>Kessler graduated magna cum laude from Georgia with a 3.9 grade point average in microbiology. He graduated from the Emory School of Medicine in 1999 and was an orthopedic surgeon in Pensacola.</p><p>Kessler, whose brother Chad played at Georgia from 1984-87, was survived by his wife Rhea and their two sons, Nicholas and Christopher.</p>