Background
Perrot, Kim was born on January 18, 1967.
Perrot, Kim was born on January 18, 1967.
Perrot attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), and played four years there as a guard.
She played in the Women's National Basketball Association for the Houston Comets. In one game against the University of Southeastern Louisiana, she scored 58 points, the third most in National Collegiate Athletic Association history. At 5"5", she was noted there for her ferocious play and was a crowd favorite.
Perrot wore jersey number 10 with the Comets organization, which subsequently retired her jersey.
In her last game with the Comets, exactly one year before her death, she scored ten points against the Los Angeles Sparks. In February 1999, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
While she was not on the basketball court with the Comets that year, many of her teammates considered her to be a spiritual uplifting force for the team The cancer had already metastasized to her brain.
Perrot underwent surgery and radiation treatments to eradicate the tumors in her head, but declined chemotherapy recommended by her doctors.
Perrot went to Mexico to seek alternative methods to battle cancer. Many attribute her death to that move—but metastasized lung cancer gave her no chance of survival with conventional medicine. In Mexico, she was joined by Cooper.
She was the first active player in the Women's National Basketball Association to die.
She was posthumously awarded a third championship ring, her #10 jersey was retired, thus making her the first player in league history to have her number retired. The Women's National Basketball Association subsequently renamed their sportsmanship award in her honor.
Comets fans raised money to create "Kim"s Place", an area at the Doctor of Medicine Anderson Cancer Center in Houston where kids with cancer can play games, sports and relax. Also, the "Kim Perrot Leadership Award" was created by the Houstan Can! Academy (a charter school for at risk youth).
While ill with cancer, Perrot had made many public appearances, and given motivational speeches, mostly at schools.
She averaged 7.2 points, 3.3 steals, and 2.9 rebounds per game during her two seasons as a member of the Comets. Two days before her death, she took a Medevac flight back to Houston from Tijuana, with Cooper and members of the Perrot family flying along.