Who “won” the negotiations?

Normal people might point out that the relationship between the NBA and NBPA is symbiotic and the notion that one side can crush the other doesn’t totally make sense, as neither side can survive without the other.  That being said, the NBA won in the sense that they knocked down BRI significantly.  The NBA didn’t get the hard cap on salaries it was agitating for but my sense was that this was an extreme position intended to force the players to cave on BRI and luxury taxes and it worked quite well.

Did the recently filed antitrust lawsuits help the NBPA at all?

No.  As seen in the NFL dispute, in a bona fide antitrust suit, the players must demonstrate a true decertification (i.e. that the union is done and will not reform), not to mention causation and damages (i.e. that anti-competitive behavior killed the union and resulting loss).  The NBPA likely could not have proven any of this, since the NBA had set forth its financials proving that the lockout was done to stop losses and even the NBPA conceded that the NBA was suffering losses (but just disagreed on the extent).  No reasonable court or jury would have compelled the NBA to open its doors under such circumstances.  I believe that the lawsuits had the owners pretty nonplussed and, conversely, that the NBPA was pretty relaxed about the NBA lawsuit filed a few months ago as well.

The practical effect, if any, of any of the lawsuits was to allow Billy Hunter/David Stern to broadcast to his constituents that he was “really mad” at the other side and wasn’t going to take it anymore.  The lawsuits then were more valuable in the rally troops sense than in terms of any tangible gains in the negotiations.  I’m sure David Boies and the rest are happy for the cash they were paid to file essentially meaningless complaints.

Will a higher luxury tax do anything?

I don’t know the exact details of the hard cap but the penalties are supposed to be triggered at a lower number than in previous CBAs and the amount of tax is supposed to be higher.  Past history indicates that no matter what the luxury tax threshold is certain teams will always be willing to go over.  I suppose if the tax was ridiculous it would even dissuade Mark Cuban but I presume that we haven’t reached that stage.  You can bank on the fact that certain teams will exceed this new threshold.  I assume the NBA knows this but takes some solace in the fact that a higher luxury tax will redistribute income a little more efficiently to the poorer teams.

What about restricted/semi-restricted free agents?

Not exactly sure but Stern was stating that there would be some measure to allow teams to more effectively retain their own free agents.  I assume there is some quasi-Larry Bird Rule in the offing.

What should the NBPA done in retrospect?

Unless the NBPA was prepared to start its own competing league, they should have taken a deal on the eve of season back in October.  The deal didn’t change much since then and there was no need to sacrifice game checks unless the NBPA had a real backup plan or intended to sit out until they got the terms they wanted (which they rightly weren’t willing to do).  Absent leverage, Billy Hunter had to balance the shortcomings of a deal with the lost money from not playing.  With no better deal in sight, you just take your best option and end this thing (as the NFLPA did).  It was a tough situation for Hunter because the NBA was so vociferous about its position and to concede would’ve made Hunter and the NBPA look weak.  Still, this pride has cost the NBPA 16 games of paychecks that are never coming back.  Pragmatism should have ruled the day.  The best you can say for the NBPA is: (1) they did not let this go on too long as they did in 1998-99 and (2) not matter the system, the NBA will pay the players quite a bit of cash anyway.

What was the funniest/ironic moment of the lockout?

Michael Jordan’s conversion from player to hardliner from the 1998 lockout to the current dispute.  I’m not the first to notice the irony of Jordan yelling at Abe Pollin in 1998 that any owner who can’t make money should sell his team.  MJ circa 2011 has had a change of heart on that one.

What is the toughest thing about being the NBPA President?

The odd thing about being NBPA president is that it is typically given to a veteran older player who is also not a star (Michael Curry, Antoinio Davis) but most vets, like current president Derek Fisher, will be out of the league pretty quickly.  Since 1980, no NBPA president has lasted more than five years (Fisher actually just hit his five-year anniversary) and most of the player immediately become coaches or GMs after retiring, instantly flipping to management.  This reminds of the story when the Nets cut Jack Haley in 1998 and named him an assistant coach.  Haley joked with his former teammates that he now totally disagreed with all their positions in the pending labor dispute.  While the NBPA does have representatives that are permanent in Billy Hunter (though he’ll be gone soon probably) and attorney Jeffrey Kessler, the lack of continuity of the players can create problems.  This is less of a problem now since Fisher has had such a long tenure but he won’t be in the NBA too much longer and the cycle will have to start over again.

Have you had enough watching the NBA’s Greatest Games series?

Yes.  I think I’ve seen Magic and Bird enough, though I did have some fun watching random playoffs games from the 1980s and 1990s.

What have we learned about international basketball?

That it really isn’t a viable option for NBA players on a larger scale.  Between the need to procure insurance and all the local rules, very few NBA players actually could go abroad and make enough guaranteed money to make it worth their while.  Special kudos to Deron Williams for realizing the finite amount of real options and jumping on the best option available (i.e. big money and an NBA opt-out clause).  A few players are also stuck in China for the year with no opt-out clause.  Per ESPN, the list of NBAers in China will be Aaron Brooks, Wilson Chandler, J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin, Dan Gadzuric, Luther Head, Yi Jianlian (his deal is said to have an NBA out), and Josh Powell.  Unless these NBA players in China are making big money or were desperate for immediate paychecks, they likely would’ve been better off waiting out the lockout.

Are we ready for some frantic free agency?

Yes.  Accelerating an entire off season into less than four weeks will be fun.  It won’t make up for the lost games but at least it’s something.  Let’s play ball.

How bad a soul was Dailey?  He certainly had several bad moments but I thought we could focus on Dailey because he was an interesting character and more complex his problems that are our lasting memories of him.  In retrospect, Dailey’s career should be viewed as one of the first modern athlete careers, where the player had plenty of issues and problems of his own creation but was probably misunderstood and would’ve been treated much differently had he been 10-15 years younger.

Make no mistake about, Dailey was not worth the trouble for some of his career but his problems are much less shocking today than they were at the time.  The short version was that Dailey was a great college player, who was accused of sexual assault on a student.  He pled guilty to a lesser charge and received only probation.  He was initially ostracized for the plea deal.  Later, drug and weight problems consigned Dailey to the 1980s disappointment bin that so many other NBA players also fell into.  So, that’s the short story but let’s go through the history as it happened and see how accurate this story is.

Dailey At USF and the Incident

Dailey was a high school star in Baltimore before getting a scholarship with the University of San Francisco.  Dailey, a 6′3 guard who had a knack for scoring but was not necessarily a great shooter, led USF in scoring as a freshman in 1979-80 at 13.6 ppg and improved to 22.4 as a sophomore.  Dailey continued to improve as a junior to 25.2 ppg, drawing 232 free throws in only 30 games.  In that third year, Dailey started to get publicity for many different reasons.  Sports Illustrated did a feature on Dailey in early December 1981 which told us that both of his parents died within a few weeks of each other when he was 13 and that he was a great scoring guard.  We also learned that Dailey’s girlfriend/fiancée at the time was Reggie Jackson’s niece and that Jackson was now looking out for Dailey.  The article concluded a little ominously in hindsight.  Dailey’s coach at USF, Peter Barry, told Sports Illustrated that “[w]e would love to see Q stay here at USF….He has a great rapport with the community.  The big question is whether or not he can wait long enough for the megabucks.” 

Over Christmas break 1981, any such rapport was broken when a female student accused Dailey of sexual assault.  In February 1982, she filed a police complaint and Dailey was ultimately accused of several felonies, including rape.  Reportedly, Dailey failed a lie detector test in January 1982 and gave a statement to police implying that he may have done something wrong. 

Dailey took a plea deal that involved only probation, a sentence that the accuser also endorsed.  A few days later, Dailey declared for the NBA draft but now he was a national story.  Questions were raised as to whether he should even be allowed in the NBA.  Dailey, himself, showed little contrition, telling the media that he wanted to put the incident behind him and stated that he had done nothing wrong.  Despite the furor over Dailey, the Bulls were intrigued by the guard’s scoring ability and drafted him seventh overall in the 1982 draft.

The story didn’t go away though.  In August 1982, Sports Illustrated ran a transcript of Dailey’s interview with the police from the previous February.  The interview was offered by the police to support its position that Dailey had confessed to the crime.  The police first asked Dailey to waive his Miranda rights (the right to be questioned with his own lawyer present), which he did waive.  He also told the police that “intended no harm against [the alleged victim] or anyone.”  The police then asked Dailey if he made a “mistake” that night.  Dailey stated that “unconsciously” he did make a mistake.  He then professed to have no memory of the details but that he didn’t mean any “harm to the young lady” and hoped that she “accepts my apology” and still maintained that he did not harm anybody.

The accuser later filed a civil suit, which was settled in early 1983 for an apology and a $100,000 payment.  Thereafter, Dailey made no admissions and any other article I have seen since Dailey denied ever assaulting the accuser.  Dailey’s guilty plea, combined with his denials, however, led to tons of bad publicity and women’s rights advocates followed him around and picketed outside his games much of his first year in the NBA.  During this investigation, Dailey also admitted to getting illegal payments that helped put USF on probation with the NCAA and ultimately led to the termination of the program for a few years, making him a total pariah at USF.

Was Dailey guilty?  It’s not clear.  Having not reviewed any other evidence, the transcript is not, to me, a slam dunk admission on Dailey’s part, though his guilty plea/settlement seem to indicate he did something wrong.  On the other hand, with so much to lose, Dailey would have been foolish to go to trial if he knew he could walk with only probation.  Of course, guilt and innocence don’t matter as much the fact that Dailey was one of the first  prominent athletes to be publicly accused of sexual assault (early 1900s boxer Jack Johnson was charged with violating the Mann Act for transporting a prostitute across state lines).  In more modern times, Dailey was a lightning rod and it was impossible for him to have a normal career after that point.

Would Dailey’s incident resonate the same way today? I don’t think so.  We have become a bit more desensitized as a society about such issues.  Athletes have been routinely accused of violence against woman and sometimes the charge creates outrage with the public and sometimes it does not.  Kobe Bryant’s own similar troubles went away much the same way that Dailey’s did (though Kobe never pled guilty, he paid an unspecified sum in a civil court action) and the matter was all but forgotten within a few years. 

In a less ambiguous case a few years earlier, NBA role playerRuben Patterson pled guilty to attempting sexual assault of a nanny that worked for him.  His career lasted several more years and despite a suspension, Patterson did not suffer the same stigma that Dailey did earlier.

Dailey in the NBA

A.    Dailey and the Bulls

While many of the obituaries focus on Dailey’s career as primarily a failure, the substance of his career was a bit more complicated.  Dailey started off solidly as a rookie, scoring 15.1 ppg and scoring in 27 mpg.  In the 1984 Pro Basketball Handbook, Zander Hollander called it a “traumatic year”  and that the scrutiny had affected Dailey but noted that he played well.  In 1983-84, Dailey continued to improve, scoring a career-high 18.2 ppg.  In the 1985 edition, Hollander stated that the rape incident had been ostensibly forgotten and that Dailey was good enough to lead to the trade of incumbent starter Reggie Theus.  Hollander also noted that the Bulls had rebuffed trade offers for Dailey.

In 1984-85, things started to go downhill for Dailey.  He missed a game because of drug problems but continued to play well when he did play.  It was also reported that he did some strange things on and off the court.  According to “Basketball’s Nastiest” by Kerry Banks, in a game against the Spurs in March 1985, Dailey “instructed the ball boy to borrow five dollars from a reporter and run to the concession stand for a slice of piazza.  When the ball boy returned, Dailey took the pizza and ate it at the end of the bench, much to the amusement of his teammates and the astonishment of coach Kevin Loughery.”   Dailey also complained off Loughery, telling reporters that “If he (Loughery) stays, I’m gone. . . . I’m tired of the personal vendetta part of it. You can see it. I’m not going to be Kevin Loughery Jr. I’m Quintin Dailey.”  Dailey’s complaints seemed to stem from the suspension and the fact that he wasn’t getting as many shots now that the Bulls had drafted a kid named Michael Jordan before the 1984-85 season.

Things only got worse in 1985-86.  Dailey’s drug problems came to a head and he was suspended and missed a huge opportunity since MJ missed much of the season with a broken foot. 

Between the drug issues and Jordan, this was the end for Dailey as a potential star player.  Jordan did not make life easier for Dailey and they saw each other as competition for shots.    They battled in practice and Jordan saw Dailey as an obstacle to MJ’s own success and treated him accordingly.  In Jordan’s own book, “Driven from Within”, MJ wrote that “I could never be good friends with Orlando Woolridge [the team's leading scorer pre-MJ] or Quintin Dailey because I was stealing some of their thunder.  But I was doing it with effort and work.  I wasn’t asking anything from anyone.” 

I cannot find the quotes anywhere but I do recall Dailey complaining about losing playing time to Jordan back then, a fact that seems a little funny in hindsight.  Still, teammate Dave Corzine did attest that Dailey “held his own against Michael Jordan in every practice.”   In 1994, Dailey admitted that Jordan had him beat: “When I saw him as a rookie, I said he was God’s gift to basketball…He had cat-like quickness, big hands and could jump out of the gym. And he studied defenses. Just the best ever. My thrill of all time was to be on the same floor with him.”

In 1985-86, Dailey also began to gain weight and the drug problems persisted.  He played in only 35 games and had definitively been written out of the Bulls plans because of MJ’s success and Dailey’s own problems, entering drug rehab and being suspended.  The Bulls did not re-sign him after that season and he had gone from top ten pick to fringe NBA player.

B.    Post-Bulls Years

Dailey opened the 1986-87 in the CBA until the Clippers gave him a shot.  He had no drug or attitude issues again.  In February 1986, Sports Illustrated did a feature on the futlie Clippers and called Dailey “one of the most likable players on the team” but noted that he 25 pounds overweight.   He did not play great his first year in L.A. but he was still a scoring machinge (he had 10.6 ppg in only 18.9 mpg but shot only.407%).  Dailey lasted two more years with the Clipps and continued to be an efficient scorer (scoring 25.3 points per 36 minutes in 1987-88).

The Clipps were undergoing a youth movement after the 1988-89 season and let Dailey go to let the youngsters play.  That summer, Dailey was offered a guaranteed contract to be the scorer off the bench from the Lakers but missed the flight to Hawaii and then was not in shape enough to make it through Pat Riley’s brutal training camp when he did arrive.  Dailey was cut and had to return to the CBA. 

His career was not over though.  The Sonics gave Dailey a chance to as a role player in February 1990.  Dailey started with a 10-day contract in Seattle but ultimately lasted three season as a scorer off the bench and logged 12-15 mpg most of the time and could still score in short spurts, though he was too heavy to play much more then that.  In mid-1992, Dailey was finally cut after shooting 24% and his NBA career ended at age 31.

After his career, Dailey moved to Las Vegas and spent his time working as a counselor working with at-risk kids without any public incidents before his untimely passing this week at age 49.  What have we learned from Dailey’s story?  Whether Dailey was innocent of guilty didn’t matter.  The matter was resolved with the victim and the courts.  His drug and weight problems hurt his career but the story of Dailey the monster was overblown.  He made many mistakes from ages 21 to 25 and did ruin much of his chance to be a very good NBA player.  Based upon his skill set, Dailey had a chance to be a good starting NBA guard, a la Otis Birdsong, but he would never be a star.  This makes him a qualified disappointment but nothing more.  While his behavior did let the Bulls down, his time was over even if he was clean and sober once they got MJ.

After the Bulls  years, by all accounts Dailey was a well-liked person and contributed to society.  While in our minds as NBA fans, he could forever be the troubled person of the early to mid-1980s, Dailey effectively moved past those problems by 1986.  People will never forget Dailey’s problems, and perhaps they shouldn’t.  But we should also remember that people have the capacity for growth and that Dailey ended up being a much better person in the ensuing 24 years.

Unfortunately, the impetus to look back at player’s career usually comes at a final point, retirement or death.  In the case of Dennis Johnson, his untimely passing has inspired plenty of writers to eulogize a great NBA player.  I thought I’d look back at his career and hopefully find a few more nuggets of information that haven’t been touched upon yet. 

DJ Before the NBA 

Johnson was grew up in Compton, California, a ghetto that later became infamous for its tough streets by the gangster rap group N.W.A. in early 1990s.  DJ was one of 16 children, born to a relatively middle class family.  Johnson tried to pay ball but was short (5′9 as a high school senior), and did not make the varsity until his senior season and even then he barely played.  Upon graduating high school without any prospect of a scholarship, Johnson spent the next year taking blue collar jobs and playing ball in local summer leagues.  During that time, he became a great leaper and grew to 6′4.  He now could guard players much taller and he made a name for himself in the playgrounds.  A scout saw DJ and offered him a scholarship to the local junior college, which he took.  

There were implications that Johnson was not the easiest guy to get along with.  His junior college coach, Jim White, said in Peter May’s “The Last Banner” that “[w]e struggled a lot….He was averse to doing what he was supposed to do.  He was never defiant; he was just a little wild and undisciplined in his life and a very emotional kid.  So when things didn’t go his way, he would explode.”  Johnson played well enough, however, to be placed with a small Division I school,  Pepperdine.  In his first and only year there, Johnson helped lead Pepperdine to a 22-6 record and the NCAA tournament, where they lost to UCLA.  Johnson had played well enough to become an NBA prospect. Because DJ had spent his first year after high school working and the next two in junior college, Johnson’s high school class was eligible for the NBA draft after his first year at Pepperdine (this was back when the NBA had the old four years from high school rule).  Johnson left school and was drafted by the Sonics with the twelfth pick of the second round (29th overall) in the 1976 draft. 

Seattle:  DJ Leads the Sonics to Contention 

Johnson played immediately with the Sonics and was solid if not great rookie (9.2 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 1.5 apg in 20 mpg).  DJ’s second year, 1977-78), was the famous year that the Sonics started out 5-17 and brought in Lenny Wilkens to right the ship.  Wilkens put Johnson in as a starter and he helped lead the team to a 42-18 finish and the NBA Finals.  Johnson first began showing his clutch reputation when he had a huge Game 4 of the Finals against the Bullets, putting up 33 points, 7 boards, 3 blocks, and sealing the game in the last few minutes with a few baskets, a key offensive rebound, and a blocked shot.  The year ended poorly, however, as Johnson shot 0-14 in a close Game 7 loss.  The Sonics came back the next year ended up beating the Bullets in the NBA Finals.  Johnson was named to the All-Star team and, even more importantly, he was the Finals MVP, averaging 23 ppg  and over 2 blocks per game. 

After two straight Finals appearances, the Sonics looked to be the Western Conference favorites in 1979-80.  Indeed, the three highest scorers on the 1978-79 Sonics, Johnson, Gus Williams, and Jack Sikma, were all 25 or under.  The team won a then-franchise record 56 games and made it to the Western Conference Finals.  The problem was that the Lakers had just picked up a rookie named Magic Johnson, who helped lead L.A. to 60 wins.  The Lakers dispatched the Sonics 4-1 and went on to win the title.  

Despite L.A.’s emergence, the Sonics still looked poised to be a contender in the future but it wasn’t meant to be.  DJ was fighting with Wilkens and he was traded to Phoenix for Paul Westphal before the 1980-81 season.  Johnson was coming off of his best year with Seattle (19 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 4.1 apg) and was young.  So why trade him for the 30-year old Westphal?  DJ said in “The Last Banner” that his relationship with Wilkens “did deteriorate a little bit.  Like any player, I wanted more time, this and that, and I wanted to renegotiate my contract.  They did not want to do that.  Lenny was trying to help me, but I didn’t always see it that way.  And we had our share of arguments.”

How Good Were The DJ Sonics? 

A strong part of Dennis Johnson’s Hall of Fame case was not just his time as a key contributor to the Celtics but also that he was a star on a title-level Sonics team.  Was it a truly great team?  Maybe.  The Sonics run was essentially three years.  Here was their records and expected won-loss based upon point differential: 

Year            W-L        Expected W-L        Playoff Result

1977-78      47-35            45-37                    Lost NBA Finals 4-3

1978-79      52-30            48-34                    Won NBA Title 4-1

1979-80      56-26            53-29                    Lost in Western Conference Finals 4-1 

A good team, but nothing in this record screams dynasty.  In addition, the team was deep but there isn’t a Hall of Famer on the roster–though Gus Williams and Jack Sikma have arguments.  Of course titles are forever, so you can never take away that the Sonics snagged the 1978-79 title.  But what kind of competition did they face? 

It was my perception that the post-ABA merger years were a messy time in the NBA and there was a lack of truly dominant teams.  You could chalk it up to balanced competition but from 1976-77 (the first year after the merger with the ABA) through 1978-79 (the year before Magic and Bird entered the NBA), only two teams broke 55 wins.  (The 1977-78 Blazers won 58 games but lost in their first playoff series because they had lost Bill Walton to a broken foot and the 1977-78 Sixers won 55 games but were taken out by a 44-38 Bullets team in the conference finals that would go on to beat the Sonics in the Finals).  In modern NBA history, though, this was one of the only times where the league didn’t offer one super dominant team in the regular season teams.  

My sense is that the late 1970s was a low ebb, in terms, of NBA talent. I know the ABA had just been absorbed but the NBA was losing a ton of stars from the 1960s and early 1970s and the Sonics, to their credit, filled the void between the dynasties of the early 1970s and the Magic/Bird Years. 

Who Was Their Star? 

As noted, the core of this team was Dennis Johnson, Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, and Fred Brown.  Sprinkle in some solid big men (John Johnson, Paul Silas, Lonnie Shelton, and Marvin Webster) and you have a good team.  The interesting question is how key each member was to the team as a whole.  Let’s look at the Sonics year-by-year leaders during that time:

1977-78 Sonics

1978-79 Sonics

1979-80 Sonics

While defense is not accounted for in the PER formula, it does show the rest of Johnson’s game to be good but not great as a Sonic (a PER of 15 is considered an average player).  Williams put up the best stats for these Sonics but, interestingly, he did not make an All-Star team in any of the three years we have reviewed, while Johnson and Sikma both made the All-Star team in 1979 and again in 1980.  Putting aside the stats, you do have to, some degree, take DJ’s All-Star selections over Williams as a judgment by DJ’s peers that he was a very key player on this team. 

In all, it’s fair to say that the Sonics were a balanced team and that DJ was one of the top three players, and, at times, the best of the three.  But you cannot unequivocally state that Johnson was ever the best player on the team for any full season during that time. 

Phoenix: DJ’s Forgotten Years 

Johnson came to a pretty well developed Phoenix team in 1980-81.  The Suns had also won 55 games in 1979-80 (though they were also toasted 4-1 by the Lakers).  Johnson’s addition was a help, as the team bumped up to 57 wins, the best record in the Western Conference.  Like the Sonics, the Suns were deep and had a skilled big man (Alvan Adams) and a designated scorer (Walter Davis) to go along with DJ.  In addition, the Suns even had a big post player (Truck Robinson).  In that first year in Phoenix, Johnson had his best season as a pro (18.8 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 3.7 apg) but the season ended in bitter disappointment.  The Lakers were upset in the first round but the Suns failed to capitalize and were knocked off in their first series by a 40-42 Kings team.

In 1981-82, the Suns slumped to 46-36 (Davis missed time with injury) and the team was smoked by the Lakers 4-0 in the second round.  In 1982-83, the Suns looked to be a contender as well, going 53-29 and added a young star in Larry Nance.  But the playoffs, once again, were bad news.  This time, the Suns lost a mini-series to an underdog Denver team 2-1.  

Why Trade DJ? 

By way of background, the early 1980s Suns were run very much as they have been in more recent times.  They had fun high scoring teams that weren’t particularly tough up front.  And the team was run by Jerry Colangelo who was not afraid to make a splashy move.  Colangelo had apparently come to the conclusion that they could replace DJ with the younger shooter Kyle Macy and wanted to parlay Johnson into another big man.  But trading DJ wasn’t just about the big man issue or the fact that Kyle Macy was kind of waiting in the wings.  Johnson had his worse season in as a regular in 1982-83 (14.2 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 5.0 apg) and he wasn’t getting along with coach John MacLeod.    Here is a sampling of how a couple of books recounted DJ’s end in Phoenix: 

-In “The Last Banner,” May said that Colangelo initially tried to trade Johnson for Bill Laimbeer (then a young Cavalier) and Kenny Carr but the Cavs rejected the deal. After that, “Johnson and John MacLeod, the Suns’ coach, were at odds and Phoenix felt it had no choice but to move Johnson.”  What was the problem?  Johnson told May that he and MacLeod “didn’t have real arguments, but I would speak up and he would do it his way.  But they were lacking big men and people thought we were feuding.  We had no feuds.  But I was more than happy to leave because we weren’t going anywhere.”  May further said that the Suns felt that Johnson couldn’t work with Walter Davis because neither was a true point guard. 

This story doesn’t quite add up.  May and Johnson enumerate a number of possible reasons for the deal but they don’t really give a definitive answer about what exactly happened. 

-In “Breaking the Rules,” Mike Tulumello’s great book on the 1995-96 Suns, he touches on the DJ Affair: “Johnson had blossomed into an all-NBA performer and the team’s best player.  But he could be moody and he wasn’t much of a practice player.  MacLeod complained frequently about him to Colangelo.  The Suns perennially needed another big man, and the Boston Celtics had one available in Rick Robey….Colangelo recognized the mistake almost as soon as it was made.  The team’s downturn then began apace.” 

-In Zander Hollander’s 1984 Pro Basketball Handbook, which was written after the 1982-83 season, they had this to say about Johnson right after the trade:

“[Johnson c]laims to be misunderstood…But he never seems to be able to stay in one place for long before making people dissatisfied….Was blamed for the fact the Suns have come up short in playoffs the last three years [in Phoenix]…Seems basically insecure and always talks big…One thing you’ve got  to hand him is that he is always willing to take a clutch shot in the pressure situation.” 

In any event, Johnson was traded to Boston for back up center Rick Robey and an exchange of first-rounders (that ended up favoring the Celtics).  Unlike Westphal, Robey had never been a star and he wasn’t even younger than DJ.  There was no reason to expect anything but mediocrity from Robey, yet Robey even disappointed on that level.  He suffered a foot injury an played in only 111 more games before his career ended.  In the end, both DJ trades resulted in horrible return.  Here are the post-DJ trade stats for Westphal and Robey:

Celtics’ Mr. Clutch

Johnson fit in with the Celts like a glove.  The team had been brow beaten by the Sixers the prior two years and had just lost in a humiliating 4-0 sweep at thehands of the Bucks in the 1982-83 playoffs.  The glaring hole for the 1982-83 Celts was at the point guard position, where they were trying to get by with an old Tiny Archibald, Quinn Buckner, and Gerald Henderson, none of whom was anywhere near the player Johnson was at that time. 

Though it feels like a Celtic Dynasty was a faiti accompli, in retrospect, the Sixers had been dominant in 1982-83 and it wasn’t clear that the Celtics’ backcourt would improve enough to match up with them before DJ was poached from the Suns.  Johnson particularly helped against the athletic guards (Andrew Toney of Philly and Sidney Moncrief or Milwaukee) who Henderson could not guard.  

Johnson’s arrival in coincided with the Celts dominant run.  From 1983-84 through 1987-88, the Celts had the best record in the conference every year.  Johnson did not put up superstar numbers (he made only one All-Star team) but he was the teams most important guard during that time.  While the clutch label tends to be thrown around a bit too loosely, there was a demonstrated pattern of DJ stepping up in the playoffs for the Celts.  Here are his regular season and playoff averages each year for the Celts:

Outside of 1988-89, the year Bird sat out for back surgery and were swept in the first round by the Pistons, DJ raised his stats every playoffs as a Celt.  And this trend wasn’t only as a Celt.  DJ never averaged less than 16.1 ppg in the playoffs outside of his Celtic years, three times scoring over 19.6 ppg in the playoffs.  I’m generally agnostic about whether a player can truly be defined as clutch.  Players have clutch moments but very few can fairly be said to almost always play well when the heat is on.  Still, you have to think that Johnson, between his Sonics and Celtic moments, falls into that category. 

The Hall of Fame? 

I’ve often felt that the Hall of Fame too often put in role players from great teams, who really would not have been in but for the fact that they filled their role on great teams.  I have my doubts about whether some good role players (K.C. Jones, Frank Ramsey, Bill Bradley) really were better than the stars on lesser teams.  Johnson, however, is a perfect border candidate.  He was a really good role player on a great Celtic team and he was a very good featured player on title team in Seattle.  Still, DJ’s stats never bowl you over.  In short, he lies pretty much on the borderline of enshrinement.  I wouldn’t have had a problem with him getting in or not getting in.  If he does get in, however, it will be shame that it has to happen posthumously.  In the end, whether DJ is honored by a bunch of voters in Springfield really doesn’t change what Johnson did on the court.  He was a truly unique player who will be missed.

Despite this sentiment, there is remarkably little written about Bellamy just an unspoken understanding of his worth by the basketball powers that be.  Even “Tall Tales”, the seminal book on the 1960s basketball, only mentions Bellamy in passing.  I thought we could run through Bellamy a little better and see if we could learn something new about Bellamy the player, how this common knowledge developed, and whether it is actually accurate.

Bellamy Pre-NBA 

Bellamy grew up in North Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s, which was probably not the easiest of times.  Bellamy was known as laid back and perhaps too calm demeanor and even NBA.com’s biography on Bellamy opines that this “may have reflected his laid-back southern nature similar to a fellow native Tar Heel and jazz musician, John Coltrane.”  Bellamy grew pretty big and ended up playing at Indiana University and leading the school in rebounding and being a an All-American as a junior and senior.  

Bobby Knight, who played for Ohio State, described going against Bellamy in college in his autobiography “My Story”:  “Bellamy had the ball above his head, and I came in from behind, went up, and grabbed the ball,  The problem was he had a good hold on it, too,  He shook me like a dog shaking off fleas, but I held onto the ball, and that wasn’t a good idea.  He was so strong he ripped the ball away and in the process sent me flying through the air –I ended up on my ass, out of bounds.  This whole thing started at the free-throw line.  I can remember sitting on the sidelines and saying to myself, ‘Wow!’”  In addition to tossing Bobby Knight around like a rag doll, Bellamy was part of the 1960 Olympic gold medal team (with Jerry West and Oscar Robertson).  

The Brief History of the Chicago Packers/Zephyrs 

Bellamy graduated in 1961 and was the first overall pick of the 1961 draft by the expansion Chicago Packers.  Back in 1961, the draft was far from an exact science, as the number two pick Tom Stith played only 25 NBA games and several of the first rounders barely played or didn’t play at all in the NBA (three of the nine first rounders played 58 or fewer career games).  Bellamy ended up being the best player in the draft, which featured several decent but no great players like Bill Bridges, Don Kojis, Tom Meschery, Ray Scott, and Kevin Loughery. 

The Packers were not good but Bellamy was.  The 1961-62 Packers went 18-62 and were, by far, the worst team in the NBA.  Despite this fact, Bellamy had a dominant year:  31.6 ppg, 19.0 rpg, a 26.3 PER.  Bellamy also led the league in shooting and he along with Wilt Chamberlain, were the first two players to shoot over 50% in an NBA season.  Despite this great year, Bellamy did not make the first or second team All-NBA because this was Wilt Chamberlain’s historic 50 ppg season and Bill Russell was the second team center.  Bellamy’s statistical dominance for the Packers seemed to be a confluence of two factors: (1) the NBA scored a ton of points in 1961-62, and (2) the Packers were ungodly terrible. 

-The early 1960s was the highest scoring environment in NBA history.  In 1961-62, the average NBA team scored 118.8 ppg, the highest average of any season.  The Packers scored 110 ppg.  On a team that scored only 100 ppg (we can’t really calculate per possession because turnovers were not a stat back then), Bellamy would’ve accounted for 28 ppg,

-The Packers were terrible.  No one of the roster outside of Bellamy had much more of a career left and most of the players didn’t make it to even one more season.  In fact, the Packers were last in the NBA in field goal percentage and scoring.  Chicago scored 110.9 ppg, the lowest output in the NBA by 4 ppg, and the team wasn’t great at rebounding either.  It made sense to feed Bellamy as much as possible when Slick Leonard was the only viable scoring alternative. 

In 1962-63, the Packers changed the team name to the Zephyrs and picked up rookie Terry Dischinger, who put up 25.5 ppg and the team improved marginally to 25-55.   This time, Bellamy’s numbers were good but not quite as good (27.9 ppg, .527 FG%, 16.4 rpg, 24.9 PER).  Bellamy was essentially the same player but between Dischinger, who could actually score, and the decline in league scoring (the average fell to 115.3 ppg) Bellamy’s number dipped slightly.  Chicago was then sold to a new ownership group based in Baltimore and immediately moved the Zephyrs to Baltimore to become the Bullets.  

In Baltimore, the team continued to improve.  The Bullets went 31-49 and Bellamy continued to lead the way with 27.0 ppg and 17.0 rpg, and 23.3 PER.  His supporting cast was significantly better now with Dischinger and some good young players like Gus Johnson, Rod Thorn, and Kevin Loughery.  In 1964-65, the Bullets improved to 37-43 and made the playoffs, beating the Hawks and losing to the Lakers in the Conference Finals (yes, Baltimore was in the Western Conference for no good reason).  The 37-43 record wasn’t as ugly as it seems, as the Bullets were the third best team in the West.  Bellamy’s numbers still looked great (24.8 ppg, .509 FG%, 14.6 rpg, 21.7 PER) but overall were declining.  Bellamy wasn’t getting any worse but the league scoring was declining and the Bullets now had some real players (Bailey Howell, Don Ohl, Loughery, and Johnson). 

Despite this steady improvement the vibe in Bullet Land was apparently not so great.  A November 1965 article by Mark Kram of Sports Illustrated reflected a very unhappy Bullets team and didn’t make Bellamy look too great either.  The article starts off with coach Paul Seymour’s frustration being interrupted by a loud whistling from Bellamy.  Hilarity ensues: “[S]uddenly, skittering through the quite, someone’s whistle began running merrily up and down the scale.  Losing, thought [coach Paul] Seymour, was bad enough; he had suffered that condition often as a player himself, though he was never indifferent to it.  But this was was too much.  He did not have to look far for the whistler.  Walt Bellamy, usually about as cheering a sight as a hearse and nearly as big, was just beginning another trill.  ‘Walt!’ snapped Seymour.  ‘Lay off the birdseed!  If you want to perform, just ask.  There’s the table, and we can always get a spotlight.’  Bellamy being Bellamy, he received this advice with a customary loud and inexpressive silence.” 

An interesting passage to say the least.  Three interesting things are learned:  (1) Coach Seymour sounds like spastic jerk, (2) Bellamy’s reputation as apathetic is already very well-ingrained, and (3) we see a first recorded instance of a sportswriter describing a mercurial players as _______ being ________, (a good 30-40 years before Boston sportswriter met Manny Ramirez!).  

Kram also discussed Bellamy’s talent, his ability to go toe-to-toe with Wilt and Russell but found Bellamy’s lack of intensity to be more frustrating than he was worth: “Seymour’s biggest problem was the personality of Walt Bellamy.  Thinking of it brought to his face the expression of a man who has just gulped a hemlock malted. When the effort of watching Bellamy’s laggard behavior on the court became too much for him, he surveyed the stands as if looking for a place to hide….Seymour is by no means the first coach to find it impossible to reach Bellamy.  Jack McMahon had him in Chicago and abhorred him.  Bob Leonard once wanted to throw him out of a hotel window but settled for fining him $400 for his indolence. [GM Buddy] Jeannette still rolls his eyes at the mention of the name.  

By last weekend everyone in Baltimore had had enough.  Jeannette arranged a trade with New York that took Bellamy off Seymour’s back….Jeannette called Seymour in and told him the good news. After they exchanged expressions of relief and congratulated each other, Seymour asked who would tell Walt Bellamy.  ‘This one,’ said Jeanette, who had suffered longer than Seymour, ‘is mine.  I claim the privilege.’” 

This is portrait of Bellamy was far from flattering.  On the court, the Bullets didn’t miss Bellamy much though, as they had finished 38-42, pretty much the same as the previous year.  But trading Bellamy for Barnes was not exactly a dump trades.  Barnes was younger and also a number one overall pick, though not quite the player Bellamy was.  

Bellamy and New York:  Did He Hold Back The Dynasty? 

Traditional lore tells us that the Knicks of the early 1970s were held back by Bellamy.  True?  Maybe.  Let’s take a look…In New York, Bellamy came to a non-playoff team and became its main scorer.  Bellamy had 23.2 ppg and 16 rpg for a 30-win Knicks team after the trade in 1965-66.  In 1966-67, the Knicks improved a bit to 36-45, with the help of a young supporting case around Bellamy.  Wills Reed (age 24) had 20.9 ppg and 14.6 rpg, Dick Barnett (who wasn’t so young at 30) had 17 ppg, and Howard Komives (age-25), Dick Van Arsdale (age-23), and Cazzie Russell (age age-22) also were good.  For the first time, Bellamy (19.0 ppg, 13.5 rpg, 18.4 PER), however, didn’t lead his NBA team in points or rebounds.  

In 1967-68, the Knicks improved again to 43-39 and lost to a tough Sixers team in the playoffs.  Bellamy was pretty much the same player as always (16.7 ppg, 11.7 rpg, 19.1 PER) but his minutes had shrunk to 32.9 mpg.  He previously had never played fewer than 38 mpg but with Reed, Russell, Van Arsdale, and Bill Bradley, the Knicks were loaded with good players.  The defense was also slowly improving.  Without possessions/turnovers, we can only assess more rudimentary raw stats.  In this case, the Knicks opponents points per game was near the bottom of the NBA in 1965-66 (8th of 9) but had moved to a more respectable 5th of 12) in 1967-68.  

1968-69 became the tipping point for the Knicks dynasty and the nail in the “Bellamy Hurts Teams” mantra.  Bellamy was traded early in the season and the Knicks took off and ended up 54-28 with the least points allowed in the NBA.  Bellamy played only 35 games with the Knicks that season and was still at the 32 mpg level.  His stats, while still good (15.2 ppg, 11.0 rpg, 17.9 PER), declined from the previous season.  Writers, reading in between the stat lines, Bellamy was portrayed as less than his numbers. 

In Bill Gutman’s “Tales from the 1969-70 New York Knicks”, he gave the following anecdotes about Bellamy: “Bellamy almost never missed a game, at least physically.  What people were beginning to realize is that the same Big Bells didn’t show up every night.  When he was going up against a Russell, Chamberlain, or Thurmond, he could be magnificent, showing talent at both ends of the court nearly equal to that of the man he was playing.  But when the opponent was…any center of lesser talent, Bellamy often went to sleep.  In other words, he played to the quality of the opposition.” 

We (actually I) don’t have the box scores, so we can’t go back and trace this assertion.  Frankly, it sounds a little manufactured but it is clear that Bellamy’s motor wasn’t as tenacious of some other players.  We have some anecdotal stories both ways.  There is a story how Chamberlain supposedly didn’t let Bellamy get a shot of for the first half of the first game they played together (this seems like an apocryphal story but I don’t know for sure).  There are also stories of Bill Russell saying that Bellamy played him better than any other center (which could’ve been just a tweak at Wilt).  

More to the point, Gutman also noted that Reed, who was better than Bellamy, was stuck at power forward with Bellamy and wanted to be a center.  Between Bellamy’s apathy and Reed’s desire to be a center, a trade seemed to make sense, especially when the Pistons were willing to trade them the younger true forward Dave DeBusschere in return.  The Knicks then went on a run of three NBA Finals (and two titles) in the next four years with DeBusschere at the big forward. 

It was clear that slotting the 6′6 athletic DeBusschere at power forward and Reed at center, made the Knicks faster and more athletic.  But the Knicks players didn’t seem to hide their antipathy for Bellamy.  Phil Jackson takes Bellamy to task in two books.  In “Sacred Hoops”, Jackson mentions Bellamy was an enforcer type who was withdrawn and describes Bellamy as the only player on the team not to be part of a brawl with the Hawks.  Jackson said that Bellamy “had withdrawn psychically from the team because of a dispute with management.”  In “More than a Game”, Jackson said that “Bellamy was not a very coachable player, and Willis [Reed] was unhappy with the fact that Bells didn’t always play hard.” 

Jackson wasn’t the only one to imply that Bellamy wasn’t a great part of the team.  In Phil Berger’s October 1970 “New York” magazine piece on the Knicks, Nate Bowman said that Bellamy was the only player with a single room on road trips “[u]ntil we started losing a lot of games.  Then [coach] Red [Holzman] told him, ‘Well you don’t get any special privileges, because you’re not doing anything special.’  So he took the room away from him.’” 

Bellamy’s Twilight In Atlanta 

Bellamy was sent to Detroit and was, ironically enough, reunited with Paul Seymour, who had detested Bellamy on Baltimore.  We can’t find any articles on Bellamy’s time in Detroit because it was quite brief, with the notable highlight that he played a league record 88 games in 1968-69 between the Pistons and Knicks ( the Knicks had played more games earlier than Pistons at the time of the trade).  While Bellamy’s raw numbers on Detroit looked solid as usual, an article from in Sports Illustrated from 1970 stated that by mid-1969-70, Bellamy reached his “nadir” in Detroit and that “he was literally not playing a full minute at the end of his stay.”  It should be noted that Bellamy played 79 out of 82 games that season, so this could have been an exaggeration, though it’s clear some coaches were not fans of Bellamy. 

Near the end of 1969-70, Bellamy was traded to a pretty good Atlanta team.  On Atlanta, Bellamy (now age-30) was the post presence for a good team built around guard/forwards Lou Hudson and Joe Caldwell and rebounder Bill Bridges (and in 1970-71, Pete Maravich).  The team was already competitive and the hope was that big Bellamy could help the Hawks counter the elite centers.  

The Hawks won 48 games in 1969-70 and went to the Western Conference Finals.  They were promptly wiped out in four straight by the Jerry West/Elgin Baylor/Wilt Chamberlain Lakers.  The Hawks made the playoffs the next three seasons (despite winning 36 games in two of the them) but lost in the first round each year.  In that time, Bellamy aged gracefully but did decline.  He rebounded as well as always but Bellamy could no longer shoot quite so efficiently (with the exception of 1971-72, when Bellamy posted a flukey .545 field goal percentage) but rebounded as well as ever.  In 1973-74 (age age-34) Bellamy finally slowed down to 31.7 mpg and had his worst shooting season (.486%) and rebounded at a respectable but lower rate than usual.  

Bellamy was let go to the expansion New Orleans Jazz in 1974-75.  Bellamy was not happy with the expansion team.  Shortly after the expansion draft, Bellamy either didn’t like that he might be relegated to a backup role or suspected that the Jazz weren’t run well (this ended up being quite true).  In either case, Bellamy, in atypically animated fashion, called a press conference in June 1974 and told reporters that he would go into “forced retirement” because of a “no care” attitude of the Jazz towards Bellamy, whom he described as non-communicative since the expansion draft.  Bellamy ended up going to New Orleans anyway but he played only one game, where he put up six points and five boards in 15 minutes before he was waived, ending his NBA career. 

Post-NBA Career 

We couldn’t find too much in the way of articles describing Bellamy as cerebral during his NBA career.  But Bellamy appears to have been busy post-NBA.  According to his own bio, Bellamy was VP of the NBPA during his playing days and since has had a role in the Georgia legislature, was a Democratic delegate in 1984 and 1988 conventions, and is now on the board of directors for an organization encouraging local development in Georgia. 

In all, Bellamy had a nice career, but not great career.  He made the Hall of Fame in 1993, about 20 years after his retirement.  I do recall that at that time, DeBusschere wrote a letter advocating Bellamy’s credentials.  After viewing Bellamy’s record, however, I think he’s a marginal Hall of Famer at best.  Bellamy’s blessing and curse was the two dominant statistical seasons in Chicago.  This was a function of an unprecedented opportunity to play in a fast pace environment on a team with virtually no other options.  The fact that Bellamy’s stats fell after that point to good but not overwhelming numbers shouldn’t really be attributed to his apathy. 

The only other scorer from the old Chicago Era, Dischinger, had a similar stat line decline.  Dischinger went from  averaging 25.5 ppg for the Zephyrs in 1962-63 as a rookie and then went straight down the next few years.  I don’t see anyone accusing Dischinger of dogging it.  The early 1960s NBA scoring environment is probably never coming back.  Nor is a team as bad as the old Chicago Packers/Zephyrs (which is a good thing).  In “Tall Tales”, Lakers coach Fred Schaus summed up Bellamy pretty well, in explaining how the Lakers tried to get Bellamy as a center to compete with Russell and the Celtics: “Walter was no superstar, but put him in the middle and we would have been a different team.”  

As for Bellamy’s apathy, it seems to cut both ways.  Mark Kreigel “Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich”, an encounter is described when a drunk Maravich ran into teammate Bellamy at their hotel at 3:00 a.m..  Maravich, apparently was “impossibly loud and drunk” and ran into Bellamy: “‘Pete just snapped,’ [teammate Herb] White recalls.  He jumped on Bellamy’s back and started to rant [racial epithets at Bellamy]….At first, Herb couldn’t understand why he was saying what he was saying, as Bells was about the most laid-back guy on the team.  And as crazy as Pete could, the one craziness he didn’t suffer from was racism….The raving lunatic [Maravich] was strangely sane: his slurs were an incantation, a desperate, profane prayer for release.  He wanted out,  ‘I hate you,’ he screamed.  ‘I hate all of you n——s.’  Bellamy could’ve broke him in half.  Instead, he just shook his head.  The big man wore a look of recognition, resignation, and finally pity.  Pete.  ‘Take this crazy motherfucker back to his room.’ [Bellamy] said.”

There you have it.  Paul Seymour hated Bellamy’s guts for his detached nature.  Ideally, you’re big man plays like a tiger, a la Alonzo Mourning, but that wasn’t Bellamy.  It may have limited Bellamy as a player a bit but he ended being a pretty good human being and a good ballplayer.  As a player, he probably falls some where in the realm of a Kevin Willis, but with Elden Campbell’s deer in headlights stare from early in his career.  Not a Hall of Famer but certainly a very good player in the right environment.  Certainly not a star but definitely a guy who deserves to be remembered.

Zo The College Years 

Was Zo a Phenom? 

Mourning first became well known as one of the nation’s top college prospects in 1987.  At that point, Mourning was a 6′9 senior in Chesapeake, Virginia but was considered the prize for college recruiters.  Mourning ended up with John Thompson at Georgetown, where he followed the footsteps of the Hoyas’ previous center great, Patrick Ewing.  Thompson acknowledged that having Ewing in his past helped get another great center.  According to Bill Reynolds’ “Big Hoops”: “Patrick going to Georgetown had something to do with it…I went to [Mourning's] room and Patrick’s picture was all over the place.”  In the spring of 1988, while still a high school senior, Mourning even earned an invite to tryout for the 1988 Olympic team, coincidentally coached by Thompson.  

Mourning played quite well at the tryouts.  According to Alexander Wolff’s May 30, 1988 Sport Illustrated article on the tryouts: “In the opening five minutes of the second half of the first game, with his team trailing by nine. Mourning sank two free throws, completed a three-point play in traffic, hit a couple of jumpers and blocked two shots. When he left the floor, his team led by two, and his primary victim, Syracuse’s Rony Seikaly, was left wondering what he had missed in high school.  ‘People started off asking me if Alonzo’s here because he’s going to Georgetown,’ said Thompson before Saturday’s scrimmage. ‘I don’t hear that question any longer .’”  Mourning was one of the last cuts on the team before being sent off to college. 

Mourning had a great freshman year at Georgetown, named second-team All Big East and defensive player of the year.  The Hoyas made it to the Elite Eight, where they lost to Duke, who had its own freshman prodigy, Christian Laettner, who outplayed Mourning in the game.  Mourning appeared set up to have a similar storied college career as Ewing (he won only one title but Ewing went to three Final Fours).  Mourning, however, never had quite so much team success in college.  In 1989-90, Mourning did not improve much over his freshman numbers but the team was very good (they also had Dikembe Mutombo), only to be upset in the second round of the tournament by Xavier (which was led by two bona fide NBA forwards Tyrone Hill and Derek Strong).  In 1990-91, the team also struggled and were only a middling seed in the tournament.  They drew the legendary UNLV team with Larry Johnson,Greg Anthony, and Stacey Augmon on the second round of the tournament.  The Hoyas hung tough but just didn’t have the guard play to match Vegas and lost 62-54. 

How Good Was Mourning in College? 

After three years, Mourning was still considered a hot prospect but the perception was that he had some issues.  The issues were as follows:

-The team wasn’t really winning much like they did in the Ewing Era:  This was true but Zo was not really to blame.  He was playing well and they only had two really good guards during Mourning’s tenure (Charles Smith in 1988-89 and Mark Tillmon in 1989-90).  The rest of the time, the supporting cast was surprisingly weak.

-Zo seemed to be stagnating statistically:  There is some truth to this.  Check his stats:

But was this really stagnation?  Seems to me that there is a much more likely intervening cause.  Mourning had moved to forward after his freshman year to accommodate the bigger and more lumbering Mutombo.  On the wing, Zo’s blocks went down and there were fewer rebounds available with Deke too (Mutombo grabbed 10.5 and 12.2 rpg in 1989-90 and 1990-91 respectively) not too mention how many blocks Mutombo took as well.  So Zo’s middle college year declines represented more of a change in position than a problem with his growth as a player.  Indeed, when Mutombo was gone in 1991-92, Zo instantly reverted to the dominant center he was as a freshman.  Indeed, Thompson told Sports Illustrated in 1992 that: “Last year Zo would have gotten all the blocked shots and rebounds Dikembe got if I’d put Zo at center.” 

-Zo had some “personal” issues:  Mourning was never really known as warm and fuzzy back then.  He played with manic intensity and talked plenty of smack, most famously in a game against UConn where he allegedly shouted anti-Semitic remarks at Nedev Henefeld, the Huskies’ Israeli star. Henefeld dismissed the remarks as “just two players playing hard, just something that happens.”  Henefeld was also quick to note that ‘The next time we played…Mourning came to me and said he was sorry. It wasn’t a big thing at all.”  Still, there was a perception, somewhat correct, that Mourning wasn’t so easy to deal with personally.  He wasn’t a bad seed or a dog on the court but he was outspoken and didn’t feel any need to be pleasant.  

In Mourning’s senior season, the team still struggled but Mourning was excellent (as we see above).  He was taken second overall by the Hornets in 1992 NBA Draft (behind Shaquille O’Neal).  Mourning wasn’t Shaq but he probably the hottest prospect coming into the pros besides Shaq in the early 1990s.  

Shall We Psychoanalyze Zo? 

Mourning’s anger and intensity was less of an issue as his career moved on.  Attitudes changed in the America and the notion of an outspoken and not-so-happy black athlete was just less of a big deal.  Still, Zo’s attitude was unique and different.  Sam Smith described Mourning (then a third-year NBA player in 1994) thusly in “Second Coming,”: “[assistant coach John] Bach called [Mourning] ‘the Tasmanian Devil’ the way he’d whirl around in a frenzy, spasms of rage exploding like Mourning was fighting himself as much as his opponent.  It seemed he was always angry, hitting a backboard support, screaming at himself, almost without perspective or a sense of humor.  One time, veteran referee Jake O’Donnell came to the Hornets’ bench and said if Mourning didn’t stop talking to himself he was going to throw him out of the game.” 

We can’t know exactly what drove Mourning but some writers have hinted towards origins lying in events that caused him to leave his birth home for foster parents as a teenager.  Smith described Mourning’s childhood too: “[w]hen Mourning was eleven and then an only child, his parents divorced and he entered the Virginia child care system, living in several foster homes before finally being raised by an elderly woman named Fanny Threet who would raise forty-nine children during her life as a foster parent.  ‘I wasn’t comfortable with the situation that was evolving,’ Mourning said in an interview in 1994. ‘I didn’t want to live with my family.’…He refuses to discuss his situation any further.  But it’s clear something terrible happened in that home, for eleven-year-olds just don’t opt to go into foster care.”

It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure that Zo’s anger was visceral and probably rooted in the way he was treated as a child.  Rumors did swirl that Mourning was abused based upon Mourning’s cryptic comments.  In fact, there was no truth to rumor.  Mourning published his own autobiography “Resilience” in 2008, where he finally explained his childhood decision to leave his home after his parents’ divorced: “[i]t wasn’t the worst situation in the world, and my parents were both great people, but the atmosphere was not good for me.  Emotionally, I began acting out.  I wasn’t normally a bad kid; I was actually a good kid.  But all of a sudden I was in trouble all the time, and it was obvious, even to me, why that was happening.  My parents and I went to a counseling session at the department of social services and that’s when I asked to be put into a group home for a while.  My parents reluctantly agreed.  Once I was in the group home, I saw kids with real problems, the kind that made mine seem like nothing….But I still didn’t want to go home….Just because I wasn’t in the worst situation didn’t mean my parents’ place was a good one.  In the end, I got very lucky:  I wound up with a woman named Fannie Threet, a local hero who as a foster mom helped raise forty-nine kids in Chesapeake….I am close with both my parents to this day, but I still call Ms. Threet ‘Mom’ too.” 

Mourning in Charlotte 

Mourning spent his first three years as a pro with the Charlotte Hornets with a promising young team.  Zo was paired with Larry Johnson (22.1 ppg, 10.5 rpg, 18.9 PER in 1992-93 and had won Rookie of the Year in 1991-92), who looked like a star, and several good players (Muggsy Bogues, Kendall Gill, and Dell Curry).  Year one, 1992-93, turned out pretty well.  The Hornets started out well, slumped to .500 (35-35) before rallying to finish 44-38 to get the fifth seed in the playoffs.  In the playoffs, Mourning had his most memorable Charlotte moment, when he hit a 20-footer to eliminate the Celtics in the first round.  Mourning and the Hornets were smoked by his idol Ewing and the Knicks in round two but there was a nice foundation on which to build. 

The Hornets hit bump in the road in 1993-94, going 41-41 and missing the playoffs.  Mourning missed 20 games with injuries and LJ’s back problems emerged too, that limited him to 50 games and decreased his explosiveness drastically.  In 1994-95, everyone was relatively healthy (LJ’s explosiveness had declined but he was still very effective) and Mourning was his usual self (21.3 ppg, 9.9 rpg).  The Hornets also were defensively above average for the first time (9th in defensive efficiency after being below average Zo’s prior two seasons) and won a then franchise high 50 games.  Unfortunately, the Hornets drew the Bulls who had just gotten back Michael Jordan from retirement.  The Hornets lost 3-1, but not before whining about the officiating the whole time. 

The Hornets fell apart thereafter.  Mourning was to be a free agent after the 1995-96 season and he and his then super agent David Falk attempted to get an extension from Hornets owner George Shinn in the summer of 1995.  Problem was that Shinn had previously given LJ an extension that was a disaster (Johnson developed serious back problems almost immediately after signing the deal).  Shinn didn’t want to pay too much for Mourning and the impasse led to bad feelings and a trade to Miami (for Glen Rice, Matt Geiger, and Khalid Reeves) on the eve of the 1995-96 season.  Stat-wise, Mourning was an All-Star in two of his three years and had about 20 ppg and 10 rpg in each year.  It wasn’t clear if he would ever develop into anything more than he was but such a player was plenty good. 

Miami: Riley and Zo 

On Miami, Mourning became the center-piece for Pat Riley’s newest title contender.  Of course, Mourning alone wasn’t alone to make the Heat a threat.  Riley was also able to pilfer Tim Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn, as well.  Mourning continued to play well on Miami.  He was never really considered the best center in basketball but he always very close and even earned All-NBA first team honors in 1998-99 (he wasn’t nearly as good as Shaq but the Lakers had an ugly season).  Miami then had an impressive four-year run with this group, though they could not get over the top (three straight losses to the Knicks in the playoffs submarined their chances).  Here’s a look at the Heat teams with Zo at his prime from 1995-96 through 1999-00: 

Year        Offensive Eff.    Defensive Eff.    Pace    W-L                        Playoff Result

1995-96            23rd                    6th              19th    42-40    (Lost to Bulls 3-0 in the first round)

1996-97            12th                    1st               25th    61-21    (Lost to Bulls 4-1 in Conference Finals)

1997-98            10th                    7th               26th    55-27    (Lost to New York 3-2 in first round)

1998-99             9th                     8th               29th    33-17    (Lost to New York 3-2 in first round)

1999-00            17th                    7th               26th    52-30    (Lost to New York 4-3 in second round) 

This is your basic slow-paced, tough defensive team.  Whenever they could score at all, the Heat were tough to beat.  The run came to an abrupt end in 2000-01 when Mourning suffered focal segmental glomerulosclerosis and missed nearly all the season.  He returned for the playoffs (the Heat played remarkably well without him) but the guards were just no match for the athletic Hornets backcourt, losing each game by over 15 points (Baron Davis outscored the Hardaway/Anthony Carter duo 61 to 23 over the course of the three-game sweep). 

Mourning was actually able to return full-time in 2001-02, playing 75 games but a notch below what he was before in pretty much every category (15.7 ppg, 8.4 rpg) and lacking his trademark energy on the court.  Even worse, the Heat’s core had also decayed to the point where they couldn’t score at all (27th in offensive efficiency) and the team fell to 36-46.  Mourning missed all of 2002-03 with the kidney issues and the original Pat Riley Heat were no more. 

Mourning in Jersey: The Weird Pit Stop 

Despite the fact that it seemed, once again, that his career was over, we would hear from Zo again.  After missing 2002-03, somehow, Mourning became a key piece to the Nets.  In the summer of 2003, the Nets’ best player, Jason Kidd, was a free agent.  Kidd led the Nets to two straight Finals appearances and was the identity of the franchise.  The Nets were begging for him to return but he was actually interested in possibly going to San Antonio or Dallas.  The Nets were able to coax him back by signing his body Mourning to a four-year $22 million deal that was completely uninsured.  It wasn’t clear that Mourning had anything left but this was a concession to Kidd, who really wanted to play with his friend.  The deal couldn’t really be panned from a Nets’ perspective as they would’ve paid Kidd an extra $22 million to keep him anyway, even if Mourning, on his own, wasn’t a great investment at the time. 

Mourning’s time on the Nets was far from fun.  Mourning played 12 games for the Nets in 2003-04, where he played okay but forgot how to rebound and fouled at a very high rate.  Mourning also got into a fight with teammate Kenyon Martin, who tactfully made fun of Zo’s kidney problems.  Shortly thereafter, Mourning was out for the season when it was found that his blood levels were bad and that he was close to suffering cardiac arrest.  So it seemed that Mourning was done (again). 

Despite all this, Mourning fought hard and tried to come back in 2004-05.  But life that season was very different.  Kidd was injured and Martin, a key player, was let go in free agency.  Kidd was very angry that Martin was let go and was angling for a trade.  Mourning also wanted to go to a contender.  The Nets seemed to want Mourning to just go away, as they were not a title team and he wasn’t that good anymore anyway.  Despite all this, Mourning came back and played pretty well (10.4 ppg, 7.1 rpg in 25.4 mpg in 18 games).  Mourning’s anger eventually led to his boycotting the team until he was traded.  The Nets didn’t really care because they weren’t going to pay him if he refused to play.  They then took his contract slot and somehow traded it (with a few other trinkets) for Vince Carter.  In the end, this worked out quite well for the Nets and Zo. 

Mourning refused to report to the mediocre Raptors team.  Rather than keep him on the suspended list, Toronto negotiated a buyout, giving Mourning a good amount of the money he was owed.  This made little sense but Mourning took the opportunity to take the money and return to Miami, a team that had since returned to title level with Shaq and Dwyane Wade in town.

Return to Miami

Zo’s return to Miami was as Shaq’s back up and he did it quite well.  Mourning was kept on a pretty strict minutes limit (20 mpg in 2005-06 and 2006-07) and a he played like a whirling dervish again, blocking shots a the highest per minute rate of his career (he led the NBA in block percentage both years) but also fouling at his highest rate too.  Mourning also shot most efficiently in his back up role (though his rebounding also declined).  The stat line showed him to be one of the best backups in the league and a key contributor to the Heat’s 2005-06 title.  Mourning opted to return after the 2005-06 title but the Heat were no longer a contender.  They fell to .500 in 2006-07 and declined greatly in 2007-08.  To make matters worse, Mourning blew out his knee early in the season, ostensibly ending his career for real this time.

Is Zo a Hall of Famer? 

While it is true that Mourning is not on the level of the greats, I see him pretty clearly as a Hall of Famer.  This isn’t a universal sentiment but I think Mourning had the unfortunate timing of entering the league with Shaq.  There was a small rivalry between the two players early on in their careers but O’Neal became so good so quickly Mourning just couldn’t keep up that it wasn’t even worth talking about by 1994. Indeed, by Shaq’s second-year he had put numbers that Mourning could never match in his best years.  But where does Mourning on our list of centers? 

Avoiding the usual controversies about how to rank centers, we can list the modern centers (post-1960s) who are clearly  are better than Zo:

-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

-Shaquille O’Neal

-Hakeem Olajuwon

-Tim Duncan 

Getting those guys out of the way, I think that David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, and Moses Malone also rank above Mourning.  Then we get to some of the Hall of Fame centers who are not superstars but very good (Robert Parish, Bob McAdoo, Elvin Hayes, Bob Lanier, Dave Cowens, Wes Unseld, Willis Reed).  It’s a bit quick dirty, but here’s a rundown of all these players career stats and their peak PERs.  Obviously this isn’t determinative of whose best but it is instructive, so let’s take a look at Zo fits in with his competition by per-36 minute production (active players are in bold):

At the outset, we do recognize that PER does not recognize defensive abilities and playing in a slower pace will depress the stats of Zo somewhat.  In that sense, Mourning is one of the better defenders, a fact that this method gives him no credit for.  Even with that proviso, the raw stats, however, do indicate that he fits in as a lower tier Hall of Famer.  One factor that hurts Zo is the fact that he missed so many games.  This obviously couldn’t be helped because of his serious illness but Zo played the second fewest games on the list, only ahead of Cowens, who retired prematurely (surprisingly, Duncan has already played more games than Zo).  Even adjusting for his era, Zo is also a weaker rebounder than expected too (but is the best shot blocker on the list).  Stats aside, I perceive Zo to be as no worse than eighth on the list behind Shaq, Robinson, Duncan, Kareem, Hakeem, Moses, and Ewing. 

The All-Zo Team

Here’s a list of the best seasons that occurred around Zo while he was a starter (pre-2002) together with Zo’s peak year:

-PG: Tim Hardaway, 1996-97: 20.3 ppg, .415 FG%, 8.6 apg, 20.8 PER

-SG: Del Curry, 1993-94: 16.3 ppg, .455 FG%, 2.7 apg, 18.5 PER

-SF: Jamal Mashburn, 1999-00: 17.5 ppg, .445 FG%, 5.0 apg, 3.9 apg, 15.4 PER

-PF: Larry Johnson, 1992-93: 22.1 ppg, .526 FG%, 10.5 rpg, 4.3 apg, 18.9 PER

-C: Alonzo Mourning, 1999-00: 21.7 ppg, .551 FG%, 9.5 rpg, 3.7 bpg, 25.8 PER

In the end…. 

Yup, Mourning was good and would’ve looked even better without his unfortunate illness.  He’s a pretty clear Hall of Famer and is better than most of the retired players who were very good but haven’t quite made it in yet (Gilmore, Bernard King, Adrian Dantley).  But in assessing Zo, we return to our gut reactions.  When you watched Zo, his play was violent and without much art.  Additionally, there are very few signature moments to his career that were totally flattering.  We remember generally his fierce defense and shot blocking but think back to specific Zo moments.  Here’s what comes to mind: 

-Mourning’s series winning shot against the Celtics in the 1992-93 playoffs (good so far)

-Mourning fighting Larry Johnson (with Jeff Van Gundy attached to his leg) after Game 4 of the 1997-98 playoff series with the Knicks and Zo’s subsequent suspension that caused the Heat to lose the series.

-Mourning’s confrontation with Henefeld.

-Mourning’s complaints that the refs were giving Jordan too much deference in the 1994-95 playoffs.

-Zo’s battles with Dennis Rodman in the 1996-97 Eastern Conference Finals where it appeared that Rodman had got in his head.

-Zo’s holdout with the Nets/Raptors.

-The title with the Heat in 2005-06.

It’s unfortunate that some of Mourning’s major moments were not happy but it is somewhat fitting that so many of his moments are associated with the temper that drove him but bit him on occasion.  Even after all that, virtually any account of Mourning indicates that he is caring guy who quietly works with charity and is thoughtful but this will always be juxtaposed with his wrecking ball playing style on the court.

What Was Life in Utah Like Before Stockton and Malone? 

Not very good.  The Jazz came over to Utah from New Orleans in 1979-80.  The team that came was pretty crappy too.  In its five years (1974-75 to 1978-79) in New Orleans, the Jazz never broke 40 wins.  The New Orleans years featured only two good players, Pete Maravich and one and a half nice years from Truck Robinson.  The highlights of those years included low attendance and the Jazz losing the draft pick the ended up being Magic Johnson for the honor of having Gail Goodrich’s golden years.  With this level of futility on and off the court, the Jazz fled to Utah, hoping to find a hoops hotbed akin to Green Bay in the NFL. 

Life in Utah pre-Stockton/Malone was little better.  The Jazz’s first years in Utah (1979-80 to 1982-83), the Jazz couldn’t crack 30 wins.  The Jazz had a few good young players (Darrell Griffith and Rickey Green) but the team was centered around a great scorer Adrian Dantley, who was perceived as a pain in the ass, and guys like Bernard King and John Drew who were struggling with off-the-court problems.  Counterintuitively, the Jazz’s best record in the non-Stockton/Malone Era occurred in the year before Stockton was drafted (1983-84).  Dantley was in the midst of his prime and scored 30.6 ppg to win the scoring title, while Griffith (20 ppg) and Green (13.2 ppg and 9.2 apg) continued to blossom as did Mark Eaton (351 blocks).  The Jazz won 45 games and the Midwest Division before losing to Phoenix in the second round.  Things looked decent and then the Jazz nabbed Stock and Malone in consecutive drafts.  In fact, the Jazz drafted incredibly well in the 1980s.  Here are the notable guys the Jazz nabbed:

Year    Player

1980    Darrell Griffith

1981    Danny Schayes

1982    Dominique Wilkins

            Mark Eaton

1983    Thurl Bailey

            Bobby Hansen

1984    Karl Malone

1985    Dell Curry 

A pretty nice haul.  Not all of these guys stayed in Utah.  Nique was famously dealt for Drew, a truly ugly deal.  If the Jazz could have resisted their urge for aging veterans they could have theoretically had Stockton, Malone, Magic, and Nique.  Of course in hindsight, it just seems like that could never have happened.  But it only took a little common sense. 

Drafting Stockton and Malone 

In retrospect, everyone will tell you that they had Stockton or Malone targeted in the draft but they just missed it.  This obviously wasn’t the case.  Stockton was a the 16th overall pick, which was a late pick in what was a 24-team league.  We all know that the Stockton draft was possibly the best draft of All-Time (Hakeem, Jordan, Barkley were also involved not to mention some other solid pros).  Stockton was not a coveted pick.  He was neatly sandwiched between to journeymen, Terence Stansbury (the 15th pick) and  Jeff Turner (the 17th pick).  Stockton’s college stats at Gonzaga did seem to hint at his future abilities as Stockton was a high percentage shooter and racked more assists than one would expect in the NCAA game: 

Year        PPG    FG%    APG    RPG

1980-81    3.1     .578        1.4        0.4

1981-82  11.2     .576        5.0        2.5

1982-83  13.9     .518        6.8        3.2

1983-84  20.9     .577        7.2        2.4 

Stockton steadily improved with a nice trend line.  In contrast, Malone actually declined over his three years at Louisiana Tech: 

Year        PPG    FG%    APG    RPG

1982-83  20.9     .582        0.4       10.3

1983-84  18.8     .576        1.3         8.8

1984-85  16.5     .541        2.3         9.0 

This was a disturbing growth curve (though it looked worse because Malone’s minutes actually declined each year).  Still, this stagnation had to contribute to Malone’s slippage in the 1985 Draft to the 13th pick.  Forwards who were taken in front of Malone included Wayman Tisdale, Xavier McDaniel, Detlef Schrempf, Charles Oakley, Ed Pinckney, Keith Lee, and Kenny Green.  The story goes that the Mavericks were hot to pick Malone but ultimately decided that Detelef Schrempf was a better option. 

Stockton and Malone: The Early Years 

Stockton and Malone didn’t instantly become stars.  Both took a couple of development years.  Stockton came off the bench for three years behind Rickey Green.  In that time, Stockton didn’t even average over 23 minutes per game.  By contrast, Malone instantly was a starter at power forward.  His first year, however, Malone was a secondary scorer behind Dantley.  Then in 1987-88, both Stockton and Malone broke out and become Stockton & Malone.  Stockton put his 14.7 ppg and 13.8 apg while Malone was a monster 27.7 ppg and 12.0 rpg.  This breakout coincided with a 47-win season, then the best record in Jazz history, that only ended after a tough seven-game series against the Showtime Lakers.  The two then played at or around this level for 10-15 years and transformed the Jazz franchise. 

The Jazz’s Ascension and Western Conference Shifts 

The Jazz weren’t the only team to take the Lakers for a tough ride in the 1987-88 playoffs.  The Mavericks also took the Lakers to the brink before losing.  The 1987-88 playoff become sort of a turning point where the Western Conference no longer was the Lakers personal stomping ground.  As much credit as the Lakers get for dominating the Western Conference in the 1980s, it bears mentioning that there were few obstacles in the Lakers path for much of the decade.  From 1980-81 through 1988-89, only three non-Laker teams hit the 55-win mark (the 1980-81 Suns had 57 wins, the 1986-87 Mavs had 55 wins, and the 1988-89 Suns had 55 wins).  Then in 1989-90, three Western Conference team pulled the trick in one year (the Blazers had 59 wins, the Spurs 56, and the Jazz 55).

The Jazz began to improve over this time but so did the rest of the west.  For all of the 1990s, at least three Western Conference team won 55 games or more each year.  This improved west gave the Jazz some problems.  Over the next three years, the Jazz  averaged 54 wins a season but only made it to the second round once.  This particular team seemed to peak in 1991-92 when they won 55 games and went to the Western Conference Finals and lost to the Clyde Drexler-Blazers.  When the Jazz were knocked out in the first round in 1992-93, it looked like the “window of opportunity” had closed.  Darrell Griffith had retired, Eaton and Bailey had little if anything left and Malone and Stockton were entering their 30s. 

The Jazz’s Late Renaissance  

Despite the aging problems, somehow the Jazz still centered around Malone and Stockton would be at their best.  As most of you know, the from 1993-94 through 1997-98, the Jazz made two Finals appearances and won 60+ games three times.  How did this happen?  Well, it’s tough to tell.  To figure it out, let’s take a look at the 1996-97 Jazz versus the 1987-88 Jazz and see what, if anything, this yields: 

      1987-88 Jazz (108.5 ppg v. 104.8 oppg)

       1996-97 Jazz (103.1 ppg v. 94.3 oppg)

Before making any snap judgments about these charts consider that in 1987-88 the average ppg for a team was 108.2 versus 96.9 in 1996-97.  Thus, the Jazz of 1996-97 were much more efficient scoring team versus league average than the 1987-88 team.  In this context, Stockton’s 1996-97 season seems at least as effective as the gaudy 1987-88 season while Malone is actually a much better player.  Besides Malone, the other things that stick out as possible advantages is the very impressive team defense and the much better two guard.  Hornacek was much better than Griffith of the late 1980s (not to mention Jeff Malone, the guy the Jazz traded to get him).  So, the Jazz had a late surge with Stockton and Malone because the team aged remarkably well, because the team defense really tightened up (which is a credit to Jerry Sloan), and because the Jazz absolutely stole Hornacek from the Sixers.  

I know the Jazz were a good team in the 1990s but I can’t help thinking they were not a real threat to win it all.  Why do I feel that way? 

You probably think that way because the Stockton-Malone Jazz were around for about ten years and watched plenty of other teams beat them on the way to the Finals.  You never got the feeling that the Jazz could beat the Magic led Lakers, the Blazers of early 1990s, the Olajuwon Rockets, or the Sonics of Payton and Kemp.  Still, the Jazz outlasted all these teams and that means something.  The Jazz were a dominant team and when they did peak, they marched through some pretty good teams: a Laker team with Shaq, Kobe, Eddie Jones and Nick Van Exel, a Rocket team with Hakeem, Drexler, and Barkley, and a Spurs team with a young Tim Duncan and David Robinson.  That’s quite a gauntlet and an indication that the Jazz of 1995 through 1998 could hang with pretty much any team in NBA history. 

Well, I said almost any team.  The Jazz’s two Final appearances against the Bulls were well played and competitive.  But I didn’t sense the Jazz having much of a shot of winning either series.  In fact, the 1998 Finals, where the Jordan hit “The Shot” to win was probably less competitive than the prior series between the two.  In 1997, the Bulls took a 2-0 lead for the series before the Jazz came back to win two straight and then the Bulls took two more to ice the series.  Game 6 was close and was highlighted by Shandon Anderson blowing a couple of late layups followed by Steve Kerr icing the game on a pass off by Michael Jordan.  In 1998, the Bulls actually took a commanding 3-1 series lead.  As tight as Game 6 was in this series, my sense was that the series was done after the Bulls smoked the Jazz 96-54 in Game 3.

Were Stockton and Malone Dirty? 

The perception was that Stockton was a bit chippy (true) and that Malone was a bit nasty.  And it was true.  Stockton perfected the art of the moving screen but had rare occasions you could point to where he hurt someone (the one exception being in the 1997 playoffs when he broke Matt Maloney’s nose with an elbow).  Malone, however, has quite a body count: 

-In 1991-92, Malone leveled Isiah Thomas and opening up his temple with an elbow.

-In 1997-98, Malone elbows David Robinson in forehead, knocking him out with a concussion.

-In the late 1990s (I can’t find when) Malone elbows Shawn Bradley in the face, leaving him bloodied. 

So, yeah, they were pretty tough. 

Isiah v. Stockton 

At the time of the ugly Malone assault on Thomas, the feeling was that this was part of a dispute between Thomas and Stockton because Stockton was chosen for the 1992 Olympic team and Thomas wasn’t.  Thomas wasn’t not happy about this and felt he was better than Stockton.  (The subtext of this story was that Thomas was left out based upon a “him or me” ultimatum offered by Jordan).  The first time that Thomas and Stockton met after the controversy arose, Thomas lit up Stockton to the tune of 44 points.  Next time they met, Malone gashed Thomas in the first few minutes of the game.  That’s the story.  But more interesting question is who was actually the better player. 

In the early 1990s, the perception was that Thomas was clearly better.  This was primarily based upon Thomas’ two championship and some heroic playoff performances.  This probably wasn’t a fair basis to compare the two as placing Stockton in Thomas’ stead on the Piston teams of the late 1980s wouldn’t have been a downgrade.  The factor that no one knew at the time was that Thomas’ career would end two years later while Stockton would be going strong for another decade.  

So on pure career value, Stockton blows Thomas away.  Our own Mike Goodman’s formula puts Stockton as the second best point guard of All-Time behind Magic (and Jerry West and Oscar Robertson but they weren’t pure points).  Though Thomas is the next point on Mike’s list, he is a good 12 slots below Stockton.  As for peak value, the two were pretty close.  Thomas’ peak was 1984-85 when he put up 21 ppg and 13 apg and he had a four-year run (1983-84 through 1986-87) that Thomas averaged a double-double and efficiency rankings over 22.  Stockton never scored over 17 ppg but he averaged a double-double for ten straight years and was a .515% career shooter.  But with players of this level of ability, the choice between Thomas and Stockton is really one of taste.  I recognize that Isiah was by far the better scorer but (Stockton’s career high in one game is only 34) but Stockton is my choice both because of his longevity and because his skill-set (efficient shooter and great passer) could blend into just about any team. 

Stockton’s Defining Moment 

The funny thing is that neither Stockton nor Malone have many moments that people remember where they made the huge play.  Rather, they are remembered for always being there.  But Stockton does have one big moment.  It was the jump shot to beat the Rockets in Game 6 of the 1997 Western Conference Finals.  The Jazz, though a very good team, had had problems with Hakeem and the Rockets for years and in this game they were able to finally put that all to rest.  Up three games to two in the final seconds of Game 6, the Jazz had the ball with a few seconds left down two.  Stockton hit a 26-foot jumper to end the series and send the Jazz to their first Finals (aided by a moving Karl Malone screen). 

Rapping the Mailman? 

Malone is bit of a polarizing figure.  In Ken Shouler’s 1996 book “Basketball’s Best 50 Players in the Last 50 Years,” Bob Ryan knocked Malone thusly “I can’t ignore the achievements; I can’t ignore the numbers.  But I find him to be a boring player,  And he’s not great in crunch time.  And in both Olympics (1992 and 1996) he’s been so tepid.”  Malone certainly never captured the imagination of the hoops fan but it’s hard to knock 19 years of production.  (Incidentally, the off handed Olympics comment is baseless.  Malone was the third leading scorer in for the 1992 Olympics and played well in limited minutes in 1996).  The clutch rap has a little more to it.  Malone has clanged some free throws in his career (in particular during the 1996 Western Conference against Seattle and at the end of Game 1 of the 1997 Finals against the Bulls).  The only other “bad” moment I can remember for Malone is Jordan’s strip of Malone’s rebound at the end of Game 6 of the 1998 Finals that ended up setting up Jordan’s shot over Bryon Russell. 

But all these complaints are nitpicks.  If you were to pick a player to have over his entire career, only a few players can be said to have had more value.  On a peak basis, however, Malone can’t quite compete with any of the great centers, including guys like Patrick Ewing or David Robinson.  This is because while Malone was a good defender he didn’t block shots or deter people on the drives like the the big centers did (Malone only had over 100 blocks once in his career).  This point was covered in Dean Oliver’s book–namely that the shot blocking centers like Olajuwon derive a tremendous off value out through defense and reducing the effectiveness of the other team’s offense as a whole, something which I don’t think Malone did.  Still, Malone was great and his consistency ranks him as the top power forward of All-Time. 

Odds and Ends 

-Here are Stockton and Malone’s best teammates (including the duo’s best seasons): 

PG:   John Stockton 1988-89: 17.1 ppg, .538 fg%, 13.6 apg

SG:   Jeff Hornacek 1994-95: 16.5 ppg, .514 fg%, 4.3 apg

SF:    Matt Harpring 2002-03: 17. 6 ppg, .511 fg%, 6.6 rpg

PF:    Karl Malone 1989-90: 31.0 ppg, .562 fg%, 11.1 rpg

C:      Mark Eaton 1988-89: 6.2 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 3.8 bpg

-The biggest disappointment of the Stockton/Malone tenure had to be 1994-95.  The Jazz were just hitting their stride with one of their best teams.  The Bulls were not a threat (Jordan had just comeback and was rusty).  The 60-win Jazz lost a tough five game series to a lower seeded Rocket team.  The toughest part was that the Rockets took Game 5 in Utah, where the Jazz were 33-8 in the season.  The Rockets went on a run and won it all while the Jazz blew an open opportunity to get the ring.  

-Not only were Stockton and Malone fixtures in Utah, the team was also pretty stable.  In fact in all the time they spent in Utah, Stockton and Malone were only coached by two men, Frank Layden and Jerry Sloan (this doesn’t count the few million times that Sloan was ejected in the middle of games and Phil Johnson stood in for him). 

-Both Stockton and Malone had a bit left in the tank when they decided to go.  Their final year numbers:                   

                   Age    PPG    FG%    APG    RPG

Stockton      40     10.8    .483         7.7       2.5

Malone        40     13.2    .483         3.9       8.7 

Clearly, they both could play.  The Jazz are currently struggling a bit but they have a couple of nice building blocks.  It would’ve been nice to see Stockton and Malone help acclimate Andrei Kirilenko and Carlos Boozer.  Hell, I’d rather have Stockton at 42 than Keith McLeod and Howard Eisley.

What Was San Antonio Like Before the Admiral? 

Not good.  The Spurs had about a six year hangover between the end of the George Gervin era and the beginning of the David Robinson years.  As you all remember, the Spurs snagged Robinson with the first pick in the 1987 Draft even though they knew he had a military commitment in the Navy.  In fact, Larry Brown was willing to come coach the crappy Spurs for one year before Robinson came to town.  It was not a pretty year.  The Spurs went 21-61 with Greg “Cadillac” Anderson playing the center spot and Alvin Robertson was the team’s best player.  (This was before it was known the Robertson would become a repeat felon).  Not a good squad but the Spurs had Robinsons coming plus a high draft pick that they used for Sean Elliott.  

Robinson’s Early Years: What Could Have Been? 

Everyone remembers that when Robinson came to the Spurs the next year and they improved by 35 games, going 56-26.  What people might not remember is that that Spur team actually seemed like the heir apparent to the Lakers.  They were young and talented.  Check out this starting lineup going in the the 1990 playoffs: 

This is a very young team with a ton of potential, with four All Star level performers and Anderson who was above average.  So it seemed to be the potential team of the 1990s.  It didn’t end up working out for a variety of reasons.  The team was together and at full power for two seasons, 1989-90 and 1990-91.  The 1990 playoffs ended bitterly with the Spurs losing a tight seven game series against the Spurs in which Strickland threw away the ball trying a behind-the-back pass late in the deciding game.  The 1990-91 season was even more disappointing, the Spurs won 55 games only to be upset by a mediocre Warrior team in the first round.  

That was this core’s last shot.  David Robinson broke his hand right before the 1992 playoffs and the team was eliminated in the first round without him.  Robinson got healthy the next year but Strickland was non-tendered as a free agent because of contract squabbles and legal issues.  Strickland went on to have a very nice career and he was replaced with Avery Johnson.  At the same time, the wheels fell of of Cummings and Anderson.  Cummings played only 8 games in 1992-93 and Anderson played in 38.  When Cummings came back, he was never the scorer he was before (though he lasted seven years as a nice bench player).  Anderson prematurely aged because of leg injuries (he had metal rods placed in a broken leg) and he was never the same player again.  Robinson’s original core was reduced to Sean Elliott, who continued to improve (a one year stay in Detroit in 1993-94 notwithstanding).  They young comers and the in-his-prime Cummings were replaced with such fodder as Vinny Del Negro, Sleepy Floyd, J.R. Reid, and Dale Ellis. 

Ultimately, the Blazers, and not the Spurs, were the Western Conference power of the early 1990s.  It was more injuries than anything else that kept the Spurs from the Finals.  However, the unfortunate upset to the Warriors really represents the blown opportunity of that team.  It was the one time they were all truly healthy and ready to make a run and they fell down.  This is not to say that the Spurs disappointed because of anything any did wrong but rather it illustrates how tenuous a team’s future can be, even if it seems it is set with a starting lineup for a decade to come. 

Sidebar:    DRob versus MJ 

The most prevalent criticism of Robinson was that he was soft and reluctant to be tough or mix it up.  He was also criticized for not being a vocal team leader, in particular when Dennis Rodman acted out in the key playoff games with the Spurs.  It might surprise you to hear that the two times that Robinson publicly put down anyone it was Michael Jordan.  In 1991, Robinson made some public comments questioning whether the Bulls would ever win built around a scorer like Jordan (see Jordan Rules by Sam Smith).  Then in an April 1996 issue of Sports Illustrated, Robinson likened Jordan’s initial comeback to a dog chasing his tail (in that Jordan wouldn’t ever be able to reach his former heights).  These were rather strong words for a deeply religious guy like Robinson.  The comments were obviously not meant to be hurtful or snide, but it was surprising to see him be so strongly condemnatory of Jordan. 

Both the comments in 1991 and 1996 were noted at the time and,  like most minor stories, were quickly forgotten in the annals of sports history.  To me, the most interesting aspect was that Robinson’s 1991 criticism of MJ captures a brief moment in time when people were still questioning whether Jordan was a team player.  People were also wondering who the team of the 90s would be.  A few months later, Jordan established the answers to both those questions. 

The Admiral’s Peak  

Despite losing his entire up-and-coming supporting cast, Robinson put together his best run of seasons after the loss of Strickland and company.  From 1993-94 through 1995-96, Robinson put up as good numbers as anyone in the NBA, averaging 27.5 ppg and 11.2 rpg over that stretch.  His rebounding numbers actually dipped about 1.0 to 1.5 rpg for the two years that they had Dennis Rodman, but that was to be expected.  Despite the fact that the team around him was not as good as in the early 1990s, the Spurs won just as much (they won 55, 62, and 59 games in that stretch).    

All Robinson Team 

Here is the best single seasons for players around Robinson: 

PG    Avery Johnson 1995-96:   13.1 ppg, 9.6 apg, .494% fg

SG    Willie Anderson 1989-90: 15.7 ppg, 4.4 apg, 4.5 rpg

SF    Sean Elliott 1995-96 :       20.0 ppg, 5.1 rpg, .466% fg

PF    Tim Duncan 2001-02:       25.5 ppg, 12.7 rpg

Hakeem v. Robinson I: The 1995 Playoffs 

1994-95 was the first time that the Spurs had the best record in the conference.  They seemed like they were on the express into the Finals before running into the crazy Rockets.  Hakeem outplayed Robinson in that series and it is traditional lore that Hakeem was inspired by watching Robinson be presented with the MVP Trophy in front of him.  Rocket announcer Bill Worrell described the scene thusly: 

“They gave David his award on the floor right before the game started.  When [Robinson] got the trophy, he said it was such an honor to receive an award that so many other great centers had won.  He didn’t name Hakeem. I always thought that was David’s biggest mistake in the series.” 

In other words, Hakeem went out and schooled him over the perceived slight.  “Schooled” isn’t exactly accurate.  Hakeem averaged an awesome 35.3 ppg in the series but Robinson, himself, almost average 30 ppg.  The even more prominent fact was that a team led by Hakeem beat a team led by Robinson.  This is a simplistic syllogism.  Fact is, Robinson was a incredible player and six games in 1995 is not necessarily a fair basis of comparison.  (Incredibly, this series was the only time that Robinson faced Hakeem in the playoffs). 

Hakeem v. Robinson II: Who was Better? 

Okay, the 1995 Playoffs was only six games, so who was better?  The numbers are very close: 

Robinson 21.1 ppg, 10.6 rpg, 2.5 apg, .518% FG (14 Seasons)

Olajuwon 21.8 ppg, 11.1 rpg, 2.5 apg, .512% FG (18 Seasons) 

Granted that is a very cursory look at the numbers favors Hakeem.  He  put up slightly better stats in a longer period of time.  Of course, it is difficult to penalize Robinson for missing two years serving in the Navy but hey it was his decision.  But as we said, this is only raw numbers.  When we look at some analytical stats, Robinson has the edge.  His career efficiency is slightly higher than Hakeems at 29.0 versus 28.0.  Further, if you look at John Hollinger’s PER stats, you see that Robinson had higher numbers than Hakeem head-to-head every year but one (excluding the injury years later in their careers).  In fact, these numbers rate Robinson as the best player in the NBA three times.  Overall rating formulas have their flaws but they tend not to miss the best players in the league.  But the real problem is that the formula debate, like the raw career total debate is so close that it determines nothing. So, let’s compare intangibles: 

1.    Hakeem has two rings as a featured player, Robinson has two only as a complementary player

2.    Hakeem has a better post game then Robinson

3.    Hakeem outplayed Robinson head-to-head in their one playoff match up 

These are the reasons that people cite as reasons why it is a  foregone conclusion that Hakeem was better than Robinson.  These reasons are overstated and the two are actually almost a dead heat.  Still, I think that they are just enough to tip the scales in Hakeem’s favor. 

How Good Was Robinson When Duncan Got to Town? 

This is a roundabout way of asking how much “credit” Robinson should get for the Spur titles during the Tim Duncan Era?  The answer is a lot.  Robinson was the second best player on the 1998-99 champs and he was the second or third best player on the Spurs last year (neck-and-neck with Tony Parker).  We will ignore the 2002-03 team because Robinson had fallen off quite a bit as a player at that point.  On the 1998-99 team, however, Robinson was still an All Star level center (15.8 ppg 10.0 rpg).   Could Robinson have put up better numbers that year?  Probably.  Look at his shots per game in his prime leading up to the arrival of Duncan: 

Year        Shots Per Game    Point Per Game

1993-94        20.7                            29.8

1994-95        18.4                            27.6

1995-96        16.8                            25.0

1996-97                    INJURED

1997-98        14.6                            21.6 (Duncan’s rookie year)

1998-99        10.8                            15.8 (Champs) 

You see that Robinson’s shooting rates plummeted by Duncan’s second year.  This is a strong indicator that Robinson made a conscious choice to subjugate his offensive game for the good of the team.  How does this effect his “credit” factor for the championship you ask?  It depends on how you assess credit.  I tend to give a boost for the best players on championship teams and less for role players.  This is because basketball teams, with few exceptions, are star-driven entities.  It is possible, however, to have two stars on a team who deserve lots of credit (a la Kobe and Shaq).  This doesn’t mean that credit is equal.  The question to ask when assessing the second star is: how good/bad a player could the second star have been replaced with and the team still win it all?  In this case, I suspect that the Spurs would have won it with an average center.  Of course, this kind of test is all speculation but certainly Robinson deserves a measure of “second banana” credit in the Pippen mode for that title.