The Book of Basketball (33 page)

Still not sold? Hakeem and Ralph were the first picks in consecutive years (’83 and ’84) and, along with the McHale/Parish combo in Boston, caused such a panic that every mid-eighties team became obsessed with adding size, leading to our number one what-if (hold tight), Joe Kleine and Jon Koncak getting picked ahead of Karl Malone, lottery teams rolling the dice with troubled losers like Chris Washburn and William Bedford and everything else. Suddenly the poor Lakers were a smallball team trapped in a big-man’s league; with Kareem’s rebounding/shot-blocking numbers in free fall, after Houston laid the smack down on them, everyone assumed the Magic-Kareem era was over. We never could have guessed that the promising Hakeem-Sampson era
had already peaked
in those four games. The following year, they battled the Disease of More (both Sampson and Hakeem wanted new contracts), lost Lucas to Milwaukee (he needed a fresh start) and suffered the double whammy of cocaine suspensions for Lloyd and Mitchell Wiggins (before the ’87 All-Star break, Houston’s three best guards were gone), and while all of this was happening, the effects of a harrowing Sampson fall at the Boston Garden in ’86 started to surface: after injuring his back and hip in the plunge,
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he started running differently to take pressure off his back and
wrecked his knees. Golden State acquired him during the ’87–’88 season for (hold your nose) Joe Barry Carroll and Sleepy Floyd. So much for the Next Great Team in the West. Only recreational drugs and a fluke fall could stop them.

Here’s the best way to put Houston’s demise in perspective. Let’s say the Pistons fell apart after the ’86 playoffs because Isiah’s knee betrayed him and Dennis Rodman, Vinnie Johnson, and John Salley were all kicked out of the league for cocaine. What happens to that void in the Eastern Conference? At the very least, the Celtics play in two more Finals (’87 and ’88) and possibly steal one or both because they aren’t worn down from battling the Pistons. Maybe Jordan wins eight titles instead of six. Maybe Dominique and the Hawks sneak into the Finals one year. Maybe the Blazers win the 1990 title and Clyde Drexler’s career unfolds differently. Who knows? For the Lakers, having the hoops gods knock that Rockets team off—just vaporize them, basically—was almost as big a gift as that 1979 number one pick from New Orleans. And wouldn’t we remember Hakeem’s career differently had he been sticking it to Kareem and the Lakers for the rest of the eighties? What if he won four or five titles instead of two? Would that propel him past Kareem and make him the second greatest center of all time? It’s safe to say that the ’86 Rockets were the signature what-if team in NBA history.
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Twenty years later, the
Houston Chronicles
Fran Blinebury wrote a column about them called “The Lost Dynasty” that included this quote from Lucas: “When I walk around Houston now and I hear people talk about winning those championships in ’94 and ’95, I just shake my head. I tell them, ‘You’ve either forgotten or you have never seen the best Rockets team. I know. I was a part of it. And I was a big part of bringing it down.’ … You look at most teams that are put together like that one and they get about an eight-to 10-year window. We didn’t know it, but our window was right there, and then it slammed shut.”

Allow me one last Ralph-related note because we can’t have a what-if chapter without him. Only seventeen NBA rookies were considered sure things in the past fifty years: Elgin, Wilt, Oscar, Kareem, Maravich, Walton,
Bird, Magic, Sampson, Hakeem, Jordan, Ewing, Robinson, Shaq, Webber, Duncan and LeBron. Eleven of those sure things cracked the top twenty of my Hall of Fame Pyramid (coming shortly). Only Sampson and Webber will miss the Hall of Fame. Only Sampson and Walton failed to play more than four quality seasons, although Walton did win an MVP and Finals MVP and reinvent himself as the sixth man on an iconic team. When you look at Ralphs career compared to every other sure thing, it has to be considered one of the biggest flukes in sports history—a combination of bad luck, the wrong situation, and a player who was slightly overrated in the first place. Sampson flamed out as quickly as Bo Jackson or Dwight Gooden, only without the fanfare and legendary stories to keep his historical fire burning. He didn’t just fade away; there’s no trace of him. He left footprints like the kind you’d see on a beach. He didn’t even inspire a “Whatever Happened to Ralph Sampson?” documentary that would have cruised to a sports Emmy in the right hands. If there’s a lesson with all of this, I haven’t found it yet. Just know that Magic, Kareem and Riley probably wipe their foreheads and say “Phew!” every time somebody brings up the ’86 Rockets. And they should.

7. What if Julius Erving played with Pete Maravich?

Oh, wait, he did! For two exhibition games … but still. Before the
’72
–’
73
season, Erving signed with Atlanta and jumped to the NBA for two exhibition games before the ABA legally blocked the move and forced him to play another season in Virginia. In retrospect, Doc’s biggest mistake was jumping to the wrong team; Milwaukee held his NBA draft rights but Atlanta thumbed their noses at the Bucks and signed Doc, with the ensuing legal battle involving two professional teams separately suing the Hawks. Everything was held up for one year before Nets owner Roy Boe paid off the Hawks
and
Squires to bring Doc to New York.
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Four absorbing wrinkles here:

1. The ABA without Doc for its last three seasons? One word: catastrophe.
   

2. In the past fifty-five years, the three most boring NBA seasons were 1974, 1975 and 1976. Let’s just say that Doc would have helped.
   

3. Had Doc ignored Atlanta and concentrated on joining Milwaukee (not far-fetched since Doc wasn’t a superstar yet and other ABA stars were jumping leagues),
   ⁶¹
   Doc and Kareem potentially could have been teammates before either turned twenty-six. And not just that, but an aging Oscar would have been there, and Bobby Dandridge, too. Forget about altering the NBA landscape from 1973 to 1976; once Doc started coming into his own, the ’74 Bucks could have won 70-plus games in a diluted NBA. Don’t you love the what-if game?
   

4. If everything worked out and Doc jumped to the ’73 Hawks, he would have gone to a team that won 46 games with Maravich, Lou Hudson and Walt Bellamy. Imagine adding Doc to the mix. And what about Young Doc and Young Pistol playing on the same team? I think the pilot just turned off the NO RIDICULOUS ALLEY OOPS sign. A Doc-Pistol alliance would have pushed YouTube to another level, transformed Maravich’s career, caused Brent Musburger to ejaculate on live TV and made Atlanta the league’s most popular team and biggest box office draw. Also, the ABA would have folded within two years and never merged with the NBA. And we’d have copious amounts of game film of the Doctor at his high-flying, mushroom-afro-wearing apex instead of just eyewitness accounts and possibly apocryphal stories. Damn it all.
   

6. What if New Orleans kept the rights to Moses Malone?

And you thought this one was going to be “What if the ’77 Blazers hadn’t traded Moses?” Ha! Too easy. This decision affected the fortunes of six franchises, swung six MVP votes and at least six titles (possibly more), robbed us of a potential Greatest Team Ever and set the tone for three decades of Clippers futility. The story starts in December 1975: Anticipating
a merger, the NBA held a supplemental draft for recent undergraduates who signed with the ABA but didn’t have an official NBA draft class. Lord knows how they came up with the rules for this thing, but five players were drafted (Moses, Mark Olberding, Mel Bennett, Charles Jordan and Skip Wise) and two of the selections cost teams their 1977 number one picks (New Orleans with Moses, the Lakers with Olberding). The following summer, the Jazz decided that they would rather have that number one pick back over keeping Malone’s rights, so Moses was tossed into the ABA/NBA dispersal draft and assigned a price tag of $350,000.
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Now you’re asking, “Wait, Moses was only twenty-one years old. Why didn’t the Jazz just keep him? Wasn’t he better than a future number one pick?” They might not have realized how good he was since Moses broke his foot the previous season and played just 43 games (averaging a 14–10), but the reason was much less defensible. The Jazz were enamored of free agent Gail Goodrich and needed that 1977 number one as part of a compensation package to sign him away from Los Angeles. How can we explain the idiocy of a floundering team deciding, “Let’s team up a twenty-eight-year-old shooting guard who doesn’t play defense with a thirty-three-year-old shooting guard who doesn’t play defense; we’ll score more points and the fans will love it”? That’s just how the NBA worked back then.
Sports Illustrated’s
Jerry Kirshenbaum wrote a November feature about the trade that included this section: “Goodrich had been signed earlier by the New Orleans front office with the blessing of Coach Butch van Breda Kolff, who had him for a while during his two-year stint as Laker coach in the late ’60s. Van Breda Kolff thinks Goodrich wears his years well, just as he himself does. Now in his fifth pro coaching post, the Jazz boss has a foghorn for a voice, shows up for games in what might be called casual clothes and enjoys the kind of stamina he demonstrated during a nine-hour pub crawl the other day to commemorate his 54th birthday. It was a celebration broken only occasionally by talk of basketball.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your 1976–77 New Orleans Jazz!
So what if Gail Goodrich is thirty-three and has eleven years on his NBA odometer? He wears his years well! Who wants to do a shot?
And you wonder why Red Auerbach dominated the NBA for thirty years; maybe he was just the only GM with an IQ over 100 who wasn’t drunk all the time. Goodrich suffered an Achilles tendon injury, played just 27 games that first season and retired two years later. So much for wearing his years well. It’s also strange that the Jazz decided Malone’s young legs and voracious rebounding wouldn’t come in handy when Rich Kelley, Ron Behagen and Otto Moore were their incumbent big guys. Remember, Malone’s talent wasn’t exactly a secret; one of the most famous college recruits of all time, Moses became the first player to jump directly from high school to the pros in 1974. The Jazz didn’t care. We can only guess that van Breda Kolff said something like, “I don’t care if he’s talented; supposedly the guy is as dumb as a rock. I want Goodrich!” So not only did the Jazz relinquish the rights to a future three-time MVP, they packaged their 1977, 1978 and 1979 number one picks and a 1980 second-rounder for Goodrich and L.A.’s 1978 number one pick. The Lakers ended up picking number six in ’77 (Kenny Carr), number eight in ’78 (sent to Boston for Charlie Scott) and (wait for it … wait for it … wait for it) number one in 1979 (Magic Johnson). Incredibly, unfathomably, unbelievably, inconceivably, an already moronic decision to overpay Goodrich (just about washed up at that point) ended up costing New Orleans Moses
and
Magic.
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Hold on, we’re not close to being done. Portland picked Moses fifth in the ABA dispersal draft purely for trading purposes, wanting no part of his $300,000-per-year contract. According to
Breaks
, Moses struggled in training camp for understandable reasons: Portland had a hyperintelligent offense with a hands-on coach and Moses had never been coached before; this was his third team in three seasons; his skills were extremely raw at this point (just a straight rebounder/banger with great footwork and that’s it); and since he was already on the trading block and backing up both Walton and Maurice Lucas, Moses wasn’t exactly invested in the situation. As the situation devolved into a fire sale, Moses unleashed holy
hell in one exhibition game, with players and coaches collectively realizing, “Holy shit! This guy is a prodigy!” They had no idea that the team had already agreed to trade him to Buffalo for a 1978 number one pick and $232,000,
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creating …

5. What if the ’77 Blazers didn’t trade Moses Malone?

Put it this way: they ended up winning the title
without him
and started out 50–10 the following year before Walton’s feet fell apart. Within a year, Walton had signed with the Clippers and their championship window had closed. Had they kept Moses, maybe Walton doesn’t keep playing in pain, maybe they don’t rush Walton back for the ’78 Playoffs, maybe Walton’s feet don’t fall apart, maybe Walton doesn’t have the falling-out with their medical staff … for all we know, maybe Walton plays 400–500 more games in Portland with shortened minutes thanks to Moses. Throw in the way Moses matured in ’77 (averaging a 13–13 in just 30 minutes), ’78 (19–15), and ’79 (25–17, MVP) and who knows how many championships were swung? Think of that vacuum of good teams in the late seventies—could the Blazers have won three in a row had Walton stayed healthy? Four? Five? And what would have happened to
Breaks of the Game?
Would Halberstam have picked another team? This trade didn’t just swing NBA titles, it could have swung the Greatest Sports Book Ever title! My head hurts.
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And we’re not even done, because poor Moses played in Buffalo for exactly six days before they shipped him to Houston for
two
number one picks in ’77 and ’78, hammering home Portland’s screwup since Buffalo basically swapped a number one for two number ones. Don’t worry, this worked out just as badly for them as it did for everyone else:
Moses only played six minutes in two games for the Braves because, hey, when you already have John Shumate and Tom McMillen at power forward, why see what you might have with the most ballyhooed high school recruit since Lew Alcindor?
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That ’77 pick from Houston ended up being number eighteen (somebody named Wesley Cox) because Moses ignited the Rockets and propelled them to a division title. When the Rockets struggled the following season (a combination of Moses missing 23 games and the harrowing after-effects of the Tomjanovich/Washington incident), their 24–58 stink bomb netted Buffalo the number four overall pick—only the Braves had already traded it away (along with their 1979 number one) in the disastrous Tiny Archibald deal.
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Buffalo moved to San Diego that summer, so if you’re scoring at home, technically, the fact that they dumped Moses for nothing could qualify as their “curse of the Bambino” moment; from that day on (October 24, 1976), only horrible things happened to them. And deservedly so. What I can’t understand is this: with unhappy Buffalo star Bob McAdoo grumbling about a new contract all summer, why didn’t they keep Moses around as insurance when it looked like they might be trading their star center? Six weeks after the Moses deal, they sent Big Mac packing for John Gianelli and cash. And the seeds of three-plus decades of Clippers futility were planted.