The Book of Basketball (35 page)

Door No. 1: Jordan (most exciting college guard of the decade), Lever (twenty-three, named second-team All-NBA just two years later), Cooper (twenty-seven, averaged a 13–8 the next two years in Denver), Natt (averaged a 23–8 in ’85) and an ’85 number one pick (ended up being fifteenth)

Door No. 2: Vandeweghe and Bowie.

Anyone in their right mind goes with Door No. 1 unless they’re reasonably certain that (a) Bowie was a sure thing, and (b) Jordan wouldn’t come back to haunt them. I am assuming that Portland’s brain trust felt “reasonably certain” of those two things. And to hammer home how dumb, indefensible and reckless that feeling was, let’s bang out a retroactive diary of the first twenty-two minutes of the ’84 draft. Our announcers? Al Albert and Lou Carnesecca for the USA Network.

0:02.
Albert hypes the proceedings by claiming there are “six bona fide superstars” ready to get picked. Apparently he’s counting 296-pound Charles Barkley twice.

0:03.
Peering over a pair of black eyeglasses, Carnesecca fidgets with a pen, rambles uncomfortably for forty solid seconds and does everything possible not to look at the camera. He looks like a priest being questioned by police about an assault on an altar boy. Glad he’s here.

0:07.
USA scrolls the order of the entire first round accompanied by some phenomenal eighties porn music. I half expected them to come out of that scroll with Ginger Lynn riding Al Albert on a waterbed. That’s followed by David Stern stepping to the podium for his first NBA draft, only he’s wearing Gabe Kaplan’s mustache from the 1977 season of
Welcome Back Kotter.
Forget about NBA TV—why don’t they rerun this draft on Comedy Central?

0:10.
One of the two guys sitting at Houston’s draft table has a mullet and a bushy mustache. Gotta love the eighties. As we watch them gabbing on the phone, the following exchange happens:

AL:
The Rockets timing has been impeccable. Last year, number one with Ralph Sampson coming out; this year, Hakeem Olajwon decided to come out early, and that’s just in time for Houston.

(Three seconds of silence pass.)

LOU
(barely audible):
The postman did ring twice.

0:11.
Hakeem goes first, although he spelled it “Akeem” back then. He’s rocking the low-cut Jheri curl, a black tuxedo and a maroon bow tie. Fantastic.
⁸⁰

0:12.
Eddie Murphy borrowed his accent for Prince Akeem in
Coming to America
from the draft interview Akeem just did with Bob Doucette. There is no doubt in my mind. He even named the character after him.

0:16.
Stern utters one of the most unforgettable sentences in NBA history—“Portland selects Sam Bowie, University of Kentucky”—as the camera shows the reps at Portland’s table with dueling “Yikes, I hope we didn’t fuck that up” looks on their faces.
⁸¹
That’s followed by Bowie ambling to the stage as Al narrates, “Sam Bowie, the young man who came back from a stress fracture injury, the left shinbone, he was out for two seasons, redshirted, he has come back, he returned strong at Kentucky.”

(So a team that just lost its franchise center six years early with repeated stress fractures in his feet just took another center who missed two full college seasons because of his stress fractures? And he’s three years older than the sure thing about to get picked right after him? Sounds encouraging!)
⁸²

0:17.
During a less than enthralling package of Bowie highlights, Al tells us again that Sam has recovered fully from his stress fractures before adding unironically, “He passed up the Olympics.” High comedy. Every major college player tried out for that team except for Sam. Seem like a red flag to you? Nahhhhhhhh.

0:18.
The Bowie highlight package finishes with a frozen picture of Bowie and a graphic with his ’84 stats: 10.5 points, 9.2 rebounds, 52% FG, 72% FT. In other words, his college stats were worse than Mychal Thompson’s NBA stats. What an upgrade!
⁸³
Meanwhile, Al and Lou have the following exchange.

AL:
And Lou, what do you say for a young player who sat out two formative years and has come back to regain it?

ME:
“Don’t pick him”?

LOU:
Well, I think it shows the type of perseverance that he has, that he was able to withstand all that misery and come back and perform, and look where he is now.

(Note: nothing gets fans more fired up than words like “perseverance” and “withstanding all that misery.” Screw that Jordan guy and his stupid dunking!)

0:18.
Doucette interviews Bowie, who seems like a tragic figure in retrospect; it’s like watching Jackie Kennedy at LBJ’s swearing-in with JFK’s blood all over her dress. Their first exchange:

DOUCETTE:
Sam, um, courage has been your middle name, you’ve had to really fight back from some adversity, and I know a lot of folks particularly yourself are happy to see this day arrive.

SAM:
Right, I had a two-year layoff with my leg injury, but if I didn’t have the support of the community of Lexington and the state of Kentucky, I don’t know if I would have been able to do it without their help.

(Imagine being a Blazers fan and watching this. Mad props to Sam for defying the odds and coming back, but why take a “defying the odds” guy with a sure thing on the board? Why even risk it? Why? Why?
Answer me! Why?)

0:19.
It’s only getting better …

DOUCETTE:
[The Blazers] tell me that they put you through an extensive physical before they made a decision on you. And the end result was a good one?

SAM
(smiling sheepishly):
Well, I went up to Portland and they gave me about a seven-hour physical, they didn’t let anything out, so, uh, I don’t know if that’s referring back to the Bill Walton situation, I know he had a stress fracture, but as far as I’m concerned I’m 100 percent sound.
⁸⁴

(Waitasecondwaitasecondwaitasecond … a
seven-hour
physical? This is like watching the
Hindenburg take
off.)

0:20.
Cut to both Chicago reps smiling happily at Chicago’s table
⁸⁵
as Al sets up number three by taking a dramatic pause, lowering his voice and finally saying, “Michael Jordan seems to be the next one up.” For the first time in twenty minutes, Lou seems like he might be awake: “Mmmmmm, everyone’s excited about that one. He really captures the imagination.” Then again, you could say the same about a seven-hour physical.

Now it gets really good …

AL:
You know, there was a question a little earlier perhaps, Portland toying with the idea of the great, can’t-miss talent of Michael Jordan against Sam Bowie, who, uh, who of course, coming off the injury, he says he is
sound, Portland has checked him out through a seven-hour test, but the question is Bowie going now over the course of an 82-game schedule.

LOU
(nodding):
It is a calculated risk.

(Note: At this point, every Blazers fan in 1984 had thrown up in their mouth at least a little.)

0:22.
A giddy Stern: “The Chicago Bulls pick Michael Jordan, from the University of North Carolina.”

The crowd applauds and cheers. They know already. That’s followed by a montage of exciting early MJ highlights with Al telling us, “This man is a can’t-miss” and a suddenly lively Lou adding, “You know, he makes them when they count, he can do it in traffic, he can do it under tremendous control, he’s a great, great creator, in the mold of a Dr. J, not as big, but is in that class, Michael is gonna make a great, great player, he’s what you call the People’s Player, people love to see this young man perform.” Al caps it off by saying, “He is star material, a great shooter, superb athletic ability, there are many teams that tried to pry that third pick from Chicago.”

I mean …

Just read everything from 0:16 to 0:22 again. We’ve seen a revisionist history in recent years that Bowie’s selection was defensible because the NBA was size-obsessed back then. But how can any team roll the dice with red flags like “calculated risk,” “seven-hour physical,” “two-year layoff” and “adversity/courage/perseverance” and pass up white flags like “can’t-miss talent,” “great, great player,” “star material,” “sure thing,” “in the mold of a Dr. J,” “great, great creator” and “People’s Player”? Incomprehensible. Totally, completely incomprehensible.

Which brings us to a special bonus what-if. On the day of the draft, what if Portland’s decision makers took a collective breath, said to each other, “Wait, are we crazy?” and reconsidered everything one last time? It’s like the second-to-last scene in
All the President’s Men
, when Woodward and Bernstein wake up
Washington Post
editor Ben Bradlee in the middle of the night to urge him to run their controversial report about corruption spreading all the way through Richard Nixon’s White House. Afraid
that Bradlee’s house has been bugged, they bring him outside and fill him in on the front lawn.
⁸⁶
The boys haven’t slept in two days; Bradlee is wearing a bathrobe and looks pissed off since they just screwed up the same story a few days before. Finally Bradlee lets them write the story, but not before telling them, “You guys are pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath, rest up, fifteen minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment, the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I’m gonna get mad. Good night.”

If Ben Bradlee had owned the Blazers in 1984, he would have put the fear of God in everyone deciding on that pick and they would have gravitated toward the sure thing. Blazers owner Larry Weisberg was reportedly enamored of Jordan, but he was also an unassuming, low-key real estate tycoon who didn’t evoke that same Bradlee-like trepidation in his staff. They weren’t afraid of him, and they weren’t afraid of the repercussions. That’s why the Blazers plowed ahead with Sam Bowie … and that’s why they fucked up. But hey, nothing was riding on it except for the future of the NBA, hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, somewhere between four and ten squandered championships, and a lost opportunity to employ the greatest basketball player of all time.

1.
High schoolers, go west or south: Duke, Virginia, Vanderbilt, UNC, UCLA, Rollins, Pepperdine, Arizona, ASU, Miami and my personal favorite, UC Santa Barbara. Stay warm. Just trust me.

2.
I threw this idea at William Goldman. His two favorites: George Raft turned down Bogie’s part in
Casablanca
, and they went after Brando and Beatty for
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
before settling on Redford and Newman. “Nobody knows anything in Hollywood,” he wrote me. “Never forget that.” Sounds like the NBA.

3.
Please don’t think I liked
Titanic—
it’s a chick flick and it’s too long.

4.
I would have thrown Billy Crudup in there, but he’s like Vince Carter—all the talent in the world and he just didn’t want it.

5.
My friend Chris Connelly disagrees and believes that Leo didn’t have the raw sexuality to pull off Diggler believably. This is a nice way of saying that Leo is too much of a skinny sissy.

6.
I tried to answer it in a 2002 mailbag and even got my stepfather involved because he’s watched
The Godfather
25,712 times. We went with De Niro. Barely.

7.
It’s like the Lennon-McCartney problem—you can’t have two alpha dogs in a band or a basketball team. It will implode. It will.

8.
I love calling San Francisco “San Fran” even if everyone in the Bay Area bristles in disgust. Why should I have to keep typing “Francisco” when I can save 5 letters? What about my fingers? This book is 250,000 words! You can’t give me the “San Fran” thing?

9.
When the expansion Bulls joined in ’67, they were placed in the West and Baltimore finally moved into the East. Although they did briefly considering keeping Chicago in the East and then moving Boston into the West.

10.
According to Leonard Koppett, scouts worried that Barry was too skinny to handle the pro game. Even back then, scouts were dumb.

11.
Actual Chad quotes from that column: “Darko is really one of a kind”; “What sets Darko apart is his toughness in the post”; “[Carlos Delfino] reminds me of Michael Finley”; “I don’t like [Kendrick Perkins] for the Celtics, I’m not sure how it helps them in the short term or the long term”; “[Maciej Lampe at number thirty is] the steal of the draft.” I love the
ESPN.com
archives. As long as I’m not looking up my own humiliating predictions. (Emeka Okafor over Dwight Howard, anyone?) Then I hate them.

12.
Had Detroit traded down and gotten Wade, now we’re talking about multiple titles. That’s not a fair what-if. Regardless, landing Darko in a top five with Bron, Wade, Bosh and ’Melo was like reaching into a brown paper bag filled with two checks for $100 million, two checks for $10 million, and a check for $10, and pulling out the check for $10.