The Book of Basketball (56 page)

Spud.
We’ve seen effective tiny/pesky/speedy point guards before, but Spud was the only one with game-changing ups. If he made an above-the-rim
play at home, his crowd would get more charged up than a red-hot craps table. Know what else? For a change-of-pace backup with a puncher’s chance of completely screwing up the other team for a few minutes, you’re not finding anyone better than the Spudster: playing for quality Atlanta teams in ’86 and ’88, Spud averaged 19 minutes, 10 points, 6 assists and at least one “Holy shit!” play in over 21 games in the Playoffs. I always thought he was a genuine asset.
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Mokeski.
I wrote about the “power of Mokeski” so many times for
ESPN.com
that I’m now prominently featured on his Wikipedia page. A backup center who somehow lasted for twelve seasons, poor Mokeski was extraordinarily unathletic and ran like he had two prosthetic legs; if that weren’t enough, he tried to bring back the curly-perm/wispy-mustache combo that should have died in the early eighties. Throw in male pattern baldness and a disappearing chin and Mokeski looked like a Jersey cop who should have been standing in a donut line. So you can only imagine how bizarre it was that he had a semieffective game—physical defender, decent banger, reliable 18-footer, never did anything he couldn’t do—and averaged 20 minutes for a 59-win Bucks team in 1985. I loved Mokeski to the degree that I spent three solid years searching for his game-worn jersey on eBay before finally giving up.

Darko.
A seven-foot Croatian teenager with the upside of a cross between Derrick Coleman and David Robinson gets drafted too high by the wrong team, faces impossible expectations,
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folds from the pressure, starts looking more pale/depressed/overwhelmed/bitter than a postpuberty Macaulay Culkin, then self-combusts to the point that he’s completely and hopelessly useless before even turning old enough to legally rent a car? This will never happen again. I am almost positive.

Nimphius.
Imagine Jon Bon Jovi’s middle part from the Slippery When Wet world tour merged with George Clooney’s extended mullet from
The Facts of Life
, with a dash of late-eighties Tommy Byron thrown in for good measure. Then make him a seven-foot twelfth man and put him in tight blue eighties warm-ups on Detroit. There you go.

Bannister.
I’m not sure how Bannister, a forward with the Knicks in the mid-eighties, got the nickname “the Animal.” But I think I have a few ideas. Every time Kenny Bannister walked through the Garden tunnel, everyone went quiet, like something awful was happening.
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He’s the captain of the Thank God They Didn’t Have HD Back Then All-Stars, which include Dennis Rodman, Greg “Cadillac” Anderson, Gheorge Muresan, Brook Steppe,
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Tyrone Hill, the Cummings brothers (Terry and Pat), Mokeski, Anthony Mason, David Wesley, Ervin “No Magic” Johnson, the ’87 Celtics, the ’02 Kings, and the immortal Popeye Jones, about whom I once wrote, “Much like the Grand Canyon and the Sistine Chapel, you really have to see Popeye in person.”

64. JERRY LUCAS

Resume: 11 years, 9 quality, 7 All-Stars … top 5 (’65, ’66, ’68), top 10 (’64, ’67) … 4-year peak: 21–19–3 … leader: FG% (1x) … played for 1 champ (’73 Knicks), started for 1 runner-up (’72 Knicks, averaged a 19–11 in 16 Playoffs G) … traded twice in prime

What do we make of this guy? His teams never won in his prime. He was traded twice in his prime: once for Jim King and Billy Turner (after Lucas had averaged an 18–18 for the season, no less), once straight up for Cazzie Russell. He was infamous—repeat:
infamous—
for chasing down end-of-the-quarter
heaves and ripping down uncontested free throw misses to pad his rebounding stats. Of the NBA 50 at 50 guys, he’s one of the few who never generate feedback like “Man, you should have seen Lucas play” or “You know who was something? That Jerry Lucas!” In today’s era of superskilled power forwards who can run the floor and play above the rim, it’s hard to imagine Jerry averaging an 18–10 in 2008, much less a 20–20. For instance, let’s say we grabbed Tyler Hansbrough before his rookie season and planted a chip in his brain that gave him Lucas’ rebounding instincts. Where do you see his career going? Does he average a 20–12 every game? I honestly don’t know. So that’s the question with Lucas—were those numbers accomplished because of the style of play (run-and-gun, lots of possessions) and lack of athletic forwards? Partially, yes. Still, those numbers were mildly mind-blowing: Lucas nearly averaged a 20–20 for four straight years, giving Oscar a running mate when the Royals extended Boston to two deciding games. During a five-year stretch in a loaded league (1964–68), he made three first-team All-NBA’s and two second teams. He also had a deadly one-handed push shot from 20-plus feet, so if you’re projecting him historically, it has to be mentioned that Lucas would have been more valuable with a three-point line. We’ll remember him for his photographic memory,
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a storied college and Olympics career, and an NBA career in which he was basically Truck Robinson
⁹¹
with a better career peak. If we’re picking power forwards from that era, I’d rather have Dave DeBusschere.

63. RAY ALLEN

Resume: 13 years, 10 quality, 9 All-Stars … top 10 (’05), top 15 (’01) … 3-year peak: 22–5–4, 43% 3FG, 88% FT … ’01 Playoffs: 25–6–4
,
48% 3FG (18 G) … ’05 Playoffs: 27–4–4 (11 G) … ’08 Finals: 20–5–4, record 22 threes … career: 21–4–4, 40% 3FG, 89% FT … career leader: threes (2nd)

Gave his career a historical boost by playing so brilliantly in Boston’s last 8 games of the ’08 Playoffs, averaging a 21–5–4, shooting 52 percent, making 30 of 56 threes, sparking Sasha Vujacic’s chair-punching tantrum in Game 4 (after nearly breaking Sasha’s ankles on his game-clinching basket), playing surprisingly stellar defense on Rip Hamilton and Kobe Bryant, making the biggest shots in Game 5 against Detroit and Game 4 against L.A., then finishing off the Lakers in Game 6 with a barrage of second-half threes.
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Already considered one of the best clutch shooters of his generation, Allen cemented that reputation despite struggling so badly in the first two rounds that one idiot writer (okay, it was me) deemed his third-round matchup with Wally Szezerbiak a wash. My take after the Finals: “I can’t remember another Playoffs in any sport quite like the one Allen had; it was like watching a dead person climb out of a coffin at an open-casket funeral like nothing ever happened.” A rejuvenated Ray-Ray kept it going the following season, when he was the most consistent star on another 60-plus-win team (18–4–3, 49% FG, 41% 3FG, 95% FT and a number of clutch shots) and vaulted himself up another few Pyramid spots. He’s showing no signs of decline with his mid-thirties looming. None. So assuming he continues to thrive in that role of three-point threat, clutch shooter, veteran leader and cooler
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like Reggie Miller did (and Miller did it well into his thirties), Allen might jump
another
eight to ten spots before everything is said and done. Amazing.

(Post-2009 Playoffs Addition: Allen pulled to a dead heat with No. 62 on this list after a sparkling performance in Round One, starring in
three
ESPN Classic games, sinking a game-winning three and two game-tying threes, scoring 51 points in Game 6 and earning some long overdue, “Wow, Ray Allen is really good” national chatter.)

For his nine-year prime (1999–2007), Ray-Ray was remarkably efficient (23–5–4, 45% FG, 40% 3FG, 90% FT), had the prettiest jumper of any star player, and rarely attempted anything he couldn’t do. If he were a baseball player, he would have been Wade Boggs—not a franchise guy, but someone with a few elite skills (milking pitch counts, getting on base, stroking singles and rarely missing a game, in Boggs’ case) that made him a genuine asset as long as you surrounded him with other quality players. Allen played on only two contenders in his prime (the ’01 Bucks and ’05 Sonics), which makes me wonder how we’d remember him if he’d thrived on Miller’s Indiana teams from 1994 to 2004 … or, conversely, how we’d remember Reggie had he spent his prime relying on low-post scoring, shot blocking, and rebounding from Ervin Johnson, Jerome James, Pre-drag Drobniak, Armon Gilliam, Tractor Traylor, Scott Williams, Reggie Evans, Jason Caffey, Danny Fortson, Vitaly Potapenko, Nick Collison, Johan Petro, Robert Swift and a washed-up Anthony Mason.
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You can’t blame Allen for never sniffing the Finals until 2008, especially when the NBA rigged the 2001 Eastern Finals so Iverson could advance to the next round. But that’s for the next book.

One more thing: big props to Ray-Ray for giving a startlingly capable performance as Jesus Shuttlesworth in
He Got Game.
Sure, he was no Bernard King (we’ll get to him), but his acting chops were solid and he even carried off a threesome with real-life porn stars Chasey Lain and Jill Kelly, as well as one of the better sequences in any recent sports movie: Allen’s climactic one-on-one game with Denzel Washington (playing his father) that wasn’t scripted by Spike Lee, leading to an incredible turn of events where Denzel scored the first four points of the game off an increasingly pissed-off-in-real-life Allen, who quickly scored the next ten and saved himself from getting mocked by the camera crew for the rest of the shoot. Do you think Pearl or Maravich could have pulled off Jesus Shuttlesworth? That’s just enough to sneak him
into the low sixties in the Pyramid. While we’re here, allow me three more thoughts on Ray/Jesus:

1. You know how NBA teams use movie clips to get fans fired up during games? For years, I’ve had a running joke about which clip would be the worst possible choice, finally deciding it would the scene from
   The Shining
   when Jack Nicholson comes flying out of nowhere and buries an ax into Scatman Crothers’ chest. I always thought that would lead to forty-five seconds of horrified silence. But imagine a big Allen three-pointer, followed by a visitor’s timeout and the crowd going bonkers, abruptly followed by the JumboTron playing Ray’s threesome from
   He Got Game …
   actually, what am I saying? That would lead to even more cheering! Nothing will ever top the Jack/Scatman scene.
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2. With Denzel in the house, L.A. missed a chance to screw with Allen before Game 5 of the 2000 Finals: they should have shown Denzel scoring those four
   He Got Game
   baskets on the JumboTron, then cut to a grinning Denzel sitting courtside. They even could have had him dressed like Papa Shuttlesworth just to mess with Ray’s head—he could have worn a fake afro, the red and black Nike outfit and an electronic tracking bracelet on his right sneaker, then sat between Lain and Kelly. You can’t tell me Allen wouldn’t have been freaked out. Why don’t teams think of this stuff?
   

3. My theory about why
   Game
   turned out to be so disappointing: In the spring of ’98, Spike delivered a 136-minute cut of
   Game to
   four Touchstone studio executives. All of them liked the movie. All of them thought it was about thirty-five to forty minutes too long and needed to be chopped down. All of them agreed that the subplot with Denzel and the hooker was depressing and should be jettisoned. They also asked Lee to reshoot the ending, since the original (Denzel getting double-crossed and going back to jail) made them want to inhale a garageful of carbon monoxide. And they wanted Spike to stop kidding around and use a real soundtrack, because obviously the movie was dying for hip-hop and droning jazz made about as much sense as Garth Brooks. So Spike agreed to everything. Begrudgingly The Touchstone execs promised to stay in touch, then flew back to Los Angeles … only their plane was struck by a meteor and they were never seen again. Meanwhile, Spike still had a movie to release. Someone else from Touchstone called to check in, leading to this exchange:
   

EXEC: How’s the movie coming?”

SPIKE: Good, good. Just finished the final cut.

EXEC: Great! You incorporated the notes from the meteor guys, right?

SPIKE
(smiling):
Ummmmm … yeah. Fixed everything.

EXEC: Fantastic! Can’t wait to see it!

And that’s how we ended up with the all-time “that should have been better” sports movie. Potential can be a dangerous thing. And yet I digress.
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62. REGGIE MILLER

Resume: 15 years, 11 quality, 5 All-Stars … top 15 (’95, ’96, ’98) … 3-year peak: 22–3–3 … 2-year playoffs peak: 24–3–2, 89 threes, 42% 3FG (33 G) … leader: FT% (5x), threes (2x) … Playoffs: 20.6 points, 89% FT (144 G) … 80-plus games (10x) … career: threes (1st), Playoffs threes (1st), 88.8% FT (9th)

If you’re from Indiana, take a deep breath before we proceed. Then take another one. And another. Think happy thoughts. Get yourself into a good place. I’ll wait for you.

(Twiddling my thumbs.)

(Humming happily to myself.)

You ready? Try not to take the following few paragraphs personally; I have no interest in feuding with Indiana, the same place that gave us Hickory High, David Letterman, Larry Legend and my hypothetical Pyramid. I want you to like this book. Every decision, comment and argument has been carefully made and thought out in an unbiased way (even with regards to that ninny Kareem). Please know that I have nothing against Reggie Miller other than his refusal to sell Marv Albert’s jokes on TNT. That bugs me. Nothing during his career annoyed me other than the way he flopped to get calls (hey, he wasn’t the only one). Even his pansy dance after draining a game-winner against Chicago in the ’98 Eastern Finals didn’t bother me. I liked watching Reggie play. I really did. Which makes what you’re about to read so painful. I’ll even put it in italics to soften the blow a little.