Piece By: Joshua Julian
As basketball fans, we’d be wrong if we said we didn’t look back at the past and reminisce on the great players who played 10, 20, 30 years ago. Every fan has that memory of either the first player they saw who made them fall in love with the game, or a bench player who, for whatever reason, just found a way into their heart. Unfortunately, even with all these flashbacks, players constantly get lost to the sands of time, fading out of memory, thereby causing the next generation to even hear of their accomplishments.
So, let’s give 10 of those guys their due: five players from the 1960s to 1990s, and then five players from my era, the 2000s to 2010s. These are guys who were fantastic throughout their careers, but, for one reason or another, are rarely given the props they deserve in the modern day discussions of basketball. These are guys that make your dad’s eyes light up and say “Now HE was a player right there”, causing him to launch into a long-winded explanation of why he was just sooo much better than even his own numbers showed. So strap in and press the gas pedal, because we’re almost to 88.
Historic Players
Bob Pettit
The only reason the Hawks franchise has a title in their past, Bob Pettit is the forgotten superstar of the 60s NBA. Typically, that era is summed up as “Bill Russell’s playground”, but Pettit was the only guys who ever got one over Russell. But after that first Celtics title in 1957, Pettit’s Hawks came back the next year and took the series 4-2 over the Celtics. And yes, the Hawks would lose two other times to the Celtics, in 1960 and ’61, but it was no fault of Pettit’s. That Celtics team was loaded with Hall of Famers: Bob Cousy, Sam Jones, Russell, Bill Sharman, Tom Heinsohn, K.C. Jones, Frank Ramsey, and John Havlicek. Pettit’s best teammates in that one title-winning season? Cliff Hagan (19.9 PPG, 10.1 RPG) and Ed Macauley (14.2 PPG, 6.6 RPG), ironically the two guys the Hawks got in return for Bill Russell in 1956. Overall, Pettit never averaged less than 20 points per game, bottoming out at 20.4 in his rookie season for the 26-46 Milwaukee Hawks.
Besides that season and his last season, Pettit never dipped below 24 points and 14 rebounds per game, making the All-Star team every year, and generally dominating the game in every way he could. But, because he played in the 60s, the era of the eight-team league, and didn’t play for the dynastic Celtics, no one remembers Bob Pettit expect diehard Hawks fans and older guys who watched him play. But it’s a shame it happened like that because Pettit was only rivaled by Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain in his time.
Alex English
Let’s play a little game here. We’re going to compare two player’s age-35 seasons, and see who had the better season:
Player A: 26.5 PPG, 4 RPG, 4.7 APG, 0.8 SPG, 0.1 BPG, .491/.250/.858
Player B: 25.3 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 10.2 APG, 1.2 SPG, 0.5 BPG, .493/.358/.693
The obvious conclusion is that Player B is more well-rounded, while Player A is more of a pure scorer who isn’t much of a three-point shooter.
Well, Player A played in the 80s, so he only averaged 0.1 three-point attempts per game. Anyway, yes, Player A is Alex English. Player B? LeBron James. And while I’m not trying to discount LBJ’s accomplishments this year, it’s appalling that no one talks about how great Alex English was, and how long he kept that greatness up. From the 1980-81 season to that aforementioned 1988-89 season, English averaged 26.9 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game, all on 51.1% shooting. No one scored more points in the 1980s than Alex English. No one. Not Larry Bird, not Magic Johnson, not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, not Michael Jordan. English’s ability to get buckets was unrivaled, and also partly helped by the run-and-gun system employed by Doug Moe.
The team was relatively successful, as they were typically in the playoffs but never escaped the 2nd round. They scored and scored, but rarely stopped the other team from scoring, which was typically their fatal flaw. But this lack of team success cannot be held against English. He was the star, yes, but he did his job nearly flawlessly. His blend of efficiency and production is rare, and the only reasons we don’t still talk about him is because he played in a tiny market in Denver and never got the chance to play on the biggest stages in the sport.
Adrian Dantley
A lot of the same points made for Alex English apply to Adrian Dantley. At the beginning of his career, he populated cities like Buffalo, Indianapolis, and Utah, with a brief pit-stop in Los Angeles to for a season and a half. His first few years were solid, almost averaging 20 points to go along with 7.2 rebounds per game. But once he got into the snowy peaks of the Beehive State, he went kaboom. In his seven seasons there, he averaged 29.6 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 3.7 assists, on 56.2% shooting. Need more proof? From 1980 to 1984, he didn’t average less than 30 points. Like, at all. Over a four year stretch, on average, he was putting up 30 points a game. Once he left Utah for the Detroit Pistons, his numbers became less gaudy, as he averaged six less shots a game, but he was still efficient, shooting about 52% from the field and averaging 20.7 points. Unfortunately, he may be most famous for his exit from Detroit.
After tensions boiled over because of the allotment of touches in Detroit’s offense, Dantley became a bit disgruntled, leading to his trade to the Mavericks for Mark Aguirre. Aguirre turned out to be a missing piece, and the Pistons went on to win two rings after Dantley’s exit. But at his peak, Dantley was arguably the best scorer of all-time, and the fact that he is not mentioned in conversations about that is a shame.
Clyde Drexler
Why is Clyde Drexler not as high on all-time lists as he should be? Simple. He wasn’t Michael Jordan. And shooting guards in the late 80s-90s who weren’t Michael Jordan were all regulated to fighting for second place in the shooting guard hierarchy. But the memory of Drexler should not be impacted by Jordan’s dominance. Drexler was dominant in his own right. Besides his rookie season, where he only played 17.2 minutes per game, Drexler’s scoring average never dipped below 18 points per game, and his field goal percentage was perpetually in the high 40%s until his final few years in Houston. As the #1 in Portland, Clyde was understated in his greatness. From 1987 to 1994, Clyde was an All-Star every single year, and averaged 23.6 PPG, 6.8 RPG, and 5.8 APG, on a very solid 47.8% shooting. Sure, he got outclassed in the 1992 NBA Finals by His Airness, but who didn’t? Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Gary Payton, and Karl Malone are all part of that club too. Clyde has just caught more shade for it because he plays the same position, so was therefore compared to Jordan more. Unjustly, I might add.
Mitch Richmond
Run TMC was legendary, a precursor to the modern NBA structuring of line-ups and gameplans. Before Mike D’Antoni and Steve Nash “invented” the quick strike three-point barrage offense, the Golden State Warriors and coach Don Nelson walked this path first. And most of the actors in this model became legendary. Tim Hardaway has forever been immortalized because of his lightning quick crossover. Chris Mullin played on the Dream Team and remains, to this day, one of the purest shooters ever. Don Nelson is one of the greatest coaches ever.
But what about the third guy? What about Mitch Richmond? Why is the guy with a career average of 21 points per game, on 45.5% shooting from the field and 38.8% shooting from deep, rarely mentioned by hoop heads? Richmond was the model of consistency, as his scoring average stayed above 20 points from his rookie season, at age 23, to his age 32 campaign in 1997-98. He was silent but deadly, and he didn’t draw a lot of headlines off the court. He also only lasted three seasons in Golden State until they decided to change up the formula, and then spent the rest of his career wallowing away in the abyss that is the Sacramento Kings. But there are few who were as consistently great as Richmond, and he deserves his due for his spot in one of the most revolutionary teams of all-time.
Modern Day
Joe Johnson
Tim Duncan, throughout his career, was the most underrated superstar in the NBA because he was “boring”. He would show up, get his nightly 25 and 15, and go home. He never made headlines, he never made bold predictions, he just did his job. And while Joe Johnson was never a superstar, he’s the most criminally underrated star for the same reasons Duncan was underrated. The aptly named “Iso Joe” was a silent, walking bucket throughout his entire career, and even after he stopped playing in the NBA. Go watch his Big3 highlights, the dudes still got it.
Whether it was with the “7 Seconds or Less” Phoenix Suns, where he was putting up 17 points a game as the third option, or the Atlanta Hawks, where he led the perpetual #5 seeds to 2nd round exits on the back of his 21 points on 449/.363/.808 splits, or his ill-fated stint in Brooklyn, as one of the many aging veterans acquired to make the Nets great again, Joe knew how to score. Yes, he was never the #1 for a truly great team. But he was miscast as a centerpiece. He was always better suited for that secondary scorer role he filled in Phoenix, and it was Atlanta’s desperation for something, anything, resembling a star that led to him wasting his prime years on some solid teams that never really had a chance to escape basketball purgatory. But that shouldn’t take away from Iso Joe’s legacy. No matter where he was, he brought pretty mid-range J’s, an underrated post game, and phenomenal touch on his floaters.
Dwyane Wade
Dwyane Wade is an aberration in this list, as he is already counted as one of the top 40-50 greatest players of all-time. But he should be a lot higher than that. Like, top 20-30. And the main reason behind this is Wade’s unparalleled portability. Need a #1 scorer? Hit up Wade. He led the Heat to a title in 2005-06, averaging 27.2 points, 5.7 rebounds, 6.7 assists, and 1.9 steals per game. Yes, he had Shaq, but Shaq was 33 and at the end of his prime. DWade was the unquestioned leader of that title-winning team, and he continued to be everything for the Heat after that magical season. He pretty much matched the above stat line every year until the arrival of LeBron James. And this point of his career is the main reason why he’s underrated. The Heat were his team; he had every right to demand his touches and force LBJ to fall in line.
But he didn’t do that, instead pushing LeBron to take more shots and take over the offense, while Wade became a secondary scorer on the perennial title threats in Miami. Most superstars would chafe at another man coming into the house he built and taking all the headlines, but Wade didn’t. This sacrifice led to him losing a few more years of peak #1 numbers, and directly led to him being underrated in all-time talks. But at his peak, you could count on one hand the number of players who were better than #3.
Gilbert Arenas
His peak was short-lived, and none of his Wizards teams ever truly threatened for a title, but the next generation of basketball fans will not know just how good Gilbert Arenas was from 2004 to 2007. The numbers attempt to do him justice, as evidenced by his nightly averages of 27.7 points, 4.3 rebounds, 5.7 assists, and 1.9 steals. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story, except for this one: 7.2. That’s how many threes Arenas was attempting per night, an unheard of number outside of Phoenix at this time. Arenas was a trailblazer, and he helped make the Washington Wizards, arguably the worst franchise in NBA history, nationally relevant. And while he fell off quite swiftly, due to injuries and some locker room troubles, his peak was a sight to behold.
Brandon Roy
Brandon Roy was really Gilbert Arenas 2.0, except he was a 1st round pick who was supposed to go kaboom and save a franchise. And at first, it looked like he was going to do just that. In his first four seasons, Roy averaged 20.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 5 assists per game, all on a perennial playoff team in Portland. In his first season, the team won 32 games and missed the playoffs. By his third season, they were a 54-win offensive juggernaut, built around LaMarcus Aldridge and Roy. And while they lost in the first round to the Rockets, there was plenty to get excited about. By his fourth season, Roy was a three-time All-Star, the Blazers won another 50 games, and they had next up, despite another 1st round exit. Then, disaster struck. Roy’s knees continued to get worse, to the point where, after a bad 2010-11 season, he retired from the NBA. Like Arenas, while his peak was short, at that peak, Roy was the next big star, one of the men tabbed as the future of the league. And while he has no place in conversations among the greats, that does not mean his memory should fade.
Damian Lillard
After Brandon Roy’s career flamed out, the Blazers quickly tried to find his replacement, another guard who could play off Aldridge and build upon what was already in place. So, in the 2012 draft, they selected a point guard out of Weber State named Damian Lillard. Aldridge was the entrenched centerpiece and the de facto #1 in Portland. Little did anyone know, Lillard would change that hierarchy. Once Aldridge bolted in free agency to San Antonio, Lillard took over the Blazers and led them to heights they never ever saw with Aldridge, culminating in a Western Conference Finals berth in 2019.
Since Aldridge’s departure, Lillard has averaged 26.9 points, 4.5 rebounds, and 6.8 assists, regularly keeping Portland around the playoff picture and serving as the heart and soul of the franchise. Yes, he’s considered one of the best point guards in the league right now, but he’s still underrated, simply because it took so long for him to get that respect. He’s been doing this since 2015, but he didn’t start getting the respect he deserved until this past season. He’s arguably the best point guard in the NBA right now, and by the time he wraps his career up, he should be in the conversation for one of the greatest point guards ever.