Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  (That’s right, Daddy. Earl Monroe was pretty good.)

  66. ADRIAN DANTLEY

  Resume: 15 years, 12 quality, six All-Stars … 1977 Rookie of the Year … top 10 (’81, ’84) …

  leader: scoring (2x), minutes (1x) … career: made FT (6th) … 30-plus PPG (4x) … 2-year Playoffs peak: 28–8–3 (21 G) … career: 54% FG (20th), 6,382 FT made (6th) … traded five times … 20K Point Club

  65. ALEX ENGLISH

  Resume: 15 years, 9 quality, 8 All-Stars … top 10 (’82, ’83, ’84) … 3-year peak: 29–5–4 …

  2-year Playoffs peak: 29–8–3 (21 G) … leader:scoring (1x), FG (3x) … 3 teams before prime79… won just 2 Playoffs in his prime … eight 2K-point seasons … 25K Point Club

  There was common ground here beyond the whole “scoring forwards with androgynous first names” thing. Dantley and English entered the league in 1976, bounced around early in their careers, peaked on Western contenders that could never get over the hump, gave up almost as many points as they scored and can’t be compared to any current players. Dantley was a six-foot-three low-post guy (number of guys fitting that description today: zero) who reached the free throw line so frequently, Bob Ryan decided after one particularly goofy Dantley game that any weird box score line should just be called a “Dantley.”80 Few were more efficient offensively, as evidenced by Dantley retiring with the highest field goal percentage (54 percent) of any noncenter. And English was a lanky forward who never seemed to get hot—he’d score 7–8 points per quarter and end up around 30 every game, only you barely noticed him except for the fact that he never seemed to miss. We’ll probably see twenty more Englishes before we see another Dantley, only because Dantley’s physical, unorthodox style isn’t something taught at basketball camps and AAU scrimmages, where every quirk and idiosyncracy get banged out of every player by the time he turns fifteen.

  What were the deciding factors for English getting the nod? Dantley was a pain in the bum, wearing out his welcome with five teams (all of which accepted 30 to 80 cents on the dollar to get rid of him).81 Everyone loved English. That’s the biggest reason. If you’re looking for a dumb but karmic reason, neither guy played for a champion, but English filmed a hauntingly bad movie called Amazing Grace and Chuck in which his character “starred” for the ’86 Celtics. 82 For one

  “game” scene in that movie, English donned a Boston uniform and played 20 minutes with Bird, Parish, McHale and DJ in an exhibition game at the Garden. This actually happened! That’s right, five of the top sixty-four guys on this list played in a legally sanctioned NBA contest together, and not just that, but English’s cameo happened with one of the greatest teams ever. Top that one, Adrian Dantley. My favorite part of this story: the NBA allowing an All-Star player to play significant minutes for another team—kind of a big deal, when you think about it—just to accommodate one of the twenty worst sports movies ever made. Didn’t anyone in Stern’s office read the script? Or the scripts for Celtic Pride, Eddie, and Like Mike, for that matter? I always pictured Stern seeing Chuck, then immediately firing everyone involved in the English decision.

  Anyway, there are two types of great players: guys we’ll see again, and guys we’ll never see again. Any rational fan would agree that Jordan was the greatest basketball player ever. (Crap, I just spoiled the ending to Chapter 10. Oh, well.) But we’ll see another Jordan again. Why do I say this with such confidence? Because we’ve seen variations of Jordan already. Jordan was an evolutionary version of Thompson (his hero, by the way), and Kobe and Wade have re-created Jordan’s game reasonably well. We’ll see a few more superathletic, hypercompetitive shooting guards who are built like wide receivers, jump like kangaroos and possess the innate ability to control their bodies in midair. We won’t see another Jordan, but we will see someone every ten years who brings many of his best qualities to the table. Okay, so when will we see another Dantley? Really, a six-foot-three post-up player 83 with a hundred different upfakes and herky-jerky moves who creates wiggle room in the paint with his abnormally gigantic ass? He was the J-Lo of NBA players. I’m seeing that again in my lifetime? There might be another Jordan, but there will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be another Dantley. In his honor, here’s an All-Star team of players from the post-Russell era whose like will never be seen again, for genetic or physical reasons.

  Starters: Kareem, Bird, Barkley, Magic, Gervin

  Sixth man: McHale

  Bench: Dantley, Maravich, Iverson/DJ, 84 Manute Bol, Spud Webb, Paul

  Mokeski Injured List: Darko Milicic, Kurt Nimphius, Ken Bannister

  Since the first ten players cracked the Pyramid and earned love in this section, we’ll concentrate on the last six guys and why they made it.

  Manute. Let’s just say there haven’t been too many seven-foot-six, 200-pound Sudanese centers from the University of Bridgeport with tribal scars on their foreheads. You’ll think I’ve been drinking again, but the facts back me up: Manute happened to be an underrated backup, getting decent minutes for five different playoff teams, averaging 5 blocks as a rookie, cracking 300

  blocks three times and contributing significantly (20 minutes a game, 5.8 rebounds, 4.3 blocks) for the TMC Warriors that made the second round of the ’89 Playoffs. More importantly, of all the players I watched walk by me in the Boston Garden tunnel, only four stood out: Michael Jordan (because he was so overwhelmingly famous), David Robinson (we’ll get to why later), Larry Bird (ditto) and Manute. He was breathtaking in person, and not just because of his surreal height and skin so dark that it made him seem purple. 85 When Manute emerged from the tunnel, we’d stop talking and gawk with our mouths agape, like everyone watching the aliens emerge from the Close Encounters UFO. It was incredible. I would have bought a ticket just to watch Manute Bol stroll by me.

  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. 86

  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, 87 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. 88 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, 89 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, 90 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.92 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 93 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.94 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 time-out 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. 95

  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: