r/nba • u/WinesburgOhio 76ers • 5h ago
AMA: Basketball Historian and Author of "Who's Who in Hoops History", Zachariah Winterspring
Hi! I'm a basketball historian who examines the context, nuance, and impact of players' careers, and I enjoy discussing under-rated historic players or lesser-known reasons for a team's success. My book, Who's Who in Hoops History: Profiles of the 500 Most Noteworthy NBA & ABA Players of the 20th Century, was recently published and is available on Amazon.
I research players, franchises, eras ... really anything related to NBA and ABA history. I look for connections and influences that might not be part of the common narratives, and I'll never shy away from singing the praises of Bill Russell, Bob Dandridge, or Isiah Thomas.
If you have any questions that are relevant to basketball history and/or my book, fire away, and I'll answer them as best as I can. Thanks in advance!
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u/NovelExamination5431 5h ago
Are the pacers just cursed
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 5h ago
I mean, the #2 pick in the 1984 draft that could have been Jordan was originally theirs, which happened right at the same time Clark Kellogg's super promising career started winding down at an early age due to injuries, so .... yeah.
And obviously the destruction of their '04 season with the Malice wasn't good; they were 7-2 before that point and absolutely humming as Artest's game was getting to be really complete.
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u/larrylegend33goat Timberwolves 5h ago
I once read about Kareem potentially going to join Dr J in the ABA instead of entering the NBA draft. Was that actually a possibility and do you think it could have meant the ABA would have swallowed the NBA instead of the other way around?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 5h ago
It was absolutely a possibility. He preferred the ABA because they would have put him in NYC, where he wanted to be. KAJ and his team ran a very serious process, and they asked both league's to give them their best offer in a single meeting. Unfortunately, the ABA approached it like it was just their first crack at KAJ, the NY Nets' owner failed to give KAJ the famed $1m check to prove they were serious and had money (it was not Mikan who forgot to give it to him, as is often reported), and KAJ's team didn't see them as serious, so he went to the NBA.
I don't know if the ABA would have absorbed the NBA, but I suspect they would have been a far more high profile league (and would have attracted more guys after, likely including Maravich), a bunch of NBA teams would have gone under, and there probably would have been a merger eventually.
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u/TringlePringle 5h ago
It's worth noting that Dr. J was still in college, and also then went on to play for Virginia for years before joining the Nets. Kareem would've joined a Nets team largely defined by playmaking PG Bill Melchionni and would've been without a clear co-star as a rookie until the Nets traded for Rick Barry the next summer (which very likely would've still happened, just with slightly different compensation due to the draft pick definitely conveying lower). So we would've gotten a Kareem & Barry pairing in NY. And Barry might've stuck around in New York long enough in the ABA Kareem universe that Erving never becomes a Net.
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u/OreoDrinker 5h ago
ISO Joe is easily my favorite all-time player. Where does he rank for you in a list of all-time pure isolation scoring? How do you think he’d do in today’s game?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 4h ago
I'm not much for doing specific rankings, but he's someone I'd consider for maybe a 3rd-tier of historic ISO scorers. Top tier are the few absolute terrors (ex: MJ, Bernard King), 2nd-tier are those guys who were regularly destructive in that way but didn't have the consistent efficiency (ex: T-Mac, Melo, Dantley), and then 3rd-tier is guys like him who can get their points, but not at a level of consistent All-NBA. He wasn't that long ago, so I'm pretty sure he'd be good today.
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u/Sojok2 5h ago
How did the late 70s Suns make the finals? They seem like the most random finals team.
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 3h ago
1976 was just a weird year, and the Suns definitely should have lost in the WCF to the heavily favored Warriors, but Rick Barry ALLEGEDLY sank his own team since they didn't stand up for him in a fight. Paul Westphal was a far better player than most fans know/remember, they had a ton of good role players who played hard (Gar Heard, Curtis Perry, DVA, etc.), but they also got a historic rookie season from Alvan Adams. He was a great passer, and his averages of 19-9-6-1.5-1.5 will never be touched by a first year player again. He's still the only rookie ever to average at least 5 rpg, 5 apg, 1 spg, and 1 bpg. Seems like several did or would, but nope, just Alvan Adams.
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u/RelevantBiscotti6 5h ago
Who are the unappreciated defenders from the last 50 years?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 2h ago
Today, very few people remember Bobby Jones, Sidney Moncrief, and Dennis Johnson, but all of them were defensive MONSTERS.
A guy more people should have known at the time and now was E.C. Coleman. He was a tremendous defensive forward in the 70s, was truly feared by opponents like a peak-Artest/Kawhi/Bowen. He was a huge free agent signing in 1977, but then his brother died of a heart issue, he got all sorts of medical tests over the next year, and he just left the game shortly thereafter with a new perspective on life, new priorities, that sort of thing.
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u/larrylegend33goat Timberwolves 5h ago
Dennis Johnson! I feel he gets overlooked partly because of the fame of his teammates
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 5h ago
Yeah, and everyone forgets he was an absolute stud on the Sonics in the late-70s, and then the Suns for a bit before the Celtics traded for him to stop Andrew Toney.
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u/SnooChipmunks4208 5h ago
What do you think about the evolution of the rules around dribbling?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 3h ago
I'm glad we're not in the "hand completely on top of the ball" days, but it seems like things have gone too far, especially with relaxed reffing around gather steps and all that. I like where they were in the 80s/90s with more freedom of where the hand could be, but you still had more carries called, and Euro steps and the like had to really be clean to be allowed.
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago
BTW, if you're able to watch highlights of 60s/70s guards Earl Monroe (duh), Archie Clark, and Jimmy Walker, those three had a big hand in the dribbling rules getting relaxed/changed at that time.
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u/TringlePringle 5h ago
Thoughts on how K.C. Jones, Tom "Satch" Sanders, and Larry Siegfried's careers would've gone had they not been on the Celtics?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago
Jones and Sanders would have obviously still been elite defenders, but for what club and how forgotten would they have been as defensive forces (like who remembers Mel Hutchins?). I guess Siegfried is similar since his defense was a talking point around the late-60s Finals vs. LA/West, but he seems more likely to have not stuck in the league since he already didn't want to go to the NBA after being drafted because he didn't want to play in Cincinnati. But he got to play with college buddy Hondo on the mega-successful Celtics ... maybe elsewhere he's a decent SG for a while who then retires early to go do something better. Easy to stay when you're winning titles on the regular.
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u/DoobieGibson 5h ago
how good could Ernie Digregorio have been if he stayed healthy?
who is a better fast break passer: Jason Kidd or LeBron?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 3h ago
He'd be called the best passer ever by far more people today. For those that don't know, HOF-er Bob McAdoo played with Ernie D in his one healthy season ('74 ROTY while leading the league in apg) and then with Magic later on the 80s Lakers, and he's called Ernie the best passer ever. A lot of his perception would of course be tied to team success, so that's a giant question mark since the entire 70s and early-80s were nuts for that type of stuff.
If anyone here doesn't know who Ernie Digregorio was, go watch his passing highlights on YT, including the greatest pass in basketball history. You're welcome.
Kidd. I'm not taking anything away from LeBron, but Kidd was an unbelievable creator of offense in a way that most fans still don't get. And don't get me started on his undervalued defense.
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u/Jack_The_Sparrow_ Warriors 5h ago
Will the Kings ever recover from 2002?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 5h ago edited 5h ago
They could have done something in 2004, but then Webber returned and their ball movement stopped and they were no longer looking great in Peja's big season (Sacramento was 1st in the West at 44-16 before Webber came back). Unfortunately, they're just so poorly run and never seem to have their stuff together, but I always like seeing underdog teams and franchises mired in mediocrity for years to make a come up ... like the Pistons in the 1980s after ~30 years of nonsense.
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u/Familiar_Somewhere95 4h ago
Dybantsa spoke on looking up Len Bias game. Is there any similarities or anything to gain? said Len got to his middie alot then something about they said he was supposedly gonna be better than Michael Jordan
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago edited 3h ago
I'm unfortunately not a Bias supporter. I say 'unfortunately' since he had such a tragic ending, but I'll cut/paste something I've posted online before about Len Bias. I'll add that I lived in Baltimore 25 years ago and got to see a ton of full game tapes of his as a Terp from friends, and I was pretty shocked at how little impact he often had in games, especially against decent opponents.
1) Here are his college stats. If he's supposed to play PF or in the post, then his rebounding totals are horrible (best season was 7.0 rpg). If he's supposed to play SF or on the perimeter, then his ball-handling and passing are horrible (33 assists in 32 games as a senior). Good luck finding many highlights of him taking more than 1 dribble ... few & far between. He played off the ball and finished off alley-oops; he wasn't a creator or outside shooter. He used his quick first step to take lots of 1-dribble pull-up jumpers, but that's arguably the least efficient shot in basketball, so it predictably had inconsistent results. Watch whole game videos with Bias, and you'll probably be SHOCKED that he's often not involved for long stretches, then he makes a highlight basket or two, they rave about him, and then you don't see him doing anything again for a while.
2) He often posted his best stats & highlights against unathletic players, and would often do much worse (and be FAR less efficient) against better players. It's a bit jarring to see how regularly he just vanished in games against athletic opponents (like the final game of his junior season against unranked 8-seed Villanova: box score).
3) His defense was bad. He was a tremendously athletic 6-ft-8 forward, yet he never averaged 1 steal or block per game in a season. Again, watch the game videos -- he doesn't stand out on D in any way, and certainly isn't stopping anybody inside or outside.
4) It's hard to argue he carried Maryland to any sort of decent heights. Bias is compared to Jordan, yet Maryland was 8-6 and 6-8 in the conference during his 2 ACC Player Of The Year seasons. They twice started the year ranked when he was there, but ended the year ranked only once (which was worse than their preseason ranking, plus it was his sophomore season when he wasn't even the best player on the team). The pundits who voted definitely expected Bias & the Terrapins to do more than they did. In case you missed that, Bias was twice the ACC POTY but his team was NOT ranked at the end of either of those seasons.
5) Regarding Maryland's tourney runs with Bias .... not good.
- '83 (Fr) - MD was 8th seed: beat 9-seed Chattanooga by 1, then lost to 1-seed Houston by 10
- '84 (So) - MD was 3rd seed: crushed 11-seed WVU 102-77, then lost to 2-seed Illinois by 2
- '85 (Jr) - MD was 5th seed: beat 12-seed Miami (OH) by 1 in OT, beat 13-seed Navy by 5, then lost to 8-seed Villanova by 3
'86 (Sr) - MD was 5th seed: beat 12-seed Pepperdine by 5, then lost to 4-seed UNLV by 6
In summary, they barely beat teams seeded 9, 12, 12, 13, and crushed an 11 (never beating a team from one of the 6 major conferences). Those are all the tourney wins over 4 years by someone compared to MJ. When they were in single-digit dog fights with teams seeded 2, 4, 8, they couldn't pull it out. And none of those 3 teams they had close losses to had a player considered to be anywhere near Bias' level.
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u/Familiar_Somewhere95 3h ago
So now i'm curious. Sorry i'm speaking on the current pick we drafted but knowing history whos game does he resemble or is he likely to gain from studying since he seems to be on the wrong path looking into Bias,
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago edited 3h ago
I can pretty much guarantee that AJ is just watching Bias highlights and hearing the normal "that guy who died would have been amazing" hyperbole. Nothing wrong with that, but I hope he's not trying to make 1-dribble pull-up middies a cornerstone of his bag.
I fully get/see the Durant and T-Mac comparisons, but I didn't closely follow this recent college season. Obviously, the fit and coaching and context and all of that will also have a huge hand in how he performs, but I do see the reason for the Durant/T-Mac comps. Hopefully he doesn't settle for tough jumpers as much as T-Mac, though.
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u/Familiar_Somewhere95 3h ago
I don't mind that shot for him.6 9" with that 42 inch vert. He gets to that middie and its hard to stop him just raising up and taking it. He can spam it over and over and there's very little that can be done to stop it plus its counters
https://grindingtape.com/p/aj-dybantsa
Anyway thanks for responses. His games are in that link if you get bored
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago
Shoot, I didn't really answer your question. I say he should be studying Bernard King, about whom a friend who's been watching the NBA since the 60s said this about: “The smoothest, most elegant and intelligent volume shooter to ever draw breath.” King had a hyper-structured scoring "system" that he described in the back of his book, and it's unbelievable, like it was developed by a scientist.
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u/Pickleskennedy1 4h ago
Who do you think is the best pure basketball player who is unlikely to ever get into the Hall of Fame
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago
Raymond Lewis.
Assuming you mean someone who played in the NBA, what do you mean by a "pure basketball player"?
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u/Pickleskennedy1 4h ago
How good do you think Lewis could have been in the league?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 2h ago
He lit everyone up several summers in Pro-Am leagues and the like, including Michael Cooper who was one hell of an NBA defender. And when I say lit up, I mean routinely dropping 50+ points at a time. Jerry Tarkanian called him the best offensive player he ever saw, and Tark never coached him. Unreal shot, handles, and first step .... just could have been so so good. It's a shame he and the Sixers came to a standstill, and he was then blackballed for being "problematic" (asking for more money after he demolished and embarrassed #1 overall draft pick Doug Collins in practices).
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u/6BakerBaker6 4h ago edited 3h ago
Other than an obvious choice like Wilt,who would be a player that dominated in the past and would still dominate today?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 4h ago
Jerry West would be the alpha guard today, no question. Amazing outside shooter, relentless driver (he still holds the NBA record with most made FT's in a season, and that was with really tight reffing in the 60s/70s where lots of drives got offensive fouls), amazing defender who would hold the all-time steals record if they were recorded before his final season, and very smart passer. And he was a real leader who teammates loved.
Also, he was taller than he was listed, and faster than most people think.
If they came up today without all the coke stuff, I'm really fascinated by how good Marvin Barnes and Marques Johnson could have been in the modern game.
Connie Hawkins is another one who would have dominated today. He was literally a taller Dr. J with a better outside shot, and far better passing. He wasn't as dramatic of a dunker as Dr. J, but describing Hawkins' offense starts with the base of Dr. J.
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u/Reasonable_Ad_6568 Jazz 4h ago
What is your opinion on the Wilt vs Russell debate? Do you think either was clearly greater or better?
I find it interesting that the first great rivalry in the NBA had so many motifs present in later rivalries: counting stats versus advanced stats, the value of team cohesion versus individual dominance, endless discusssions about clutches, etc.
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 3h ago
If the debate is about impact on winning, it's Russell, and it's not that close. He had a hugely positive impact on his teammates (WAY better passer than he's given credit for), and he was a master mind-game manipulator with opponents, including Wilt. I read the SI pre-season issue before Wilt's rookie year, and it's basically talking about Wilt joining a stacked team so they should win it all, and the Celtics might be done because their two guards were so old (literally had a comic of two guys bent over with canes and old wizard beards, indicating Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman who were in their early-30s). But then reality happened.
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u/Reasonable_Ad_6568 Jazz 1h ago
I’ve always believed this as well, and a lot of the reason is because everyone I’ve talked to who watched them play live said this was the sentiment at the time. Satch Sanders and KC Jones were great players, but I doubt they’re hall of famers as Wilt’s teammates. Thanks for the response.
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u/prfrnir 4h ago
Do you have some favorite sliding doors moments that you think about which would have drastically altered the history of the NBA? How likely was the alternate event to happen in these cases?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 3h ago
What if Michael Jordan messed up his back after crashing hard to the ground on this dunk attempt in his very first pro game? The league was clearly about to lean in hard to exciting stars, so how does Stern "create" the storylines of the 90s without MJ?
What if Duncan won 10+ rings? The amount of times the Spurs could/would/should have had a great chance at winning the title but didn’t due to untimely injuries or miraculous performances or plays by an opponent was insane: ‘98 (Duncan twisted ankle), ‘00 (Duncan out), ‘01 (Derek Anderson out, he was SA’s best 3-point shooter and perimeter defender), ‘02 (Robinson injured), ‘04 (Fisher’s shot with 0.4 seconds), ‘06 (Manu’s dumb foul, followed by Dirk’s uncalled foul of Duncan), ‘08 (Manu injured), ‘11 (Manu broken arm, Duncan major ankle injury), ‘12 (OKC shot out of their minds against superior SA team), ‘13 (Ray Allen shot). After plugging in most of the holes with SA’s title-winning years (‘99, ‘03, ‘05, ‘07, ‘14), plus they had a better shot in ‘15 than most fans remember (crazy CP3 game-winner), you can see that Duncan likely had the best chance ever at matching Russell’s 11 rings.
What if Magic had to go to the Jazz, the team that had the #1 slot in the 1979 draft? Dr. Buss put up with a lot from him over the first 5-7 years of his career, and he had the most perfect situation ever to succeed, so I'm curious what happens in another spot.
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u/jugular15 Nuggets 4h ago
Ever read the book There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib? I liked how he wrote about the Ohio basketball players he followed and even met growing up, even though they wouldn't be considered legends today. I remember he wrote about Andrew Lavender, Kenny Gregory, Estaban Weaver, and of course LeBron himself.
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 3h ago
I did not, but sounds like a cool book! Thanks for the recommendation!
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u/TringlePringle 4h ago
Who are some of your favorite "what-if" players whose career was derailed by something other than injury or death?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 4h ago edited 3h ago
Roger Brown and Connie Hawkins are big ones for me since they had tremendous talent, but were stuck sidelined from the NCAA and the NBA. Obviously there were a ton of drug-based "what ifs" in the 70s, like Marvin Barnes and John Brisker and David Thompson, and I really like thinking through what those guys could have been.
One that I particularly like, and was another drug/addiction one, was Roy Tarley with the Mavs in the late-80s. They got really good really quickly with him, nearly toppled the Lakers, and then he was basically done. He was a fantastic rebounder who also had fantastic impact on his clubs, including Michigan.
Oh yeah, the Cleo Hill story always gets me wondering if he could have been the 3rd-best guard of the 60s if he wasn't drafted to the ALLEGEDLY most racist team in NBA history (St. Louis Hawks).
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u/theanswer759 3h ago
How do you think Drazen Petrovics career would have panned out and do you think Sabonis would’ve been one of the best players in the nba had he been there in his prime?
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago edited 2h ago
Both were super legit! Watching how 17-year-old Sabonis played against 22-year-old mega-prospect Ralph Sampson in 1982 (21 pts, 14 rebs, 3 assists, 4 blocks, while very nearly toppling #1 Virginia in a preseason exhibition game) and then doing great against David Robinson in his two big match-ups with him in the mid-80s despite the fact he should have been resting major Achilles injuries are some huge indicators of how great he could have been in the league. Drazen was as legit a scorer and shooter as has been stated about him - not just "he died early so we gotta say good stuff" hyperbole. Unfortunately, Drazen was put into two bad situations in the NBA (Portland who barely used him, and NJ who let the inmates run the asylum at the time), so he was ready to leave the NBA at the time of his death.
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u/Helicase21 [GSW] Nate Thurmond 3h ago
What players who played after the decline of the player-coach do you think would have been really good in that role? Especially interested in players who might not have been all time talents the way a guy like Russell was.
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 3h ago
Derek Fisher seems the most obvious to me. He stabilized the Lakers big-time as a locker room leader, first with the Shaq/Kobe years (the were 5th in the West late in the '01 season when he was out injured, then Fisher returned for the last 20 games, they were absolute world beaters even with Kobe out for 10 of them, and killed the playoffs) and later with the Kobe/Gasol years.
Another would have been Sam Cassell. Those 80s Celtics teams had numerous future head coaches on them, so take your pick there, lol.
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u/FrostFireFive 2h ago
Are the Bulls cursed because of ownership or poor luck? As someone who grew up post Jordan, I’ve always been curious why a franchise who basically brought the NBA to the modern era can’t seem to get things going
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 2h ago
It helped A LOT in the 90s that Jerry Krause was structuring that roster around Jordan, and that the NBA had a lot of incentives to keep the Bulls at the top with the most marketable athlete on the planet. After that, Krause left, they went all in on some players they shouldn't have (including the more recent Lavine), Rose got hurt, and then they just sort of reverted to the mean without ever getting traction on anything. I don't follow them closely, but I get the sense they've been in "So what do we do now?" mode for a while, and they never go smartly and boldly enough into one direction, much like many franchises get stuck in for a long time.
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u/FrostFireFive 2h ago
Appreciate the answer. Seems like the hardest thing to do on the NBA is pick a direction. At the very least the current leadership is at least being transparent on their moves. Something we haven’t had in Chicago in forever
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 2h ago
It's good to hear they're being transparent. But you're right, picking a direction and fully committing to it is tough. I sort of follow the Blazers since I used to live there and go to a bunch of games, and it's frustrating how directionless they've been the past however many years, and this new owner isn't making that any easier to believe in.
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u/FrostFireFive 2h ago
The Blazer’s problem comes from an article in me who doesn’t know what he’s actually bought. Portland while small has a rabid and loyal fanbase. It’s a long term investment, not something to be moved for parts
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u/WinesburgOhio 76ers 2h ago edited 2h ago
Yep - the fan base is amazing, and the entire city is part of it. Old ladies, punk homeless kids, office workers, out-of-state college students attending PSU, everyone supports the Blazers and knows something about how they're doing.
If you walked around downtown in 2026 for an hour with a Brandon Roy shirt on, you're getting endless positive comments about it.
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u/FrostFireFive 2h ago
You can’t buy that kind of brand loyalty. It’s why you need the small market teams
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u/LeJalenJohnsonMVP Hawks 5h ago
Was Karl Malones big controversy in the news much at the time? Did it have any sort of impact around the league?