Sep
14
Greg Oden’s Injury Provides a Perfect Forum to Discuss Filip Bondy’s “Tip- Off”
When Chicago Bulls General Manager Rod Thorn selected Michael Jordan with the third pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, he described the lanky guard from North Carolina in terms of being a very good player but not anyone to turn a franchise around. Boy would Thorn ever be wrong about Jordan, and his disappointment that the Bulls did not get a franchise center is now something to laugh at, considering what Jordan did for the Bulls, the game and sports marketing.
However, back in that era of the NBA, drafting a franchise center was a shared philosophy by all teams. At that point, championship teams were built around superior big men, from George Mikan, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul- Jabbar), Bill Walton and Dave Cowens.
Winning six championships in eight seasons and establishing himself as the greatest player in NBA history, Jordan would turn this philosophy on its head. With that said, you can forgive Thorn for not exactly jumping out of the gym when the Bulls had to select Jordan rather than getting a shot at Houston center Hakeem Olajuwon (who went #1 to the Houston Rockets) or Kentucky big man Sam Bowie (who went #2 to the Portland Trailblazers).
The conception that Jordan was not heavily desired in the 1984 NBA Draft, however, is not true; as Bondy’s excellent book on the 1984 NBA Draft reveals. Jordan, in fact, was highly wanted by many teams in the draft and was a subject of many intriguing trade scenarios.
The best one: the Philadelphia 76ers briefly considered trading the face of its franchise, Julius “Dr. J” Erving, to the Bulls for the third pick, which would have been used to select Jordan. That would have left the Sixers with Jordan and the number five pick in the draft, which turned out to be Jordan’s buddy, Charles Barkley. Imagine that duo in the Eastern Conference during the late eighties and early nineties. The Sixers briefly thought about it but decided that trading Dr. J would prompt such a backlash from Philadelphia fans, who later went on to boo Santa Claus and class-act Donovan McNabb, that is was not worth it.
A quick read providing a great behind-the-scenes look at the trade scenarios, superstitions and philosophies that defined the 1984 NBA Draft, Bondy’s “Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever” is a must for any fan or historian of the league and the draft that brought the NBA Olajuwon, Jordan, Barkley and John Stockton.
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