The Book of Basketball (30 page)

Here’s what we know: From 2004 to 2006, the upgrade from Parker to Kidd wouldn’t have made up for the cap hit and loss of depth. From 2006 to 2009, you would much rather have spent $40 million on Tony Parker than twice as much on a declining Jason Kidd.
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So Popovich and Buford dodged a bazooka bullet on this one. And since we’re here …

25. What if Tim Duncan signed with Orlando in 2000 to play with Grant Hill?

And to think, it almost happened. If Duncan signs with Orlando, that swings the title in three seasons (’03, ’05 and ’07) … and with Hill missing games and killing Orlando’s cap, suddenly Duncan would have been emulating KG’s career and squandering his prime on a series of undermanned teams. Those two would have been mirror images of each other—Duncan wasting away in the East, Garnett wasting away in the West—as we spent those years wondering who got more screwed and who did more with less. Bad times all around.
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Also, where would T-Mac have landed if Orlando chose Duncan and Hill? Maybe in San Antonio to replace Duncan? And what if they still drafted Ginobili and Parker? Could they have won a title with those three guys and Robinson in 2003? Could they have even made the Finals without a dominant big guy? Hmmmmmm.

(Note: I would have ranked this one higher, but it’s unclear if Duncan was ever
that
close to joining Orlando. Could you see him winning a title, then ditching his teammates for a bigger paycheck in Florida? Me neither.)
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24. What if MJ never played with the Wizards?

In the big scheme of things, no biggie. But imagine how cool it would have been if Game 6 of the ’98 Finals—MJ winning the title by himself and ending his career with the layup-steal-jumper sequence—was our last basketball memory of Michael Jordan? That Washington comeback made him seem mortal, cluttered our brain with a few unpleasant memories, hurt his career historically (even if we didn’t realize it) and opened
the door for a decade of ludicrous “Kobe/LeBron might even be better than MJ!” arguments. Which leads me to my world-renowned Kurt Cobain Theory: Part of the reason Nirvana gained steam historically was because Cobain killed himself at the perfect time, right after
In Utero
and the
MTV Unplugged
album, when he was hooked on drugs and slowly going insane. Had he hung around and survived, we would have been treated to a few rehab stints, some bizarre behavior, a messy/bloody/violent breakup with Courtney Love that would have landed one of them (or both) in jail, at least two incoherent albums that every annoying Cobain fanatic would have defended as “genius, man, pure genius,” followed by a six-year disappearance and an eventual booking on
Celebrity Rehab
with Dr. Drew, where he definitely would have hooked up with Mary Carey. He would have made Scott Weiland seem more bubbly than the dudes from Wham! After enduring his pathetic downfall for twelve or fourteen years, would we still be hailing Cobain as a musical genius and crediting him as the father of alternative music? No way! He would have been just another druggie musician who threw away his career.
²⁵
If you don’t believe me, look how we regarded Michael Jackson before he died—the freak of freaks, a celebrity cautionary tale, a creepy (alleged) child molester—even though as recently as 1987 we agreed that Jackson was the most talented pop artist ever. Or consider how Eddie Murphy would have been remembered historically had he perished in a plane crash two months after the 1988 release
of Coming to America.
Memories affect perceptions for better and worse. They do. Our last Cobain memory was that MTV special, just an anguished, captivating, overwhelmingly talented dude delivering the best
Unplugged
of all time. That’s one of the things that helped him endure. And our last Jordan memory should have been the swipe of Malone and the jumper over Bryon Russell. Alas.

23. What if John Havlicek didn’t get injured during the ’73 Eastern Finals?

I know, I know … I promised that we would avoid injury-related what-ifs. The ’73 Celtics finished 68–14 (the fourth-best record ever) and had their most dominant team of the Cowens/Havlicek era. Hondo separated his shooting shoulder in Game 3 of the Knicks series, missed the rest of that game plus the next one (both Boston losses) and played left-handed for the last three, with the Celtics still stretching it to seven before the Knicks finally realized, “Wait, Hondo is playing with one hand—let’s hound him every time he has the ball!” So the Celtics suffered their first-ever Game 7 defeat at the Garden, with the Knicks beating an aging Lakers team in the Finals. That trophy belonged to Boston; considering Hondo played 1,442 of a possible 1,475 games (including playoffs), the fact that his only major injury in sixteen seasons happened at that specific point in time ranks among the biggest flukes in NBA history. When an over-the-hill Celtics team stumbled into the ’76 title, it was almost like the NBA gods were paying them back for robbing them in ’73.
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Just know this was the only fluky post-shot-clock injury that almost definitely swung a title. Do the ’58 Celtics beat the Hawks if Russell didn’t sprain his ankle early in the series? Maybe … but we don’t know. Do the ’88 Pistons topple the Lakers if Isiah doesn’t sprain an ankle in the third quarter of Game 6? Maybe … but the Lakers still had home court in Games 6 and 7 (and Magic and Worthy in their primes). Do the ’87 Celtics beat the Lakers if McHale didn’t break his foot? Do the ’83 Lakers hang with Philly if Worthy didn’t break his leg? Could the ’04 Lakers have held off Detroit if Karl Malone didn’t hurt his knee? Do the ’85 Celtics beat the Lakers if Bird didn’t injure his shooting hand in a bar
fight?
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Would the ’03 Mavs have won a title if Nowitzki didn’t get hurt? What about the ’99 Knicks with Ewing? Could the ’96 Magic have hung with the Bulls if Horace Grant didn’t get hurt in the first half of Game 1? Could the ’62 Sixers have beaten Boston if Wilt didn’t injure his hand trying to punch Tommy Heinsohn (and hitting a teammate instead)? There are no definitive answers. We don’t know. With the ’73 Celtics, we know: they had the best team, the best player (Hondo) and the reigning MVP (Dave Cowens). Even getting half a series from Hondo (and 40 percent of Hondo when he played), that series still went seven. What does that tell you?

22. What if Wilt ended up on the Lakers instead of the Sixers in 1965?

We covered this story in the Wilt-Russell chapter. (And by “we,” I mean me.)
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Yup, Wilt, Elgin, and Jerry could have become teammates four years sooner than it actually happened. And it didn’t happen for a remarkable reason. Forget about the potential playoff ramifications; can you imagine how much damage Wilt would have done in Hollywood in his sexual prime? He would have been throwing his cock around like it was a boomerang. I’m almost positive that Elizabeth Taylor and Raquel Welch would have been clunked in the face with it. That probably happened anyway. Let’s just move on.

21. What if Kobe signed with the Clippers in 2004?

The Clippers fervently believed Kobe was coming—remember, this was the same summer when Kobe was getting blamed by everyone for pushing out Shaq and Phil Jackson—until he broke their hearts by changing course at the last minute. Other than the Lakers offering an extra year and slightly more money, was anything else offered to help stop Kobe from joining a younger and more talented Clippers team? Are the rumors true that the Lakers illegally promised Kobe a postretirement piece of the Lakers?
²⁹
Were the Lakers reluctant to pursue Kobe offers before the ’08 season because of something promised during those ’04 negotiations? It’s all hypothetical, and we’ll never know for sure until Kobe retires and we learn if he earned the Magic Johnson Memorial Ownership Discount from Dr. Buss. But everyone working for the Clippers feels like
something
happened to trump their offer beyond the dollar figures. They just don’t know what.
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Regardless, this was the biggest moment in Clippers history, the time they came within a hair of stealing Kobe and completely changing the face of pro basketball in Los Angeles as we knew it. The second biggest moment was when they signed Bill Walton … who played 167 games in six years and topped 55 once. The third happened in the second round of the ’06 playoffs, needing one stop to secure the series, when Mike Dunleavy stuck an ice-cold rookie named Daniel Ewing on Raja Bell and blew their one chance at an extended playoff run. The fourth was when they lost a deciding Game 5 in 1990 and ESPN Classic showed the game fifteen years later. (That’s right, the Clips on ESPN Classic!) The fifth was a five-way tie between the times Marques Johnson, Derek Smith, Norm Nixon, Shaun Livingston, and Danny Manning blew out their knees. And the sixth was when I nearly made a half-court shot at a Clippers game for
E:60.
Not a fun three decades for the Clips in California.

20. What if the Lakers picked Dominique Wilkins over James Worthy in the 1982 draft?

The defending champs were picking first thanks to a head-scratching trade with Cleveland.
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Desperately needing young blood at the forward spot, the Lakers lucked into the perfect draft for that wish list—Worthy, Terry Cummings and ’Nique went one-two-three—ultimately opting for Worthy’s all-around excellence and experience over ’Nique’s upside and explosiveness.
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You know what’s surprising? This wasn’t a popular choice at the time. NBA fans were drooling at the thought of ’Nique (one of the most thrilling college players ever to that point) running the wing with Magic, Nixon and the Showtime Lakers. But an unhappy Wilkins could have imploded them and the Lakers didn’t want to take the chance; he didn’t help his cause by refusing to play for the Clips (picking second) or Jazz (picking third). Knowing what we know now, it’s just far-fetched to imagine ’Nique giving up shots, deferring to Kareem and breaking a sweat on defense. Then again, maybe Riley and Magic could have changed his ways (after all, they salvaged McAdoo’s career and he was infinitely more selfish than ’Nique), and had they done so, the ceiling of those Showtime Lakers teams climbs a level because ’Nique was such an electric player and unstoppable scorer. Beyond that, Magic would have made him better and they might have broken the record for Most Alley-Oops That Brought the House Down. Shit, we might have spent 1985 to 1993 having Jordan-Dominique arguments that centered around “Who’s better?” instead of “Who’s a better dunker?”

Had the Lakers taken Wilkins, his career would have been remembered differently: either better or worse, but definitely not the same. We can agree on that. We can also agree that Worthy would have been the big loser here: the Clippers would have taken him second, then Utah would have
taken Cummings third because he could play both forward spots (in fact, they took Thurl Bailey the next year for the same reason). Instead, Worthy went first, Cummings went second and poor Utah had to trade number three to Atlanta for John Drew, Freeman Williams and $750,000 in a deal that seemed awful even before Drew entered rehab a few months later and admitted he’d been freebasing for three solid years. (Way to do your homework, Utah!) Has there ever been a best-case/worst-case draft scenario that rivals James Worthy landing on the ’83 Lakers instead of the ’83 Clippers? Instead of winning three rings, a Finals MVP and NBA’s 50 at 50 honors, he would have joined a woeful Clippers team, fallen prey to the Clippers jinx, blown out his knee in twenty-nine places within three years and missed every one of Magic Johnson’s postgame Laker orgies. We never would have uttered the words “Big Game James.” Ever.
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19. What if Atlanta took Chris Paul with the number two pick of the 2005 draft?

We knew this was an Aretha Franklin-sized mistake at the time because Paul was the best player in the ’05 draft and, more importantly,
Atlanta desperately needed a point guard
!
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But with Paul turning into a franchise guy and Evolutionary Isiah, it’s slowly becoming the poor man’s version of Bowie-over-MJ for this generation of hoop fans, a relatively inexplicable decision that became between ten and twenty times more inexplicable as the years passed. With the supporting talent the Hawks already had in place (Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, etc.), you couldn’t pick a better team for him. You really couldn’t.
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It’s safe to say CP3 will be haunting Atlanta fans for years to come. All 527 of them.

But here’s what we haven’t made enough of …

18. What if Portland took Chris Paul with the number three pick?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh … you forgot about this one, huh? Portland sent that pick to Utah for the number six pick (Martell Webster), the number twenty-seven pick (Linus Kleiza) and a 2006 number one (the number thirty pick, Joel Freeland). So let’s say the Blazers had just kept number three and picked Paul, which would have made sense because, you know, he was the best player in the draft and all. They’re still a lottery team the following season, although probably not quite as bad; maybe they end up with Rudy Gay at number eight instead of Aldridge at number four. They’re definitely better in ’07, maybe a fringe playoff team, so let’s take Oden away from them and give them the number twelve pick (Thaddeus Young) that year. So which foundation would you rather have if you’re a Portland fan?

Scenario A: Oden, Aldridge, Webster, Roy, Travis Outlaw, Jarrett Jack, Joel Przybilla, the rights to Rudy Fernandez and Paul Allen’s billions

Scenario B: Paul, Roy, Gay, Outlaw, Przybilla, Jack, Young, the rights to Rudy Fernandez and Paul Allen’s billions