In struggle and sports Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/ywp4Ch
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165610/how-most-lopsided-trade-nba-history-explains-world
When you study the rosters of all 30 National Basketball Association teams or even casually watch a game, you find yourself facing two stubborn facts: 1 - Every team possesses an international mosaic of talent. 2 – The last All-Star produced by the high schools of New York City is 32 years old and just changed his name to Metta World Peace.
Calling hoops “the city game”, as Pete Axthelm did 40 years ago, only makes sense if the city is Barcelona. Two decades of globalization alongside the crumbling of our urban infrastructure has dramatically altered who we see on the court. If there was one moment that represents both the birth and brutal pathos of this process, it was draft day 1998 when two teams took part in what must be seen as the most lopsided trade in NBA history. That was when a Michigan Wolverine superstar born and raised in inner-city Detroit, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, was sent from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Dallas Mavericks for a skinny teenager from a place called Wurzburg, Germany named Dirk Nowitzki, and role player Pat Garrity. Now Dirk is considered the best player on earth and Robert Traylor is dead, passing away earlier this year from a heart attack at the tender age of 34.
It’s unbelievable that these two folks were traded for one another. But equally unbelievable is that this was seen as a steal for the Milwaukee Bucks. Then CNN/SI scribe Dan Shanoff wrote at the time, “After trading away No. 4 draft-pick Stephon Marbury last year, the Bucks get it right in ’98 by stealing the marketable and talented Robert Traylor from the Mavs for an overhyped foreign prospect.”
I asked Dan Shanoff about this ill-fated prediction this week, and he said, "Looking back, I am mostly appalled at my simple-minded analysis and implicit xenophobia. Projecting (and developing) draft picks into Hall of Famers demands imagination that Don Nelson and Mark Cuban clearly had and I lacked. I also didn't account for the maniacal dedication that Dirk would put in to honing his craft. It is perhaps the ultimate irony that as my 5-year-old son became aware of basketball this past spring, he announced that Dirk was his favorite player. Nowitzki's talents are that obvious. I only wish I could have understood that back then."
We can laugh, scoff, or shake our heads at Dan Shanoff, but his analysis wasn’t a wild statement by any stretch. They represented my thoughts at the time along with most observers. But in hindsight it’s now clear that this deal was more than the most lopsided trade in hoops history. It was a "canary in the coal mine" for the way the game and the world has changed over the last 15 years.
The Dirk story is now well known. From Wurzburg, Germany, the 19 year old blew up in pre-draft workouts and, despite having the muscle tone of a baby deer, became the object of numerous team’s affections, including the Celtics (who had to “settle” that year for Paul Pierce.) But in the shadow of Dream Team I and II and the utter domination of “our guys” at the Olympics, the conventional wisdom was that Euro players were too weak, too fragile, and basically too lame to make it on the big stage. A soft seven-foot jump shooter? Not in this man's league.
The Traylor story is less known. He averaged 16 points and 10 boards as a junior at Michigan, and was the Big Ten Tournament MVP. His freshman year, “the Tractor “ tore down a rim and made it look easy. With the sweet charisma of a gentle giant, Traylor was in a national sneaker ad before his first pro game. He was “Big Man”, “Barkley, Jr.,” and any nickname that speaks to those rare players whose baby fat makes them magically aerodynamic. Traylor, as Shanoff wrote, was seen as a “can’t miss”: the Big 10 Superstar with the big league body.
But Traylor’s body didn’t go from baby fat to Baby Shaq. Instead he battled obesity throughout his career. He also battled income tax evasion charges that ended in a conviction for hiding the money of his cousin, a convicted drug dealer, But Traylor's greatest obstacle wasn’t weight, taxes, or scandal. It was his production on the court. In 438 NBA games, Traylor averaged 5 points and 4 rebounds. He then bounced across the globe, playing for professional teams from Turkey to Puerto Rico. It was in Puerto Rico when Traylor was talking on the phone with his wife when, she thought, the line disconnected. Unable to reach him again, she called team officials who found him dead of a heart attack.
It was remarked by those who knew Traylor that this cause of death was painfully ironic, given his generous heart. ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who is from Detroit, wrote, “He was generous to a fault. Traylor, like a lot of promising, black athletes from troubled backgrounds, never learned to say, ‘no.’ He received three years probation after he admitted he prepared a false tax return that hid the assets of his cousin, Quasand Lewis, a convicted drug dealer. He squandered a lot of his NBA millions, admitting in a 2009 Detroit Free Press story that he once took care of as many as 20 friends and family.”
Traylor was the guy from the projects who’s bigger, stronger, and faster than everyone else and is pegged for the NBA from the time he walked onto a court. Everyone told him that he would be a star, that the money would always be there, and that he had to take care of his friends at all costs. He also, even in Detroit, had the inner-city infrastructure, from youth leagues to avid boosters, that gave him a path to the League. Dirk was a skinny kid who had no justification to believe that a beanpole from Germany could ever be hailed as the best in the game. For several years other GM’s watched Dallas, and dipped one toe in the water, thinking the game’s globalization might just be a mirage.
Now the league is filled with badass players from across the earth. It’s also filled with Dirk imitators, born both inside and outside the states: seven footers who rain jumpers for days. It says a great deal that arguably the league’s best player, Kevin Durant, plays like Dirk and is from the Maryland suburbs. Rough, rugged, and raw rebounders like Traylor, with a little meat on their middle are in very short supply. As for Detroit, the attacks on the city's union and non-union workers has never missed a beat, and it's spent 15 years as victim of every neoliberal "shock therapy" on the populace. Last year, it was named the United States’s “most stressful city” by virtue of being in the top 10 for murders, robberies, poverty, and, yes, heart attacks. Brutal cuts to city programs has also meant that extracurricular activities, exercise, and for some, opportunity, have become casualties of “the new normal.” As we spend this shortened season celebrating Dirk, let’s also remember Robert Traylor and the way this one trade marked a fork in the road toward a very different NBA: a different NBA that reflects they way our world has changed and left many behind.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Showing posts with label Basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basketball. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
N.B.A. Lockout: Can Players Save Owners from Themselves?
Dave Zirin
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/07/nba-lockout-can-players-save-owners.html
National Basketball Association players, like their N.F.L. counterparts, have now been “locked out” by team owners, putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy. But other than the presence of a lot of very angry athletes, there are few similarities between the two conflicts. In the N.F.L., the owners want a longer season and even higher profit margins. They claim future losses but refuse to open their books and prove it.
The situation in the N.B.A. is a much stinkier kettle of fish. The N.B.A. just completed its most profitable season ever. Driven by fan interest around LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Miami Heat, among other attractions, the league pulled in a record $4.3 billion in revenue. Last off-season, $2.5 billion was spent on contracts. Attendance was the fifth-highest total in league history. Despite all of this, twenty-two of the thirty teams in the league claim to have lost money this past season. And Commissioner David Stern has opened the books to prove it to the player’s union.
It’s all very bizarre. How can record profits and financial hardship coëxist?
One answer is the economy. Owners are getting less in public subsidies than had been projected before the bottom dropped out in 2008. But the true answer lies in understanding the mindset of the typical N.B.A. owner, many of whom seem to have the impulse control of an Adderall addict armed with a lighter in a fireworks store. The league-wide losses, which Stern pegs at $200 million, can be put at the feet of awful contracts that teams have given older players. It’s guaranteed money that has to be paid long after a player’s value has expired.
To take one example: the highest paid player in the N.B.A. next year won’t be LeBron, Kobe, Dirk, or any of the icons that rule the league. It’ll be Rashard Lewis, a player who was signed to a $118 million contract four years ago with Orlando and never earned that kind of money on the court. (He’s no longer even with the team, having been traded to Washington.) The owners argue that there is no mechanism for them to “get out” from under these kinds of bad contracts. Yet no one put a gun to their heads when they offered this money in the past.
The owners want the union to agree to a hard salary cap enforced across the league, “guaranteed profits for each team,” and the freedom to escape from these lousy contracts. In other words, they want the union to help them exercise the fiscal discipline they are unable to exert themselves.
Atlanta Hawks center Etan Thomas said to me yesterday as the lockout loomed that “most union negotiations start from the existing contract. David Stern has started from the point of a fantasy Christmas list. No guaranteed contracts. A hard salary cap. Drastic concessions. Guaranteed profits … as if we have control over the broader economy. We have been open to renegotiating how we divide revenue. But instead they showed up with this Christmas list of anti-union wishes that would have hurt not just players but the game of basketball.”
Thomas makes the point that if the owners most fevered wishes come true, teams will have a couple of superstar players that make a fortune and then ten guys fighting over the crumbs. “Basketball without a middle class is a game where people are playing selfishly, trying to pad their stats at the expense of the team because there is no security,” he said.
Since the last lockout, in 1999, the conventional wisdom has been that players would always lose labor conflicts because time is not on their side. They need to play when their bodies are in their primes. (Owners have more ability to wait it out.) Or some people have suggested that players lead the kinds of profligate lifestyles that demand consistent game checks. But this time it seems different. This current crop of players, faced with a lockout, have adopted a resolute determination not seen in decades.
Fifty players showed up to negotiations last week wearing the same bright yellow T-shirt that read “STAND.” David Stern was not amused, but the players are solid.
As Derek Fisher, president of the National Basketball Player’s Association, said, “We will not accept a bad deal that is not fair to our players. We’d love to avoid a lockout, but we are unified in the sense of not being afraid if that’s what we’re faced with.”
Etan Thomas also described to me how schooled the younger players are on the game’s past. “There’s a stereotype that athletes don’t know their history,” he said. “But I talk to these guys and they know about Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Spencer Haywood. They know about the players who refused to take the court for the 1964 All-Star Game unless the union would be recognized. They all paved the way and fought for this league to reach the level it is now, and we respect that. We cannot take all of their hard work and throw it down the drain.”
For hoops fans, we should hope that the National Labor Review Board ends the lockout, per the request of the N.B.P.A., that the two sides pound out a long-term deal, and that owners start to practice the very self-discipline that the league preaches to its players. That would truly, to use the playground vernacular, be money.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/07/nba-lockout-can-players-save-owners.html
National Basketball Association players, like their N.F.L. counterparts, have now been “locked out” by team owners, putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy. But other than the presence of a lot of very angry athletes, there are few similarities between the two conflicts. In the N.F.L., the owners want a longer season and even higher profit margins. They claim future losses but refuse to open their books and prove it.
The situation in the N.B.A. is a much stinkier kettle of fish. The N.B.A. just completed its most profitable season ever. Driven by fan interest around LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Miami Heat, among other attractions, the league pulled in a record $4.3 billion in revenue. Last off-season, $2.5 billion was spent on contracts. Attendance was the fifth-highest total in league history. Despite all of this, twenty-two of the thirty teams in the league claim to have lost money this past season. And Commissioner David Stern has opened the books to prove it to the player’s union.
It’s all very bizarre. How can record profits and financial hardship coëxist?
One answer is the economy. Owners are getting less in public subsidies than had been projected before the bottom dropped out in 2008. But the true answer lies in understanding the mindset of the typical N.B.A. owner, many of whom seem to have the impulse control of an Adderall addict armed with a lighter in a fireworks store. The league-wide losses, which Stern pegs at $200 million, can be put at the feet of awful contracts that teams have given older players. It’s guaranteed money that has to be paid long after a player’s value has expired.
To take one example: the highest paid player in the N.B.A. next year won’t be LeBron, Kobe, Dirk, or any of the icons that rule the league. It’ll be Rashard Lewis, a player who was signed to a $118 million contract four years ago with Orlando and never earned that kind of money on the court. (He’s no longer even with the team, having been traded to Washington.) The owners argue that there is no mechanism for them to “get out” from under these kinds of bad contracts. Yet no one put a gun to their heads when they offered this money in the past.
The owners want the union to agree to a hard salary cap enforced across the league, “guaranteed profits for each team,” and the freedom to escape from these lousy contracts. In other words, they want the union to help them exercise the fiscal discipline they are unable to exert themselves.
Atlanta Hawks center Etan Thomas said to me yesterday as the lockout loomed that “most union negotiations start from the existing contract. David Stern has started from the point of a fantasy Christmas list. No guaranteed contracts. A hard salary cap. Drastic concessions. Guaranteed profits … as if we have control over the broader economy. We have been open to renegotiating how we divide revenue. But instead they showed up with this Christmas list of anti-union wishes that would have hurt not just players but the game of basketball.”
Thomas makes the point that if the owners most fevered wishes come true, teams will have a couple of superstar players that make a fortune and then ten guys fighting over the crumbs. “Basketball without a middle class is a game where people are playing selfishly, trying to pad their stats at the expense of the team because there is no security,” he said.
Since the last lockout, in 1999, the conventional wisdom has been that players would always lose labor conflicts because time is not on their side. They need to play when their bodies are in their primes. (Owners have more ability to wait it out.) Or some people have suggested that players lead the kinds of profligate lifestyles that demand consistent game checks. But this time it seems different. This current crop of players, faced with a lockout, have adopted a resolute determination not seen in decades.
Fifty players showed up to negotiations last week wearing the same bright yellow T-shirt that read “STAND.” David Stern was not amused, but the players are solid.
As Derek Fisher, president of the National Basketball Player’s Association, said, “We will not accept a bad deal that is not fair to our players. We’d love to avoid a lockout, but we are unified in the sense of not being afraid if that’s what we’re faced with.”
Etan Thomas also described to me how schooled the younger players are on the game’s past. “There’s a stereotype that athletes don’t know their history,” he said. “But I talk to these guys and they know about Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Spencer Haywood. They know about the players who refused to take the court for the 1964 All-Star Game unless the union would be recognized. They all paved the way and fought for this league to reach the level it is now, and we respect that. We cannot take all of their hard work and throw it down the drain.”
For hoops fans, we should hope that the National Labor Review Board ends the lockout, per the request of the N.B.P.A., that the two sides pound out a long-term deal, and that owners start to practice the very self-discipline that the league preaches to its players. That would truly, to use the playground vernacular, be money.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Stern-Cold: Losing the N.B.A.
Dave Zirin
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/04/david-stern-nba.html
“I don’t know where you were raised, but I lived with rats. I used to kill rats. We had a .22 rifle and we would lay in the kitchen and shoot them on the floor. One thing my grandmother taught me was that if you got a rat trapped, you’ve got to give his ass a way out, because he will fight you if he has to. If you don’t give us a way out, a chance for a compromise, you’re going to get a fight.” An American labor leader made the previous statement last month. It wasn’t a Teamster, United Autoworkers official, or anyone from the public-sector battles in the Midwest. The union in question is the National Basketball Players Association, and the man who promised “a fight” was their executive director, Billy Hunter.
Hunter was referring to the stalled negotiations over a new collective-bargaining agreement for the N.B.A. The current labor deal expires at the end of June; if no progress is made before then—and there hasn’t been much in several months—the league could join the N.F.L. as the second major American sports league whose players (and, of course, fans) are locked out.
There is an extra lacquer of anger and mistrust in the N.B.A. because of the particular commissioner with whom Billy Hunter is negotiating: David Stern. For thirty years, Stern has been arguably the most successful commissioner in all of sports. Having Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan in his league certainly helped, but Stern has taken the N.B.A. from a second-tier attraction to a global phenomenon. In recent years, however, another, utterly implacable side of Stern has emerged.
Fans in the greater Seattle area, who didn’t want to spend three hundred million dollars on a new, publicly funded stadium and lost their team, are familiar with Stern’s vindictive side. (The Sonics were moved to Oklahoma City, where they are now the Thunder.) But never has Stern seemed as unbending, isolated, or arrogant as he does now. Players are warned; complaining coaches are silenced; and negotiating partners are enemies.
Stern, speaking to a room full of N.B.A. stars during All-Star weekend, reportedly said that he knew where “the bodies are buried” in the league—presumably because he had buried some of them himself. “It was shocking,” the Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose told Yahoo! Sports. “I was taking off my gear, and when he said that, I just stopped and thought, ‘Whoa…’ I couldn’t believe that he said it.”
Then, on April 7th, the N.B.A. referees union announced that they were complaining to the National Labor Relations Board that Stern and the N.B.A. had violated federal law by engaging in unfair labor practices. Their filing includes accusations relating to an “obscene expression” that Stern directed at union negotiators in a January 24th meeting. According to the report, Stern stormed out of the meeting in a rage when the stenographer refused to take his obscenity out of the record.
And there’s the tale of Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. When Van Gundy told reporters that Stern doesn’t allow dissenting opinions, the commissioner responded, “We won’t be hearing from him for the rest of the season.” He then said of Van Gundy, “I see somebody whose team isn’t performing, whose star player was suspended, who seems to be fraying.”
Most fans could care less about Stern’s attitude—but his state of mind is a problem for the sport of basketball. If he’s not willing to negotiate in a way that shows respect, then there likely won’t be a season in 2011. Stern is pursuing a strategy similar to the one N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell has adopted: demanding wage cuts and claiming financial hardship, while offering players, at best, a limited look at the books. But Stern’s demands extend further. Stern and the owners also want teams to be able to retain players at their discretion, even if their contracts have run their course. This would effectively end free agency and turn back the clock on sports labor relations by decades.
“That’s a dealbreaker,” Billy Hunter told me. “I’m dead set against it, and most players would be as well. This would oppress players. Why was free agency fought for and achieved? You take that away if you have a franchise player tag. We will be just as adamant as not accepting it as we would about not accepting a hard salary cap…. If they continue to put forth the same demands, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation as the N.F.L.P.A.”—the football players, who are still locked out.
In a season where ratings and interest are up, and players like Chicago’s Rose and the L.A. Clippers’ forward Blake Griffin are leaving a new generation of fans breathless, David Stern is practicing his own version of the extreme austerity. But, just as there are no schools without teachers and no fire stations without firefighters, there is no league without the players. No one buys an N.B.A. ticket to watch David Stern. This seems to be a reality he has forgotten—no matter where the bodies are buried.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2011/04/david-stern-nba.html
“I don’t know where you were raised, but I lived with rats. I used to kill rats. We had a .22 rifle and we would lay in the kitchen and shoot them on the floor. One thing my grandmother taught me was that if you got a rat trapped, you’ve got to give his ass a way out, because he will fight you if he has to. If you don’t give us a way out, a chance for a compromise, you’re going to get a fight.” An American labor leader made the previous statement last month. It wasn’t a Teamster, United Autoworkers official, or anyone from the public-sector battles in the Midwest. The union in question is the National Basketball Players Association, and the man who promised “a fight” was their executive director, Billy Hunter.
Hunter was referring to the stalled negotiations over a new collective-bargaining agreement for the N.B.A. The current labor deal expires at the end of June; if no progress is made before then—and there hasn’t been much in several months—the league could join the N.F.L. as the second major American sports league whose players (and, of course, fans) are locked out.
There is an extra lacquer of anger and mistrust in the N.B.A. because of the particular commissioner with whom Billy Hunter is negotiating: David Stern. For thirty years, Stern has been arguably the most successful commissioner in all of sports. Having Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan in his league certainly helped, but Stern has taken the N.B.A. from a second-tier attraction to a global phenomenon. In recent years, however, another, utterly implacable side of Stern has emerged.
Fans in the greater Seattle area, who didn’t want to spend three hundred million dollars on a new, publicly funded stadium and lost their team, are familiar with Stern’s vindictive side. (The Sonics were moved to Oklahoma City, where they are now the Thunder.) But never has Stern seemed as unbending, isolated, or arrogant as he does now. Players are warned; complaining coaches are silenced; and negotiating partners are enemies.
Stern, speaking to a room full of N.B.A. stars during All-Star weekend, reportedly said that he knew where “the bodies are buried” in the league—presumably because he had buried some of them himself. “It was shocking,” the Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose told Yahoo! Sports. “I was taking off my gear, and when he said that, I just stopped and thought, ‘Whoa…’ I couldn’t believe that he said it.”
Then, on April 7th, the N.B.A. referees union announced that they were complaining to the National Labor Relations Board that Stern and the N.B.A. had violated federal law by engaging in unfair labor practices. Their filing includes accusations relating to an “obscene expression” that Stern directed at union negotiators in a January 24th meeting. According to the report, Stern stormed out of the meeting in a rage when the stenographer refused to take his obscenity out of the record.
And there’s the tale of Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy. When Van Gundy told reporters that Stern doesn’t allow dissenting opinions, the commissioner responded, “We won’t be hearing from him for the rest of the season.” He then said of Van Gundy, “I see somebody whose team isn’t performing, whose star player was suspended, who seems to be fraying.”
Most fans could care less about Stern’s attitude—but his state of mind is a problem for the sport of basketball. If he’s not willing to negotiate in a way that shows respect, then there likely won’t be a season in 2011. Stern is pursuing a strategy similar to the one N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell has adopted: demanding wage cuts and claiming financial hardship, while offering players, at best, a limited look at the books. But Stern’s demands extend further. Stern and the owners also want teams to be able to retain players at their discretion, even if their contracts have run their course. This would effectively end free agency and turn back the clock on sports labor relations by decades.
“That’s a dealbreaker,” Billy Hunter told me. “I’m dead set against it, and most players would be as well. This would oppress players. Why was free agency fought for and achieved? You take that away if you have a franchise player tag. We will be just as adamant as not accepting it as we would about not accepting a hard salary cap…. If they continue to put forth the same demands, we are going to find ourselves in the same situation as the N.F.L.P.A.”—the football players, who are still locked out.
In a season where ratings and interest are up, and players like Chicago’s Rose and the L.A. Clippers’ forward Blake Griffin are leaving a new generation of fans breathless, David Stern is practicing his own version of the extreme austerity. But, just as there are no schools without teachers and no fire stations without firefighters, there is no league without the players. No one buys an N.B.A. ticket to watch David Stern. This seems to be a reality he has forgotten—no matter where the bodies are buried.
Dave Zirin is the author of “Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love” (Scribner) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin Named to Basketball Hall of Fame
Mason Levinson, Monday, April 4, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dennis-rodman-chris-mullin-named-to-basketball-hall-of-fame/2011/04/04/AFwLm3fC_story.html
(Bloomberg) -- Five-time National Basketball Association champion Dennis Rodman and five-time All-Star Chris Mullin were among 10 people named to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Former NBA players Artis Gilmore, Arvydas Sabonis and Tom “Satch” Sanders, longtime coach Tex Winter, college coaches Herb Magee and Tara VanDerveer, Women’s NBA player Teresa Edwards and Harlem Globetrotter Reece “Goose” Tatum also were elected, the museum announced at a televised news conference in Houston today prior to the college basketball men’s championship game.
They will be enshrined in the Springfield, Massachusetts- based Hall on Aug. 12.
Rodman won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls and two with the Detroit Pistons. He twice was named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year and seven times made the NBA’s All-Defensive first team.
“I feel kind of out of place because of some of the things I’ve done,” Rodman said at the news conference, citing his behavior. “They could have went the other direction, saying ‘You know, Dennis, some of the things you’ve done off the court is not conducive to the Hall of Fame.’”
Rodman, who was arrested numerous times during his 14-year NBA career, gained notoriety for numerous tattoos, multicolored hair and behavior such as wearing a wedding gown to promote his book and kicking a courtside cameraman.
“They saw a little bit about Dennis Rodman, as far as (being) a character person,” Rodman said.
Two Golds
Mullin was also a finalist last year. The two-time Olympic gold medalist had 17,911 points, 4,034 rebounds and 3,450 assists during a 17-year career for the Golden State Warriors’ franchise and the Indiana Pacers before retiring in 2001.
Mullin said he learned of his election this morning while on the West Coast.
“I actually went back to sleep, but I slept with a big smile on my face,” he said.
Winter coached in college and the pros from 1947 to 2006, winning nine NBA championships as an assistant. He is considered an innovator of the triangle offense, which both the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers used under Winter and Phil Jackson to claim league titles.
Magee, the coach at Division II Philadelphia University, is the career leader for wins at the same institution for any level of college basketball. He has won 922 games in 44 seasons at the school.
Sabonis, a center from Lithuania, was among the top international players in the world. He played for the Portland Trail Blazers from 1995-96 to 2002-03.
Points, Rebounds
Gilmore played in both the NBA and American Basketball Association, and was named to 11 All-Star Games. His 24,941 points ranks 20th all-time, while his 16,330 rebounds ranks fifth.
Sanders, elected as a contributor, played for the Boston Celtics from 1961 to 1969 and later coached the Celtics and Harvard University. Sanders helped form several NBA player- development programs.
Women’s committee selectees were Edwards and VanDerveer. Edwards was the first U.S. basketball player to participate in five Olympics, winning four gold medals and a bronze.
VanDerveer, who has led Stanford to two national women’s championships, was named this season’s collegiate coach of the year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. Over a 32- year career, VanDerveer has an 826-198 record.
Tatum, who died in 1967, was the original “clown prince” of the Globetrotters, who mix basketball with comedy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/dennis-rodman-chris-mullin-named-to-basketball-hall-of-fame/2011/04/04/AFwLm3fC_story.html
(Bloomberg) -- Five-time National Basketball Association champion Dennis Rodman and five-time All-Star Chris Mullin were among 10 people named to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Former NBA players Artis Gilmore, Arvydas Sabonis and Tom “Satch” Sanders, longtime coach Tex Winter, college coaches Herb Magee and Tara VanDerveer, Women’s NBA player Teresa Edwards and Harlem Globetrotter Reece “Goose” Tatum also were elected, the museum announced at a televised news conference in Houston today prior to the college basketball men’s championship game.
They will be enshrined in the Springfield, Massachusetts- based Hall on Aug. 12.
Rodman won three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls and two with the Detroit Pistons. He twice was named the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year and seven times made the NBA’s All-Defensive first team.
“I feel kind of out of place because of some of the things I’ve done,” Rodman said at the news conference, citing his behavior. “They could have went the other direction, saying ‘You know, Dennis, some of the things you’ve done off the court is not conducive to the Hall of Fame.’”
Rodman, who was arrested numerous times during his 14-year NBA career, gained notoriety for numerous tattoos, multicolored hair and behavior such as wearing a wedding gown to promote his book and kicking a courtside cameraman.
“They saw a little bit about Dennis Rodman, as far as (being) a character person,” Rodman said.
Two Golds
Mullin was also a finalist last year. The two-time Olympic gold medalist had 17,911 points, 4,034 rebounds and 3,450 assists during a 17-year career for the Golden State Warriors’ franchise and the Indiana Pacers before retiring in 2001.
Mullin said he learned of his election this morning while on the West Coast.
“I actually went back to sleep, but I slept with a big smile on my face,” he said.
Winter coached in college and the pros from 1947 to 2006, winning nine NBA championships as an assistant. He is considered an innovator of the triangle offense, which both the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers used under Winter and Phil Jackson to claim league titles.
Magee, the coach at Division II Philadelphia University, is the career leader for wins at the same institution for any level of college basketball. He has won 922 games in 44 seasons at the school.
Sabonis, a center from Lithuania, was among the top international players in the world. He played for the Portland Trail Blazers from 1995-96 to 2002-03.
Points, Rebounds
Gilmore played in both the NBA and American Basketball Association, and was named to 11 All-Star Games. His 24,941 points ranks 20th all-time, while his 16,330 rebounds ranks fifth.
Sanders, elected as a contributor, played for the Boston Celtics from 1961 to 1969 and later coached the Celtics and Harvard University. Sanders helped form several NBA player- development programs.
Women’s committee selectees were Edwards and VanDerveer. Edwards was the first U.S. basketball player to participate in five Olympics, winning four gold medals and a bronze.
VanDerveer, who has led Stanford to two national women’s championships, was named this season’s collegiate coach of the year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. Over a 32- year career, VanDerveer has an 826-198 record.
Tatum, who died in 1967, was the original “clown prince” of the Globetrotters, who mix basketball with comedy.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Basketball Hall of Fame Nominees
From LATimes.com:
"Chris Mullin and Dennis Rodman were among 12 finalists announced Friday for the 2011 class of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Mullin and Rodman join Maurice Cheeks, Ralph Sampson and Jamaal Wilkes as finalists among players. Coaches selected as finalists include Tex Winter, Dick Motta and Herb Magee, while contributors chosen were Al Attles and referee Hank Nichols. Finalists from the women's screening committee were Teresa Edwards and coach Tara VanDerveer.
Significant omissions from this year's finalists list include Reggie Miller and Don Nelson..."
Mullin, Rodman highlight Hall of Fame finalists
February 18, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sns-sn-nba-hall-final-021811,0,3955111.story
"Chris Mullin and Dennis Rodman were among 12 finalists announced Friday for the 2011 class of the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Mullin and Rodman join Maurice Cheeks, Ralph Sampson and Jamaal Wilkes as finalists among players. Coaches selected as finalists include Tex Winter, Dick Motta and Herb Magee, while contributors chosen were Al Attles and referee Hank Nichols. Finalists from the women's screening committee were Teresa Edwards and coach Tara VanDerveer.
Significant omissions from this year's finalists list include Reggie Miller and Don Nelson..."
Mullin, Rodman highlight Hall of Fame finalists
February 18, 2011
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sns-sn-nba-hall-final-021811,0,3955111.story
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