Okay, so this post isn’t quite as earth-shattering as the title would suggest, but is based on a book I just saw yesterday about the 1984 NBA Draft called Tip Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever, by Filip Bondy. I haven’t had a chance to go through it, but it looks interesting. It theorizes that the picks in the draft led to numerous changes across the board in the way the NBA handled the draft, including the institution of the NBA Draft Lottery the following year.
Of course, the 1995 NBA Draft changed a lot of things, too – that was the year Kevin Garnett was drafted fifth overall right out of high school. If you really want my opinion (which coincides with a lot of others’), the 1979-80 season really changed basketball forever – the first year Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were in the NBA. Anyway, the book looks like something I’ll have to pick up, after I get :07 Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin’ and Gunnin’ Phoenix Suns by Jack McCallum (um, isn’t the phrase “:07 Seconds” redundant?). Of course, the Suns make me want to get back into coaching ~a lot~, but that’s another blog.
The title of this post was just a lead-in to the fact that twenty-two years ago today, a kid named Michael Jordan was named NBA Rookie of the Year. Yup… that’s it. You read that whole paragraph above for just that little tidbit.
BTW, Dirk Nowitzki, though deserving, should’ve finished second behind Steve Nash for MVP honors. If you take Nowitzki off the Mavs and Nash off the Suns and replace them with relatively equivalent players at their positions, the Mavs are still way better off than the Suns. Nash IS the Suns… Oh well, as my dad would say, I don’t get a dollar either way.
The title of this post was just a lead-in to the fact that twenty-two years ago today, a kid named Michael Jordan was named NBA Rookie of the Year. Yup… that’s it. You read that whole paragraph above for just that little tidbit.
BTW, Dirk Nowitzki, though deserving, should’ve finished second behind Steve Nash for MVP honors. If you take Nowitzki off the Mavs and Nash off the Suns and replace them with relatively equivalent players at their positions, the Mavs are still way better off than the Suns. Nash IS the Suns… Oh well, as my dad would say, I don’t get a dollar either way.
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Quickly, today is actors’-birthdays day:
David Boreanaz, who starred in Joss Whedon’s Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and it’s spinoff, Angel, and who currently stars in Bones on FOX is 36.
Janet Jackson, of Good Times, Diff’rent Strokes, and Fame fame and Super Bowl XXXVIII infamy, is 41.
Debra Winger, the hottie in An Officer and a Gentleman (am I the only person who’s a bit underwhelmed by that movie?) and Terms of Endearment, is 52. She also played Drusilla/Wonder Girl in the old Wonder Woman TV show, and her voice was one of three electronically combined to create E.T.’s voice in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The other two voices are Pat Welsh (primary) and Steven Spielberg. Go figure. She’s also one of the ghouls in the Halloween sequence, wearing a monster mask and lab coat while carrying a poodle.
Pierce Brosnan, the fifth James Bond, turns 54. I actually remember him more as Remington Steele. Oh, and I do like him in The Thomas Crown Affair. His trivia fact: he started in show business as a fire-eater in the circus.
Non-actor birthday: tennis star Gabriela Sabatini is 37 today.
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