Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Pat Riley, OK, but what about Adrian Dantley
September 6, 2008 by James Edwards
Filed under Detroit Pistons, NBA Basketball
NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.
Adrian Dantley guarding Larry Bird
source newscom
Wow! That is all you can say about a Hall of Fame class including Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Pat Riley.
But for me there is a double Wow for Adrian Dantley.
Pat Riley had this story about Adrian Dantley and it says it best.
Dantley was playing for the Los Angeles Lakes in the late ’70s, and Riley was the traveling secretary.
It was Riley’s job to assign seating on planes, and he always sat Dantley next to the reticent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Dantley always wanted another seat, but Riley kept rejecting his request.
“He was the only guy who wasn’t scared of Kareem,” Riley said.
Adrian just had a knack for scoring that you can’t teach.
NBA Adrian Dantley factoid - Dantley led Notre Dame in scoring in 1974-75 (30.4 points per game) and 1975-76 (28.6 points per game), while also leading the team in rebounding those two seasons with marks of 10.2 and 10.1 rebounds per game, respectively. He was also the leading scorer on the 1976 US Olympic team that captured the gold medal in Montreal and was drafted sixth overall, by the Buffalo Braves, in the 1976 NBA draft. He became the third Buffalo player in five years to receive the NBA Rookie of the Year Award when he won it after the 1977 season.
Adrian played briefly for my Detroit Pistons (Ok, Bill Davidson is the owner, not me, and he is also going into the Hall of Fame, not me. Go figure, could have been me.).
The Pistons were in their glory years with Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, and Joe Dumars, but Adrian was so good offensively in the half court that the Pistons would be caught just standing around as Adrian stared his man down and then took off for the hoop with some amazing move that resulted in a basket or foul. The Pistons wanted to run more so Adrian was sent packing and an aging Mark Aguirre was brought in.
As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.
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