In the 1984 NBA draft, the Houston Rockets chose future Hall of Famer Akeem Olajuwon first overall. Portland used the second pick on Sam Bowie, whose career was marred by injuries, over a player who would completely redefine the sport of basketball. (Just to rub it in further, Charles Barkley and John Stockton were also available.)
It's easy to look back and say that was a terrible decision. But what did people think at the time? Was there a serious argument about whether Bowie or Jordan would be the better player (as with the Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf debate years later) or was there a consensus from the start that Portland picked the wrong guy?
You can find a few articles online if you want a refresher. Here is one. Here is another.
But to sum it up:
I'll talk more about the final point. Oden had multiple red flags going into the draft. He was huge, and he suffered from a physical anomoly which made one leg shorter than another. There was no world where a player of his size would be able to play NBA level basketball at a healthy rate. But this was almost completely ignored in the leadup to the NBA draft.
Just look at Embiid. He has lost so much time to injuries. But that didn't scare the 76ers. And now he is widely regarded as one of, if not the, best centers in the NBA.
You can definitely argue that Jordan was an otherworldy athlete coming out of college. And you'd be correct. So it was never going to be a smart decision. Obviously taking Jordan and trading Paxson at his best value for a center would have been a better overall move. And drafting a huge center with leg injury history is pretty dumb. But as stated, even just a decade ago, teams were ignoring pre-draft red flags for raw talent.
If you want draft testimonials from that far back, I don't have them for you. If someone else out there has better search skills than I, I would love to read some of the expert takes on the draft.
One thing you have to understand is that basketball philosophy was that at that time, dominant centers were the name of the game. You got your championships with someone like Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and guys like Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon were the player type that teams were salivating over. You ran your team through a dominant rim protector on defense who could also bully people down low on offense. After all, someone can score a lot easier if they're taller than everyone , and two feet away from the basket, right? Three point shooting was considered a novelty. Wing players were essential, but not dominant. Ball handlers like Magic Johnson and Big Centers like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were considered the most important. Everything else was just filler.
The Blazers, who only 7 years before, won a championship through a dominant center in Bill Walton, thought Bowie was the perfect piece to take them over the edge. Consider that they were 48-34 in the season before the draft and ended up with the 2nd pick through a stroke of luck through a trade made 3 years prior. And then consider that the Blazlers only the year before drafted Clyde Drexler, who ended up being a Hall of Fame player in his own right, playing at Jordan's position of shooting guard. They were a relatively complete team, who lost a heartbreaker in the first round of the playoffs against a Suns team who, while relatively worse on paper, had guys like Larry Nance, a center who was 4th in blocks that year. The Blazers had one glazing weakness, and it was a dominant big man.
So by positional value and considering the Blazers needs at the time, it seemed like a no-brainer. While no one would say that Bowie was a better athlete than Jordan, his positional value made him much more important to both the Blazers and general NBA thinking at the time. And keep in mind that Bowie's NBA career derailed because of injuries, some of which he admits that he lied to Portland about:
"I can still remember them taking a little mallet, and when they would hit me on my left tibia, and 'I don't feel anything' I would tell 'em. But deep down inside, it was hurting. If what I did was lying and what I did was wrong, at the end of the day, when you have loved ones that have some needs, I did what any of us would have done."
That is a direct quote from the ESPN documentary "Going Big". And it is something to consider, because it at first looked like the Sam Bowie experiment was working! When people talk about Sam Bowie the bust, they need to talk about his injury history first and foremost, because he wasn't a half bad player on the court. Bowie was 3rd in blocks his rookie year. While the Blazers took a step back in record, they were able to make it further in the playoffs than they had the previous year. They had a promising forward/guard duo of Kiki Vanderweghe and Clyde Drexler and a promising front court duo of Sam Bowie and Mychal Thompson with Jim Paxson as point guard. If Bowie's injury concerns didn't spring up (which again, the Blazers were essentially lied to about), that team would be primed to win a championship even if Bowie wasn't as good as Jordan was. The late 80s/early 90s Blazers teams are some of the best to ever play in the NBA, with the caveat being they never won a championship. If Bowie lived up to potential, it is worth considering that we are not even having this conversation.
The 1984 NBA draft was filled with intrigue based on coin flips, potential trades, and other potential scenarios. The Bulls wanted a center, and considered trading down for one for other teams. The conventional thought was that Jordan was athletic as could be, would be a great NBA player, but not a generational talent. Remember, as of the early 80s, you don't win with wings, you wing with centers. But lots of teams loved Jordan and were calling Chicago for the 3rd pick. In the end, the Bulls hemmed and hawed at other teams offering deals for Jordan, and they eventually said no, Jordan was someone they were comfortable with drafting.
Here is Bulls beat writer Sam Smith (author of the best selling book "The Jordan Rules") on the 1984 NBA draft:
“He isn’t going to turn a franchise around,” I remember Bulls GM Rod Thorn saying at the time. “He’s a very good offensive player, but not an overpowering offensive player.”
In fact, lets not act like the Bulls were some geniuses here. They got extremely lucky as well. They were not exactly over the moon when they drafted Jordan. A contemporary article from a critical Chicago Tribune opinion writer on June 20, 1984 gives some insight as to what exactly the Bulls were telling fans when they drafted Jordan. Ignore the commentary if you want (it’s nothing special, just shock jock hot takes) but focus on the quotes
“We wish he were seven feet, but he isn’t,” said Bulls general manager Rod Thorn. “There just wasn’t a center available,” said Thorn. “What can you do?”
"When you win only 55 games in two years," said Thorn, "you don't get well all at once. Look, when Isiah Thomas went to Detroit, he improved them but it took two years to make the playoffs.We’ve taken a step in the right direction. Jordan isn't going to turn this franchise around. I wouldn't ask him to. I wouldn't put that kind of pressure on him."
"If we had our choice between Bowie and Jordan," said Thorn, "we would still have taken Jordan. But Olajuwon was the big prize."
So basically, the Bulls were pleading for fans to be patient after drafting Jordan. As in the Bulls saw him as a piece of a potential championship team, but not the dominant center they were promising fans all year. Only after the 1984 Olympics, which Jordan was a part of, transpired and Bobby Knight (legendary Indiana University coach) started singing his praises, did the narrative on Jordan change. He was now the shining new star and the Bulls had convinced themselves they had found an amazing player. But no one saw him becoming what he did, and it changed the NBA.
Already by the 1980s there was an argument over whether you draft for talent or for position. Jordan was already identified as a potentially superlative talent, but it was a position where Portland was already stacked. They had picked up Clyde “the Glide” Drexler the year before. So they already had arguably the second best player of all time at Jordan’s position, a future Hall of Famer and ten time all star. And Drexler was backed up by several good to great shooting guards and small forwards.
In 1984 Portland was small, fast, and accurate. Consensus was that what they needed was a big man to dominate the paint and the boards. Everyone identified Hakeem Olajuwon as the best center in the draft. So it’s no surprise that he went with the first pick. Among the remaining centers Bowie really did have the best stats, and he had just come off a final four game where, although Kentucky lost, Bowie had won the fight against Patrick Ewing. Statistically for the three years he played Bowie produced very good numbers; he had 13.4 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.3 blocks, and 1.4 assists per game for Kentucky.
And the Blazers did fairly well with Bowie that first year. He made the All-Rookie squad. And Portland was only knocked out by the eventual NBA champion Lakers. His stats against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Olajuwon in 84-85 are illustrative.
GP GS MPG FG% 3P% FT% RPG APG SPG BPG PPG B 76 62 29.2 .537 .000 .711 8.6 2.8 .7 2.7 10.0 A-J 79 79 33.3 .599 .000 .732 7.9 3.2 .8 2.1 22.0 O 82 82 35.5 .538 — .613 11.9 1.4 1.2 2.7 20.6
Abdul-Jabbar was getting more assists and (a lot) more points, but Bowie got more rebounds and blocks. Bowie beat Olajuwon in assists and blocks. Statistically Bowie in his first season provided more or less what the Blazers were hoping for.
Portland had every reason to think that Bowie could be a perennial all-star. In retrospect his injuries never let him live up to his potential. But the potential was there.
As far a media or analysis of the draft, people didn’t do critical breakdowns to quite the same degree as they do today. I can find a fair number of archived articles noting who drafted who. But nothing grading or rating the draft. No one at the time seemed to be shocked by the choice.
As a side note, it should be pointed out how firmly the Blazers were focused on big men. They never seriously considered Jordan. Bowie was flown up for 7 hours of exams, workouts and interviews. Jordan didn’t go to Portland at all. Had they decided Bowie was going to be injury prone and pass on Bowie, they intended to go with Charles Barkley, who was the third big man on their draft board.
