Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Thursday, October 07, 2004

On Monday I questioned Nancy Lieberman's statements that coach Thibault's was responsible for drafting Michael Jordan. I had always thought that Rod Thorn made that decision. In a WNBA.com chat yesterday, here's what Thibault had to say:

When I was with the Bulls I was an assistant coach and director of player personnell [sic] and along with Rod Thorn, I was involved in that choice. We had owners who wanted us to consider going for Sam Bowie, but Rod and I agreed that if we had to, we'd try and lock them in a closet so we could make the pick for Michael Jordan.

Credit Mike for setting the record straight. He doesn't take much credit -- he just says that he was "involved in that choice."

But there is something strange thing about his account.

He suggests that there was debate about taking Sam Bowie over Jordan, but Bowie was actually gone by the time the Bulls picked. In the 1984 NBA draft, the Rockets picked Olajuwan first, then the Blazers picked Bowie, then the Bulls picked Jordan. (The Bowie pick, of course, has gone down as one of the worst in league history. Portland missed not only Jordan but also Barkley and Stockton.)

So it's unclear what Thibault means when he says that the owners wanted to "go for" Bowie. Maybe he means that they considered some sort of trade with Portland (though, to my knowledge, that's never been reported before). Maybe he means that before the draft, some of the owners were pushing for Bowie, but that debate was mooted when their pick came around. Maybe he just doesn't remember that well.

Here is how Thorn has described that fateful draft:

That was a freak thing. Portland was in the lottery, and if they had won then Houston would have taken Michael, hands down. When Portland got the No. 2 pick, they had Clyde Drexler and Jim Paxson, and they felt they didn’t need another medium size player. They felt they needed a big guy, and if their doctor said that Sam Bowie was okay, they were going to take him. I knew that a month before the draft. Their doctor said he was okay, so they wound up taking him. I don’t think they even considered it.

I would have taken Olajuwon if I was No. 1. I don’t know how many teams were in the league then, 26, but everyone would have taken Olajuwon. I would have taken Jordan at No. 2 because I wasn’t a huge Sam Bowie fan and he had a broken leg. But by being No. 3, we fell into Jordan by circumstance.

No mention that they ever really thought about Bowie. And since they knew a month ahead of time that Portland was taking Bowie, it seems unlikely that anyone in the Bulls organization had thoughts of drafting him.

For more, see factcheck.com (just kidding, Dick).