Tilting at Windmills

Raise your glasses to half-full, y’all. It could be worse.

The Los Angeles junior varsity may have won the NBA draft lottery last night, but here’s hoping they do something stupid like not taking Blake with their first pick. Unfortunately for those of us who want to see Blake not only do well, but do it on a good, well-run team, we have to hope Blake falls to two or three. The Clips have a habit of not only making bad draft day decisions, but in the decisions they sometimes make in drafting good talent, they run it off.

Case(s) in point:

1985 – Benoit Benjamin, 3rd overall pick – You can go back almost 25 years to see horrible draft trends by this organization. Benjamin was picked third in 1985 behind Patrick Ewing and Wayman. He was never even remotely in the same class those guys, nor those drafted behind him – players such as Xavier McDaniel, Chris Mullin, Charles Oakley, The Mailman, Joe Dumars and Terry Porter. Benjamin played enough games for the Clips to be the franchise’s leading shot blocker, which is kind of like being the tallest guy at a midget convention.

1988 – Danny Manning, 1st overall pick – Maybe the Clips’ most productive first round pick, Manning ended up playing for five years in NBA Purgatory. Of course, owner Donald Sterling refused to put anything around him, so the Manning Clips sucked balls, which didn’t break a single Sooner heart.

1998 – Michael Olowokandi, 1st overall pick (the last time the Clips took the #1 pick) – Kandiman was a big, supposedly mobile guy out of Pacific U. That’s it. He’s widely considered to be the biggest bust in NBA history. LA owner Donald Sterling passed on Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, Mike Bibby and Rashard Lewis to take this stiff.

1999 – Lamar Odom, 4th overall pick. The Clips looked like they had a bonafide star when they took Odom out of Rhode Island. The 6’10″ softie averaged 17 ppg his first two years and the Clips put him with emerging stars like Andre Miller, Michael Olowokandi and eventually, bonafide playmaker Elton Brand. Odom liked the herb more than he liked his NBA paycheck, though, and the NBA suspended him in November 2001. In the offseason, the Clips didn’t even whimper when the Miami Heat picked him up. He started 80 games for the Heat, then was dealt to the Lakers as part of the Shaq deal. Now playing for the real LA team, Odom taunts the Clippers in the same arena where he used to roll blounts made out of Sterling’s pay stubs.

2000 – Darius Miles, 3rd overall pick. Miles went from high school in 2000 to NBA All-Rookie in 2001. The Clips rewarded him by letting him bolt after two years. Miles has bounced around with three different NBA franchises since then, his most productive years coming in Portland. His career is in jeopardy now since, after being suspended in 2008 for violating the league’s anti-drug program (read: weed), last week when the Memphis po-po asked what that console thing was in his car, he replied “you put your weeeed in it.”

2001 – Tyson Chandler, 2nd overall pick. The only time Chandler even touched a Clippers jersey was when NBA reps called his name at the rostrum. Dealing Chandler immediately to the Bulls for Elton Brand was probably the Clips’ best draft day move of all-time, although that’s like saying the Soul is the coolest Kia ever built. Chandler started three of four years for the Bulls, but never averaged in double figures in either points or rebounds. Brand ended up leading the Clips to their first playoff series win since they moved to LA, although it took four years.

2005 – Yaroslav Korolev, 12th overall pick – He speaks English without an interpreter. He probably tears up the Russian league, but who knows. I wouldn’t know this guy if I literally ran into him. Worst foreign pick in the NBA since Uwe Blab.

So, what trends say is that the Clips will either draft Blake and he’ll languish on a bad team (Baron Davis’ knees notwithstanding) or Sterling will do something stupid like passing him up in favor of Ricky Rubio. The latter scenario would likely send Blake to Memphis, unless the Grizz brainfarts and take their coveted Thabeet. Put that perfect storm together and it’s hello Oklahoma City!

We began talking about OU’s history as a 1 or a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament yesterday, in advance of the 2-seed Sooners’ game with Morgan State tomorrow.

Today we’ll finish the lookback with the 80s Sooners featuring Mookie Blaylock, Sky King and the great Wayman Tisdale.

1989 – 1 seed

The core of OU’s 1988 national runner-up team returned with All-Americans Mookie Blaylock (20 ppg, 6.7 assists, 3.7 steals) and Stacey King (26 ppg, 10 rebounds) leading the way. That year, Blaylock became the first player in NCAA history to notch more than 200 assists and 100 steals in back to back seasons. He also set an NCAA record for most steals in a game (13). Blaylock and King didn’t have Harvey Grant and Ricky Grace anymore, but the Sooners didn’t miss a beat, plugging in people like Tyrone Jones, Terrence Mullins and Skeeter Henry.

This Sooner team averaged 102 ppg, scoring over 130 ppg in three straight games in December and averaged 126 per in two games at the All-College Tournament. The Sooners won a second-straight Big 8 title, but lost the Big 8 tournament championship game to Missouri in Kansas City, which might have cost them placement in the tournament. The selection committee thought they’d be cute and let #16 seed East Tennessee State play in their home state against the #1 seed Sooners in Nashville. The powers that be almost got their wish of seeing a huge upset as OU survived a 72-71 scare from the Buccaneers. Tubbs took it out on La Tech two days later, sending the Bulldogs and future Dallas Mavericks stiff Randy White back home to Ruston with a 124-81 spanking. The 30-win Sooners ran out of gas in the Sweet 16, though, and ran into a future Denver Nugget Bryant Stith, the all-time leading scorer at Virginia. The Cavaliers ended the Sooners’ season with an 86-80 upset in Lexington, KY.

1988 – 1 seed

This was the closest OU has ever come to a national championship in men’s basketball. The ’88 Sooners averaged nearly 103 ppg and all five starters – Stacey “Sky” King (22.3), Harvey Grant (20.9), Mookie Blaylock ( 16.4), point guard Ricky Grace (14.7) and the sharp-shooting Dave Sieger (10.9) – averaged in double figures. Daron Oshay “Mookie” Blaylock was so good and such a popular player both in college and the NBA that “Mookie Blaylock” was actually the name of Pearl Jam before they were Pearl Jam, then the group named their first album after his jersey number (10). Blaylock is arguably considered to be the best guard to ever put on a Sooner uniform. Mookie led the nation in steals that season and set NCAA records for highest per-game steals average (3.8) and most number of steals in a season (150). King went on to grab some NBA hardware during the Michael Jordan Bulls-era’s first threepeat … with Harvey’s brother Horace. Grace is still the standard-bearer for point scorers at OU and Sieger was a more reliable and less hair-gelled Cade Davis. Tubbs had all of the pieces befitting a national championship team that year.

The Sooners won the Big 8 regular season and tournament titles and with their subsequent #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, made quick work of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Auburn, Louisville and Villanova to cruise into the Final Four in Kansas City, beating those four teams by an average of almost 20 points. If there was any doubt about this team, and there shouldn’t have been, it was allayed in the national semifinal when the Sooners took out an NBA-laden Arizona squad, featuring Steve Kerr, Sean Elliot, Tom Tolbert and Jud Buechler, by 18 points. The only thing standing in the Sooners’ way of a national title was to beat a team they’d already beaten twice that year, 26-11 Kansas. There were problems, though: the game was in Kansas City and the Jayhawks were hot.

In one of the best halves of basketball in NCAA championship game history, the two teams traded punches for the first 20 minutes and went to the lockerroom tied at 50 apiece. King and Grant combined for 23 points in the opening half, Sieger drained six threes and the Blaylock-led Sooners defense forced 15 turnovers. The Sooners struggled to score in the second half, though, uncharacteristically getting only 29 points (they usually scored that many the second they stepped off the bus at in ’88) as the King-Grant duo were limited to just 8. OU was within one at 78-77 with less than a minute and the Hawks missed the second shot of a 1-and-1, but the Ed Hightower-led officiating crew called Sieger for pushing Danny Manning in the back, sending him to the line to effectively seal the game.

OU finished the year 35-4, which is to date still the highest single-season win total for any Sooner basketball team.

1985 – 1 seed

Wayman Tisdale’s last hurrah ended too soon. The 6’9” forward with the seven-foot smile was and is everything to the Oklahoma basketball program. You could say that without Tubbs snatching him out of Tulsa’s Booker T. Washington High School, we wouldn’t have seen the kind of success in the later 80s that we did. With apologies to Gar Heard and Alvan Adams, Tisdale put OU hoops on the map. Some of his accolades included being the first true freshman in NCAA history to be named first team AP All-American (’83), finishing with what is still an OU record 25.6 ppg career average, owning the top 2 best scoring seasons in school history, being selected third in the NBA draft (the highest for a Sooner to date, but stay tuned with Blake) and joining a select list of collegiate players with over 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. Tisdale set that last mark in just 104 games. Nobody in the last 25 years has accomplished that feat faster and the people who hit that 2,000-1,000 mark in fewer games than Tisdale have names like Elgin Baylor, Lew Alcindor, Larry Bird, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West and Elvin Hayes.

The Sooners won the Big 8 title that year, going 13-1 in conference, riding Tisdale’s dominance and a great supporting cast of Darryl “Choo” Kennedy (15.7 ppg, 8 rebounds per game), Anthony Bowie (13.4 ppg) and Tim McCalister (13.1 ppg). McCalister, never shy about jacking one up if he was open anywhere inside 30 feet, probably would have averaged more had he played in a different era. The 3-point line didn’t come to the college game until his senior year when he hit 87 in ’87 and averaged nearly 20 ppg, the highest of his career.

After winning the Big 8 tournament and having little trouble with North Carolina A&T and Illinois State, the Sooners got a gift in being sent to Dallas to play in the Regional. When they took off the bow and opened the box, the surprise was The Mailman, Karl Malone, and Louisiana Tech waiting in the Sweet 16. In one of the epic Sooner tournament games in history, Tisdale and the Mailman slugged it out into overtime. Tisdale hit a shot over Malone with :06 to play in the extra period to send OU into the Elite 8 against Keith Lee and Memphis State. Lee proved to be worth every penny that Memphis coach Dana Kirk paid him, pushing the Tigers to a two-point win over the Sooners and into the Final Four, which would later be vacated by the NCAA due to Lee’s fat checkbook.

The Sooners’ 31 wins that year marked the first time that an OU club had eclipsed the 30-win mark.

1984 – 2 seed

The Sooners entered the 1984 tournament with their highest seed ever, led by Wayman Tisdale’s eye-popping 27 ppg. The super-sophomore All-American was surrounded by a cast of role players in David “Truck” Johnson, Jan Pannell, Calvin Pierce and outstanding freshmen like Tim McCalister and Darryl “Choo” Kennedy. This was definitely Tisdale’s team, though. On December 28, 1983, Tisdale dropped 61 points and 22 rebounds on Texas-San Antonio in the All-College tournament. That broke a 27-year-old conference, single-game scoring record that had been set by Wilt Chamberlain in 1956 and is still just one of three 40-20 games in school history (Griffin notched the third one against Tech earlier this year).

Oklahoma went into the NCAA tournament with a Big 8 title and gaudy 29-4 record. In the days when the field was 48 teams and byes were awarded, OU was looming for the Dayton Flyers, who had just knocked off LSU in the first round. In a stunning upset, Roosevelt Chapman scored nearly half of the Flyers’ points to knock off the 2-seed Sooners and Tisdale, 89-85.