1986 NBA Draft

1986 NBA Draft - 17 June 1986

Synopsis

The draft of role-players, drugs, and bad luck—this sums up the 1986 NBA Draft. But with all of the black clouds and bad luck, there would be some bright spots and nice surprises. How many NBA drafts do you see having the better players come out of rounds two and three? (The NBA Draft now only has two rounds.) Three teams, the Detroit Pistons, Portland Trail Blazers, and Cleveland Cavaliers, actually did pretty well with this draft. The role of any NBA draft for a team is to: A) get to the NBA Finals, and B) win the NBA Finals. Every team wants to draft the next Michael Jordan or Shaquille O'Neal, but that doesn't always happen, but sometimes a team can obtain a role player that fits well with that team's overall success.

Related Topics:
Detroit Pistons - Portland Trail Blazers - Cleveland Cavaliers - NBA Finals - Michael Jordan - Shaquille O'Neal

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• The Detroit Pistons made two solid draft choices: John Salley at #11, and Dennis Rodman at #27. The two players would put forward pivotal performances in three straight NBA Finals appearances for the Pistons in 1988, 1989, and 1990. Salley would come off the bench and be a versatile player backing up both the center and power forward positions, while Rodman would start at small forward and use hustle, quickness, and intuition to outrebound power forwards and centers. Detroit would win two of the three, 1989 and 1990. In 1988 they would lose to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games, in 1989 the Pistons would sweep the Lakers in four straight, and in 1990 they would defeat Portland four games to one. Detroit would also have two additional Eastern Conference Championship appearances on either end of the three straight Finals trips; in 1987 they lost to the Boston Celtics in seven games, and they were swept in four games by the Chicago Bulls in 1991. These would not be the last titles for either player. Rodman joined the Bulls in 1995, becoming a starter on the Bulls' last three championship teams of the Jordan era. Salley was a reserve on the 1995-96 Bulls. He retired following that season, but came out of retirement to join the Lakers for their 1999-2000 championship season. With that title, Salley became the first NBA player to play on championship teams for three different franchises.
• The Portland Trail Blazers had a throwaway draft pick in the form of Walter Berry (at #14). Berry turned up to training camp with no work ethic and a poor attitude. He seemed to have an eight-grade education, at best, and was lazy, and only lasted one week into the season. The hope for the Blazers was to be found in the east, across the Atlantic, in Europe. First, there was Arvydas Sabonis (selected at #24), but it would take Sabonis nearly ten years to get to Portland, by which time he had lost most of his mobility to a series of knee and Achilles injuries. A lot of Blazer fans have been playing ?what if? for a while now. Even a semi-hobbled Sabonis would finish as runner-up for the Rookie of the Year and Sixth Man awards at age 32! He would help the Blazers get to two Western Conference Finals. In 1999 Portland was swept by Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs, and in 2000 they would lose to Shaq and Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. Another reason Portland fared well from the 1986 draft was Kevin Duckworth. Duckworth, drafted 33^rd by the San Antonio Spurs, would go from a overweight perennial benchwarmer from a small school, Eastern Illinois University, to the league?s Most Improved Player in 1988, a two-time All-Star (1989 & 1991), and average over 15 points-per-game over four seasons (1988-1991). He would be the starting center on two NBA Finals teams, 1990, where Portland lost to Detroit four games to one, and 1992, where the team lost to the Chicago Bulls four games to two. In addition they would lose to the Lakers in the 1991 Western Conference Finals, four games to two.
• The Cleveland Cavaliers, in addition to picking up Brad Daugherty with the first pick, obtained Mark Price with the 25^th pick. Daugherty, although never a big NBA star, would be a 5-time All-Star, with 41 playoff game appearances, and Price would be the floor leader for Cleveland with eight solid seasons at the point guard position, a 4-time All-Star, and appear in 47 playoff games. Price and Daugherty, would lead the Cavs, along with Larry Nance and John "Hot Rod" Williams (drafted a year earlier), to the 1992 Eastern Conference Finals, beating the New Jersey Nets and the Boston Celtics along the way. But, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls were waiting for them in the conference finals, and Jordan would go on to put Craig Ehlo on every highlight film for the rest of the year, and the Bulls beat Cleveland four games to two.
• The second round as a whole was solid, with Mark Price (# 25), Dennis Rodman (# 27), Larry Krystkowiak (# 28), Johnny Newman (# 29), Nate McMillan (# 30), Kevin Duckworth (# 33), and Jeff Hornacek (# 46). These seven players taken from the second round would all have solid careers. Krystkowiak?s would be cut short with knee injuries, and Newman would be a journeyman, playing 16 seasons with nine different teams. But the other five would all make their mark in the NBA.