Tip-Off: How the 1984 NBA Draft Changed Basketball Forever

I really enjoyed this book. It was a very fast read for me. The author focuses on several of the top picks from this draft: Olajuwon, Bowie, Jordan, Barkley, Stockton, and Perkins. He spends a lot of time on each of these players and gets very in-depth, and that alone made the book a worthwhile read to me. Also, the author talks about some of the fall out from this draft: The NBA draft lottery, salary cap changes, and the globalization of the league. I enjoyed the author's style, lots of quotes from major players at the time and reflecting on the time later. The bibliography is quite extensive. So I felt like the author pulled a lot of info from lots of different articles and books I might have read separately anyway. I felt he did a nice job sorting through the material. Again, I really enjoyed the book. If you love the NBA and love this particular era, I think you'll enjoy the book.

Just think how the basketball landscape would have changed had the Houston Rockets traded Ralph Sampson straight up for Michael Jordan! The Bulls would have done it and were waiting for the Rockets to call but Rockets coach Bill Fitch was in love with the twin towers idea. The Sixers had a deal in place to trade the aging Dr. J to the Clippers for Terry Cummings but didn't pull the trigger for fear of fan backlash. Bobby Knight, the dictator that he is, had Michael Jordan in tears during the Olympic tryouts. Charles Barkley showed up at the 1984 Olympic trials not with the goal of making the team, but rather improving his draft status. When the tough Soviet team pulled out of the 1984 games Coach Knight cut Charles Barkley because he didn't care for his personality. But had the Soviets stayed in the Olympics Barkley wouldn't have been cut because his superb playing ability would have been needed to beat the Soviets. Barkley gained 15 pounds within 24 hours to tip the scales at a Sixers predraft weigh in to scare them away from drafting him. I could go on and on with all the interesting facts brought out in this book. This book is not just about who was drafted when but more about how things fell into place. Teams with awful records playing hard at the end of the season because they had traded away their lottery pick - upsetting the teams that had traded for these picks. Teams with their lottery picks tanking it at the end of the season in order to get the highest pick possible. This tanking led to the weighted ping pong ball draft ordering system in place today. It is amazing how many prior drafts and trades came around to help or haunt teams picking in the 1984 draft. For example, if the Rockets had drafted Clyde Drexler in 1983 instead of Rodney McCray the Blazers would have drafted Michael Jordan in 1984 while the Rockets would have had a dynamic duo of Drexler and Olajuwon. This was an excellent book. I highly recommend it.

If you are looking for an anthology on Michael Jordan, then stop reading now. But if you are looking for a definite history on the NBA, its clubs and some of the Top 50 greatest players, this is a must. It not only provides insights into the NBA draft and how it changed the landscape of the game, but it also provides a behind the scenes look into what teams were thinking and trying to achieve. Probably the best basketball book I have ever read.

I liked this book a lot, and I'll tell you why: I thought this was a wonderful story-telling sports book. And these were tales I'd never heard before -- about Charles Barkley's desperate, gustatory attempts to avoid getting drafted by the capped Sixers; about Sam Bowie's personal travails; about Michael Jordan's frustrations with Bobby Knight. And the book posits several alternate NBA universes, which are great fun to consider -- my favorite is the notion of the Houston Rockets, with both Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon, having traded Ralph Sampson for the third pick. All in all, a really evocative book of an important time in basketball. I don't know if it changed the sport forever, but it certainly made for great debate and consideration.