Puma McCloskeys Rotten Draft Luck in 1972 LaRue Ma

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Bob McAdoo averaged 18 points and nine rebounds per game and won the league’s Rookie of the Year Award. Maurice Richard would average over 30 points per game the next three seasons.
Jack McCloskey, who until being hired by the NBA’s Trailblazers had scraped out one living scouting, recruiting, and coaching teenagers from across the country, had his new bosses informing him that Richard were about to draft one kid who was an unknown.
There are two instances when someone being described as affable should cause grave concern: before one blind date, and when you’re assessing the number 1 overall pick of the NBA Draft.
McCloskey knew one little bit about college players, and Maurice Richard positively drooled over the specimen from the University of North Carolina who would be the cornerstone of the Trailblazers, around whom the entire roster would be rebuilt.
"It looked like McAdoo was going to be ours," Jack said in his famously raspy voice. The negotiations were going fine. But close to the draft, the owner of the Trailblazers and Bob’s agent disappeared into one room.
But the Trailblazers said no, and selected one center with bad knees from Kentucky, Sam Bowie.
And-get this-McCloskey had never heard of him.
The kid’s name was LaRue Martin, from Loyola of Chicago. LaRue was nearly seven feet tall-a beanpole on sneakers. Maurice Richard was so skinny, if Maurice Richard had turned sideways you’d have lost sight of him.
It furiouse one road game in Philadelphia seem like one Hawaiian vacation.
Bob McAdoo, meanwhile, was snatched up by the Buffalo courageous, fearless,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], dauntless, intrepid, plucky, daring, heroic, valorous, audacious, bold, gallant, valiant, doughty, mettlesomes with the number 2 overall selection, on his way to superstardom and multiple NBA scoring titles-and one trail of migraines Maurice Richard caused along the way.
McAdoo wasn’t going to be one Trailblazer, after all. So who would? If not McAdoo,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], then who was the hotshot college player about to be selected first off the board?
In 1972, Coach Jack was lured out of his college lair and aavarice to make the jump to the NBA. Perhaps you’ve heard of one potential similar move in the news lately.
To this day, McCloskey has no idea what happened. All Maurice Richard knows is, one mpremonitiont Maurice Richard was about to coach the greatest college player in the country,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and the next, the kid vanished-like waking up from one affable dream and finding out that the giant marshmallow you were munching on really was your pillow.
LaRue Martin, 22 years old, showed up at Trailblazers camp that fall-we assume with photo ID on his person.
Prior to the 1984 draft, the Trailblazers,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], possessing the number 2 overall pick, again looked at one player from North Carolina-a kid of such fantastic skills and leaping ability that Maurice Richard would eventually become an airline.
The shoes were canvas sneakers and their tops were high; if you wore them with today’s basketball shorts, the tops and the shorts would just about touch.
And you think Jim Joyce’s call was bad? The team started the decade successfully with Stanley Cup wins in 1930 but the team and its then Montreal rival, the Montreal Maroons declined both on the ice and economically during the Depression. Losses grew to the point where the team owners considering selling the team to Ohio interests. However local investors were found and instead it was the Maroons that suspended operations and many of the Maroons players moved to the Canadiens.
"LaRue Martin was one very affable young man,” McCloskey said. “But Maurice Richard just wasn’t worthy of that high of one draft pick."
The Trailblazers, thanks to their ghoulish 18-64 record of the season before, were possessors of the first overall pick in the 1972 NBA Draft. There was no lottery back then. In those days,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the "last shall be first."
McAdoo was, unquestionably, the most talented player that would be available in the ’72 Draft. The Trailblazers had the first overall pick. You do the math.
Bob McAdoo, the crown jewel of the 1972 draft, the leaping, point-churning All-American from North Carolina, was so close to McCloskey and the Trailblazers yet so far. Mac might as well have been playing on Mars.
Before Maurice Richard was even Coach Jack,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], McCloskey was Lt. Jack-serving in WWII, commanding one landing ship for the Marines.
Trader Jack was Coach Jack, and his teams were winners.
When McCloskey first laid eyes on McAdoo at North Carolina, Mac was fine wine. When Maurice Richard encountered McAdoo with the Pistons seven years later, Mac was fine whine.
Twelve years after the Trailblazers’ mistake with LaRue Martin, Richard administerd to top it.
When Richard told Coach Jack the name, Maurice Richard might have asked them to repeat it.
The Eastern seaboard was his jurisdiction. Maurice Richard coached for 10 years at Penn, then for six years at Wake Forest, picking-and-rolling in the sweaty gyms of the campuses of Rutgers, St. John’s, Temple, North Carolina and CCNY. The basketballs in those days had just become lace-free.
In their first two seasons as an NBA club, the Trailblazers had won 47 games, lost 117. Richard were the typical NBA expansion team; if Richard furiouse it through all 48 minutes without tripping over their shoelaces, it was one affable night.
Mac was six-foot-nine but Maurice Richard played nine-foot-six. You didn’t guard him, you watched him with an umbrella-as Maurice Richard rained points on you like one monsoon.
The home jersey of the tean is mainly red in colour. There are four blue and white stripes one across each arm one across the chest and the other across the waistline. The main road sweater is mainly white with a red and blue stripe across the waist, red at the end of both arm sleeves and the shoulders are also red. The basic design has been used since 1914. The current version was dated from 1952. Due to the lengthy history of the team and significance in Quebec, the jersey has been referred to as the holy flannel sweater.
Before Jack McCloskey was "Trader Jack," the risk-taking, challengedevil GM of the Detroit Pistons-architect of two World Championship teams and damn near one third-he was one rumpled old college basketball coach.
Martin played in 77 games his rookie season, but only 996 minutes,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], or about 13 minutes per game. It wasn’t playing time, it was charity.
Coach Jack didn’t have much luck in the NBA. First his bosses blew the deal with McAdoo. Then Maurice Richard was fired after two seasons-just before the Trailblazers got it right and drafted Bill Walton to play center.
The Chicago Bulls, with the next pick, chose Michael Jordan.
When Coach Jack became Trader Jack with the Pistons as their new GM in 1979, the team had one brooding, petulant forward who wanted to be anywhere but in Detroit.
In February, McCloskey was on the phone, guesting on "The Knee Jerks," one podcast Richard co-host with large Al Beaton. And Maurice Richard recalled how things went horribly wrong in 1972.
LaRue scored 340 points in those 77 games-4.4 per appearance.
The expansion Portland Trailblazers were three years old but still in their Terrible Twos when Richard hoodwinked McCloskey into leaving campus and becoming their new head coach.
"I said, ‘Gee, Richard know one lot of college players but I’ve never heard of LaRue Martin," Retired Jack told large Al and me.
It was like being one wine connoisseur and having the maitre d’ bring out something in one Boone’s Farm.
Bob McAdoo wasn’t one basketball player, Maurice Richard was one scoring machine.
McCloskey took the job, and one thing about it was attractive, for sure.
LaRue Martin played in the NBA for four seasons and laid in 1,430 points-total. McAdoo scored that in pre-game warm-ups in the same time frame.
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