Arguably the most egregious draft mistake in NBA history is the Portland Trail Blazers picking Sam Bowie with the No. 2 pick ahead of Michael Jordan, who went to the Chicago Bulls and became the GOAT.
What a lot of people don’t know though, is that they could have made the right move. If the Blazers GM at the time, Stu Inman, had just listened to legendary Indiana Head Coach Bob Knight, they would have gotten Jordan.
“Bobby Knight, who’d coached MJ at the ’84 Olympic trials, urged Blazers GM Stu Inman (an old pal) to take Jordan,” Bill Simmons wrote for ESPN. “Inman said, ‘But we need a center.’ Knight yelled back, ‘So play him at center!’ Inman didn’t listen, and the result is a jaw-dropping scene.”
Michael Jordan went on to become the greatest ever, winning six championships with the Bulls, along with six Finals MVPs, and five MVPs. Sam Bowie, on the other hand, played for 10 seasons in the NBA and was never even an All-Star, being derailed heavily by injuries.
Michael Jordan had played for Coach Bob Knight on the 1984 USA Olympics Team before they began recruiting top NBA stars in 1992. The team won the gold medal, with MJ leading them in scoring. He averaged 17.1 points per game in the Olympics, and it’s no wonder that Knight was left so impressed by him.
Sam Bowie Lied About His Pain To The Blazers To Get Picked Over Michael Jordan
A simple move can change everything for an NBA franchise, and the Blazers certainly suffered for not drafting Michael Jordan, they haven’t won a championship since 1977. But perhaps they were also not entirely at fault, as it turns out that Bowie didn’t tell them the truth about his health before they drafted him.
“I can still remember them taking a little mallet, and when they would hit me on my left tibia, and ‘I don’t feel anything’ I would tell ’em. But deep down inside, it was hurting. If what I did was lying and what I did was wrong, at the end of the day, when you have loved ones that have some needs, I did what any of us would have done.”
This ‘what if’ will always haunt the Blazers, considering what Michael Jordan could have done for the franchise. The Chicago Bulls were struggling before his arrival, but he turned it all around for them. They should just have listened to Knight when they had the chance.
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