Kobe Bryant is widely considered to be the closest player we’ve seen to Michael Jordan, but former Chicago Bulls player Stacey King disagrees with that notion. On the latest episode of Stacey King’s Gimme The Hot Sauce Podcast, King stated that pre-injury Ron Harper was actually the closest.
“Ron was the most exciting player in the league, under MJ,” King said. “I mean it was like 1 and 1A… When you start talking about Kobe being the closest one. No, people forget Ron Harper before injury was about the closest thing that we had seen to an MJ.
“They had all these other guys, ‘Oh this guy’s supposed to be this guy.’ No, Ron Harper was the closest because not only was he a great scorer, he was a hell of a defensive player and he took challenges,” King continued. “Going up against Michael, he gave Michael fits.”
King also believes Harper, who was the guest on this episode, was the only player who could be called a Jordan stopper. The man himself didn’t go so far as to say he could stop the Bulls icon, though, as he admitted the best one could hope to do was contain him.
Getting back to King’s initial point, I can understand why he believes pre-injury Harper was the closest thing to Jordan. He was undoubtedly a very special talent.
The Cleveland Cavaliers drafted Harper with the eighth pick of the 1986 NBA Draft and it was evident right away that he had what it took to be a star in the NBA. As a rookie, he put up impressive averages of 22.9 points, 4.8 rebounds, 4.8 assists, 2.5 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game.
A severe ankle injury in the second game of his sophomore season led to Harper’s numbers dipping a bit but he appeared to be back to his best in the 1989-90 campaign. He averaged 22.8 points, 5.9 rebounds, 5.2 assists, 2.3 steals, and 1.2 blocks per game for the Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Clippers, but the injury bug would strike yet again in that season.
Harper suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn cartilage in Jan. 1990 and was never quite the same after that. He still played at a fairly high level for the Clippers in the years that followed (20.1 PPG in 1993-94) and you wonder how much better he would have been if not for that devastating injury.
Harper joined the Bulls in 1994 and became a defensive-oriented guard for them. He excelled in that role and when Jordan came out of retirement the following year, the two formed one of the best defensive backcourts in the NBA. They would go on to win three titles in a row from 1996 to 1998 and are remembered today as one of the greatest backcourt duos of all time.
Dennis Rodman Thinks Ron Harper Could Have Gone Down As The Greatest Ever If Not For The Knee Injury
King, now a color commentator for the Bulls, is far from the only one who holds Harper in very high regard. During an appearance on the BTM Podcast, Dennis Rodman said Harper was Jordan before Jordan and that he could have become the best player ever if not for the knee injury.
“The quiet assassin on that team was that one guy, Ron Harper. Nobody talks about him. He probably could’ve been the best player ever if he didn’t have that knee injury. He was Michael Jordan before Michael Jordan to me because he was good.”
Rodman isn’t the type to just shower anyone with compliments, so that tells you how good Harper was. I am not sure he had the potential to go down as the best ever, but he certainly could have become one of the better players of his generation.
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