Tim Hardaway Sr. was selected with the 14th pick of the 1989 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors, and the league was actually very different than what he’d imagined. On the Forgotten Seasons podcast, the 57-year-old shared what the NBA was like during his early years.
“When I came into the NBA, it was very humbling,” Hardaway said. “You think it was something else. You thought it was all glorified and everything, but it was totally different when you got there. Some players had to wash their own uniforms, you taking commercial flights, you waking up at 4 in the morning taking a 6 am commercial flight out. We weren’t fortunate like the LA Lakers… They took MGM on flights say like cross country or back-to-backs.”
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Even players on the Los Angeles Lakers had to fly commercial if they were playing the Warriors, the Sacramento Kings, or the Phoenix Suns. Hardaway said that if the flight got canceled, then the players just had to wait and get on one later in the day.
All of this is such a far cry from what life is like in today’s NBA. Even the idea that a player would have to wash their jersey seems like an absurd thought. Teams nowadays also either have their own planes to transport players or charter them.
When Did Chartered Flights Become The Norm In The NBA?
While there is no way to know when players were no longer asked to wash their own jerseys, we do know when things changed when it came to flights. In 1987, Detroit Pistons owner William Davidson purchased a private plane ahead of the season to fly his team, the first recorded instance of such an event taking place, as per Yahoo.
The Portland Trail Blazers were next to fly privately and the two teams would meet in the 1990 NBA Finals. With the NBA being a copycat league, others soon followed. By November 1991, 20 of the then-27 teams were chartering some or all of their road trips. When the year 1995 came around, there was only one team not chartering flights full-time, the Utah Jazz.
That wasn’t because their owner was cheap, but because Delta had the naming rights to their arena. As per the contract, the Jazz had to fly a certain number of miles on Delta, who didn’t charter flights at the time. The issue was finally resolved in January 1995 and with that, every team in the NBA had adopted the approach.
Tim Hardaway Sr.’s NBA Career
Coming back to Hardaway, he made an impact instantly after being picked by the Warriors and made the All-Star team in his second season. Along with Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin, he formed the iconic “RUN TMC” trio. Their uptempo offense masterminded by Don Nelson made them one of the most exciting teams to watch in the NBA at the time, but postseason success eluded them.
Then during the 1995-96 season, Hardaway would be traded to the Miami Heat. There in 1997, he would finish fourth in the voting for MVP. In the following years, he remained a productive point guard in the NBA and eventually retired from the league in 2003.
In all, Hardaway is a five-time All-Star who finished with career averages of 17.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, 8.2 assists, and 1.6 steals per game. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2022 for his accomplishments.
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