Don Nelson’s fingerprints are all over the modern NBA.
Small-ball principles, ball-handling forwards, pace and the 3-point shot are key components of the modern game, and the former Warriors coach was an evangelist for each en route to winning the most games in NBA history. His place in basketball history as an innovator is secure, and he entered the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012.
Nelson’s influence arguably would have been even more outsized, if only the Chicago Bulls heeded his advice sooner and made it permanent. The Doug Collins-coached Bulls moved Michael Jordan to point guard down the stretch of the 1988-89 season, and the results were terrifying.
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Jordan averaged 32.2 points, 9.4 assists and 8.3 rebounds in 41 regular-season and playoff games as the Bulls’ point guard, and that stretch included a streak of seven consecutive triple-doubles. One of those, a 33-point, 12-rebound, 11-assist performance against the Warriors in Chicago, prompted Nelson to say, “I told you so.”
“Well, they finally figured it out there,” former Bulls guard Craig Hodges recalled Nelson saying in longtime Bulls beat reporter Sam Smith’s 1992 best-selling book, “The Jordan Rules.” “I would’ve been playing him at point guard the day he showed up as a rookie.”
Jordan’s run didn’t last into the next season, as the Bulls lost to the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals. Chicago then fired Collins, and Phil Jackson began incorporating the Triangle offense in order to lighten Jordan’s playmaking and scoring load.
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The experiment, however brief, nonetheless proved predictive. The Ringer’s Dan Devine drew parallels in March between Jordan’s move and the Houston Rockets shifting James Harden to point guard in 2016. Devine noted that Jordan’s time as a point guard “inadvertently foreshadowed the modern game’s stylistic shift toward monster-usage primary playmakers” a la Harden, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Luka Doncic.
Would this have become the norm sooner if Jordan stayed a point guard? Is Jordan’s overwhelming legacy the same if he did? Do the Bulls still go on their dynastic run, and is there a "Last Dance?" Is Phil Jackson hired as the Los Angeles Lakers' coach? What happens to Steve Kerr's career?
The potential ripple effects are endless, but at the very least, Nelson’s instincts proved once again to be ahead of his time.
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