How Good was Clyde Drexler????

As readers of this blog (all three of you) know, I’m all about posting tributes to old NBA players that the average fan might have forgotten about. Today’s tribute is dedicated to Clyde “The Glide” Drexler.

Because my Basketball Jones started right about the time of Clyde Drexler’s prime, I was able to see Clyde at his best. My first full season of really being into the NBA was the 1990-1991 season (4th grade for me). Being from Los Angeles, I was an obsessive Laker fan. When my mom would make me go to sleep at around 9pm every night, I would make sure not to miss the end of Laker games by sneaking my walkman or radio under my covers and catching Chick Hearns “words eye view” on AM 570. During the 1991 season the Lakers were one of the best teams in the league. They had All-Stars Magic Johnson and James Worthy, as well as solid contributors such as Sam Perkins, AC Green, and Byron Scott. Yet they found themselves looking up at the Blazers the entire year. I remember always having an empty feeling whenever the Lakers would have to go up and play Portland. That Blazers team was stacked. They had Terry Porter, Danny Ainge, Buck Williams, Kevin Duckworth, Jerome Kersey, Alaa Abdelnaby and a very young Cliff Robinson as their core. But most of all, they had Clyde Drexler to rely on every night. Watching the Lakers go to play Portland wasn’t just scary because of their team, but also because of that high school gym they tried to pass as an NBA arena. That place got so freakin loud that I don’t know how any visiting team was able to communicate with each other there. If you think Arco arena gets loud, you definitely did not witness a game being played at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum.

At the time, Clyde was the most dynamic shooting guard in the league behind Michael Jordan. When I think about Clyde, I wonder how he might have been remembered if he would have played during a time when Michael Jordan was not around, because I can’t recall too many players prior to him that had athletic ability and highlight film abilities that trumped his. He had range out to three point territory, he could jump out of the gym, he had a very solid handle, and he was just a very heady player.

For a time, it looked like Clyde would never get a championship ring because he played in the same era as Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. He had two run-ins with both players that stick out in my mind. The first is the 1990-91 Western Conference Finals against the Johnson’s Lakers. In that series, Drexler’s Blazers came in with the best record in the NBA, a younger, more talented team, and home court advantage. Almost everyone expected the Blazers to win. But those people were discounting the greatness of one Ervin Magic Johnson. Magic guided the Lakers to a defeat of the Drexler’s Blazers in six games. The image I will always remember from that series is Magic Johnson rolling the ball down court to allow the time to run out and put the underdog Lakers in the NBA Finals.

The next year, the torture would continue for Clyde and his Blazers as Michael Jordan put on one of the greatest performances of all-time in game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals. Jordan had a record setting 35-point first-half performance to lead the Bulls to a 122-89 rout. MJ seemed unstoppable as he drained several three-pointers over Blazer defenders and after one made three he shrugged his shoulders as if to say: “I don't even know what's going on here.” Although the Blazers came back to make the series competitive, Jordan’s game 1 performance set the tone for the rest of the series. Jordan was directing this performance at all of the critics that thought Clyde was on the same level as him. This performance pretty much told Clyde, you’re good, but I am the best.

Anyhow, Clyde would eventually succumb to a series of injuries over the next couple of years leading the Blazers to start to look in a different direction, making Clyde expendable. At the 1995 NBA trade deadline, Clyde was dealt to the struggling Houston Rockets for Otis Thorpe and Vernon Maxwell. The Rockets were the defending NBA champions, but were struggling to get back to the level they played at during the previous season. This trade would give Clyde the opportunity to show that his career wasn’t quite over yet. Coming to Houston, he would be reunited with his former Houston Cougar teammate and defending regular season and Finals MVP Hakeem Olajuwon. Hakeem was the best player in the league at the time, but desperately needed some help besides the solid role players the Rockets had on their roster. The arrival of Drexler revitalized the Rockets organization and Drexler’s career. The Rockets went on to win the 1995 NBA Championship, defeating the Orlando Magic in 4 Games. Luckily for Clyde, he got to the Rockets just before the second wave of Michael Jordan’s championship barrage.

Anyhow, the most amazing thing about Clyde was the way that his athletic ability stuck around with him late into his career. Most players (even Michael Jordan) lose a lot of their athleticism as they get older. They have to become savvier players because they can no longer rely on just their athleticism to get by. I mean even Michael Jordan became primarily a post player and a fade a way jump shooter later in his career. There was no such drop off with Clyde. If you don’t believe me, check this You Tube video below for the proof. Even in his Rocket days, Clyde was still jumping out of the gym and making unbelievably athletic moves.

This is even more amazing when you consider that Clyde supposedly never stretched before games! This according to former Rocket teammate Sam Cassell, who in a SI article earlier this year stated:

"It was the most amazing thing I've seen in my life. [Clyde] didn't stretch at all. He was 35, and the only stretching I saw Clyde do was before the jump ball. (Cassell leans over, hands on knees, legs apart.) I said, 'CD, you're amazing.' You know the [way the typical player lays] on his back stretching his hamstrings? I've never seen Clyde do that. Then the first play of the game, if you threw it to him on the wing, he'd haul ass back upcourt and dunk that thing.

"We used to talk all the time. I'd say, 'It amazes me, man, not what you do on the court but how you do it. You don't stretch, you don't ice, you don't do nothing.' If something's a problem he'd put a band-aid over it. Amazing."

The bottom line, Clyde was one of the best shooting guards to ever play the game.