The 1984 draft was a seminal moment in the history of the NBA. It set the stage for the NBA in the 90s no different than Bird and Magic did for the 80s. That’s selling it short though. It was the first step in a basketball renaissance that would literally change the world.
Then and Now
The current draft is only 2 rounds and has been 2 rounds since 1989. Back in 1984 though, they slogged away for 10 whole rounds. 228 players were drafted! There were less teams then too, only 23. Florida had simply no interest in basketball at that point apparently.
This also marked the first NBA Draft for new Commissioner David Stern, his first of 30 until his retirement in 2014. His career deserves a serious deep dive in lengths I am not prepared for, but here’s the quick version to bring you up to date. He starts as a lawyer working for a firm that represents the NBA, most notably in a case against Oscar Robertson regarding free agency and the NBA/ABA merger. After negotiating that settlement, he goes to work for the NBA as its in house attorney. He is quickly promoted to being in charge of the NBAs marketing and player relations department where he works basically hand in hand with the Player’s Association. Now he’s Commissioner following the retirement of Larry O’Brien. The modern NBA was made by Stern along with a certain member of this draft.
Michael Jordan was one of only 9 underclassmen to declare for the draft, all were juniors. Granted there have been some rule changes since then, but there are 28 in the current draft, not including international players. This is actually way down from previous years where early entrants outnumbered total picks.
This was the last year without an NBA draft lottery. Everything would change the next season with the infamous but unconfirmed frozen envelope brought Patrick Ewing to the Knicks. This year though, things were simple. You picked in the reverse order of where you finished …unless you made a trade. And trade they did.
Trades
The 1984 draft really goes back to 1978, at least for Sixers purposes. In August, the team made a trade with Denver to Acquire Bobby Jones and a 1984 first round pick for George McGinnis and a 1978 first. This pick turned out to be #10 overall (Leon Wood). Two months later, the Sixers traded World B. Free to the then San Diego Clippers for another 1984 first. This ended up being #5 and Charles Barkley. To put that in context, Barkley was born in 1963. He was only 15 when these trades went down. Someone like Ace Bailey comparatively would have been 13.
Those weren’t the only long-term trades. In 1980, the Cavs traded their first for a guy named Mike Bratz1 and it eventually became the 4th pick. This was the 3rd of 5 consecutive draft picks the Cavs owner had traded, eventually causing David Stern to implement one of his many rules to save owners from themselves, the Stepien Rule. Two years after trading for Free, the Clippers traded him to the Warriors for a different 1984 pick (#8). The Sixers still had their own pick in this one all the way down at #22. They traded it to Washington for a 1988 first which they lit on fire in the catastrophic Moses Malone/Jeff Ruland trade. All in all, the first round included 11 trades out of 24 picks.
The most significant though, and the one that doesn’t take much embellishment to claim changed basketball, was completed on June 5, 1981. The Indiana Pacers traded their 1984 first to Portland for a guy named Tom Owens. He’s a nothing guy who bounced around the league and was retired before the 1984 draft took place. This ended up being the second pick in the draft.
The Draft
At #1, Houston’s choice was a no brainer at the time. Hakeem (then Akeem) Olajuwon was seen as the best player in the draft and would team with their other all-everything center, Ralph Sampson, to form an unstoppable Twin Towers lineup. It is weird to think in the modern NBA that this was a good strategy. Sampson sputtered out due to injury and his slight frame, but Hakeem would win two championships, an MVP, finish All-NBA 11 times, and All-Defense 9 times including DPOY twice. He was a first ballot Hall of Famer.
Here’s why everyone remembers the draft though. Instead of Indiana picking at #2, it was the Portland Trailblazers. Because they had drafted a shooting guard, and Hakeem’s college teammate Clyde Drexler, the year before (people forget that Clyde was very good, and is in the Hall of Fame) Portland figured it needed a center instead of a redundancy. That made Sam Bowie, the center out of Kentucky, the pick. And thus the NBA world started spinning. For the Trailblazers, this was like receiving a lottery ticket and never checking to see that it was a winner.
The Chicago Bulls fielded trade offers for #3 including from Philadelphia. The Sixers owner, Harold Katz, apparently thought he had a deal in place that would have landed Julius Erving in Chicago for the pick straight up. Yes, the Sixers would have kept the #5 pick in the deal. Apparently, the Chicago owner liked the deal but was talked out of it by his GM Rod Thorn. Erving was coming off his 5th straight Top-6 MVP finish and had led a dominant Sixers team to the championship one year earlier. He was 33 though. Thorn convinced the Bulls owner to draft Michael Jordan instead. Dr. J was out of the league 3 years later. MJ was not. Damn.
Jordan’s North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins went to Dallas with the pick they had traded for earlier. Perkins was a solid role player who eventually joined his other NC teammate James Worthy with the Lakers. Thankfully those NC teams were so good, because it allowed Auburn’s junior phenom, Charles Barkley, to slide a little under the radar despite being nearly 300 pounds. The Sixers scooped him up at #5. Barkley would play 8 years in Philly and be on 7 All-NBA teams. We won’t talk about when he actually won the MVP in his 9th year.
Rounding out the 4 All-Timers from this draft is PG John Stockton, drafted out of Gonzaga by the Utah Jazz with the 16th pick. I won’t go into his personal politics, but as an NBA player, the unassuming (and only member of the 1992 Dream Team to be dismissed as a tourist) Stockton finished his career as the NBA’s all-time leader in assists (15,806) and steals (3,265) leading the NBA in both categories several times.
Other notables from this draft include defensive specialist Alvin Robertson (6x All-Defense, 1x DPOY, and NBA’s all-time steals per game leader (2.7)), the strongest looking guy in the NBA Kevin Willis, the future Tom Owens of the 2003 NBA Draft Otis Thorpe2, future great coach Rick Carlisle went to the Celtics in the 3rd round, and a guy named Oscar Schmidt went to the Nets in the 6th round but would never play in the NBA. Why do we care about him? Well, he is the 5th member of this draft to be inducted to the Hall of Fame. Schmidt is known as one of the greatest international players ever, but was apprehensive about the NBA because it would have meant a pay cut from his European wages and would have prohibited him from playing for the national team of his native Brazil. The rule prohibiting NBA players from international competition wouldn’t be lifted until 1989 when Schmidt was in his early 30s.
Aftermath
This draft would come to define the 1990s and the NBA in general. Jordan’s 6 titles headline the list, but Olajuwon’s Rockets won 2 more. Stockton brought the Jazz to 2 NBA Finals with Barkley bringing the Suns to another. Between them, they have 7 MVPs and 7 more top 2-3 finishes. In addition to Stockton and Robertson’s records, Jordan is the all-time leader in scoring average and Hakeem is the all-time leader in blocks.
Internationally, the 1992 Dream Team took the world by storm. Kids all over the world were introduced to basketball at its highest form for basically the first time. It is no wonder that the amount of international NBA talent sky rocketed in the 2000s, as most attribute this to the Olympic exposure of 1992. Jordan was the leader of the team. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the co-headliners, but Barkley was the second-best player on the team. This led to a year long simmering rivalry between Barkley and Jordan that started with a Gold Medal and culminated in the 1993 Finals.
The NBA salary cap was 3.6m that year. It would double by 1988, double again by 1992, and double again by 1998 in Jordan’s last real year of basketball, hitting $30m. It would not double again until 2014.
It would be 20 years before the NBA would again see another draft with this kind of lasting influence on the league and the world. Not until Lebron James was selected first overall by the Cavs in 2003. We’ll get to that draft another day.
UPDATE: Conspiracy
I have uncovered a conspiracy so dark that most won’t believe it, condemning it to a wild social media joke written in retrospect in an attempt for cheap clicks. Well, if that’s all it is, then explain this…
With game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder tonight, Kevin Durant is noticeably absent from either roster. This off season, Kevin will see that unlike in the past where he could go to a Finals participant in free agency, he has no path to that this summer. What is a ring chaser like KD to do? I’m glad you asked.
See, Kevin once befriended an old scientist who invented a time machine. They hatched a plan where Kevin would go back a year to 2024 so that He could get himself to either Indiana or OKC. Unfortunately, he accidentally went back to 1984 instead! The time circuits were broken and he couldn’t get back to 2025. He decided to go to the NBA draft and because he is 6’10 was chosen with the first pick in the second round. David Stern misheard his name and announced Devin Durrant instead! “Devin” washed out after 2 years because he couldn’t take the physical game of the 80s. I’ll let everyone know if I receive a knock on my door delivering a 41 year old letter from KD. It just started to down pour…
All statistics by basketball-reference.com
All trades from Wikipedia and its sources.
- Notable for being the last Chicago Bull to wear #23 before it became the most famous number in sports ↩︎
- Much like Owens was traded by the Blazers to the Pacers for the #2 pick that they wasted on Sam Bowie, Otis Thorpe would eventually go from Detroit to Memphis for the #2 pick in the 2003 draft which Detroit wasted on Darko Milicic instead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, or Dwyane Wade ↩︎
Philly Front Office 
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