1988 NBA draft

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the 28th of June 1988, the NBA held its annual draft at Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum in New York City. Seventeen young men sat in what the league called the green room, waiting to hear their names. Two of the players who would go on to have the most decorated careers in that room were not among those seventeen invites. The draft that day would produce a first overall pick whose career was cut short by injuries, a fifth pick who became one of the best shooting guards of his era, and a player selected late in the second round who would go on to win nine NBA championships. What made this particular draft unusual was its format: the league had slashed the number of rounds from seven to three, compressing an entire class of prospects into a tighter, more pressurized event. It was also the first draft ever held for two brand new franchises, the Charlotte Hornets and the Miami Heat, who were about to play their very first seasons.

• 2. The Green Room

  ›

  Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum had hosted the NBA's draft green room for the seventh year in a row in 1988. The green room, a staging area where top prospects gathered with their families and representatives, had been part of the draft experience since at least the 1980 NBA draft, when the event began airing on national television. Before that era, players selected would be called to a hotel after the fact to shake hands and take promotional photos with the commissioner. By 1988, they waited live, in real time, to walk to the podium and meet NBA commissioner David Stern. The NBA's team presidents and general managers voted collectively to determine who received green room invitations, and this year the group believed the top seventeen prospects deserved a spot. Seventeen invites is a large number, and yet two players who would become notable NBA figures were left out entirely. Dan Majerle from Central Michigan University and Anthony Mason from Tennessee State University were both absent. Shelton Jones from St. John's made the list but would wait until the second round to hear his name.

• 3. Danny Manning and the First Pick

  ›

  Danny Manning, a power forward from the University of Kansas, went first overall to the Los Angeles Clippers. The expectation placed on him was enormous, and for a time he appeared capable of meeting it. He earned two All-Star selections and won the Sixth Man of the Year award during a career that stretched across fifteen seasons. Injuries, though, prevented him from becoming the franchise-defining player the Clippers had hoped for. The Clippers also held the sixth pick that year, acquired from Sacramento, though they then traded that selection to the Philadelphia 76ers. Mitch Richmond, taken fifth overall by the Golden State Warriors out of Kansas State, had a very different arc. Richmond earned six All-Star appearances and five All-NBA team selections over his career. He also won Rookie of the Year following that 1988-89 season, a strong signal of what was to come for a player passed over by four teams before the Warriors called his name.

• 4. Expansion Teams Enter the Draft

  ›

  The Charlotte Hornets and Miami Heat each made their first-ever draft picks on the 28th of June 1988, before playing a single regular season game. Charlotte selected a shooting guard out of the University of Kentucky with the eighth overall pick. Miami used the ninth pick on a center from Syracuse University. The Heat also held two additional first-round selections that year, picking twentieth and twenty-third overall. Both of those extra picks came through trades agreed upon on the 23rd of June 1988. The Heat received a first-round pick from the Dallas Mavericks as part of an arrangement tied to the expansion draft, in which Miami agreed not to select centers Bill Wennington and Uwe Blab or guard Steve Alford. A second-round pick came from the Seattle SuperSonics, who sent it to Miami after the Heat agreed not to select guard Danny Young in the same expansion process. The result was that a franchise with no history yet was navigating the draft with multiple assets and complex trade conditions on the very day the league introduced it to the public.

• 5. Nine Championships, One Draft

  ›

  Steve Kerr was not among the seventeen players invited to sit in the Felt Forum's green room. He was a guard out of the University of Arizona, and his selection came in the second round, at pick forty-two. The Utah Jazz chose him, and few in the room that day would have predicted what his career would eventually look like. Kerr won five NBA championships as a player, then added four more as a head coach, bringing his total to nine titles. Also in this draft class were Rik Smits, a center taken second overall by the Indiana Pacers out of Marist College; Hersey Hawkins, a shooting guard out of Bradley taken sixth; and Dan Majerle, a forward from Central Michigan taken fourteenth by the Phoenix Suns. All three became NBA All-Stars. Majerle's absence from the green room, despite becoming a prominent player, reflected how imprecise the voting by team presidents and general managers could be when projecting a prospect's future.

• 6. Early Entrants and Overseas Paths

  ›

  For the sixth consecutive year, and the tenth time in eleven years, no college underclassman who had entered the draft withdrew their name before the event. Nine college players successfully applied for early entrance, including Rod Strickland from DePaul and Rex Chapman from Kentucky. The draft also included a more unusual category: players who qualified as college underclassmen while already playing professional basketball abroad. Three players fell into this group. Lloyd Daniels had left Mt. San Antonio College in 1987 to play for the Waitemata Dolphins in New Zealand. Hernán Montenegro, who was born in Argentina, left Louisiana State University in 1987 to play for Olimpo de Bahía Blanca back home. Eddie Pope had left the University of Southern Mississippi in 1986 to play for Saint-Etienne Basket in France. Their inclusion pushed the total count of college underclassmen in this draft from nine to twelve. Montenegro's case was particularly noted as the first time a foreign-born player qualified as a draft underclassman while playing professionally for what the source describes as his home nation.