Adrian Dantley

Adrian Dantley at long last has been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Dantley is not well known to the younger generation and has probably been forgotten by many older fans. This may be due at least in part to the fact he played for seven different NBA teams from 1976-1991 - a journeyman superstar with no core constituency. In addition, Dantley was not flamboyant nor was he a self-promoter.

But Adrian Dantley's career was remarkable just the same. He was an exceptional collegiate player at Notre Dame where he is best known for helping the Irish end the multi-year winning streak of the legendary John Wooden/Bill Walton UCLA team of the 1970's. The raw numbers for Dantley's pro career are certainly impressive: over 23,000 points, career average of 24.3 points per game including several years with an average of more than 30 per game, led the league in scoring multiple times. Perhaps most striking was a lifetime field goal percentage of .540, this by a 6' 5" forward who played most of his game below the rim.

Dantley was not a great shooter but he was a great scorer; this is not as anomalous as it sounds. Oscar Robertson and Michael Jordan were not great shooters but used their size, strength, ballhandling skills, and in Jordan's case, elevation, to obtain high-percentage shots, the prerequisite for prolific scoring. Jerry West once said that Elgin Baylor was a great scorer because he had more high-percentage shots than anyone else; West should know since he had a few himself. But while Adrian Dantley did not have the ballhandling skills of the "Big O" or the hang time or explosive quickness of Jordan or Baylor, he possessed keen intelligence, anticipation, Zen-like instincts around the basket, strength, and a deceptively effective first step - probably as efficient an offensive machine as the NBA has ever seen.

The Hall of Fame should have come calling years ago.