Nissalke’s innovation
In 1976, University of Wisconsin alumnus Ray Patterson chose an old friend and pupil in Tom Nissalke, a Madison native and assistant with the Bucks, to turn around the Houston Rockets.
Nissalke was not exactly known as an offensive innovator; the hard-nosed Wisconsinite’s calling card was defense.
In his first season, Nissalke won coach of the year after guiding the Rockets to the Eastern Conference finals by making them a top-10 defensive team. But after his second season, the Rockets offense cratered to the bottom of the NBA.
So to start 1978-79, Patterson swung big and signed free agent Rick Barry from Golden State to juice the offense. But Houston didn’t have a point guard. Nissalke had to improvise, and he eventually turned to Barry.
Though the forward averaged 6.0 assists per game with Golden State from 1973-78, the playmaking was a result of the attention on him as an elite scorer. This would be different.
The 6-foot-7 Barry would be setting up the Houston offense.
“I was probably the first one,” Barry said of the concept of point forward. “There were very few times that you saw forwards in the top 10 in assists. I’ll do whatever it takes to win, and that’s what it really was basically all about.”
He averaged a career-high 6.3 assists, sixth-best in the league. He had 28 games of at least seven assists, including 11 with 10 or more.
“It was just to utilize his great passing skills and also to get the great shooters in position,” said Del Harris, Nissalke’s assistant coach. “And Rick could score it, he could drive it, he could pass it inside to Moses (Malone) or he could find shooters coming off the screens.”
The Rockets offense drastically improved and they finished fifth in scoring but were swept out of the playoffs. Nissalke was fired.
Even if the idea of a bigger playmaker wasn’t accepted in that moment, Harris definitely took to it. So when he assumed the Rockets head coaching job in 1979-80, he didn’t abandon the concept. Instead, he leaned into it with 6-8 forward Robert Reid.
In 1980-81, Reid averaged 4.2 assists as the Rockets made it to the NBA Finals.
Milwaukee star helps Seattle to title
John Johnson led his Milwaukee high school to a state title in 1966 and was an All-American at the University of Iowa, but it was clear he was more than just a scorer.
The first pick of the expansion Cleveland Cavaliers in 1970, the 6-7 Johnson burst into the NBA with consecutive all-star seasons, averaging 16.8 points and 5.0 assists. But he was traded to Portland in 1973 and Houston in 1975 to later play under Nissalke.
“I did learn a lot from him and saw he was able to handle the ball,” Reid said of Johnson. “And that’s how I was able to do it.”
When Johnson was traded again, this time to Seattle in 1977, it looked like he was closer to wrapping up his career than revitalizing it. As luck would have it for him, the SuperSonics fired head coach Bob Hopkins in-season and hired
Johnson’s former Cavaliers teammate Lenny Wilkens.
“His skill set stood out to me,” Wilkens said of Johnson. “Either one of us got the ball, the other would take off and I thought, hey, this is great, this makes us much more effective. And I thought it was something that wasn’t utilized in the NBA hardly at all at the time.”
Wilkens expanded Johnson’s playmaking role in 1978-79, helping the SuperSonics win their only NBA title. Johnson often looked like the playmaking wunderkind from his high school days, as he averaged a team-high 4.4 assists. In 1980, Johnson averaged a career-high 5.2 assists.
“He was very good at making the play and passing the ball and loved doing it,” Wilkens said. “I just felt like, hey, this guy’s a natural at it and I’m going to utilize that ability of his to help us with our team. So, I think J.J. was one of the first really, point forwards.”
Marques Johnson relieves pressure
After a Madison native and a Milwaukee prep star ushered in a new dawn in basketball, the light reached the Bucks in the spring of 1984 – and Marques Johnson remembers it clear as day.
During a practice between Games 2 and 3 of the 1984 playoffs against New Jersey, Bucks coach Nelson devised a way to relieve the pressure Nets guards were putting on shooting guard Mike Dunleavy as the team’s primary ballhandler.
Nelson decided putting the ball in the hands of the 6-7 Johnson would loosen up the Nets defense.
Forward Marques Johnson, who played 11 NBA seasons (1777-90) for the Bucks, Clippers and Warriors, says he coined the term “point forward” while playing for Milwaukee during the playoffs in 1984.
“They weren’t pressuring me at all,” Johnson recalled. “So Nellie told me, ‘M, I want you bring the ball up the floor and get us into our offense.’ ”
The coach walked his all-star through a handful of plays, and it helped turn the series.
Who coined the term point forward?
What’s in a name?
Sometimes, it’s everything. Especially when you’re about to break longstanding positional boundaries. So, who came up with the sobriquet?
That remains clear for Marques Johnson, too.
“I said to him, ‘Instead of a point guard, I’m like a point forward,’ ” he recalled of that practice in New Jersey. “’Nellie’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, point forward, I like that you’re my point forward, yeah, I like that M, point forward.’ ... That was the first time that term was ever uttered.”
Nelson and Harris, who by this time was an assistant coach in Milwaukee, first used the phrase together in training camp meetings in the late summer of 1984. By then, Johnson had been traded to the Los Angeles Clippers and the Bucks still lacked a true point guard.
Their attention turned to Paul Pressey, a 6-5 forward entering his third season.
Nissalke, Harris and Wilkens outlined the concept. Barry, Reid, John Johnson and Marques Johnson were the first examples of it. But it was Nelson and Pressey who stamped a new age.
Pressey played this new position full time in 1984-85 and averaged 6.8 assists, good for 17th in the NBA. He was the only player considered a forward in the top 40 in that category.
For Nelson and his players, it made sense to use Pressey the way he did. But that sensibility began to splinter the rigid frames around NBA positions.
“They would put two guys on one side of the floor and play three against three, and then the small forward would play point forward,” said ESPN analyst Hubie Brown, who began his head coaching career against Nelson’s Bucks.
“That changed the defensive rules and then that changed how you were going to play. That caused a lot of confusion within coaching early on of what were you gonna do?”
Pushing the position forward
Pressey, who averaged 7.1 assists from 1984-89, defined the position thusly: “When you take the ball out of bounds and give it to the small forward and he’s bringing the ball up the floor, he’s actually running your offense on a steady basis … at least 25 plays for you.”
The 1990s saw Chicago’s Scottie Pippen (6-8) and Detroit’s Grant Hill (6-8) add a bigger, more athletic scoring element to the position. Then came LeBron James, who was 6-7 as a rookie in 2003.
In his first decade, James averaged 27.6 points and 6.9 assists, including two seasons averaging at least 30 points and six seasons averaging at least seven assists.
In the summer of 2013, the Bucks thought they might add a new chapter to the point forward story when they drafted a 6-9, 18-year-old from Greece.
“He’ll be able to play two, three, (the) one, point forward – that’s what he plays,” then-Bucks head coach Larry Drew said at Antetokounmpo’s introductory news conference on June 28, 2013.
“That’s what comes to your mind when you watch him play because he has the ability to take the ball off the glass and he can take it coast-to-coast. And he makes plays.”
The gangly teen profiled a lot like Pippen for the Bucks’ front office, but he had bigger goals. Literally.
“I’ll be like Magic, you know?” Antetokounmpo said that summer day with a wide smile. “Like (Kevin Durant) – mix KD and Magic Johnson.
“I think it’s better that I grow because I’m a point guard. Six-10, maybe point forward as the coach says, and I think it’s better. I can play the point guard position. I can handle the ball very well. But the thing that makes me special in the game is I’m an unselfish point guard. I pass the ball to my teammates. And when the team needs a scorer, I’m that scorer.”