Nelson went small with Tim Hardaway in 1989 NBA draft
This story was originally published in 1989. Two months after draft, the Warriors acquired center Alton Lister from Seattle.
The Warriors dropped only one shoe Tuesday in the NBA college draft. The other shoe, coach and general manager Don Nelson indicated, will hit the floor a little more than a month from now when it’s really time for let’s make a deal.
Going into the draft, the Warriors needed a powerful front-line player. They had the same need going out after using their first-round pick, the 14th overall, to take tiny Tim Hardaway, a 5-foot-11 point guard from Texas-El Paso.
Before the NBA’s first prime-time draft began, the Warriors tried and failed to trade up with Indiana in an attempt to snag Oklahoma’s Stacey King or Louisiana Tech’s Randy White with the seventh pick.
King went sixth to Chicago, White eighth to Dallas.
Rebuffed by Indiana, the Warriors worked what looked like a strange pre-draft transaction with Seattle. The Sonics acquired the Warriors’ other first-round slot, the 16th, for Seattle’s first-rounder next year.
That swap and the selection of Hardaway made no sense until Nelson stepped to the microphone at the Coliseum Arena and did everything but say outright another trade is inevitable.
“You’re going to have to listen carefully,” Nelson said to a roomful of sportswriters and broadcasters. “I can’t say very much.
“We’re going to be very active with that pick from Seattle,” Nelson said mysteriously. “We think we can get a power person at a later time (for next season). You can be aggressive in future picks at any time.”
Nelson paused before dropping the Yogi Berra-ish admonition of, “It’s just not over yet.”
Nelson said the Warriors probably will swing into action after the NBA salary cap goes up Aug. 1 from $7.2 million a year to an estimated $9.5 million. That would allow the Warriors, who are two under the 12-man roster limit, to land a high-priced player, perhaps a free agent.
And it also would allow another team to absorb a high-priced player from the Warriors, say 7-4 Ralph Sampson and his $2.1 million price tag for next season. Not many big players are available. The expansion Minnesota Timberwolves might listen to an offer for former Detroit muscle man Rick Mahorn.
Roy Tarpley of Dallas would be even more attractive, even though the 7-foot forward is one strike from lifetime banishment under the league’s drug policy. That might lead the Mavericks to part with him for someone to replace seriously injured center James Donaldson. White also would be a possibility.
The Warriors fell to 10 players when they released bench warmers John Starks, Orlando Graham and Ben McDonald after the June 15 expansion draft.
Power forward Larry Smith also no longer is Warriors property because he is an unrestricted free agent able to sign with any club. Nelson refused to say whether the Warriors wanted Smith back.
Indiana was a candidate to trade down for the Warriors’ two firstrounders because the Pacers needed a point guard.
“I thought Indiana was going to take me,” Hardaway said by phone. “But when they didn’t, I kind of figured it would be Golden State.”
Nelson never had an opportunity to interview Hardaway, the Warriors’ only selection in the tworound draft, because a pre-paid airline ticket didn’t get to Hardaway. He had taken a written test mailed to him by the club.
The acquisition of Hardaway and the signing Saturday of Soviet star Sarunas Marciulionis give the Warriors five guards plus two guards posing as forwards. Hardaway and Marciulionis give last season’s starting point guard, Winston Garland, something to think about on his Caribbean honeymoon.
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Nelson said. “We rated Tim Hardaway as the top point guard of this season. It will be proven out over the long road.
“He can run the break as well as anybody. He gets the ball to the right people at the right time. He’s small but stocky, a la a small Mitch Richmond body.”
The 175-pound Hardaway grew up in the competitive atmosphere of Chicago, where his father was a playground legend. The younger Hardaway didn’t do so bad himself, averaging 40 points a game last summer in leading his team to the championship of a Chicago pro-am league in which NBA stars Isiah Thomas, Terry Cummings and Craig Hodges participated.
Hardaway, 22, passed former NBA great Nate Archibald as UTEP’s alltime leading scorer despite not playing much as a freshman.
Hardaway averaged 22 points a game last season and was the Western Athletic Conference player of the year.
But it was in the postseason allstar games that Hardaway sparkled. His stock moved up when he was named most valuable player of an allstar game in Seattle and of the Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational. He had to settle for merely being on the Orlando (Fla.) Classic all-tournament team, although Nelson said he should have been MVP there, too.