NBA: Where Have All the Goons Gone?
It used to irritate me when I’d listen to old guys gripe about athletes being tougher during their era. Which makes me wonder because I think I’m turning into one of those guys. The NBA is solid right now, but it was much better during the previous three decades.
The current era is right up there with the 1980s, ‘90s and 2000′s in terms of superstar players. The ‘80s had Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone and Isaiah Thomas, etc. The ‘90s gave us Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, etc. And of course the NBA in the 2000′s presented us with Shaq, Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Jason Kidd and many others.
However, the role players of yesteryear in my opinion were more in-tune with their duties to their teams and were more significant to the league. Nowadays, teams employ different role players every year. Guys like Matt Barnes, Flip Murray and James Posey seem like they’re on a different roster every season. That wasn’t the case in previous eras. Michael Cooper never bolted from L.A. to chase more money and minutes. Guys like Vinnie Johnson, Danny Ainge and Kurt Rambis accepted and relished their roles with top flight clubs and in doing so helped their teams win multiple titles.
There was one role used by basically every team during previous decades that has almost entirely been eliminated in today’s NBA. Check that, it has been eliminated.
That’s the role of a “Goon”. There aren’t any left. The league and Commissioner David Stern has eliminated all them by ejecting, suspending, and fining players who try and take on the old school enforcer role.
I think back to the New York Knicks of the mid-1990s coached by Pat Reilly. Knowing he had to compete with the Jordan and Pippen led Bulls, Reilly used the formula consisting of one superstar (Patrick Ewing) and seven goons to make up his team’s rotation. The Knicks never defeated the Jordan-led Bulls in a playoff series, but they came closer than most teams during that time.
Reilly’s goon-trio of Charles Oakley, Xavier McDaniel (“the X-Man), and Anthony Mason physically beat the hell out of those legendary Bulls teams. Michael and Scottie were just too good to ever lose. Reilly’s strategy worked better than any other. You couldn’t out-superstar Jordan. Even with Ewing. You needed a different approach.
Think back to the ‘Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons teams from 1987-1991. They had maybe the best collection of goons in league history. Guided by all time goon Bill Laimbeer, solid running-mates Rick Mahorn, John Salley and Dennis Rodman, the Pistons bruised up opponents and allowed Isaiah Thomas and Joe Dumars in the back-court to do their thing. Pistons coach Chuck Daily was one of the few guys that was able to win multiple titles (’89,’90) with a goon-heavy approach. He did have one superstar in Thomas, a must to win an NBA title.
Nowadays, teams can’t incorporate that old school Reilly/Daily type of mentality and use brute force to punish softer, more-skilled opponents.
There aren’t any goons left in the NBA. I’m sorry, but Brendan Heywood and Ronny Turiaf aren’t goons.
The league has eliminated them completely. Those old ‘Lakers vs. Celtics’ battles during the ‘80s had multiple fist-fights each game and nobody ever got tossed and sometimes technical fouls weren’t even given. I also remember watching the Pistons play the 76ers during the early ‘90s and almost expecting a fight between Laimbeer and Barkley to occur.
It was part of the game. Maybe they got tossed, but you certainly didn’t expect either to receive a fine or 20-game suspension like Carmelo Anthony received for failing to beat-up a five foot seven inch Nate Robinson a couple years back during an altercation I would never define as a “fight”.
I miss the goons of the NBA. I miss the Sonics employing Frank Brickowski (a top all time goon, I might add) to purposely antagonize Dennis Rodman during the 1996 NBA Finals hoping both would get ejected. Trading Brickowski for Rodman was something Seattle coach George Karl was willing to do. And “Brick” accepted that as his role with a championship contending team.
I remember one game during that series where Brickowski received a technical foul 30 seconds after checking into the game for trying to rough-up Rodman.
A goon’s role to a team was pivotal. The dictionary’s definition of “goon” is “a hired hoodlum or thug”. That’s my new favorite definition.
In basketball, more so than any other sport, the team with the league’s best player usually wins the championship. Magic and Bird dominated the ‘80s (eight rings combined), Jordan and Olajuwon owned the ‘90s (eight rings combined) and Shaq and Duncan dominated the 2000′s (eight rings combined).
For all the teams that don’t have the era’s best player, they must resort to other tactics in order to possibly win a crucial playoff series and take down Goliath.
Without the role of a goon these days, players like LeBron James, Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant will be able to roam free knowing they’re physically protected by the NBA’s referee’s and commissioner.
Jordan never had that luxury. He knew Oakley, Mason and the X-Man were coming for him. He realized and accepted the definition of a “playoff foul”. In today’s era, a “playoff foul” results into a “flagrant two” foul. Yeah, and how lame are those? Flagrant two’s? Come on NBA.
The league now has two types of flagrant fouls. Somewhere ex-goons like Maurice Lucas and Kurt Rambis are puking.
5 Responses to “NBA: Where Have All the Goons Gone?”
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I agree with your thoughts Johnny but I will take it one step further. It seems these days that a player can’t express ANY emotion whatsoever during a game. It has all become so bloody polite. Get caught making a sour face and there is a risk of a T. An angry bounce of the ball gets you one too. There is a lot of yammering that we don’t hear on the TV, and by golly, I’d love to hear it! On the sportsmanship side – I challenge you to catch a camera angle showing a player helping a player from the opposite team to his feet. RARELY do they broadcast such sportsmanship.
Great points, StephanieB! Thanks