“It was like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and LeBron James in one player.”. It was said by Bill Walton, no less, the cursed red giant, a legend destroyed by injuries when he amassed a gigantic resume, at the height only of the greatest. And said it by David Thompson, the forward with superpowers who had been a college champion with North Carolina State in 1974, in the parenthesis between two gigantic UCLAs, Lew Alcindor’s (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Walton’s. Thompson was a swingman (guard-forward) who invented ways to move through the air and perfected alley oops without getting to crush: by inheritance of Alcindor / Kareem, and the impossibility of stopping him in another way, the mates were prohibited in College. In the 1967-69 stretch, Alcindor won three college titles and lost… two games total.
After Bill Walton came Michael Jordan, of course. That years later he assured that Without him Kobe Bryant would not have existed in the same way that without David Thompson Michael Jordan would not have existed. The 23 of the Bulls, the best of all, grew up admiring the feats of Magic Johnson and He marveled playing alongside James Worthy, with whom he was the 1982 NCAA champion with the North Carolina Tar Heels, eight years after the North Carolina State wolf pack, the Wolfpack, will win the first title in its history (they repeated in 1983). But his idol, the superhero of Air Jordan, Thompson era.
A benchmark for the greatest benchmark of all
That David Thompson who was champion and Best Player of the Final Four in 1974, and whose 44 is the only number withdrawn by NC State (26.8 points on average in his university career), was a magnet for a Jordan who dreamed of having that almost poetic elasticity, his physical ability to dominate the basketball courts. I would end up having all that and much more, of course. More than anyone and more than Thompson, drafted as number 1 in 1975 by the ABA (Virginia Squires) and the NBA (Atlanta Hawks). He left North Carolina, where Jordan would soon rise as the undisputed icon of the state, and went to the ABA, straight to the Denver Nuggets a year before the Rockies were one of the four survivors of that countercultural madness that was the ABA. : the Nuggets passed to the NBA in the union of both leagues, the merger, junto a Spurs, Nets y Pacers.
In his ABA course, he was Rookie of the Year, averaged 26 points and was MVP of a Very special All Star Game, in Denver, the first with a dunk contest and in which he took the title Julius Erving with his iconic flight from the line of personal. Thompson had astonished the public, his audience, at an event that is an American basketball legend. For something in 1977, in the heat of the success of Star Wars, he took what would be his unforgettable nickname: Skywalker. The one who walks through the sky.
In the NBA, Thompson had a tremendous career, of course. But not as glorious as her talent boasted. It was all star in his first three years in the League with the Nuggets (1977-79) and also in 1983, recently transferred to Seattle Supersonics and in the twilight of a path radically slowed down by injuries … and drug use. An endemic evil in that NBA of the early eighties and too great a temptation for the player who had signed what was then the largest contract in NBA history: the Nuggets gave him four million dollars for five years after the 1977-78 season. Before your first serious foot injury. And of course before his abysmal problem with addictions. It was even said of him that in 1986 he was spending $ 1,000 a day on cocaine. Earlier, in 1984, the end of his career was accelerated when he literally shattered his knee because in a fight he was thrown down the stairs in the mythical Studio 54, In New York.
In his seven years in Denver he averaged 23.5 points per game. With the Supersonics he dropped to 15.2 and barely played in his second and final season (19 games) because he spent almost the entire time in rehab. After he hit rock bottom, he was sentenced to 180 days in jail for assaulting his wife and went a long way to detoxification. When he left alcohol and drugs behind, he rebuilt his life and dedicated years to giving talks, linked to the NBA environment and already far from the years in which he dazzled with that huge physique and that captivating talent forged in Boiling Springs, in Carolina del South. Where at the age of 16 he stood out so much in a basketball camp that he even exposed an ABA professional, Skeeter Swift Jr, who set out to teach him a lesson by his haughty demeanor and was scalded.
An amazing night in April 1978
It’s hard to know what David Thompson’s ceiling might have been, but everyone who saw him play agrees that he would have retired as one of the greatest. You have the number 33 retired by the Nuggets, the eternal admiration of Michael Jordan (no small thing) and many stories to tell. Some of them incredible, like the one in the insane race for the NBA Top Scorer title in 1978 that he lost to George Gervin by the narrowest gap ever: 27.22 for 27.15 points per night. Stephen Curry beat Bradley Beal last (2021) in the foto finish… but no so much (31.9 by 31.3). In fact, there are two other more pinpoint cases: David Robinson to Shaquille O’Neal (0.44 margin after scoring 71 points in the last game with tocomocho of the Clippers, the rival of the Spurs) and the tremendous Kobe Bryant-Kevin Durant of the 2011-12, settled with a +0.17 for KD. Also that below the 0.07 of the Gervin-Thompson.
Gervin won, the unforgettable Iceman, called the ice man because just sudaba while demolishing his rivals with his choreographic style and marvelous finger roll. And the ABA won, which was vindicated as soon as he joined two of the great stars of two of his teams sent to the NBA, Nuggets and Spurs. And David Thompson lost, Skywalker, who was left without an award that, in any case, was going to go to Pete Maravich. The Top Scorer of 1977 (31.1) was packed to repeat when he suffered a knee injury and did not cover the 1,400 minutes that were the minimum to qualify. By the hair: it stayed at 1,352 and finally 27 points on average. Without Maravich, Gervin had almost tied the first of his four Top Scorer titles but needed one last big effort on an unforgettable day, the last of regular season On April 9, 1978, a Sunday.
The Spurs, classified for the playoffs, played against the Jazz, eliminated. Hours before, the Nuggets (classified) were playing against the also eliminated Pistons, in Detroit. It was the last game at Cobo Arena, his home since 1961, before moving to the Pontiac Silverdome. With all the local fish sold, there were barely 3,482 people in the stands, and the television had not even appeared there, focused on the farewell of a giant: That day, John Havlicek played his last game with the Celtics after 16 years (and eight rings) of green pride. The priorities were clear, with little media attention to a scoring career whose last stage Gervin reached with a +14.
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Dick Raphael (DIARIO AS) Since the Nuggets played before, Larry Brown asked Thompson if he wanted to go. Go for it. It was an invitation to throw it all away. And the Nuggets played like that, with no system other than Thompson’s actions, plays for him, balls in his hands. The 1.93, 23-year-old forward made his first eight shots, mostly suspensions from mid-range peppered with a few dunks and alley oops house brand. After another five unsuccessful baskets before the end, closed the first quarter with 32 points, then an NBA record in one set. He had signed 13/14 with a 6/6 in free throws, his only failure a dunk attempt blocked by Pistons center Ben Poquette. “I felt like Superman on steroids”, Said years later Thompson himself, who in the second quarter added 21 more points. At the break, 53 with a 20/23 in shots. The Nuggets won 69-83 and the news began to circulate: televisions raced towards the pavilion, radios connected a track in which, no less, the historic record of 100 points of Wilt Chamberlain was being put under siege. But the fatigue and an extra effort of the Pistons arrived so that history was not written at their expense. Increasingly exhausted and with markings of two, three and up to four defenders, Thompson stayed at six points in the third quarter (59 overall) as the game turned around. The Pistons, in fact, won (139-137) and Skywalker he finally added 73 points with 28/38 shooting and 17/20 from the personnel line in 43 minutes. It was the record of an outside player, in total behind only Chamberlain (100, 78 and twice those 73 points). Still today only one more mark has passed ahead, the 81 points of Kobe Bryant. He, Chamberlain and Thompson are the only ones to have achieved at least 73 on an NBA court. For reasons of timing and slots, Thompson had time to catch a plane, be received in Detroit like a hero, with races of about 300 people to get to see him at the airport, and hear from home what was happening in New Orleans at the Jazz-Spurs. Gervin needed 58 points to finally regain his lead in the scoring career. And the Spurs, like the Nuggets before, did everything they could to get him to join them. In fact they lost with a scandalous score (153-132) because, with nothing else at stake, they had sections in which they defended with four while Gervin recovered in the center of the court to keep scoring when his requipo recovered the ball, almost always after receiving basket. Iceman He started badly, he missed his first six shots and gave his only assist, all the details had to be taken care of, so that Louie Dampier added the 15,000 point of his career. After his initial failures, he went through the bench and thought about letting him be, but he was sent back to the track. From there at the end of the first quarter he added 20 points and in the second he piled up 33. Not only did he already have 53 at halftime but also He had also taken Thompson’s newly released scoring record in a quarter (by one point). Since then, Carmelo Anthony has achieved 33, Kevin Love 34 and Klay Thompson 37. In the third quarter he reached the 59 he needed to win the Top Scorer crown. He asked to continue a little longer to add some extra basket “in case the calculators were wrong”. He finished with 63 points, 10 less than Thompson also with 10 minutes less on the court and five fewer baskets despite 11 more attempts (23/49 in his case with a 17/20 in free throws). Less efficient than the historic Thompson party, which is believed to have hovered around the eighty-many points if it had already been played then with a line of three. Years later the two, Iceman and Skywalker, they recognized that they were dying of laughter every time they coincided and talked about that battle fought deferred, from Detroit to New Orleans. One with echoes of the unforgettable 1970s, the wacky but wonderful ABA and an NBA that was moving into the golden age, on the verge of the arrival of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Other times were coming, of course.
