You may remember when LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s all-time leading scorer. ESPN had a tracker estimating the exact date, based on things like LeBron’s scoring average, minutes per game, if Mercury is in retrograde, etc. etc.
Scoring a lot of points is a wonderful accomplishment and should rightfully be celebrated, though there’s a more common achievement that’s also impressive. We’re talking total games played. Jrue Holiday became the active latest player to hit this milestone, notching career game #1000 earlier this season.
He’s now one of just 150 NBA players to ever reach 1,000 games.
I’m more curious about some of the names around him.
First off, kudos to Glen Rice for playing exactly 1,000 games. That’s the kind of precision I would expect from a sharpshooter like him.
But there are six retired players who fell within ten games of 1,000. What happened to them?
Metta World Peace is perhaps the easiest answer. He played in 991 games (some of them as Ron Artest) and would have easily eclipsed 1,000 if he hadn’t participated in the Malice at the Palace in 2004. Because he went into the stands and started punching people, he missed 73 games. It’s the longest suspension in NBA history, and it keeps him off the 1,000-plus list.
T.R. Dunn is not a player who gets thrown around NBA circles very often, but he should because “Theodore Roosevelt Dunn” is a fantastic name.
Dunn’s averages aren’t super impressive—5.1 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.6 assists for his career—but he was a durable guard. He played in every contest for four consecutive years and had ten years in a row where he missed two or fewer games.
That durability gave out on him as he hit his mid-30s, though. Dunn missed 130 out of a possible 246 games in his final three seasons, falling just short of 1,000 for his career (993, to be exact).
There are also a pair of Sams on this list: Sam Cassell (993) and Sam Mitchell (994).
Cassell’s biggest downfall was the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season. The New Jersey Nets had high expectations for him but he got hurt during the FIRST GAME of the year. Woof.
The Nets traded Cassell mid-season to the Milwaukee Bucks. He only played a total of eight out of 50 games. If he had even appeared in 30% of the season’s games, he’d be sitting in the rarified air of 1,000-game players.
Mitchell, meanwhile, got drafted in the third round of the 1985 NBA Draft (back when the draft had more than two rounds), but he spent the next two years in France. He didn’t make his NBA debut until he was 26 years old.
Dolph Schayes came four games short of 1,000, but he’s also in the Hall of Fame. I’d say that’s a fair trade-off.
Finally, Hedo Turkoglu was a mere three games—194 minutes of basketball—away from getting to an even grand.
Perhaps if he had laid off the pizza and Sprite, he’d be in the club.
Coincidentally, the next issue will be the 250th of Crisp Bounce Pass, which is a pretty cool milestone in its own right. I’m gonna celebrate with a cookie cake.