Too long, didn’t remember: NBA stars that time (and the internet) forgot

We look back at seven ex-NBA stars who contributed a great deal to the league, but whose stories also risk being lost to time thanks to vanishing modern attention spans. Have you ever opened up a social media page with a clear intention of what you’re doing and then instantly become distracted? You end up fiddling around and then closing the page and realizing you didn’t even do what you’d originally logged on for? Yes, the internet is a place full of distractions. TikTok, Instagram, whatever Twitter (X) is? It’s hard to remember what you had for breakfast some days. The same, of course, goes for NBA history.

If you go online today to read about basketball, it can seem like the league or the sport itself was created in the 21st century. That anything before Kobe Bryant never actually existed. As a result, fans sometimes need a history lesson. And that’s exactly what we wanted to do today. To examine the careers of seven former NBA stars who contributed a great deal to the league but whose stories also risk being lost to time thanks to our modern attention spans.

Talk to any basketball fan in Seattle for more than five minutes and the name Jack Sikma will inevitably come up. The blonde curly-haired big man helped lead the SuperSonics to the 1979 title – a fact that makes it all the more ridiculous that Seattle is without an NBA team now. Drafted in 1977 out of small Illinois Wesleyan University, Sikma became a seven-time All-Star thanks to his quirky catapult jump shot, which started far back behind his head and usually ended with a swish in the net. Over his first nine years in Seattle, Sikma notched 16.8 points and 10.8 boards per game to go along with that ’79 championship trophy. He finished his career with five more years in Milwaukee, battling the likes of Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics. (Highlights).

The 6ft 1in Nate ‘Tiny’ Archibald boasts a lot of hardware. But perhaps his biggest distinction is that in 1972-73, he was the league’s scoring and assist champion. Not only that, he’s the only person ever to achieve that feat. Later, the six-time All-Star was a member of the Boston Celtics team that won the 1980-81 NBA championship. From the 1971-72 season through the 1976-77 campaign, Archibald averaged 26.7 points and 8.6 assists per game. He sat out a year due to injury but then he reinvented himself as a cagey vet, finishing fifth in the MVP race in 1980 and winning a ring with Robert Parish, Bird and the gang the next season. Today, the four-time NBA champion Parish considers Tiny to be one of the top five Celtics of all time. (Highlights).

Raise your hand if you remember the Buffalo Braves? The short-lived franchise in western New York later became the San Diego Clippers through a convoluted series of relocations. But when the team was still in Buffalo it was led by MVP and three-time scoring champion, Bob McAdoo. When the versatile center entered the league in 1972 out of UNC, he became the rookie of the year. The next season ‘Do was the MVP runner-up. In this third year, he won MVP. And in his fourth season, McAdoo capped off three in a row leading the NBA in scoring. Things went a bit sideways for him in the middle of his career, however. He bounced around the NBA, going from the Knicks to Boston to Detroit to New Jersey. But in 1981, he landed with the Lakers, where he won two rings as an important double-digit scorer in the playoffs off the bench. (Highlights).

Ask Hall of Fame scoring forward Carmelo Anthony about Adrian Dantley, and he’ll tell you the surprising story of a successful basketball player who saved his money and who yet passes the time working as a crossing guard. It’s a funny idea for someone who was a six-time All-Star and two-time scoring champion in the 1980s with the Utah Jazz. But it’s true! Prior to his working the crosswalks, though, Dantley averaged 29.6 points and 6.2 rebounds per game over seven years in Salt Lake City. Then ahead of the 1986-87 campaign, the forward went to Detroit where the Pistons were on the cusp of winning a championship. But in the middle of 1988-89, Dantley was shipped to Dallas, right before the Pistons broke through. Today, Anthony, who knew Dant when the latter as an assistant coach in Denver, still rightly reveres him. (Highlights).

In the 1980s, the Denver Nuggets were a high-flying, high-scoring basketball machine. And one of the biggest reasons why was forward Alex English. The first player in NBA history to score 2,000 points in eight straight seasons, English could hit the midrange and finish at the rim with the best in the league. Not only that, but the eight-time All-Star and 1982-83 scoring champion achieved these feats it in the latter half of his career. After a few fruitless years in Milwaukee and Indiana to begin his time in the pros, English landed in Denver, where his scoring took off. Over the entire 1980s, he averaged 26.9 points, 5.7 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game while playing in the Mile High City. (Highlights).