NBA 1k970 Draft Class: 90 Potential (1980s)

Welcome to NBA 1k970, a project that will revolutionize the way we at Sportsfap slack off and waste time.

Sporstfap is using NBA 2k20 on the PS4 to recreate the last 50 years of basketball history. Starting with a 1969-70 roster base, we will be recreating the last 50 NBA seasons, playoffs and NBA Drafts (with 60 real players in each draft), and never leaving the house or speaking to a human person again as long as we live.

Thankfully, this is a massive waste of time that can be enjoyed by everybody, like a model submarine that actually goes underwater. Use these rosters and drafts to create your own version of basketball history! Save careers or teams, rewrite the record books, and never leave the house or speak to your loved ones again!

This is also an excuse for us here at Sportsfap to rank and write about the top 250 prospects over the last 50 years of Basketball history. The following is a list of players from the 1980’s (Draft Classes 1980-89) with a 90 potential rating. We’re going to give you the player, their rookie rating, and a quick (hopefully) entertaining blurb about their career, which is sometimes just straight up the wiki copied and pasted. In case you missed it // or would like more detailed information about this nerdery, check out our 90 Potential – 1970s article. We do a good job of explaining what TF we are doing here.

Are you passionate about a particular player? Is someone way too high or low? Want to help make players, courts or jerseys? Let us know! This is a work in progress. But keep in mind that if you don’t see a superstar player you like here, there’s a good chance he’s rated higher than a 90 potential.

So kick off your Sunday shoes and welcome to the 1980s!

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Joe Barry Carroll, C – 1980 Draft Class (Rating – 81)

Joe Barry Carroll was a very productive NBA player whose career stats look much better than his nickname and reputation would suggest. The #1 overall draft selection in 1980, JBC averaged 18.9 points and 9.3 rebounds as a rookie, while being named to the NBA All-Rookie First Team.

A two-way center who could legitimately dominate in stretches, Carroll played a year in Italy in his prime and was nicknamed “Joe Barely Cares” by the media at the time, which seems to be a good indication of how his career went (one of the rare players whose numbers went down as a college senior). I don’t know, I wasn’t alive.

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Darrell Griffith, SG – 1980 Draft Class (Rating – 82)

Here we go. The #2 overall draft pick in 1980, Darrell Griffith is by far the 2k-est player we’ve had so far (and one of the all-time video game ballers). Known as DOCTOR FUCKING DUNKENSTEIN, Griffith was a high flying, jaw-dropping dunker who yammed on fools while setting the then-record for made threes in a season 1983-84 with 91. 91 threes in a season! Could you imagine such a thing? And that was the all-time record! Harden gets that on a road trip these days. Dr. Dunkenstein was the original king of Dunks n’ Threes, the only true 2k currency there is.

Foot injuries derailed the Good Doctor’s career, but people who saw him play speak about his game in reverential terms.

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Kiki VanDeWeghe, SF – 1980 Draft Class (Rating – 75)

Anytime a person can be described as “The original ___” or “___ 1.0”, they stand to gain an irrational boost from this space. Wellp, as the original Dirk, German-born Kiki Vandeweghe put up a gargantuan 29.4 PPG in 1983-84 as a key (ki) member of the absolutely insane and decades-ahead of their time Run-n-Gun Denver Nuggets teams of the early 80s.

Fun fact, the 1982-83 Nuggets remain to this day the only team to both score 100 and allow 100 points in every single game of an NBA season (although someone is def breaking that before 2021, my guess is this years’ Atlanta Hawks). Kiki wasn’t much for defense, but he was a gunner’s gunner.

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Rolando Blackman, SG – 1981 Draft Class (Rating – 73)

The first Panamanian-born player to be drafted into the NBA, Ronaldo Blackman was a 4-time All-Star and the best Dallas Maverick ever until the aforementioned Dirk Nowitzki took that bar and put it on a shelf somewhere in Germany, never to be reached again.

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Larry Nance Sr, PF – 1981 Draft Class (Rating – 72)

“The High-Ayatolla of Slamola” which is the most 1980s nickname a person has ever had**, Larry Nance was a former 3x All-Star and 1st team All-Defensive player who also won the 1984 Dunk Contest. Larry Nance flourished with the Cavaliers after being traded there from the Phoenix Suns as part of a blockbuster deal that sent Nance, Mike Sanders and Detroit’s No. 1 pick in 1988 (used to pick Randolph Keys) to Cleveland for Kevin Johnson, Mark West, Tyrone Corbin and Cleveland’s first (used for Dan Majerle) and second round (used for Dean Garrett) picks in 1988 and the Lakers’ second round pick in 1989 (used for Greg Grant). The players that I’ve heard of there are all super impressive.

**Why did they add the suffix “-ola” to everything in the 80s? IDK.

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Dale Ellis, SF/SG – 1983 NBA Draft – (Rating – 69)

An original 3 point gunner, Dale Ellis is one of the most modern players of the 1980s, in that he would yack a shot pretty much as soon as he got the ball, many of those yacks being yacked threes.

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Xavier McDaniel, SF/PF – 1985 Draft Class (Rating – 81)

The superbly nicknamed X-Man, Xavier McDaniel was a forgotten 80’s star who also happened to be one of the toughest / craziest players in league history. Bake it away Wiki:

While at Wichita State, McDaniel was the first person to lead the nation in scoring (27.4) and rebounding (15.0) in the same season.

McDaniel was selected by the Seattle SuperSonics in the first round (4th overall) of the 1985 NBA draft and became an instant starter. He averaged 17.1 points per game and finished second in the NBA Rookie of the Year balloting to Patrick Ewing. His second season, he was one of a trio of 20 ppg scorers with the SuperSonics along with Dale Ellis and Tom Chambers. The SuperSonics made it all the way to the Western Conference finals that season. He averaged over 20 points per game for the next three seasons as a Sonic.

In college, McDaniel began to shave both his head and his eyebrows to look more intimidating. He continued this all throughout his pro career.

Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_McDaniel

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Terry Porter, PG – 1985 Draft Class (Rating – 70)

Part of his own 2019-style Dynamic Duo with Clyde Drexler in Portland, Terry Porter was a pass-first point guard who was more than capable from distance. After attending the Division-III University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point (the prestigious!) Porter became a highly productive NBA player for al ong time. He’s actually 15th All-time in assists as of this moment (which if you remember the “rules” from the last post, means he gets into the 90-Potential club no matter what), although both Russell Westbrook and Rajon Rondo should pass him and enter into the top 15 by the end of the 2019-20 NBA Season.

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Brad Daugherty, C – 1986 Draft Class (Rating – 80)

One of the greatest big men ever to play at UNC, Brad Daugherty was actually the #1 pick over Len Bias in 1986 (the 1986 NBA Draft is particularly sad to look back on, the top 3 are all high-potential guys who never made it).

Daugherty’s career in the NBA was cut depressingly short when he retired at 28 due to persistent back injuries, but true Brad Daugherty-heads got to say their goodbyes via the 1996 Whoopi Goldberg classic ‘Eddie’.

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Reggie Lewis, SF/SG – 1987 Draft Class (Rating – 74)

A wing with a somewhat modern game (though he didn’t shoot the three much) in that he was extremely efficient, could shoot very well off the dribble, could get to the line / hit his free throws and finish around the net in a ton of creative ways. Lewis averaged a 20.8 / 4 + r / 3 + a while hitting over 80% of his FT attempts over his last two NBA seasons, and looked to be improving every year. As Bill Simmons says (he says this about Len Bias, but it applies to both guys) in the Book of Basketball, Boston Celtics fans were robbed of years of Larry Bird throwing full court lobs to a streaking Lewis, although they did get flashes of it as that video will tell you ^^.

Lewis tragically passed away on the basketball court, in an off-season practice at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass on July 27 1993 at the age of 27.

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Dan Majerle, SF/SG – 1988 Draft Class (Rating – 68)

Known as Thunder Dan (which I’m torn between being a top-5 worst or top-5 best nickname all-time. It’s certainly nowhere in between), Dan Majerle (pronounced Marley, like Marley and Me) will be remembered as a 3x AS and 2x All-Defense with a modern, 3 and D wing style game. The current coach of the NCAA’s GRAND CANYON ANTELOPES (fuck yes) was a key piece of the 1993 Phoenix Suns team that was dispatched in the NBA Final by MJ’s Chicago Bulls.

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Mookie Blaylock, PG – 1989 Draft Class (Rating – 74)

Regarded as maybe the best 6’0-or-under defender of all time, Deron “Mookie” Blaylock was a ball-hawk who finished with over 200 steals 4 times in his NBA Career, and was All-Defense twice. He was also a solid shooter from distance who wasn’t afraid to jack threes. Mookie would fit in very nicely in today’s game. He’s like a more-appreciated Kyle Lowry (I only didn’t say a “better” Kyle Lowry because I’m Canadian). Let Wiki tell you!

– Led the NBA in steals two years in a row (1996–97 and 1997–98), joining Alvin Robertson, Magic Johnson, Allen Iverson, and Chris Paul as the only players to achieve that feat.
– Led the NBA in three-point attempts and finished second in three-pointers made in the 1996–97 season.
– Is the Atlanta Hawks’ all-time franchise leader in three-point field goals made (1,050), three-point field goal attempts (3,023), and steals (1,321).
– Set the Atlanta Hawks’ single-season franchise records for three-pointers made (231) and attempted (623) in 1995–96.

Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mookie_Blaylock

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Pervis Ellison, PF/C – 1989 Draft Class (Rating – 75)

Our second Pervis after 1975’s Purvis Short, although “Never Nervous” Pervis Ellison spelled his “Pervis” with an “e” instead of the “u” version of “Purvis”, which was of course the the 1970s model of Purvis.

For some reason, the name Purvis feels more ..lewd than Pervis? That U makes it feel dirtier. It’s more perverted with the U, even though the word perverted is spelled with the E. I don’t know why this is or what the absolute fuck I am talking about here friends, I just report the facts as best as I can interpret them.

Anyway, Pervis Ellison was a classic draft bust, a 4-year NCAA starter who was the first ever Freshman to be named the NCAA Tournament’s Most Outstanding Player in 1986. According to wiki, Teammate Danny Ainge gave Ellison the nickname “Out of Service Pervis” for the many injuries that would plague him during his professional career. Danny Ainge has been a cold-blooded killer for decades.

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Glen Rice Sr, SF/SG – 1989 Draft Class (Rating – 82)

Our final entry of the 1980s. Glen Rice was a 3x AS and a former 3-point shootout champion who shot his shot and shot it a lot. A fabulous shooter, Rice managed to hit a gargantuan .470 % of his threes (!) in the weird post-Michael Jordan period where the NBA shortened the 3-point line.

In researching Rice for this project however, it was his NCAA career that locked him into a 90 // impressed me the most.

Rice played college basketball for the University of Michigan Wolverines for four seasons (1985–1989), a starter for three of those seasons. He became the school’s all-time leading scorer with 2,442 points. He led Michigan to the 1989 NCAA Men’s Division I basketball championship, scoring an NCAA-record 184 points in tournament play, a record that still stands. Rice was also voted the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player and was part of the Associated Press All-America second-team, after averaging 25.6 points for the season, while shooting 58% from the floor and 52% from three-point range. Rice made the cover of Sports Illustrated on April 10, 1989. On February 20, 2005, Rice’s No. 41 jersey was retired during a ceremony at Michigan’s Crisler Arena.

Rice continues to rank among Michigan’s all-time leaders in several statistical categories, including:

1st in men’s career points (2,442)
1st in single season points (949 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single season field goals made (363 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single season field goal attempts (629 in the 1988–89 season)
1st in single season three-point field goal percent (51.6% in the 1988–89 season)
2nd in career field goals made (1,003)
2nd in single season three-point field goals made (99 in the 1988–89 season)

Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Rice

There’s also this carefully-written and headlined piece from Deadspin in 2011 that is worth sharing for the historical record: All The Details Of The Sarah Palin-Glen Rice Coitus You’ve Been Waiting For

Just know how hard I’ve been trying to avoid a Barstool-Sports-style joke about Glen Rice’s legendary scoring in college. Shit I think I just made it. I’m gonna go ahead and get out of here immediately. If you made it to the end of this, thanks for reading. We’ll be back with about 9ish more of these things, detailing all 250 players with a 90+ potential.

If you would like to help out with the creation of players / jerseys/ courts , please feel free. Hit us up on the comment section, or on Twitter, or at Operation Sports’ forums when the game is actually released.

If you would like to donate moneys to the cause, please also feel free.
paypal.me/sportsfap