Bucky Buckwalter, Hall Of Famer
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Written By Aaron Grossman
Clyde Drexler. Terry Porter. Jerome Kersey. Cliff Robinson. Buck Williams. Kevin Duckworth. Arvydas Sabonis. Drazen Petrovic.
It’s hard to imagine Trail Blazers history without those names, which is to say, it’s hard to imagine Trail Blazers history without Morris “Bucky” Buckwalter.
Twenty years after becoming the team’s first and still only NBA Executive of the Year, Buckwalter was enshrined into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame on Sept. 28, 2011. It was quite a fitting honor for a lifetime in the sport.
“When I was eight years old, my father gave me a basketball,” said Buckwalter at the ceremony. “We didn’t have TV, so we played a lot of hoops. Little did I know it would take me to the state tournament. I got a college scholarship to the University of Utah, and also an opportunity to travel around the world and watch basketball, and then of course be associated with the Trail Blazers. The odyssey has been very, very rewarding.”
Buckwalter’s assembly of the early 90s Portland teams that twice reached the NBA Finals changed the franchise forever. And, in the true spirit of the name Trail Blazers, his unmatched belief that European players could make it in the NBA forever changed the league.
“I could see that players and teams [in Europe] were developing much quicker, and some certainly on the level of being able to play the NBA,” Buckwalter explained. “So when I took over as President in charge of Basketball Operations in 1986, we had the opportunity to draft Arvydas Sabonis, who was by all accounts the best big man in Europe, and also Drazen Petrovic, who was probably the best shooting guard at the time.”
And pioneers don’t quit just because they’re on an unpopular path.
“We took a lot of criticism at that time for drafting players from overseas because people thought they weren’t going to be able to compete. This last year, I counted and the NBA had something like 95 foreign players, so you can see that foreign players did indeed develop to the point where they could compete very successfully in the NBA.”
Bucky Buckwalter: Innovator, game-changer, Hall of Famer.
Clyde Drexler. Terry Porter. Jerome Kersey. Cliff Robinson. Buck Williams. Kevin Duckworth. Arvydas Sabonis. Drazen Petrovic.
It’s hard to imagine Trail Blazers history without those names, which is to say, it’s hard to imagine Trail Blazers history without Morris “Bucky” Buckwalter.
Twenty years after becoming the team’s first and still only NBA Executive of the Year, Buckwalter was enshrined into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame on Sept. 28, 2011. It was quite a fitting honor for a lifetime in the sport.
“When I was eight years old, my father gave me a basketball,” said Buckwalter at the ceremony. “We didn’t have TV, so we played a lot of hoops. Little did I know it would take me to the state tournament. I got a college scholarship to the University of Utah, and also an opportunity to travel around the world and watch basketball, and then of course be associated with the Trail Blazers. The odyssey has been very, very rewarding.”
Buckwalter’s assembly of the early 90s Portland teams that twice reached the NBA Finals changed the franchise forever. And, in the true spirit of the name Trail Blazers, his unmatched belief that European players could make it in the NBA forever changed the league.
“I could see that players and teams [in Europe] were developing much quicker, and some certainly on the level of being able to play the NBA,” Buckwalter explained. “So when I took over as President in charge of Basketball Operations in 1986, we had the opportunity to draft Arvydas Sabonis, who was by all accounts the best big man in Europe, and also Drazen Petrovic, who was probably the best shooting guard at the time.”
And pioneers don’t quit just because they’re on an unpopular path.
“We took a lot of criticism at that time for drafting players from overseas because people thought they weren’t going to be able to compete. This last year, I counted and the NBA had something like 95 foreign players, so you can see that foreign players did indeed develop to the point where they could compete very successfully in the NBA.”
Bucky Buckwalter: Innovator, game-changer, Hall of Famer.
