The 1979 draft – in which the Pistons held three of the first 15 picks – had a chance to be transformational for a franchise that had spent 22 seasons in Detroit and had three playoff series wins to show for it.
As it turned out, it kinda sorta was.
But the payoff came thanks not to the general manager who exercised those three picks – Dick Vitale; yes, that Dick Vitale – but to the guy who succeeded him, Jack McCloskey.
The Pistons went into the 1979 draft with the fifth, 10th and 15th picks, the first earned the hard way, a 30-52 record in Vitale’s first – and only – full season as coach.
The 10th pick came from Buffalo via a 1977 trade that shipped Marvin “Bad News” Barnes to the Braves for Gus Gerard, John Shumate and the ’79 first-rounder. The 15th pick came when the Pistons returned hometown star Ralph Simpson, a teammate of Spencer Haywood’s at Detroit Pershing High, to Denver – where he was a five-time ABA All-Star – after acquiring him 15 months earlier from the Nuggets.
The return: Michigan State’s Greg Kelser, coming off his star turn as Robin to Magic Johnson’s Batman in leading Michigan State to the 1979 NCAA title, with the fourth pick after inducing Milwaukee to move down one spot; UCLA point guard Roy Hamilton with the 10th pick; and Michigan’s Phil Hubbard, an All-American as a sophomore but never the same after sitting out the 1977-78 season following a crippling knee injury while playing with Team USA in the 1977 World University Games, with the 15th pick.
All three had long since left the Pistons by the time the Bad Boys had been assembled and were poised to win the franchise’s first NBA championship a decade after that 1979 draft.
Two key players in that title era, though, were the result of McCloskey trades that shipped Hubbard to Cleveland and Kelser to Seattle early in his run as Pistons general manager.
But nobody was thinking about anything other than how the three newcomers fit and how much they’d improve the Pistons in Vitale’s second season on the night of June 25, 1979 when the draft opened with the Los Angeles Lakers – who’d gotten the No. 1 pick as compensation for the New Orleans Jazz signing of 33-year-old guard Gail Goodrich as a free agent – picking Johnson to kick start the Showtime Lakers era.
UCLA forward David Greenwood was the second pick of Chicago, which had lost a coin flip with the Lakers for the right to draft Johnson first. The Knicks followed by taking San Francisco 7-footer Bill Cartwright third, putting Milwaukee on the clock. The Bucks wanted Sidney Moncrief, the high-flying All-American from Arkansas, but put up enough smoke about drafting Kelser that Vitale forked over $50,000 of owner Bill Davidson’s money to dissuade the Bucks from taking the local star.
The Pistons said they, too, were torn between Kelser and Moncrief until input from their medical staff tipped the scales.
“Reports that (Moncrief) had some knee trouble bothered us,” Vitale told reporters that night. “It was indicated by our team doctor that he had some softening in the kneecap area. He advised we should move in another direction. (The Bucks) were flipping a coin whether to take Moncrief or Kelser and with the $50,000 we just made their decision a little easier.”
Said Davidson, “Perhaps we’re a little more sensitive about knee injuries because of all of Bob Lanier’s problems.”
Across Lake Michigan, meanwhile, Bucks coach Don Nelson chuckled: “I don’t know why, but Detroit thought we were going to take Kelser. We had Moncrief in mind the whole way. It’s like a good poker player – you never let ’em know.”
After Kelser and Moncrief were drafted, Seattle took athletic Rutgers big man James Bailey and Baylor fireplug guard Vinnie Johnson back to back. New Jersey went with Calvin Natt, a physical forward out of Northeast Louisiana, and the Knicks took Arizona forward Larry Demic with the ninth pick, putting the Pistons back on the clock at 10.
In need of protection at point guard with Kevin Porter a free agent – he wound up signing with Washington – Vitale zeroed in on UCLA’s slight Hamilton.
“He rated as the best pure guard coming out,” Vitale said. “He’s a born leader.”
His own scouting chief, Al Menendez, tried to warn him off. “Some like him more than I do,” Menendez’s scouting report, obtained by the Detroit Free Press, read. “At times wild, but he has great quickness and can push the ball up the court and can penetrate.”
Two players who would go on to 11-year NBA careers went next – Southern Cal’s Cliff Robinson (not UConn’s Cliff Robinson who would later play for the Pistons amid an 18-year NBA career) to New Jersey and Dayton’s Jim Paxson to Portland. Indiana took North Carolina’s Dudley Bradley 11th and the Lakers took the third UCLA product of the first round in Brad Holland 14th, putting Vitale back up at 15.
Hubbard had been a phenomenal player in his first two years at Michigan, leading the Wolverines to the No. 1 ranking as a sophomore when he averaged 19.6 points and 13.0 rebounds. But the knee injury – in an era when serious knee injuries devastated careers – clearly had robbed him of his quickness and explosion. After sitting out a year, he came back to average 14.8 points and 9.2 rebounds as a Michigan junior.
“We just didn’t feel we could afford to let him go,” Vitale said. “Two years ago he was not one of the best in the country, he was the best in the country. He was considered the premier forward in America.”
Again, Menendez sounded a note of caution: “Injury appeared to get worse as season progressed,” his scouting report said. “Would ? taking him 1st round since he really should go back to school. He was a potentially great player but injury has changed all that. Someone may take a gamble on him.”
In fairness, there weren’t many players drafted after Hubbard who would go on to better NBA careers. Hubbard averaged 10.9 points and 5.3 rebounds over an 11-year career, the first three in Detroit and the final eight in Cleveland. That made him an infinitely better pick than Hamilton, who averaged 15 minute a game as a rookie and was waived before his second season, landing in Portland – where he played five minutes of one game and never suited up in the NBA again.
Kelser, longtime TV partner of George Blaha for Pistons telecasts, had his NBA career cut short by knee injuries, ironic given the Pistons’ reluctance to take Moncrief, a five-time All-Star over his 11-year career. Kelser spent six seasons in the NBA, the first 2½ with the Pistons. Statistically, his best season was his rookie year when he averaged 14.2 points and 5.5 rebounds.
But McCloskey turned Kelser and Hubbard into building blocks for the Bad Boys. Isiah Thomas was the first, McCloskey’s pick at second overall in the 1981 draft. That November, he shipped Kelser to Seattle for the player the Super Sonics had drafted seventh two years earlier, Johnson – “The Microwave.” McCloskey, in fact, had traded Kelser to Seattle once before, shortly after arriving as Pistons GM, for Seattle’s 1981 No. 1 pick. But Kelser flunked the physical due to knee tendinitis.
“I saw him play a few games and I thought he had strength,” McCloskey would say of Johnson many years later. “I thought he could come off the bench and create something. And I thought he was a hell of a shooter.”
A few months later, at the February 1982 trade deadline, McCloskey packaged Hubbard, Paul Mokeski and his first- and second-round picks in that year’s draft to Cleveland for Kenny Carr – who would subsequently go to Portland for a future No. 1 pick – and the player who would come to represent the Bad Boys persona, Bill Laimbeer.
Over the first three rounds of the 1979 draft, only three players drafted after Hubbard would go on to play more NBA games than the 665 he logged. Two of them – Mokeski and Laimbeer – were involved in the same trade as Hubbard. The third also intersected with the Pistons: Detroit native and Pistons ambassador Earl Cureton, drafted by Philadelphia seven spots ahead of Laimbeer.
So, all in all, that 1979 draft did prove transformational for the Pistons, even if none of the players they drafted that night would ever be part of the championships that followed.