(EDITOR’S NOTE: Pistons.com continues its look at past NBA drafts ahead of this week’s NBA draft lottery to remember the only two times in Pistons history they held the No. 1 overall pick – both long before the lottery was instituted.)
The last time the Pistons picked first in the NBA draft, gas cost 36 cents a gallon, America was embroiled in the Vietnam War, the United States population crested 200 million and the first Earth Day was celebrated.
It’s been a while. Half a century, in fact. The Pistons finished 31-51 in the 1969-70 season, worst in the Eastern Conference but better than both San Francisco and San Diego in the West. As was the practice in those days, the two worst teams in each conference flipped a coin to determine the top pick and the Pistons came up a winner.
There were three compelling options for the Pistons at the top of that draft: Bob Lanier, the massive St. Bonaventure center with the deft touch; Rudy Tomjanovich, a local star from Hamtramck and the University of Michigan; and the most prolific scorer in college basketball history, LSU’s Pete Maravich.
The Pistons opted for Lanier despite the fact he was coming off a serious knee injury suffered in St. Bonaventure’s win over Villanova to put them in that spring’s NCAA Final Four. Lanier collided with future Pistons teammate Chris Ford and tore ligaments in his knee. It speaks to the value placed on big men of that era that even a knee injury – at a time return from ligament injuries was much more uncertain than it would become a few decades later – didn’t scare the Pistons off of Lanier.
In defending the pick, Pistons coach Butch van Breda Kolff cited the success two other recent high picks – big men Wes Unseld and Lew Alcindor, before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – experienced early in their NBA careers. Unseld, taken second in 1968 by Washington, was Rookie of the Year and MVP in 1969; Alcindor was Rookie of the Year and total points leader in 1970 after being the No. 1 pick in 1969.
“He can play,” van Breda Kolff said of Lanier. “He’s got great hands. He’s a very good shooter. He’s such a big man he can set a great pick and what a lot of people don’t realize, he’s a good passer, too.”
Lanier, a Buffalo native who stayed home to play at the tiny Jesuit school in upstate New York, put up video game numbers in his three seasons. (No, Lanier didn’t go pro early; freshmen were still ineligible for varsity sports at that time.) He averaged 26.2, 27.3 and 29.1 points and 15.6, 15.6 and 16.0 rebounds a game over the three years while shooting better than 55 percent in all three seasons.
But Tomjanovich was also a prolific scorer against a better class of competition in the Big Ten, averaging 30.1 points and 15.7 rebounds a game as a senior. Given his local ties, he surely would have sold some tickets for a team that averaged 4,000 fans a game at Cobo Arena.
And if ticket sales and points were the barometer, how could they pass on “Pistol” Pete Maravich, who averaged 43.8, 44.2 and 44.5 points a game in his three seasons at Louisiana State?
Free Press columnist Joe Falls wondered how the Pistons could hope to survive economically while paying Lanier the princely sum of nearly $250,000 a year after it was revealed he signed a five-year, $1.2 million contract.
“Lanier will get something like $3,000 a game from the Pistons over the next five years and not even Gordie Howe comes close to making that sort of money,” he wrote.
The NBA was seeing a salary spike under pressure from the upstart ABA to retain its stars and win the signatures of high draft picks. Among the college All-Americans in the 1970 draft to opt for the ABA were Kentucky’s Dan Issel, North Carolina’s Charlie Scott, Purdue’s Rick Mount and Jacksonville’s Artis Gilmore.
Lanier turned out to be the right pick, after all, though all three players justified their draft status. Lanier was a seven-time All-Star for the Pistons in 10 seasons before finishing his career with five years in Milwaukee, averaging 22.7 points and 11.8 rebounds in Detroit. He was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1992.
Tomjanovich spent all of his 11 NBA seasons with the Rockets, the first in San Diego before the franchise relocated to Houston in 1971. He averaged 17.4 points and 8.1 rebounds around the horrific 1977 brawl in which Tomjanovich suffered life-threatening injuries. A five-time All-Star, he is part of the 2020 Naismith Hall of Fame class whose induction has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, though his coaching career – Tomjanovich led the Rockets to back-to-back NBA titles in 1994-95 – was critical in his Hall candidacy.
Maravich also endured a serious knee injury that derailed his NBA career, but he burned brightly over much of his 10-year run. A five-time All-Star and 1987 Hall of Fame honoree, Maravich averaged 24.2 points over his career and led the NBA in scoring at 31.1 points a game in 1976-77.
The Pistons have only had the No. 1 pick one other time in their 63 years in Detroit and it came just three years prior to the Lanier pick. That one didn’t work out as well. The Pistons took Providence guard Jimmy Walker – more famous now for being Jalen Rose’s father – over another prolific scorer, Earl Monroe, the No. 2 pick of Baltimore.
The Pistons actually had the fourth pick in that draft, too, the result of a complicated three-team trade, and took St. John’s forward Sonny Dove.
“At one time we were debating whether to make Walker or Dove our number one choice,” Pistons owner Fred Zollner said. “Now we have them both. Maybe our luck is changing.”
Well, no. But they’re overdue for a little good luck now.