Don Nelson

Andy Fahey

They never finished higher than fourth place in the division. They won just a single playoff series, and never came close to sniffing an NBA Finals. And yet, the Run TMC teams at the turn of the 90's solidified a spot in the hearts and minds of Bay Area and basketball fans through their revolutionary style and breakneck pace, which forever altered how the game is played today.

During the 2022-23 season, the past has met the present with the reigning NBA Champion Warriors sporting the Run TMC-era uniforms, more formally known as the team’s Classic Edition uniforms, for select games. The throwback threads feature the classic, upward-slanted ‘Warriors’ script on the jersey and the old school Golden State Warriors basketball icon on the left side of the shorts, just like the uniforms worn by the fast-paced early ‘90s Warriors teams headlined by Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin.

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Introducing the Warriors' New Classic Edition Uniform

That Run TMC era was short-lived to be sure. They played only two seasons together and compiled a record of just 81-83. But Run TMC's impact on the franchise persisted long after its abrupt conclusion, and their influence continues on in today’s NBA landscape – and not just through the retro uniforms that harken back to the days of then Head Coach Don Nelson’s up-tempo bunch.

Chris Mullin was the first to arrive, joining Golden State as the seventh overall pick in the 1985 NBA Draft. The All-American with the thick Brooklyn accent forged from his days playing pickup on Flatbush Avenue would see his scoring average jump from 14.0 to 15.1 to 20.2 points per game in his first three seasons with the franchise before being joined by the next two incremental figures of Run TMC, Coach Nelson and Mitch Richmond.

Nelson, the NBA's all-time leader in coaching victories from 2010 until March 2022, began the first of his two tenures as the Warriors' head coach the following offseason, and used the fifth overall pick of the 1988 NBA Draft to select Richmond out of Kansas State. Nelson's run-and-gun style suited Richmond perfectly, and the two-guard would go on to capture Rookie of the Year honors after averaging 22.0 points per game. The following offseason, the final piece of what would become the famous trio known as Run TMC was acquired when Golden State selected Tim Hardaway and his 'killer crossover' with the 14th overall pick of the 1989 Draft.

The Warriors went 37-45 and missed the playoffs in the 1989-90 season, but the team was already displaying the characteristics that would come to define the Run TMC era. Golden State led the league in both scoring average and pace of play that season, and Hardaway, Richmond and Mullin had combined for 61.9 of their league-leading 116.3 points per game. The trio, alongside other cult favorites like Manute Bol, Sarunas Marciulionis and Tom Tolbert, made Golden State nightly can't-miss television and a nightmare for opposing defenses.

"Big guys playing outside, small guys going inside, point forwards starting the offense," Hardaway recalled to NBA.com's Fran Blinebury in June 2015. "Around the league it was: 'What are you all doing? What is this about?' They didn't know how to even play against us. They didn't know how to discuss it. They didn't know how to plan for it. It was mind-boggling to the other team."

"People couldn't stop us. They couldn't scout us. They didn't know what we were doing because we didn't know what we were doing. If they went to the playbook, we'd be like 'what are you looking at?' Because we might have a playbook but we're not running them tonight. We're just running you."

A year later, the Run TMC Warriors cranked it up another notch. In the very first game of the 1990-91 season, Golden State defeated the Denver Nuggets by a score of 162-158, which remains the highest-scoring non-overtime game in league history. They'd go on to average 116.6 points per game that season, second-most in the league behind only those same Nuggets, and would finish with a record of 44-38, pitting them against the second-seeded San Antonio Spurs in a first-round playoff series. The Warriors dropped Game 1 in San Antonio by a score of 130-121, but they had seen all they needed to see.

"I remember losing the first game and having a team meeting, and how confident Nellie was that we were going to win the series," Mullin recounted. "He said, 'I found something. I found it. We're going to get them. We're gonna beat them.'"

Whatever Nelson had discovered, it worked. Golden State reeled off three-straight wins to upset the Spurs and claim the series in four games. They'd carry that momentum into the next round and earn a split on the road in the first two games against Magic Johnson, James Worthy and the vaunted Los Angeles Lakers. After prevailing in Game 2, the series transitioned back to Oakland, and Golden State was riding high. So high, in fact, that prior to the start of Game 3, the Warriors were introduced by Run DMC, the popular rap trio from whom the Run TMC moniker was derived from. Unfortunately for Golden State, that display may have backfired.

"As we won Game 2, we was excited to go home," Hardaway said. "But I think we kind of embarrassed them with Run DMC when they announced us…that wasn't the right thing to do."

Right or wrong, the NBA Finals-bound Lakers responded in kind by earning a three-point victory in Game 3 and swept the remaining games in the series to knock Golden State out of the playoffs. It wasn't readily apparent at the time, but their defeat in Game 5 not only brought an end to the Warriors' postseason run, but an end to the Run TMC era in general. Tim, Mitch and Chris would never play together on the same team again.

Coming off their defeat at the hands of the Lakers, the prevailing sentiment was that Golden State needed to get bigger in order to take the next step, and that set forth a series of events that would end the Run TMC era almost as quickly as it came together. Hours prior to the season-opener the following year, Richmond was traded to the Sacramento Kings along with other assets for rookie forward Billy Owens. It was a severe blow to Richmond, and a trade Nelson looks back on in infamy.

"It was the worst trade I've ever made," Nelson said. "Mitch was a star. That's the one regret I have of my career."

Richmond remembered it being a tough time for him personally: "Felt like this was a family to me, and then to get traded, it was very difficult to handle."

The impact of the trade wasn't completely negative though, particularly in the immediate aftermath. Golden State increased its win total by 11 victories in the 1991-92 season to finish third in the conference before suffering a first-round exit from the playoffs at the hands of the Seattle Supersonics. Meanwhile, Richmond continued his eventual Hall-of-Fame career in Sacramento, leading the Kings in scoring each of the next six seasons.

But the long-term effects of the trade were crippling. Following that season, the Warriors would post only one winning season and secure only one more playoff berth over the next 14 years.

When Golden State finally reached the postseason again in 2006-07, enough time had passed for Mullin, Richmond and Nelson to reunite with the franchise, but in considerably different capacities. Nelson was in his second term as head coach of the Dubs, while both Mullin and Richmond had rejoined the organization in front office roles. Later that year, Golden State became the first eighth seed ever to defeat a one-seed in a seven-game series, knocking out the 67-win Mavericks in six games. While they'd eventually go on to lose to Utah in the second round, the 'We Believe' movement reawakened the fan hysteria from Run TMC's heyday.

Fast forward to today, and one realizes that much has changed. On the other hand, in many ways, the past lives on.

The Warriors have won four of the last eight NBA Championships and advanced to the NBA Finals on two other occasions (2016, 2019) during that stretch. In addition, the team has won at least 50 games in seven of the last nine seasons with a foundational core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, all of whom have the C patch – indicating captain – stitched onto their Classic Edition jerseys this season.

The modern-day Warriors are a team predicated on ball movement and unselfishness, and those characteristics were core features of the style of play of those Run TMC teams. &nbsp;&nbsp;

But the similarities between the Warriors teams of then and now aren't limited to their respective triumvirates of scoring talents, nor the breakneck speeds at which they'd operate. There's also a link between the men at the helms.

"On a given night, Nellie would give us the freedom to go out there and play,&nbsp;if&nbsp;we played the right way," Mullin recalled. "In the locker room he'd say, 'You know what guys, tonight I'm going to call no plays. As long as you guys are sharing the basketball, playing the right way...no plays.' And that was an incentive for us to get out there and do just that."

Nelson's genius was equal parts innovation and opportunity. He understood the types of players that comprised his roster, and developed a game plan designed to maximize their skill sets, regardless of how departed from the norm it was. As Mullin so delicately put it during his Hall-of-Fame induction speech in 2011, "Who else would encourage Manute Bol to shoot three-point shots?"

Very few have had the audacity to employ such a philosophy, but it worked for Nelson and Run TMC, and the primary ball handler on that squad sees a similarity in how Steve Kerr and the current Warriors go about their business.

"What coach Steve Kerr is doing is, if you have the open shot, take the open shot," Hardaway said. "That's what Nellie was about. This team is unique in what they have right now."

Just like Nelson, Kerr has emphasized a movement-oriented offense, replete with passing and spacing. The Dubs have led the league in assists in six of the eight seasons of Kerr’s coaching tenure. &nbsp;

Kerr and the Warriors have been at the forefront of an ongoing transformation of the modern game, in which offensive numbers across the league – including points, assists and pace – are at their highest marks in decades. In many ways, the same tenets of Run TMC's offensive philosophy are at the root of this league-wide explosion.

"They were a nightmare to guard," Kerr says of Run TMC. "They pushed the pace relentlessly. They were probably a little ahead of their time, you know, with small ball. Nellie was really the guy that invented small ball in the league, even before Run TMC with Milwaukee, so the Warriors were a perfect team for him."

"Point guard dominant offenses are a common theme around the league now, and Nellie did that with Tim," he continued. "A lot of high screens, and a lot of pushing the pace and three-pointers off the dribble. You see that all over the league now."

"You know, we didn't win championships together," Mullin said. "But we had a lot of fun, and we drove a lot of people crazy because we played a crazy style…Wish we would have done a little more, but for that little three-year period, man, we had a ball."

"It was the most fun I ever had playing basketball."

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Run TMC's Continued Influence on the Warriors and NBA at Large

gswdgrinfelds

Former Warriors head coach and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Don Nelson joins Tim Roye and Laurence Scott on Warriors Sound to talk about a wide variety of We Believe memories.

From his home in Maui, Nelson shares a full slate of stories about the players that made the We Believe-era so unforgettable and offers insight into the NBA Playoffs series where the Warriors upset the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks in the first round.

Additional We Believe interviews and Fabric of the Warriors with Rakuten features spotlighting Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson, Monta Ellis and more are in full rotation on Warriors Sound 24/7.

Don Nelson

Run TMC's Continued Influence on the Warriors and NBA at Large

Warriors Sound Podcast: Don Nelson on We Believe