NBA Trivia Thread before the finals end

[MarshallGoldberg]

1. In what year did the last NBA player wear Chuck Taylors? Bonus if you know the player.
2. Who was the last NBA player to wear converse of any type? hint: great back tattoo.
3. Who was the only player to lead the NBA in scoring and assists in the same year?
4. Who is the only player to be a teammate of both Bill Russell and Larry Bird?
5. Who are the only inactive players to win a finals MVP but not be in the hall of fame?
6. Who was the only player in league history to average over 40 points a game in a finals series?
7. On the other extreme, who were the only finals MVP's to average less than 10 points a game? Hint it was back to back years.
8. Who led the NBA in scoring in the 1980's in terms of total points scored?
9. Who is the only finals MVP from the losing team?
10. Who is the only NBA regular season MVP to play on a team with a losing record?

Spoiler: Answers here

1. 1979, Tree Rollins still wore chucks!
2. Udonis Haslem
3. Nate "Tiny" Archibald
4. Don Chaney
5. Cornbread Maxwell and Jojo White
6. Michael Jordan of course
7. Dennis Johnson averaged 9 ppg for Seattle as finals MVP in 1979 as well as Wes Unseld in 1978 for the Bullets
8. Alex English. Bird was injured too much.

9. Jerry West in 1969.
He averaged 38 points, 7 assists, and 4 rebounds in the 7 game series. Russell managed to hold the (injured by the last game) Wilt to 11.7 points a game.

10. Kareem Abdul Jabbar in 1976.

He averaged 27.7 points, 17 rebounds, 5 assists, 4.1 blocks, and 1.5 steals per game. He led the league in advanced stats that didn't exist yet at the time including PER, WS, WS/48, Box score plus minus, and VORP. The Lakers finished 40-42. Highlights of his year included two duels against Bill Walton where Kareem had a 48-12-6-2 game and a 41-20-3-9 game while holding the great Walton to only 12 points.

There were 17 players who played at least a game for the Lakers in 1975-76. All of them EXCEPT Kareem had a field goal percentage under 50%.

 

[Pitt79]

1. In what year did the last NBA player wear Chuck Taylors? Bonus if you know the player.
Paul Silas?
2. Who was the last NBA player to wear converse of any type? hint: great back tattoo.
Dennis Rodman?
3. Who was the only player to lead the NBA in scoring and assists in the same year?
Oscar Robertson?
4. Who is the only player to be a teammate of both Bill Russell and Larry Bird?
John Havlicek?
5. Who are the only inactive players to win a finals MVP but not be in the hall of fame?
Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan
6. Who was the only player in league history to average over 40 points a game in a finals series?
MJ
7. On the other extreme, who were the only finals MVP's to average less than 10 points a game? Hint it was back to back years. Bill Russell
8. Who led the NBA in scoring in the 1980's in terms of total points scored? Alex English
9. Who is the only finals MVP from the losing team? Larry Bird
10. Who is the only NBA regular season MVP to play on a team with a losing record? Wilt?

 

[Pitt79]

I was mostly way off, anyways, I tried to do it without googling

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

My number 5 is outdated based on guys who recently retired. I asked my friends these questions a few years ago and I forgot to update that one. So yeah my bad, Tim Duncan for example is definitely a 2021 hall of famer! I think the rest are accurate still or updated.

 

[DT_PITT]

1. In what year did the last NBA player wear Chuck Taylors? Bonus if you know the player.
2. Who was the last NBA player to wear converse of any type? hint: great back tattoo.
3. Who was the only player to lead the NBA in scoring and assists in the same year?
4. Who is the only player to be a teammate of both Bill Russell and Larry Bird?
5. Who are the only inactive players to win a finals MVP but not be in the hall of fame?
6. Who was the only player in league history to average over 40 points a game in a finals series?
7. On the other extreme, who were the only finals MVP's to average less than 10 points a game? Hint it was back to back years.
8. Who led the NBA in scoring in the 1980's in terms of total points scored?
9. Who is the only finals MVP from the losing team?
10. Who is the only NBA regular season MVP to play on a team with a losing record?

Since my son has really gotten into NBA2K, we do NBA trivia almost every night. There was also just a story on ESPN's website about Finals MVP's and we were just looking at all of the Final MVP's last night.

I actually knew the teammate of Russell and Bird because we were trying to name all of the retired Celtics jersey's a couple weeks ago.

Anyway -- Believe I would have gotten 3-10 (and I won't bother posting them because of the spoilers).

However, I'll see how he does with the first two because I would never have gotten them.

Spoiler: Answers here

1. 1979, Tree Rollins still wore chucks!
2. Udonis Haslem
3. Nate "Tiny" Archibald
4. Don Chaney
5. Cornbread Maxwell and Jojo White
6. Michael Jordan of course
7. Dennis Johnson averaged 9 ppg for Seattle as finals MVP in 1979 as well as Wes Unseld in 1978 for the Bullets
8. Alex English. Bird was injured too much.

9. Jerry West in 1969.
He averaged 38 points, 7 assists, and 4 rebounds in the 7 game series. Russell managed to hold the (injured by the last game) Wilt to 11.7 points a game.

10. Kareem Abdul Jabbar in 1976.

He averaged 27.7 points, 17 rebounds, 5 assists, 4.1 blocks, and 1.5 steals per game. He led the league in advanced stats that didn't exist yet at the time including PER, WS, WS/48, Box score plus minus, and VORP. The Lakers finished 40-42. Highlights of his year included two duels against Bill Walton where Kareem had a 48-12-6-2 game and a 41-20-3-9 game while holding the great Walton to only 12 points.

There were 17 players who played at least a game for the Lakers in 1975-76. All of them EXCEPT Kareem had a field goal percentage under 50%.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

Gilbert Arenas said he was going to wear Chucks in an NBA game but he never followed through sadly.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

OK going into random shit.

My best players we never got to see in the NBA in their prime list:
- Sergei Belov. Soviet great of the 1960s-80s, either couldn't or didn't want to defect. Scored 20 of their 50 points in the infamous Olympic gold medal game.

- Oscar Schmidt. Chose the ability to play for his country in international competitions, Brazil, over the ability to play in the US. Drafted in the legendary 1984 draft class. Scored 46 points against team USA in the pan-am games upset.

- Connie Hawkins. Great career in the ABA and with the Globetrotters while waiting to get the right to play in the NBA. I think in theory the "torch" should have been passed from Baylor to Hawkins to the Doctor to Michael but it never quite worked out.

- Arvydas Saboinis. Came late, dominated David Robinson in 1988 Olympics. Good NBA career but he was so much better when he was younger.

- Nikos Galis. chose Europe, I think could have been a good NBA player though his choice worked well for him.

- Len Bias. RIP. I think would have been in that big range of better than Reggie Lewis, worse than Michael Jordan/could have extended the Celtics dynasty.

- Radivoj Korac. Old school. In a two-game playoff series against Swedish League champions Alvik Basket, during the 1964–65 season of the FIBA European Champions' Cup (EuroLeague), he scored 170 points. He scored 71 points in the first game of the series, and 99 points in the second game of the series, for a series scoring average of 85 points per game. Died in a car accident at age 30.

- Dejan Bodrigoa. Probably best modern player to not chose to go to the NBA for whatever reason. For Panathinaikos he had a season where he averaged 53% from three, 62% from the field, 20 points a game in a shorter game length. One Olympic silver, two FIBA golds including a 2002 win over team USA where he really took it to Carmelo Anthony.

 

[pitt2533]

I would never have guess Alex English was the leading scorers of the 80s. I knew he was good and knew he could put the ball in the basket but would never have guessed that.

I would actually have guess Jordan even knowing he only played 6 years in the 80s. My other guess would have been Kareem.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

it goes for 1980s scoring:

English
Moses
Dantley
Bird
Kareem
Reggie Theus
Dominique
Aguirre

Jordan is around #25 or 35 or so. He wasn't drafted until 84 and also missed almost the whole 85-86 season with injury.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

Is Adrian Dantley the worst player to ever average 30 points a game? Or at least the most boring? 6'5" back to the basket post players focused on drawing fouls, I am glad that isn't a "thing" as much these days

 

[LeftCoastPanther]

The Walton foot issues kept Portland from winning three titles in a row. Seattle and Washington by far are the most unmemorable NBA champs ever.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

Yep. Sixers should have one another too but they were more talent than team in those earlier versions. Honestly even the 81 finals showed how small time things were that the games were still on tape delay and a sub .500 Rockets team could make it the finals like those Bullets and Sonics.

 

[LeftCoastPanther]

Westhead scrapping Jack McKinnon’s offense and installing his own caused that 1980-81 Lakers team to woefully underachieve. Never should that Houston team have been in the Finals.

 

[PittSqueak]

What player won a ring with the Bad Boy Pistons, Jordan Bulls, and Shaq/Kobe Lakers?

Random Fun Fact: Larry Bird shot .406 3-pt% in BOTH his rookie season and his final season, and he ranked top-10 in 3-pt% 7x in his career, the same amount of times as Curry (who has NOT done it the past 2 seasons).

 

[CaptainMurphy]

What player won a ring with the Bad Boy Pistons, Jordan Bulls, and Shaq/Kobe Lakers?

Random Fun Fact: Larry Bird shot .406 3-pt% in BOTH his rookie season and his final season, and he ranked top-10 in 3-pt% 7x in his career, the same amount of times as Curry (who has NOT done it the past 2 seasons).

John Salley

Of all the players and teams I just missed following (born in 79), Bird and the Celtics were number one. Such a fun player to watch.

 

[PittSqueak]

Who was the last player-coach in the NBA (he did so as an assistant coach, so the answer isn't Cowens)?

With whom did Dennis Rodman live during his last season in the NBA?

Tim Thomas (the #2 HS recruit in 1996, later a 13-year NBA vet) played on an AAU team with 3 future-NBA stars on it, who played PG, SG, SF on the squad, often considered the best AAU team ever. Who were they?

 

[PittSqueak]

Who was the last player-coach in the NBA (he did so as an assistant coach, so the answer isn't Cowens)?

With whom did Dennis Rodman live during his last season in the NBA?

Tim Thomas (the #2 HS recruit in 1996, later a 13-year NBA vet) played on an AAU team with 3 future-NBA stars on it, who played PG, SG, SF on the squad, often considered the best AAU team ever. Who were they?

HINTS
Q1: It was a big man who played-coached in '94-95 and was mentoring a young center.
Q2: Rodman's final season was 12 games with Dallas in 2000 (14.3 rpg). Who with the Mavs would be crazy enough to let Rodman stay with him?
Q3: Thomas is from Philly. 2 of the 3 are Philly area guys who appeared in the '96 McD game with Thomas. The other 1 was a Floridian who played in the '95 McD game.

 

[LeftCoastPanther]

Rodman lived with Cuban briefly and I believe the NBA said Dennis wasn’t allowed to.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

Tree Rollins as player coach, infamous foul on Rik Smits after just telling everyone not to go for his pump fake. Dave Debussure was a player coach at like 25? years old, which was sort of wild.

Cuban.

No clue on the AAU team.

---

top 10 playoff points per game scorers all time; 3 of them are playing tonight. I know he had a playoff choke reputation but was mildly surprised to find wilt was as low as #36.

1. Michael Jordan* 33.45
2. Allen Iverson* 29.73
3. Jerry West* 29.13
4. LeBron James 28.94
5. Kevin Durant 28.86
6. Rick Barry* 27.33
7. Elgin Baylor* 27.04
8. George Gervin* 26.46
9. Stephen Curry 25.97
10. Hakeem Olajuwon* 25.90

---

lebron has 32% of clevelands "stats" this playoffs -- points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks. kareem is the only other player in nba history to clear 30% of team stats, when he dragged some bad lakers teams into the playoffs before magic was drafted.

 

[PittSqueak]

The AAU team had Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, and Richard Hamilton. The scary part is that big man Tim Thomas was often considered the best of all of them at the time.

EDIT: Kobe was the PG on this team.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

I know this......

NHL Playoffs >>>>>>>> NBA Playoffs.

 

[Pitt79]

... back to the basket post players focused on drawing fouls, I am glad that isn't a "thing" as much these days

I miss back to the basket post players, like Kareem or Shaq, I think it sucks that there is never a big guy who you just feed and watch him dominate anymore, I wonder why 7 footers don't want to learn that game anymore?

 

[Pitt79]

- Nikos Galis. chose Europe, I think could have been a good NBA player though his choice worked well for him.

He could flat out ball, not sure he would have been a great NBA player, probably a role player. Some seasons in Europe he AVERAGED 40+ppg. I was at the Eurobasket Final 4 in '87, he averaged 44ppg and Greece upset Sabonis led USSR for the Gold Medal 103-101 2OT. The Party in the streets of Athens that night was killer, the shop owners where passing out bottles of beer on the street and the throngs where so thick cars couldn't get through.

 

[cease10]

Dwayne Wade wore Converse before going to a Chinese brand.

 

[MarshallGoldberg]

I miss back to the basket post players, like Kareem or Shaq, I think it sucks that there is never a big guy who you just feed and watch him dominate anymore, I wonder why 7 footers don't want to learn that game anymore?

I agree. I was complaining more about post up guards who would deke and fake and back up before settling for a body up jump shot trying to draw a foul -- Adrian Dantley averaged 30 points a game while being incredibly boring and never winning anything.

I still would love to watch a Kareem, Walton, McHale, or Hakeem go to work on the block. Embiid could be that guy. It's amazing how well he is doing considering he DOESN'T have very good post moves. All of these guys start learning these skills too late as AAU and prep schools focus on the guards and pick and roll game, so no one has them.