I submit for your consideration a player whose career could have been defined by unfulfilled promise but was instead defined by professionalism, dependability, and hard work. He wound up being the face of a dominant franchise for a decade and a half. I speak, of course, of Antonio McDyess. McDyess was acquired by the Hawks on a draft-day trade that saw the Hawks send the original OP, Karl Malone, to the Jazz to team up with Michael Jordan. Why did Wig make this move? Because he saw greatness in McDyess and because it was finally time to move off the "Oldlanta Hawks" and start his first rebuild.
I invite you to take a moment to look at McDyess' potentials his rookie season:
http://pbsl.ijbl.net/1995/players/player579.htm
In the same draft he grabbed McDyess, Wig picked up Eric Snow in hopes of building a team of defensive-minded players with McDyess the offensive centerpiece, in the mold of the early Karl Malone Kings. The Hawks began selling off assets and McDyess was the Hawks' second option behind Randy Brown. McDyess averaged 14.8 ppg and 6.7 rpg as a rookie, enough to make the all-rookie second team. The Hawks finished with the #8 pick in the draft and Wig grabbed Hall of Famer Ben Wallace to create the big man duo with an offensive specialist and a defensive specialist he had been dreaming of. He traded away Brown and gave McDyess the keys to the offense.
Of course, as we all know, the vagaries of TC can ruin a young player. After his rookie season, the dreaded training camp smackdown was delivered and many thought that instead of a promising young stud, the Hawks were now in possession of a less-than-promising young dud. (These days, of course, we have Training Camp insurance, but a young McDyess was not so lucky).
http://pbsl.ijbl.net/1996/players/player579.htm
How did McDyess react to the training camp smite? Merely by upping his scoring to 17.3 ppg and despite adding a historically good rebounder next to him, keeping his rebounding up at 6.5 rpg. The following year, the trend continued - despite being asked to play out of position at SF his scoring average moved up to 20.7 ppg and his rebounding improved to 7.4 ppg.
By the time his rookie contract had expired, McDyess was the undisputed offensive leader of the Hawks, averaging over 22 ppg. He signed a big money deal and his star kept rising as he made his first all-star appearance. But the Hawks were a middle-of-the-pack team even after acquiring an in-his-prime Latrell Sprewell late in the season.
Of course, the summer of 2000 echoed in infamy throughout the league for years to come. It was the summer McDyess, in his prime, was asked to sublimate his expanding game for the good of the team when league MVP Anfernee Hardaway and a ridiculously talented Grant Hill were added to the Hawks' squad. In less than a season, McDyess went from being the sole offensive focus to sharing the offense with the most dominant scoring force in the league (Hardaway) and two other 20 ppg scorers (Hill and Sprewell). To his great credit, McDyess adjusted without complaining. His scoring dropped a bit but so did every other star on the team ... and McDyess became much more judicious with his shot selection so as to not hurt the team.
Of course, with the Hawks' superteam, McDyess picked up a couple of rings. As the wings and point guard of the team aged and began to decline in scoring by 2002, McDyess picked the slack up again, averaging 22.5 ppg and reasserting himself as the offensive leader of a team that still featured Penny Hardaway. He continued this scoring production, picked up more all-star nods, and even moved to center in 2006 after Ben Wallace was traded away (and grabbing a rare all-star nod for a yellow player while still averaging 22.5 ppg/7.5 rpg on 53% shooting - he was 32 that year).
McDyess' leading role on the Hawks finally came to an end when both an in-his-prime Pau Gasol and the still-dominant Tim Duncan were added to the team in 2008. Not bad for a guy who, in 1996, many thought training camp had turned into a bust!
The amazing thing about that is his numbers could have been higher at their peak if he hadn't had to share the ball during his prime years (the Hawks' "superteam" years with so many other stars were the years he was 26-29), but he did whatever was asked. Play out of position at SF and C? Sure. Suppress his game for the sake of the team? You bet.
Did he have the highest "peak" of the Hawks' superteam members? Probably not - because his peak was shared with his Hall-of-Fame teammates. Was he integral to the team's success? Absolutely. For 13 seasons, Antonio made himself into a force to be reckoned with; his Hall-of-Fame teammates were forces for about 10 seasons (Big Ben), 13 seasons (Sprewell), and even Penny, in the GOAT argument, was "only" a force for 15 seasons. McDyess deserves to be in the hall alongside his teammates.
Simply put, when you think of the Hawks, you think of Antonio McDyess.
For more than half the lifetime of the league, when you played the Hawks, you had to account for the McDyess matchup. When McDyess finally hung up his sneakers, he was one of only five players to score 20,000 points for a single team and one of only five players to grab 7,000 rebounds for a single team (the lists as of his retirement):
Shawn Kemp - 27,384 career points with the Warriors
Tracy McGrady - 24,535 career points with the Kings
Tim Duncan - 24,018 career points with the Jazz
Antonio McDyess - 20,999 career points with the Hawks
Chris Bosh - 20,927 career points with the Wolves
Shawn Kemp - 9,948 rebounds with the Warriors
Tim Duncan - 8,762 rebounds with the Jazz
Alonzo Mourning - 8,189 rebounds with the Celtics
Antonio McDyess - 7,323 rebounds with the Hawks
Chris Webber - 7,154 rebounds with the Wolves
Final page:
http://pbsl.ijbl.net/2011/players/player579.htm
