Oh, JR Rider. What are we to do with you? When Rider entered the league in 1993 he was seen as a wild child, a force to be reckoned with as a scorer and as a leaper. Perhaps one of the greatest things about Isaiah Rider Jr. was not just that he won the 1994 NBA Slam Dunk Contest as a rookie, but that he did the between-the-legs dunk as part of his winning routine a full six years before Vince Carter blew everyone away by doing the same thing. (Bonus: The first player you see after each dunk in these videos? Chris Webber. Both times.)
Despite his obvious physical talent for the game, Rider was a troubled individual. A member of the Jailblazer team in 1999, Rider was traded to Atlanta after the Portland front office grew tired of him spitting at fans and smoking the ganja.
In his one and only season in Atlanta, Rider saw his numbers increase to 19.3 PPG, 4.3 REB and 3.7 AST. While Rider may have been scoring at a greater clip, his season in Atlanta showed his relative one-dimensionality when it came to basketball. Save for a game against Portland on February 4th, 2000, Rider never broke double-digits in any other category other than points.
That’s not to say Rider didn’t have some good games. In fact, on December 7th, 1999 Rider went 38-9-7 in a win against the Clippers — part of a four came arc where Rider scored 30 points or more each game.
Unfortunately, the Hawks were bad that year and ended up finishing 28-54 in Lenny Wilkins’ last year as coach of the team. With the exception of Mutumbo, Jim Jackson and a rookie Jason Terry, the Hawks had a solid group of NBA rejects that year. It’s no wonder they performed that poorly and equally as unsurprising that Rider devolved to selfish play on such a bad team.
Rider’s year in Atlanta would be the last one in which he’d make a meaningful impact for a team. He would play two more years — with the Lakers and the Nuggets — before retiring after the 2002 season. Rider tried to make a comeback in 2009 with an ABA team but failed to make any immediate impact. I suspect the editor who wrote the copy for the front of this holographic card was making an attempt at irony due to Rider’s propensity to make a scene upon arriving at a new team while generally being… well, JR Rider.
Dane Carbaugh is a published research author and can be found writing about the NBA all over the Internet. He can be found on Twitter at @DaneCarbaugh
