By far one of the most interesting players of the last two decades of NBA basketball has to be Daron “Mookie” Oshay Blaylock. A perrenial starter, Blaylock was on the court for tip-off for 800 of the 889 NBA games he played in and finished with career averages of 13.5 PPG, 6.7 AST, 4.1 REB and 2.3 STL.
In fact, the only year of his 13 season career he didn’t put up numbers on par with his career averages was his last one in 2001-02 when he played behind Gilbert Arenas and the beautiful, majestic frosted tips of Bobby Sura.
In 1994 Blaylock was powering through his second year in Atlanta after inexplicably being traded from New Jersey for the immortal Rumeal Robinson. Blaylock was having a very good year and on November 27th, 1993 posted a triple-double of 15-10-10 against the 76ers.
Blaylock also dished out 16 assists three times that year including on the opening game of the season versus Indiana. He would go on to put up a season high of 28 points against the Rockets in a 133-111 win in Atlanta.
The Hawks would finish the year first in the Central Division under Coach Lenny Wilkins with a record of 57-25. Despite having the top seed in the Eastern bracket that year Atlanta would get bounced in the second round by Indiana getting mopped by double-digits in each loss.
Mookie would go on to play for the Warriors before finally retiring after the 2002 season. Although 1994 was a good year for Blaylock, what will burden him for the rest of his days is that Pearl Jam, who could be one of the worst bands of all time, were originally called Mookie Blaylock. Goodness, what luck.
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
