One-hit-wonders aren’t exclusive to music. The NBA has seen their fair share of players provide magical seasons out of nowhere, only to be followed up by seasons of insignificance. Why these outlier seasons took place can be different for each player. So let’s take a look at five guards who randomly put together outlier seasons of statistical dominance.
Michael Adams 1990-’91
Michael Adams had established himself as the starting point guard of the Denver Nuggets in the late 1980’s. For three seasons he had held the reigns and the team made the playoffs each season, even advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals one year. During those years Adams had cumulative averages of 15.9 points, 6.3 assists, and 1.9 steals per game on decent shooting splits of 42.8/36.3/83.3 with 5.4 three-point attempts per game.
But it was the beginning of a new decade and with that a new regime took over the franchise. There were changes all throughout the organization and Paul Westhead took over as head coach. The team also cut ties with almost all of their best players including Fat Lever, Alex English, Joe Barry Carroll, Danny Schayes, and mid-way through the next season, Walter Davis.
The rebuild was in full effect. After years of being one of the worst defensive teams in the league, Coach Doug Moe had finally gotten the team to play on that end of the floor. However, in Coach Westhead’s first season at the helm, the team plummeted to the very bottom of the league in defensive rating, giving up a jaw-dropping 130.8 points per contest.
So what were players doing with all that energy they were saving on the defensive end? Scoring the most points per game in the league to inflate the crap out of their individual stats, of course.
Inflation meant a great economy for Michael Adams. The former steady, Chauncy Billups-esk point guard started taking shots like a proud card-carrying member of the NRA. Taking 21.5 shots per game to be exact with 8.5 of them being threes. His field goal percentage in the 1990-’91 season was 39.4% and 29.6% from three. Adams to the day is the only player in NBA history to shoot at least eight threes per game and make less than 30% of them.
But enough about percentages because that’s not why he’s on this list. He’s on this list because he averaged a monstrous 26.5 points, 10.5 assists, and 2.2 steals per game in the ’90-’91 season.
Following that magical statistical season, the Nuggets made a head scratching move that sent Adams, a first round pick, and a future second round pick to the Bullets in exchange for a single first round pick used to draft Mark Macon 8th overall.
The trade would work out well for Adams because despite not making the All-Star team the previous year, he would be selected as an injury replacement in his first year with the Bullets. He put up impressive averages of 18.1 points and 7.6 assists, but his efficiency didn’t get much better with 39.3% from the field and 32.4% from three. He would not return to the All-Star game again but would be a good starter for two more years with the Bullets before his career would end in Charlotte two years later.
Dana Barros 1994-’95
If you’re reading this and wondering who the heck Dana Barros is, just know you’re probably not alone. If you want to find out more about his game you’ll have to go to YouTube and get all the way to “D-a-n-a B-a” before anything about him shows up in the search suggestions. During the 1994-’95 season, however, everyone knew who this undersized, sharp shooting guard was.
After four seasons of limited rotation minutes with the SuperSonics, Barros found his way to the Sixers after a couple of offseason trades. In his first season as a full-time starter Barros showed full competence as he averaged 13.3 points and 5.2 assists per game on efficient shooting as the team’s fourth scoring option.
The following season would be his breakout year. Despite his team’s 24-58 record, Barros would make his lone All-Star appearance as well as taking home the league’s Most Improved Player Award after averaging 20.6 points, 7.5 assists, and 1.8 steals per game on ridiculous shooting splits of 49.0/46.4/89.9 with 5.2 three-point attempts per game.
Unfortunately, Barros never achieved those heights again. He signed with the Celtics as a free agent that offseason and would only start 25 of the 80 games he appeared in the following season. He averaged 13 points and 3.8 assists in 29.1 minutes per game on very good efficiency again. He played just 24 games the next season in the same role and then played the role of spark plug scorer for a few seasons as his career eventually came to a close.
Barros’s lone year of stardom may have mostly been a matter of circumstance being on a bad team and playing very big minutes, but his talent was legit. Truly a player ahead of his time, Barros was a sniper from three and used it to open up the rest of his game. It would be hard to imagine his role being marginalized the way it was most of his career if he played in today’s NBA.
Jerry Stackhouse 2000-’01
As the third pick out in the 1995 NBA draft out of North Carolina, Jerry Stackhouse came into the league to get buckets. He would get those buckets by any means, or by any amount of shots needed. But that wasn’t the case in college as he posted 19.2 points per game during his sophomore year with scorching efficiency of 51.7% from the field and 41.1% from three.
His efficiency in the NBA? Well, his field goal percentage was lower than his college three-point percentage. Stackhouse took full advantage of the era he played in; the infamous early 2000’s. The dark age where isolation plays and post ups were at their peak and for some reason each would almost always result is a deep, contested, fadeaway two-point shot.
Only once in his 18-year career did Stackhouse shoot over 43% from the field for a season. And that season didn’t happen to be the one we will be focusing on in which he took over 24 shots per game.
On a 32-win Pistons team in the 2000-2001 season Stackhouse had a field day, averaging 29.8 points on 40.2% shooting. On four other occasions, Stack averaged over 20 points per game but none of the others eclipsed 24 per game so his ’00-’01 campaign definitely stands alone as an outlier. Not to mention that 30 points per game is a landmark achievement and has only been accomplished by one player who’s not either in the Hall of Fame, or a sure-fire future inductee and that’s the great World B. Free. This gives historic value to one season of Stackhouse’s mostly forgotten NBA career.
Mike James 2005-’06
What do you get when you cross Michael Jordan with LeBron James? 2005-’06 Mike James, of course.
This is not to be confused with another current professional basketball player by the same name. If you want to get an idea of how underrated the retired Mike James is, just try looking him up on YouTube. His situation on there is even worse than Barros’s and you’ll need to search his name, team, and year before you have any shot at finding his highlights. The current professional Mike James, who by the way has played just 36 NBA games, has already become more popular.
The less popular James didn’t make his NBA debut until he was 26 years old. He only had his number called in 15 games in his first year with the Heat but proved himself worthy of rotation minutes over the next three seasons. At the same time, however, he also found himself already turning into a journeyman as those three seasons were spent with five different teams. Each team got production out of him and he averaged 9.6 points and 3.6 assists in 24.8 minutes per game. His efficiency wasn’t great, but liveable at 41.2% from the field, 35.5% from three, and 76.3% from the line.
The Raptors saw potential in him though and traded Rafer “Skip to My Lou” Alston, who was coming off his best season, to get James. The move paid off.
The team was bad, winning 27 games, but there’s always a silver lining for players on bad teams; good stats. Mike James and Chris Bosh looked like one of the best duos in the league on paper. Bosh did his thing averaging 22.5 points and 9.2 rebounds, while James came out of absolutely nowhere to put up 20.3 points and 5.8 assists. These stats didn’t come at the expense of his efficiency either as he shot 46.9% from the field, 44.2% from three on 4.8 attempts, and 83.7% from the line.
He signed with the Timberwolves that offseason and go on to average 10.1 points and 3.6 assists in 25.2 minutes per game while starting 65 of his 82 games that season. He continued to be a journeyman and played for 5 NBA teams over his final 6 NBA seasons, even going to Turkey for a season, as well as two G-League teams for some reason even though he was between the ages of 36 and 39 during those stints. Whether he played overseas after that is beyond me because keeping up with this guy is nearly impossible. He only played over one full season (82 games) for one team in his entire career so his random season of greatness wasn’t any more random than anything else about his career.
Jeremy Lin 2011-’12
Finally, we find our way to Linsanity. As we currently watch NBA teams pass on the 31 year old point guard, now seems like as good a time as any to remind ourselves of the “Linsanity” stint that took the league by storm. More importantly, Lin is overdue his credit as a legitimate NBA starter outside of the Linsanity period.
One fateful night on February 4, 2012, the lowly Knicks were trailing the lowly Nets and Coach Mike D’Antoni made a legendary coaching decision. He subbed in an undrafted G-Leaguer out of Harvard. The Harvard grad dropped 25 points, 7 assists, and 5 rebounds while leading his team to their first of seven straight wins. Lin would start the following game and after an early injury to Carmelo Anthony, Lin would post 28 points and 8 assists in another victory. Linsanity had officially begun.
Starting with his first monster game, Lin would average 26.8 points and 8.5 assists over 6 games while shooting over 50% from the field. Including the next four games his averages sat at 24.6 points and 9.2 assists.
By the end of Linsanity he had maintained averages of 18.5 points, 7.7 assists, and 2.0 steals per game. Injury forced him to miss the team’s final 17 games but he was still a hero. The Knicks had won 16 of 26 games with Lin under center. This was during the circumstances of Carmelo Anthony missing seven straight games and struggling after return, scoring just 16.9 points per game on 40% shooting before Lin’s injury.
From there, the best days of Jeremy Lin’s legend were behind him. He would sign a 3-year, 25.1 million dollar contract with the Rockets in the offseason. As a full-time starter he averaged 13.4 points and 6.1 assists per game for a 45-win team. He came off the bench in the majority of his games over the next three seasons for the Rockets, Lakers, and Hornets, none of which were good fits for his playing style.
Lin wasn’t a perfect player, even at his peak. He’s an inconsistent three-point shooter and a high volume turnover guy. But as long as he gets to be the primary ball-handler- contrary to his role in Charlotte- and doesn’t have to rely on a lot of catch-and-shoot threes- unlike his game in Houston- he’s extremely effective.
The Nets picked up on this and in 2016 actually signed Lin to his largest contract to date at 3-years, 38.3 million. The former phenom did not disappoint despite battling injury all season which cut down his games and minutes. In 36 games he averaged 14.5 points and 5.1 assists in just 24.5 minutes per game. Those stats were good for “per 36 minute” averages of 21.3 points and 7.5 assists per game. Call me crazy, but I think he could have kept those numbers up for a full season.
Lin came back with a vengeance next season, eager to prove himself. Just 25 minutes into his season, his opportunity would be over. A ruptured patella sidelined him for the rest of the year and Lin knew the consequences immediately. It hurts worse to watch him after the injury than the injury itself. Knowing his season was already over Lin breakdown and cried. It’s a small sample size but he had scored 18 points and had 4 assists in the game leading up to the injury. Lin was on his way to a great, career reviving season for the second year in a row and had it ended due to injury.
He would be traded the following offseason to the Hawks were he would play very well in a backup role to Trae Young before being waived. This allowed him to sign on with the Raptors for the remainder of the season and secure a championship ring. The envy of any player that doesn’t have one, but seemingly a small consolation prize for a player who has seen the highest of highs, and unfairly the lowest of lows throughout his career.
Hopefully we haven’t seen the last of Jeremy Lin in the NBA. From NBA long shot, to the face of the Mecca of basketball, to miscast role player, to a potential comeback story, to NBA champ, and now an NBA reject, the story of Jeremy Lin is a script Hollywood could never write. If not for untimely being bitten by the injury bug in Brooklyn, the Jeremy Lin story may sit in a better place right now.
That’s all I’ve got for statistical one-hit-wonders. As crazy as these outlier seasons are it’s even crazier to think how few of them there have been in the NBA’s nearly 70 year history. If there’s anyone you think I missed, let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed!
Comments