The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last gives a fond farewell to retiring Indiana Pacers veteran Reggie Miller, “certainly the best clutch shooter in the modern game (post-1980) not named Bird or Jordan.” Miller is a rarity these days in the faltering NBA: a truly great player who stayed with the same team over nearly two decades and never got a ring. Last also says:
He is the only great player of recent vintage who has been able to stay with the same team and completely (and successfully) remake his role, going from star to supporting castmember. This speaks not only to his talent and determination, but to his very fine character.
What’s the big deal if he also ranks up there with Barkley as one of the biggest trash-talkers in the game? All in good fun and love for the game. I grew up in Oregon cheering the Blazers and another fine gentleman, Clyde “The Glide” Drexler, who sadly couldn’t get his ring in the Rose City but was rewarded as a Rocket. Reggie Miller was definitely in the top 5 players I absolutely loved to watch, maybe because he was such a nerd – tall and lanky, a freakishly good 3-shooter, and full of so much personality. You could still see the kid in his face and wonder how he must have schooled plenty of traditional jocks on the courts in his youth. I’ll never forget his 8 points in the final 9 seconds to steal victory from the Knicks in the 1995 playoffs. Reggie’s retirement, in a way, marks the end of the NBA’s glory days for my generation, which missed Dr. J, Bill Russell and the Big O and only caught the tail end of Isaiah, Magic and Bird. (I still can’t bring myself to credit Jordan, the ruiner of the Blazers’ championship hopes in the early ’90s.) If only I could freeze that time, before the NBA (and Blazers) spiraled downward ignominiously.
I’m a tech journalist who’s making a TV show about a college newspaper.