Warriors Got Lucky In 1985 With Mullin

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Former Golden State general manager Al Attles remembers the first NBA draft lottery, mostly because he nearly behaved badly in front of his mother.

The year: 1985.

The place: Mother's Day dinner.

Attles had just watched in horror as the Warriors - hopeful they would get the top pick in the draft - somehow ended up at No. 7.

After a miserable 22-win season - worst in the Western Conference - a lack of luck in the lottery hardly seemed fair.

With the seventh pick, Golden State had no shot at the top prize, which was Georgetown center Patrick Ewing, and little chance at Wooden Award winner Chris Mullin.

So it seemed to Attles, who thought Mullin would be long gone by the time Warriors made their selection.

That's why he was so upset during that long-ago

Mother's Day dinner.

"I was quietly beside myself," Attles said. "I didn't know what to do. I thought about turning the table over."

Instead, Attles started pondering Golden State's draft prospects. He interviewed a handful of players, including an underclassmen from Louisiana Tech named Karl Malone.

"He was a very nice young man," Attles said. "He tried to do everything according to Hoyle."

Deep down, however, Attles wanted Mullin.

And - surprise, surprise - he got him.

On draft day, six teams passed on Mullin before Golden State took him with the pick that Attles considered table-turning worthless just a month earlier.

"I tell people all the time, if I knew we were going to get Chris Mullin at No. 7, I wouldn't have worried one bit," he said. "There would have been a lot fewer sleepless nights."

During his career, Mullin exceeded Attles' predraft expectations and became one of the best lottery values in league history - even to this day.

He played 16 seasons and was a five-time All-Star. He scored nearly 18,000 points and played on the Dream Team during the 1992 Olympics, proving Attles was right about him all along.

"I have no idea why Chris Mullin slipped" in the draft, he said. "If you looked at him and followed college basketball, he was one of the biggest stars coming out. . . . I guess it became all about what he couldn't do: he was too small and he was too slow."

Attles laughed: "Those people just didn't understand Chris Mullin. They didn't know him as a person and they didn't know his work ethic. . . . I'm not naive enough to say we would have taken him ahead of Patrick. But I didn't think we could miss if we got Chris. Even if we had picked higher - second or third - I think we would have taken him."

Twenty-one years later, Attles calls Mullin "the best No. 7 draft pick in history. The way it worked out, we didn't really 'settle' for Chris Mullin, did we?"

Not like Atlanta, which used the No. 5 pick in the draft on 7-foot center Jon Koncak.

And not like Sacramento, which picked beefy center Joe Kleine at No. 6.

"Those guys were very good players," Attles said. "But one of the biggest mistakes you can make is letting size dictate things. For the longest time, our league was too big man-oriented. And sometimes you make mistakes by taking a big man instead of the better all-around player."

David Fredman, the assistant general manager of the Denver Nuggets, agrees.

"Size usually moves guys up," he said. "That's just the way it is."

Asked specifically about the 1985 draft, Fredman said, "In that situation, those other teams were looking for big guys, period. I didn't have anything to do with Mullin. It was like that old saying, 'If you're going to make a mistake in the draft, make a big mistake'." </div>

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