There was a player from the 1970s named Archie Clark, a former four-time All-Star who lasted 10 NBA seasons and mastered what was nicknamed “the Shake and Bake,” where he went left while his defender leaned right, and vice versa. … If you know how to do it and stay low with it, it’s effective every time.” “That crossover is deadly,” the custodian gushed.Ī lot of people don’t recognize my signature crossover because it comes so fast. Hardaway did it again, this time faking a jumper before going strong to the rim for a layup. “Wooo, damn!” said a school custodian, standing nearby in the hallway with a broom. There were no other witnesses in the empty gym for this landmark moment in basketball history, or so they thought. In those one-on-one contests, Hardaway switched hands between dribbles, went between his legs, left his confused defender stuck to the floor, blew by him and dunked. So, after the workout, me and another player stuck around and played a little to stay sharp.” “We just ran sprints and did defensive drills,” Hardaway recalled. Haskins put the team through a two-hour workout once the wheels hit the runway back in El Paso. Haskins - who coached the school formerly known as Texas Western to the historic 1966 championship over all-white Kentucky, inspiring the film “Glory Road” - was raging after UTEP suffered a season-opening 29-point loss to Washington in Hardaway’s first college game. Raised on Chicago basketball, where the meek are left standing when sides are chosen in pickup games, Hardaway made his way to Texas-El Paso for college. He made five All-Star and All-NBA teams and won a gold medal with the 2000 U.S. He was a showman for the Golden State Warriors for six seasons, then a leather-tough cornerstone in Miami with the hardscrabble Heat for six more. Hardaway was a quick-reflex defender, directed his teams with unflinching leadership and served as a primary scoring option in an age where point guards were pass-first. Even his knuckleball jump shot was efficiently workable. That was the extent of his limitations, though. He was barely 6 feet tall and not gifted with supreme athleticism. “He’s got the most confidence I’ve ever seen,” Mullin said.Ĭongratulations to Olympic Gold Medalist and 5x #22HoopClass honoree Tim Hardaway. Hardaway made those coaches smarter and those players better, so he’ll be immortalized next to them. He spent a ton of his minutes alongside Hall of Famers Mitch Richmond, Chris Mullin and Alonzo Mourning. Hardaway played primarily for Don Haskins, Don Nelson and Pat Riley, three coaches already in the Hall. Tim Hardaway is now ready for induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Because, just maybe, if those delinquents had gotten away with it, who knows, we might’ve been deprived of ever seeing one of the most devastating dribbles known to man, of seeing the most entertaining trio in basketball - Run-TMC y’all - and of seeing a point guard stare into the camera during a 1990s Nike commercial shoot and utter three ad-libbed words that captured his essence: Take a look at some of Tim Hardaway's top moves and killer crossovers!Īnd so, for a player who delivered 7,095 assists in his NBA lifetime, this was the greatest assist given to him. And those kids never stood a chance against a determined woman, who must have had the foresight to know what the basketball would someday mean to her son. Gwen Hardaway gave chase, up the street, ‘round the corner, down the alley, scraping her legs in the process, blood dripping, blood boiling. A kid in these parts knows not to leave his bike alone for a minute, and the same street law applied for a ball so shiny and new that it still had all its pebbles. Hardaway, however, was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, a famously edgy hood of hard-working people like the Hardaways, and unfortunately a few crooks as well. So, he sat on it, like a hen does her eggs.Ī lifetime bond was formed and nothing seemed purer. His father bought him a Wilson for Christmas, his very first ball, and the young boy - or “Tim Bug” as he was known - was too small to dribble it. But back in the day - to be specific, a crucial day in his basketball life - Tim Hardaway and his precious ball were taken. It was never easy to swipe the basketball from the master of the crossover dribble, a weapon he popularized and introduced to the mainstream and used to change the game forever. A 5-time All-Star and Olympic gold medalist, Tim Hardaway is set to be enshrined into the Hall of Fame.
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