
Rick Mahorn.
Also the subject of one of my favorite pieces by one of my favorite sports writers (Ralph Wiley).
Ralph Wiley wrote: [Mahorn's] Bullets took games off the Celtics in Boston Garden in the '80s, when that was hard to do. They muscled up, blocked out, pulled chairs and grinded up bones on the O board to make their bread. Mahorn smiled that picket fence smile of his, that sardonic smile, ironically, the same smile Russell used on everybody else to make the Celtics the ultimate winning machine. The smile that made opponents think, "What's that #%@!& smiling about?" instead of "how is this guy managing to beat me?" But I didn't get to know the real Mahorn behind that smile until he moved on to Detroit.
Mahorn won a ring in '89 and the Pistons won again the next year, two titles during the era of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan.
Back then I talked to Mahorn at length and thought, "Wow, this guy is really smart, there's way more to him than just pulling chairs and setting picks and muscling guys; this guy understands the game, the whole game."
http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story?page=wiley/040514
OrlandoTill wrote:up.