93 94 HOUSTON ROCKETS ROSTER PROFESSIONAL
93 94 HOUSTON ROCKETS ROSTER FREE

With CBA negotiations happening right at that instant, the loopholes were closed and Dudley’s contract became an anomaly.įor being at the center of it, both on the court, in the courts, and in the fight for diabetes awareness, Chris Dudley earns the 61st spot on our list of Top 100 Trail Blazers players and influencers.Does anyone play this team online? They're complete garbage for a championship team that almost 3 peated. He was happy, the Blazers were happy, the league office was not happy. That gave him one of the Top 25 salaries in the league.

Courts and arbitrators came back with some version of, “If you didn’t want the rules to allow that, you should have written them differently, neener neener.” Dudley got to opt out and signed a new contract worth (surprise, surprise) far more than his original. Sensing the salary cap about to go to heck, David Stern and company pushed the void button on the opt-out, claiming it was an obvious effort to circumvent the rules. With Bird Rights accruing in a single year in those days, it seemed obvious that Dudley would opt out of the small contract in the Summer of 1994, then the Blazers would re-sign him to a better one even though they technically didn’t have the cap space to do so. The mystery was solved when league officials looked in the fine print and realized the Blazers and Dudley had inserted an opt-out clause after Year 1.

His incumbent team, the Nets, had offered him twice that over fewer years. Even a back-up center could expect to make more than that. Heads were scratching when he accepted a 7-year, $11 million deal to play in the Pacific Northwest. When Dudley came to the Blazers in 1993, Portland wasn’t the only suitor. Green and Toni Kukoc, who both ended up in the same boat.)

You know that pesky NBA salary cap rule where a player has to play for the same team (or at least under the same contract) for three years before Bird Rights kick in? You know the other one, where player option years and opt-outs can only happen in the last year or two of their contracts? Chris Dudley did that.

93 94 HOUSTON ROCKETS ROSTER PROFESSIONAL

This was uncommon among professional athletes and a large part of his story. He played his entire NBA career with type 1 diabetes, becoming a spokesperson for diabetes awareness and an important example for people diagnosed with the disease.Przybilla’s stats are better he had more longevity. Chris Dudley was going to Chris Dudley.Īs mentioned, those qualities alone might have placed him right by, maybe a little underneath, Przybilla on this list. If he couldn’t score like Kevin Duckworth (the man he replaced) and he wasn’t a deity in the eyes of fans like Arvydas Sabonis (the man who replaced him), that was fine. He was the classic, “I’m going to defend, you just do what you do well, wait why are you giving me the ball?” player. He averaged 4.0 offensive boards per game for the Blazers in 1994-95, just off his career-high average of 4.2 with the New Jersey Nets. If you like the phrase, “Thank God he made 1 of 2! That’s progress!” then Chris Dudley is your man.īut Dudley could rebound. Scientists are still trying to figure out how he shot 31.9% from the charity stripe in 1989-90. Until Shaquille O’Neal came along and stole the headlines for everything, Dudley was routinely lampooned as the worst foul shooter in the league. That was good, because his offense was.woooof. Along with Cliff Robinson and Aaron McKie, he became one of only three players on Portland’s 1994 roster still suiting up for them in 1996 (all three would be gone by the start of 1997).ĭudley came to the Blazers heralded as a defensive center. He became one of the letters in the Alphabet Soup in the years that followed. Dudley joined the roster in 1993-94 the year Clyde Drexler was traded to the Houston Rockets. Place in History: Chris Dudley belongs nestled with #64 entry Joel Przybilla as a defensive-minded center who came in at the end of an era to try and push his team through to the next one.

93 94 HOUSTON ROCKETS ROSTER FREE

Joined Club: September 2001, signed as free agent Joined Club: August 1993, signed as free agentĭeparted Club: October 1997, traded to the New York Knicks in a three-team deal for draft picks *Statistics are pulled from a player’s time in Portland Games Played with Blazers: 295 Regular Season, 18 Postseason During that break, Blazer’s Edge is counting down the top 100 Blazers: players, executives, and other influencers who made the franchise what it is today. The Trail Blazers’ 50-year anniversary season is temporarily on pause as the NBA goes on hiatus to slow the spread of COVID-19.

93 94 houston rockets roster