If you don't know who Mitch Richmond is, let me enlighten you. Mitch Richmond is probably one of the best basketball players you've never heard of.
He played basketball for my beloved Kansas State Wildcats in the late eighties, leading them to the Elite Eight round in the NCAA Tourney.
He went on to play 14 season in the NBA with the Golden State Warriors/Sacramento Kings/Washington Wizards/LA Lakers and made the All Star team six times, including All Star MVP honors in 1995. He also earned a championship ring with the Lakers in 2002.
He was the 1989 NBA Rookie of the Year, and earned Olympic medals with two USA Dream Teams, one gold and one bronze.
He is one of only 7 players in NBA history to average at least 21 points a game in his first 10 seasons. The others are Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Shaquille Oneal, Oscar Robertson, and Allen Iverson. Pretty impressive company to keep.
Why do I tell you all this? Because he is one of my favorite K-State athletes, and we got to see him get his number retired (#23) at the KSU-Nebraska game last night. Here is a picture I took of him, kind of blurry. He was great player and a class act. Addressing the crowd at half time, he said "Once a Wildcat, always a Wildcat."
In case you can't tell, I bleed purple.
4 comments:
Color me jealous! (in a good way ;) ). We bleed purple too...had season football tickets until we were pregnant with kid #3. Would like to take all the kids back to Manhappening for some games in the future, too.
He was part of the RUN TMC trio at Sacramento! I'm a huge basketball fan and was glad to see him win a ring with the Lakers.
I actually do remember him - more from his pro days than his K-State days. Very cool!
He was a bad, bad man!!
Very nice that you got to witness that, he was a very good player and quite a guy from what I hear.
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