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A look back at Golden State's 1996 'Todd Fuller or Kobe?' decision
An injured Kobe Bryant is doing all he can to be able to play in Thursday night’s Lakers contest against the Golden State Warriors. The game is on the Warriors’ home court, and despite the two teams never really engaging in a serious rivalry during Bryant’s time in the league, the home team will honor Kobe during the nationally televised game.
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That honor will include a message from Warriors front office consultant Jerry West, also a former Laker champion who was the general manager of the team when it acquired Kobe Bryant all the way back in 1996. West locked in on Bryant early on in the draft process, despite having no lottery picks to work with. He cannily moved up in the draft by dealing Vlade Divac to Charlotte in exchange for the draft rights to Kobe – later adding legend to legendary by using some of the cap space acquired by dealing Divac to sign free agent Shaquille O’Neal.
The Warriors general manager at the time, Dave Twardzik, will not be involved in the ceremony. Neither will former NBA center Todd Fuller, both for obvious reasons. Fuller was selected by Twardzik and Golden State 11th overall, two slots ahead of Bryant’s spot in the draft, in what at the time was the latest in a series of blunders that helped make the Warriors often the laughingstock of the league in the 1990s and into the 2000s.
"You felt much more comfortable taking an underclassman who declared as opposed to a high school guy because it was uncharted territory," Twardzik said. "The concern any time you take a high school guy is not only physical maturity but emotional maturity. It would have been something that probably didn't fit into our plans."
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"We did our due diligence, but ultimately we kind of felt like he was not going to get to us anyway," he said. "But you know, if he had, I don't know that we would have taken him. There was that unknown."
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"Todd was more of a high-post player and had a very good basketball IQ," Twardzik said. "But he probably wasn't quick enough or physical enough to play the position, and the system at the time was probably more suited to a low-post player."
And Fuller?
"Hindsight is always 20/20, but when I came out to the Warriors, it was a team in flux and I actually played a lot early and got off to a good start," he said. "But one of the things I didn't learn is I put too much pressure on myself. I wasn't that athletically talented, but I had enough tools to get the job done if I'd just worked a bit harder and had a little bit more stable mindset toward myself."
Fuller did start the first 11 games of the Warriors’ season alongside Joe Smith (the top overall pick the year before), All-Star Latrell Sprewell, Chris Mullin (a future Warriors GM, in his last year with his first go-round with the team), and a post-ACL tear Mark Price. The team went 2-6 during that span, finishing the season with a 30-52 record, acting as the NBA’s second-worst defensive team. Fuller averaged 4.1 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in 12.7 minutes per contest under Rick Adelman, who along with Twardzik would be fired the following offseason.
The center went on to play one more campaign in Golden State, offering about the same production, before being shipped to Utah for a second round pick. He jumped around to the Hornets and Heat in the years following, and after being cut by the Orlando Magic in 2001 training camp, he embarked on an international career that saw him play five more years and, by his estimation in talking to Steward, visiting 32 different countries along the way.
According to Steward, Fuller is now “pursuing his Master's degree in advanced analytics at N.C. State and only fleetingly follows the NBA.”
Kobe? Well, Kobe’s still playing. And he’s on a whole lot of NBA fans’ Mt. Rushmore. This certainly was a whiff, on Golden State’s part, but both then and now some of the reasons behind passing on Bryant are somewhat understandable.
For one, the team was looking to win now. It had by then lost Chris Webber after he fell out with former coach Don Nelson (the Fuller pick, cruelly, was the last link to the trade that brought C-Webb to Golden State), but on paper it recovered nicely behind Smith, Sprewell, and the hope that Mark Price could approximate his former All-Star ways. Sprewell went on to make the All-Star team that year, averaging 24 points per while playing Bryant’s position. Rookie contracts lasted only three years back then, so the team needed to improve rather quickly in order to keep Smith (entering his second year) from fleeing as an unrestricted free agent.
Secondly, as Twardzik mentioned, teams just didn’t draft many high schoolers back then, and no NBA team had ever drafted a high school guard. Kobe had hype coming out of Lower Marion, including a Sports Illustrated feature, but that feature also included this quote:
"I think it's a total mistake," says the Boston Celtics' director of basketball development, Jon Jennings, who opposes any schoolboy's going pro. "Kevin Garnett was the best high school player I ever saw, and I wouldn't have advised him to jump to the NBA. And Kobe is no Kevin Garnett."
Those Celtics, famously, would still work Bryant out but pass on drafting him in favor of Antoine Walker. In reality, 13 teams passed on Kobe Bryant – nearly half the NBA at that point, and it’s possible he could have fallen further had Jerry West (who also had an All-Star shooting guard on his roster in Eddie Jones) not dangled Vlade Divac in front of Hornet GM Allan Bristow (the unluckiest No. 13) and his staff’s eyes.
Sadly, for the Warriors, the damage didn’t end with the Fuller selection.
Twardzik – a scrappy former ABA and NBA guard who worked up the ranks after serving as an NBA assistant coach – also passed on future Hall of Famer Steve Nash, All-Stars Jermaine O’Neal (also a high schooler, who would become the youngest player in NBA history later that year), Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Peja Stojakovic, and several solid rotation players. Ben Wallace went undrafted. Lots of teams screwed up their picks that year, but it’s still a tough “what if?”-list to read off.
Especially when considering how the Warriors fell even further in the coming months.
The team hired Garry St. Jean as its GM the following summer, and legend Chris Mullin was dealt to a contender in Indiana for Erick Dampier. Not only did Latrell Sprewell attack new coach P.J. Carlesimo in the second month of Fuller’s second season, he joined a long list of talented players who (in Spre’s case, literally) forced their way out of Golden State: Mitch Richmond, Chris Webber, Tom Gugliotta, Tim Hardaway, and later in 1997-98, former top draft pick Joe Smith. The Warriors would disappoint for years, until a returning Mullin and Don Nelson helped the team make the playoffs in 2007.
It should also be noted that the Fuller selection wasn’t exactly praised at the time; and not just because of the presence of Kobe. An Academic All-American with a nearly perfect GPA at NC State, the center was touted by Golden State more for his academic success rather than his business acumen that summer. St. Jean went the same route when he introduced next summer’s lottery pick: Colgate product Adonal Foyle.
For Bay Area fans, though, all of this is warmed by the fact that the Lakers and Warriors have essentially switched places, nearly 20 years later.
The same mismanagement, iffy coaching and injuries that befell those Golden State teams have dogged the Lakers since 2012, even with Bryant (sort of) still around, while the defending champion Warriors have lost just three games since last June. The idea that Kobe Bryant could have been the one to keep Latrell Sprewell from P.J. Carlesimo’s neck (instead of, seriously, Muggsy Bogues) is a little easier to forget with Stephen Curry slinging 27-footers around.
According to the feature, it appears Todd Fuller and Dave Twardzik are more than happy with their current lot in life. Warrior fans can also say the same – too bad it took them, oh, about 19 years to get there.
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
