The NBA sidekick Hall of Fame

P.J. Brown and Jamal Mashburn

Every Miami Heat game in the mid-to-late 90s included an announcer asking whether or not this year might be the year Jamal Mashburn reached his potential. No announcer ever asked this question about P.J. Brown. No announcer asked this about P.J. Brown because power forwards at the time could satisfy their critics by merely rebounding and setting picks. Be and look strong, and everyone would shut the hell up. That was it. That’s all there was to do, and that was something Brown could do. And he did it very well.

Mashburn, on the other hand, was trying to stretch the game, and maybe that was his problem — instead of stretching the game, he should have been ripping it wide open, tearing it limb from limb. But that would have required him being a bit more like Brown. These were the starting forwards of the Alonzo Mourning-era Miami Heat; a team that was overrated when it was together and is now underrated the further we are from it. Maybe all teams are like this.

Either way, teams are no longer built quite like the Heat teams of yesteryear. Every player fit perfectly into a position or role. Tim Hardaway was nothing but a point guard. Mourning could be nothing other than a center. Brown played like every other successful team’s power forward. Dan Majerle was a shooting guard and nothing else. And then there was Jamal Mashburn.

This really is going to keep coming back to him.

Mashburn was the fourth overall pick in the 1993 NBA Draft. He had played his college days under Rick Pitino at the University of Kentucky. He was a victim of Christian Laettner and Duke Blue Devilry. He was outside the Fab Five. He was outside the Carolina Family. He wasn’t alone. He was a Wildcat, but he was also singular. Drafted ahead of him were Chris Webber, Shawn Bradley and Anfernee Hardaway. He was most definitely better than Bradley, and he is a lot closer to Webber and Hardaway than probably most basketball fans are willing to admit.

The arc of his NBA career is an odd one. His best statistical years show up at the beginning and the end, so instead of what looks like a mountain or a frowny face, his arc looks like a valley or a smile. Jamal Mashburn always had a great smile, like a heavyweight boxer spitting out his mouthguard just so. And maybe he came by that trait naturally; after all, his father was a retired boxer.

Mashburn averaged 24.1 points per game in his second year with the Dallas Mavericks. That was in 1994-95. Webber wouldn’t hit that mark until the next century. Webber was climbing a mountain. Mashburn was walking a valley.

Despite a talented core, none of the Dallas teams Mashburn played for made the playoffs. These teams were undone by pop singer drama and an inability to share the ball. Mashburn would average more than 3.7 assists in his four and a half seasons in Texas. He would later average five assists in four seasons with the Charlotte Hornets. He finished playing at the age of 31, having averaged 20.8 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game. He is one of only six players to average over 20 points in his final season, along with Jerry West, Larry Bird, Dražen Petrović, Reggie Lewis and Michael Jordan.

At the age of 30, Mashburn played in his first and only All-Star game. At the age of 38, Brown won his first and only ring with the Celtics. He averaged 19.5 minutes during the Finals against Los Angeles. Their efforts in Miami were undone by on-the-court aggression and the unraveling of Tim Hardaway’s knee. Perhaps one forward cared too much and the other not enough, or maybe that simply plays into the stereotypes of their positions — the power and the small, the 4 and the 3.