The last time the #NBAAllStar Game was in Utah, the three-time defending 3-point shootout champion was nearly left out of the competition. He eventually competed despite not being on a roster.
This is the story of how in 1993, Craig Hodges became a man without a team.
A thread.
The NBA began its All-Star three-point contest (the “Long Distance Shootout”) in 1986. And six of the first seven contests split between two three-peat winners: Larry Bird and Craig Hodges.
Coming into the 1993 contest, Hodges had won the past three shootouts, including finals knockouts of Reggie Miller in 1990 and Terry Porter in 1991. His ‘91 performance is perhaps the greatest in the contest’s history, setting records that stand today: 21 shots made, 19 in a row.
Ladies and gentlemen, Craig Hodges.
#NBAAllStar
Surely the 1993 3-point contest would be all about someone trying to knock out Hodges, the three-time defending champ. There was only one problem. Craig Hodges, just 32 years old, was out of the NBA.
From @mkisaacson, July 11, 1992:
After beating Portland for ring #2, the Bulls jettisoned Hodges, 32, and Cliff Levingston and Bobby Hansen, each 31. But while Levingston went to Greece and Hansen retired, Hodges and his career 46.1% 3P shooting seemed ideal to hook on somewhere.
But he didn't.
Instead, the NBA moved on without him. Unlike most free agents, Hodges thought his unemployment was not a question of what he did on the court but what he said off it. He was a Muslim, pro-Black, anti-corporate activist athlete, a rarity then. From his autobiography:
@RTFanning
Craig Hodges had always been a thinker and community leader. The Bulls' rise gave him bigger opportunities to make a difference. He approached both Jordan and Magic Johnson before tipoff of Game 1 of the 1991 NBA Finals, asking them to boycott the Finals.
When the Bulls visited the White House after winning the '91 title, Craig Hodges brought President Bush a letter asking that the fallout of “300 years of free slave labor” come to “the forefront of the domestic agenda.”
Hodges continued speaking out, including against Michael Jordan. At the start of the '92 Finals, Hodges said MJ was “bailing out” of his responsibilities to Black people in America.
nytimes.com/1992/06/05/spo…
Though MJ said that he agreed with Hodges ("I can go to any restaurant and get a free meal, but a starving man can't. That's what society has become.") Hodges wondered if the owners and agents, especially David Falk, had pushed him out of the league as punishment for speaking up.
Phil Jackson — who years later hired Hodges as an assistant with the Lakers — expressed surprise that Hodges garnered no interest from other NBA teams in 1993.
nytimes.com/1996/12/25/spo…
The connection between his activism and his unemployment did not go unnoticed. On Dec. 1, 1992, Sam Smith ran a no-holds-barred column that made clear that Hodges, despite having an elite NBA skill and nothing negative as a teammate or a citizen, was being shut out of the league.
Seriously, read the full column. @SamSmithHoops went scorched Earth on the NBA in defense of Craig Hodges.
Sam Smith noted that while Hodges belonged back in the NBA, his loss of a roster spot was also costing him an opportunity to defend his three-point crown. Rod Thorn summed it up: “If you’re not with a team, you can’t compete.”
Sam Smith called bullshit.
Famously, the year before, the NBA left Magic Johnson on the All-Star ballot despite having retired Nov. 7 after testing positive for HIV. He did not play that year, yet fans voted him a starter and the NBA let him play, placing 8 men on the West bench so that no one lost a spot.
Perhaps more relevant, Hodges told Smith, was 1989, when the NBA invited someone to compete at All-Star weekend who had never been in the NBA. As the league embraced its worldwide popularity, David Stern invited Rimas Kurtinaitis of the USSR to join the three-point contest.
The year before, Rimas Kurtinaitis was the leading scorer in the USSR's upset over the USA in the Olympics. He was a terrific shooter but couldn't do much in the contest. #NBAAllStar
Sam Smith brought national attention to Hodges’s unfair treatment, and while the NBA initially left him out, Rod Thorn said he spoke with the players’ union and decided to let Hodges compete. His training court was his mother’s driveway and a church gym.
Craig Hodges arrived in Utah and quickly saw that if he had support among his fellow 1993 #AllStarWeekend participants, they were keeping it under wraps. Run-ins with both Dominique Wilkins and Charles Barkley told the tale. From his autobiography “Long Shot”:
@RTFanning
In a prelude to the 2020 protest bubble jerseys, Craig Hodges brought a black & gold jersey to the 1993 #AllStarWeekend that said “UNITE” in honor of his work with Operation UNITE in Chicago. The league put the kibosh on that, giving him a white uniform with “NBA” on the front.
And that’s how, Craig Hodges, the greatest participant in the history of the NBA Long-Distance Shootout, ended up a man without a team in 1993. He was the only player to shoot in each of the first eight 3-point shootouts.
#AllStarWeekend #AllStarGame
And even though he was out of the league and practicing on cracked concrete, Craig Hodges shot well enough to reach the second round.
NBA owners never brought Craig Hodges back, even when he clearly could have helped teams win. Thirty years after his first three-point contest title, Hodges spoke with me about the NBA players’ wildcat strike in the summer of 2020:
readjack.substack.com/p/craig-hodges…
Salute to Craig Hodges. As both a three-point artist and an athlete-activist, he was ahead of his time.
❤️
Enjoy this thread? Check out Craig Hodges's autobiography "Long Shot" at @haymarketbooks. Co-written by @RTFanning. Foreword by @EdgeofSports.
haymarketbooks.org/books/964-long…
In 2017, I asked Craig Hodges to pick a winner between the best team on the first three-peat, 1992, against the best team on the second three-peat, 1996. He corrected me: the best team was 1991.
@JustinKaufmann @PeterZimm
What happened to Craig Hodges's generic "NBA" jersey from his 1993 3-point shootout? It was up for auction eight years ago. Don't know if it sold, but Craig sold his trophies from 1990 and 1992.
chicago.suntimes.com/2015/12/16/185…
Want to read more on Craig Hodges? Here is Ben Joravsky of @chicagoreader in 2016:
chicagoreader.com/news-politics/…
Here is @evanFmoore on Craig Hodges, 2017:
rollingstone.com/culture/cultur…
I noted that Craig Hodges brought an Operation UNITE jersey to the 1993 3-point contest that the NBA would not let him wear. Here he is yesterday with @PeterVecsey1 wearing a UNITE jacket, same colors as the jersey, so that’s a sense of what it looked like.
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