27. Mark Price, Georgia Tech, 1983-1986

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: Yes

ACC Legends H-O-R-S-E competition: who you taking?

JJ Redick, Dennis Scott, Rodney Monroe? Maybe Christian Laettner just because he wins everything? If you’re looking for a dark horse pick, how about Charlie Davis or Bob Verga or Jack McClinton? Hubert Davis, anyone?

I’m taking Mark Price. Quite simply, one of the best shooters to ever lace ‘em up. One of only three players in NBA history to shoot 90% from the free throw line (Curry and Nash) for his career. Over 40% from three and over 50% from two. If you’re too young to remember Price, think of him as Steve Nash with a shorter career. Price’s good seasons would fit right into Nash’s playing record and you wouldn’t know the difference. But he was finished as a great player at 29 whereas Nash was just getting started.

In evaluating Price, you can’t avoid thinking about Johnny Dawkins.  Their careers were parallel in a lot of ways.  Both were combo guards who played from 1983-1986, and both were cornerstones of great program building jobs.  Here is how their respective teams fared over those years:

YearDukeGeorgia Tech
1982 (year before arrival)10-17, 4-1010-16, 3-11
1983 (freshman)11-17, 3-1113-15, 4-10
1984 (sophomore)24-10, 7-718-11, 6-8
1985 (junior)23-8, 8-627-8, 9-5
1986 (senior)37-3, 12-227-7, 11-3

Dawkins is generally regarded as a better player than Price, and that is what I would like to explore, because from looking at their playing records, that is not an obvious conclusion.  We will look at several dimensions:

  • How they did locally in All-ACC voting
  • Tournament performance
  • How they did nationally in All-America voting

You might guess that we are coming to a familiar theme here, and that is the disparity between ACC voting and national voting.  From the perspective of ACC voting alone, Price is the equal of Dawkins, in fact I would argue slightly better.  Here is how they did in All-ACC voting:

  • 1983: Price finished 9th with 149 points, Dawkins finished 10th with 117 points.  Price also won ACC Rookie of the Year with 83 votes to Dawkins’ 53.  Advantage: Price
  • 1984: Price finished 5th with 177 points; Dawkins finished 7th with 157 points.  Advantage: Price
  • 1985: Price finished 3rd with 223 points; Dawkins finished 4th with 199 points.  Advantage: Price
  • 1986: Dawkins finished 3rd with 243 points; Price finished 4th with 236 points.  Dawkins received 40 votes for ACC Player of the Year, Price received 5.  Advantage: Dawkins

All-ACC: advantage Price.

Then there’s the ACC Tournament:

  • 1984: Dawkins 1st team all-tournament, Price 2nd team all-tournament.  Advantage: Dawkins
  • 1985: Dawkins and Price both 1st team all-tournament; Price MOP.  Advantage: Price
  • 1986: Dawkins 1st team all-tournament, Price 2nd team all-tournament, Dawkins MOP.  Advantage: Dawkins

ACC Tournament: advantage Dawkins.

So if you look at the whole picture with All-ACC and All-ACC Tournament, I just don’t see anything in that record that would support Dawkins being better than Price.  It’s at best a draw for Dawkins, and if I had to pick a winner, it would be Price.

Then there’s the 1986 NCAA Tournament.  Dawkins had an amazing tournament.  He was MOP of the East Region, and there is no question but that he would have been MOP of the tournament had Duke won the final.  Here is his game by game shooting/scoring:

  • First Round: 27 points on 11-for-17
  • Second Round: 25 points on 10-for-12
  • Regional Semifinal: 25 points on 11-for-20
  • Regional Final: 28 points on 13-for-25
  • National Semifinal: 24 points on 11-for-17
  • National Final: 24 points on 10-for-19

That would be remembered as one of the all-time great NCAA tournaments if Duke had won the title.

So maybe we give Dawkins an ever-so-slight edge overall based on that NCAA Tournament performance.  It’s arguable.  I still think they’re about even.

But when it comes to All-America voting, Dawkins clearly did better than Price.  To break it down,

  • 1984: Price: 3-UPI; Dawkins: nothing
  • 1985: Price: 2-AP, NABC; Dawkins: 1-NABC,UPI; 2-AP
  • 1986: Price: 2-NABC; 3-AP, UPI; Dawkins: 1-AP, NABC, UPI, USBWA

Let’s acknowledge that Dawkins was just better in 1986.  The ACC voters agreed with that.  So that really leaves 1985 as the anomaly.

I’m probably spending too much time on this, but hopefully you get the point.  Whether Dawkins or Price was better is not at all obvious, and the decision requires close parsing of a lot of data points.  I do think the balance of the evidence is in favor of Dawkins, but it’s awfully close, and Price has an argument.

One thing that I think hurt Price nationally is that his scoring average dropped by almost five points from his freshman year to his sophomore year.  On the surface, that sounds like regression, but if you look closer, that wasn’t the case at all.  There were two factors:

  1. Price got some help, in the form of Bruce Dalrymple and Yvon Joseph, so he started shooting less and passing more.
  2. His freshman year had the three-point line, and then they took it away.  Price was a great 3-point shooter.  He lost 2-3 points per game just from the line going away.

Price’s efficiency actually went up as a sophomore.  He went from being a 43.5% shooter to a 51% shooter.  He was probably a better player overall.  But unless you’re watching him every day, like the ACC voters were, you might miss those nuances and conclude that he took a step back.

One more point on Price.  When Price was named ACC Rookie of the Year in 1983, he was the first of eight Yellow Jackets to win that honor over the 14-year span from 1983 to 1996 (full list below).  Bobby Cremins knew how to recruit freshmen who were ready to play in the ACC, and he had no qualms about putting them on the floor.