60. Brad Daugherty, UNC, 1983-1986

2003 Top 50 List: Yes

Dan Collins List: No

Brad Daugherty was kind of a Tim Duncan Lite, I think.  The fundamentally sound big man.  It may be unfair to call him anything “lite”; he was a great player in his own right.  He wasn’t nearly the defensive player Duncan was, but he was every bit as good on offense, maybe better.  What jumps out at you statistically is the FG%.  For his career, he shot 62%.  And he wasn’t one of those guys that stood around waiting for garbage buckets; he was the focal point of the offense.  That 62% mark is fifth all-time in the ACC.  I’d like to know how many players in college basketball history shot 62+% with over 1200 career attempts.  The only two I can find besides Daugherty are Lew Alcindor (of course) and Steve Johnson of Oregon State, although I suspect I’m missing a couple.

As a senior, Daugherty averaged 20.2 points per game and shot 64.8% from the field.  I just referred to this in the Horace Grant post, but since 1993, there are only three seasons in all of college basketball with 20+ points per game and 65+% from the field.  Daugherty needed one less miss and he would have been there.  Daugherty also shares (with Zion Williamson) the ACC record for most field goal attempts in a game without missing – 13.

You might remember an interesting fact about Daugherty, that he was 16 years old when he began at UNC.  I don’t remember the backstory; he had an October birthday, so he was young for his class to begin with, and then he must have skipped a grade.  But in any case, all the other outstanding players in that Class of 1986 – Len Bias, Johnny Dawkins, Mark Price, Mark Alarie, John Salley – were all one-and-a-half to two years older than Daugherty. I wonder how much that factored in to the Cavaliers’ decision to take Daugherty with the first overall pick? It’s an important principle when evaluating young players. When you’re comparing two players of similar skill levels, but one is substantially older than the other, the younger player has the higher upside. Daugherty had arguably the fourth-best NBA career of anyone in that draft, behind Jeff Hornacek, Dennis Rodman, and Price. (And I can’t resist throwing in this little tidbit – Wolfpack fans, do you know who was selected in the second round that year, earlier than Hornacek? Pano Fasoulas. I bet the Blazers would like to have that one back.)

Daugherty’s senior year would have been good enough for ACC Player of the Year in some years, but the competition of Bias, Dawkins, and Price was too tough.  Regardless, he was a terrific player.  He had an outstanding NBA career – a borderline Hall of Fame trajectory – before it was cut short by back injuries.