NBA Jackets - surprising long careers

TechPhi97

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Anthony Morrow’s long (9 years) career in the NBA was brought up in the Kelly thread, and I thought it would be an interesting topic - what NBA Jackets had surprisingly long careers?

John Berry played 16 years in the NBA, which is surprising to me. I was originally thinking that Drew Barry played longer than I expected, but he only got 3 or 4 years of 7 total playing professionally. One of my college buddies was friends with Drew, and he told me one time that a big incentive for players is the NBA pension - evidently you qualify after 3 years.

Any others?
 
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BeeRBee

BeeRBee

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I see 821 games over 14 years for Jon Barry, which I would agree is a surprisingly long career.

Thad Young just finished his 17th year, and has played in 1172 games. While I would certainly have predicted a good career for him, any NBA player lasting 17 years counts as a surprising career. He was one of 5 active players this year from the 2007 draft class, with only 4 players from older classes still active.
 

GT33

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Iman played 10 years
Geiger got 10 years
Harpring notched 11
Bynum had almost 8 years
Collier had 5, cut short by dying. What a sad story there.
 

TechPhi97

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BeeRBee said:
I see 821 games over 14 years for Jon Barry, which I would agree is a surprisingly long career.

Thad Young just finished his 17th year, and has played in 1172 games. While I would certainly have predicted a good career for him, any NBA player lasting 17 years counts as a surprising career. He was one of 5 active players this year from the 2007 draft class, with only 4 players from older classes still active.
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Wow, now that's a career - 17 years!
 

TechPhi97

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Did some investigating, you can follow this link to see a list of GT players in the NBA and their stats. A couple of notables:
  • Thad Young has played them most NBA games (1,172) and it's not even close (next is Bosh at 893).
  • Mark Price played the most games of anyone not drafted in the first round (722), ranking 9th all-time for GT players.
  • Duane Ferrell played the most games for a non-drafted player (583 / 14th all time) closely followed by Anthony Morrow (564/15th all time)
  • Stephon Marbury takes the crown for PPG, at 19.3 for his career. Followed by Bosh (19.2) and Price (15.2)
  • Bosh has scored the most points (17,189) followed by Marbury (16,297) and Thad (14,225)
  • Our "Mr. Irrelevent" is a tie between Gani Lawal and Yvon Joseph, both of whom played 1 game in the NBA, albeit 25 years apart.

Other surprising careers (at least, to me):

  • Matt Geiger's career was pretty impressive - 10 seasons, 13th in total points scored (5,509) and 11th in PPG (9.2). Not bad for the 42nd pick!
  • Will Bynum played 8 NBA seasons / 360 games, along with 3 seasons overseas (Israel and China)
 

brandon_cox

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TechPhi97 said:
Mark Price played the most games of anyone not drafted in the first round (722), ranking 9th all-time for GT players.
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As far as I can tell, Price is the only GT alum to make first team All NBA. He did it in 1992-93; Michael Jordan and he were the starting guards. Charles Barkley and Karl Malone were the starting forwards and Hakeem Olajuwon was the center.
 
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