When Ralph Sampson enters the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday, it will feel a bit like a fait accompli -- something that was always ordained to happen -- whether Sampson actually earned it or not.
Ask anyone who was around at the time and they'll tell you Sampson was practically destined for Springfield ever since his days of averaging 30.4 points and 20.5 rebounds per game as a heavily touted high school senior in Harrisonburg, Va. Although he stood 7-foot-4, which eventually would make him the eighth-tallest player in NBA history, Sampson also was freakishly athletic -- he would later go on to jam from the free throw line in the 1984 NBA Slam Dunk Contest -- and possessed the quickness and dexterity of a much smaller man.
Such physical tools had pro scouts drooling over Sampson's potential during his time at Harrisonburg, and their collective longing for Sampson only intensified after he led the University of Virginia to an .830 winning percentage over four seasons in Charlottesville, winning three national college player of the year awards in the process. After Sampson's freshman year at Virginia, none other than Red Auerbach predicted that he would become the next Bill Russell; meanwhile, the quest to land Sampson in 1983 led the Rockets to engage in what we would now call "tanking," producing an impossibly bad 14-win season that guaranteed them a coin flip with Indiana for the No. 1 pick.
In the end, Houston got its man and he put together three healthy seasons as a Rocket (two as part of a "Twin Towers" combination with Hakeem Olajuwon), winning NBA Rookie of the Year in 1984, capturing All-NBA honors in 1985 and helping Houston upset the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1986 Western Conference finals with a twisting, series-clinching buzzer-beater that sent the Rockets to the Finals. But, in the 1986-87 season, Sampson hurt his knee while slipping over a slick spot on the court, the first of many injuries that ultimately would derail such a promising career.
Or so the Sampson myth would have us believe.
Although the curse of "what might have been" has tarnished the legacies of many an athlete over the years, in Sampson's case, it seems to have been a blessing in disguise, propping up Sampson's suprisingly meager Hall of Fame case despite ample evidence that, even if left unhindered by injury, the totality of his career would not have reached the requisite level of greatness typically needed for induction.
In fact, Sampson might be the first player elected to his sport's Hall of Fame completely on the basis of potential rather than on what he actually accomplished in games.
College dominance?
The first dubious element of Sampson's candidacy is the supposed dominance of his NCAA career. Although the Cavaliers did put up an impressive 112-23 record in Sampson's college run, the most successful four-year stretch in school history, Sampson's individual numbers are hardly the stuff of legend: 16.9 points, 11.4 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game (in fairness, Sampson also added 3.5 blocks per game and shot 57 percent from the floor, but, in a sign of things to come, he turned the ball over 2.6 times per game).
That career scoring average of 16.9? It's exactly the same as what recent UVa star Sean Singletary put up, and roughly 2.0 PPG less than the immortal Jeff Lamp was producing concurrently with Sampson. Granted, points aren't everything, and Sampson affected the game in a number of ways that didn't show up in the scoring column. But given how much of Sampson's Hall of Fame case is contingent upon his college career, his individual stats at Virginia don't exactly leap off the page.
And, if his college résumé is based more on team accomplishments than individual production, it bears mentioning that, despite the gaudy record, Virginia made only one Final Four in Sampson's college career (his sophomore year of 1981), flaming out early with a Sweet Sixteen loss to UAB in 1982 and an Elite Eight defeat at the hands of NC State a year later. In fact, the most defining moment of Sampson's college career wasn't a victory at all but rather an improbable loss (as the top-ranked team in the country) to tiny Chaminade on Dec. 23, 1982, a debacle that still ranks as the biggest upset in the history of college hoops.
Mediocre pro
Sampson's professional credentials are even sparser. Through the end of the 2012 season, Sampson ranks 239th all time in Basketball-Reference's Hall of Fame probability metric, with a mere 2.7 percent predicted chance of being inducted based on past voting patterns. He played just three full seasons before injuries limited him to an average of 35.5 games per season in the final six seasons of his NBA career, finishing with lifetime per-game averages of 15.4 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.6 blocks.
Even in those three healthy years, Sampson was good -- but certainly not great. Most notably, he proved a gifted scorer who could create his own shot but was not particularly efficient in doing so. Paired with Olajuwon, Sampson often played away from the basket with a more finesse-oriented style, attacking with his face-up game and midrange shooting. For some bigger players (Dirk Nowitzki comes to mind), this approach has worked wonders, but Sampson was far too turnover prone as a pro, losing the ball on 9 percent of his touches in those first three seasons. And defensively, although Sampson was solid by virtue of his sheer size, his shot-blocking numbers were actually pretty underwhelming for a player of his stature.
Sampson did hit the vaunted "20-and-10" scoring and rebounding averages in his healthy seasons, but are a mere three years of that production, especially when coupled with the limitations of his game in the pros and an overrated college career, really enough to justify a Hall of Fame nod these days?
When Sampson gets officially enshrined, he might just be Springfield's least-accomplished center. Arvydas Sabonas and Bill Walton played a comparable number of games to Sampson, but each was far more productive in the NBA -- Sabonis' and Walton's career PERs were 21.2 and 20.0, respectively, and Sampson's was 16.0 -- and arguably made a bigger impact before joining the league (Sabonis' international work is legendary; Walton's NCAA career is a very rich man's version of Sampson's).
Sampson similiarities
Perhaps the most fitting comparison, then, is Bob Houbregs, who put the University of Washington on the map in much the same way Sampson did for Virginia before embarking on a five-year pro career from 1953 to '58. But doesn't it say something about Sampson that his closest comparison, in terms of accomplishments, among centers is a 6-7 guy from the 1950s who didn't even play the position full time and averaged 9.3 career points per game?
In terms of pure physical tools and raw possibilities, Sampson had the potential to soar into the same stratosphere as some of the game's all-time greats. But the Hall of Fame should be based on actual achievements, not theoretical ones. Just because a player's place in Springfield seemed fated from the beginning doesn't mean he should get a pass for what is clearly not a Hall of Fame-worthy career résumé.