Top 100 NBA Players: #97

Bob Dandridge

(Simmons: #79, BBR: #182)

Bill Simmons refers to Bob Dandridge as his "favorite lost great from the seventies." The reason that Dandridge is "lost" is that he was a great player but never the best on a good team. He spent the entire decade of the 70's as one of the league's best players, but he always had better or more famous teammates overshadowing him. In Milwaukee, where he started his career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson took the spotlight. In Washington, where he had his career peak, people still paid more attention to Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld. The two seasons in which he took over as the best player on the Bucks turned into the two worst seasons of his career, which says to me that he was better as a second banana.

Dandridge played in 4 NBA Finals during his career, winning the NBA championship twice. In each of those Finals appearances he raised his scoring average, something the previous entrants on this list haven't been able to say. Here are the playoff numbers from those seasons.

1971 - 19.2 pts, #3 player on champ
1974 - 19.3 pts, #3 player on runner-up
1978 - 21.2 pts, #2 player on champ
1979 - 23.1 pts, #2 player on runner-up

Dandridge's career in the 1970's looks very similar to Lamar Odom's in the 2000's, with several very solid years in a row. The thing that sets Dandridge apart is the way he always stepped up in the playoffs, while Odom faded. The big playoff dip in the middle represents the time in which he was carrying the Bucks, and the cliff on the right side was caused by injuries that derailed his career right when it appeared that he was about to take over as the star in Washington.

Not only has he been forgotten by the majority of NBA fans, he has also been left out of the Hall of Fame by voters for decades, who obviously have failed to recognize how big a contributor he was to some of the best teams of the 1970's. The least I can do is give him a little recognition today as one of the top 100 players of all time.