Top 100 NBA Players: #94

Fat Lever

(BBR: #188)

Unless you are a die-hard Denver Nuggets fan, you are probably scratching your head right now, but Fat Lever is one of the most underrated players in NBA history. He was Jason Kidd before Kidd was. Some of his statistical achievements have never been matched. Yet most fans don't even know who he is, and he didn't even get the recognition he deserved while he was playing, as evidenced by the fact that he was part of two All-Star teams and one All-NBA team.

Let's start by looking at one of his best seasons, 1988-1989. His stat line that year is one for the ages.

Fat Lever - 19.8 pts, 9.3 reb, 7.9 ast

There are only two other players in NBA history who have matched those totals in any single season, and you may have heard of them. The first was Oscar Robertson, who did it 4 straight seasons from 1961-1964, and the other was Wilt Chamberlain, who accomplished it in 1968. Two all-time greats from the 1960's and Fat Lever, that's it. No LeBron James, no Michael Jordan, no Magic Johnson or Larry Bird. Just Fat Lever has his those numbers in the past 40 years.

If you're thinking that he had a one-hit wonder season that year, you're wrong. That was just part of one of the best 4-year runs in NBA history, which lasted from 1986-87 through 1989-1990. During that stretch his averages look like this:

Fat Lever - 19.1 pts, 8.9 reb, 7.6 ast, 2.5 stl

How many players have reached those totals in a season? Just one. That's right, Fat Lever is the only one who has ever put up those numbers at any point in his career, and those were his 4-season averages. Remember the reference to Jason Kidd earlier? Lever, also a point guard, had the potential to be an even bigger star than Kidd, because he was a better shooter than Kidd ever has been. Lever, with 46 triple-doubles in a Nuggets uniform, is by far their all-time leader, with Dikembe Mutombo coming in a not-so-close second with 8. In fact, only 29 triple-doubles have been recorded in Denver history that weren't credited to Fat Lever.

So why does nobody know who he is? Part of it is probably because he played alongside Alex English, one of the league's best scorers, for his entire career in Denver. Part of it is that his career basically ended right at its peak. After the 1990 season, he was traded to the Dallas Mavericks, where he missed most of his first 3 seasons due to knee injuries before returning for one final season in which he was not the same player as before. He was let go by Dallas in 1994, at which point they drafted the next best thing, Jason Kidd. It also doesn't help that he only played in the Western Conference Finals once in his entire career, and it was a couple of years before he hit his peak.

The things that kept Hornacek close to Lever were his level of playoff success and his longevity, but there is no denying that Lever was the better player. Those four years he posted in the late 1980's were all better than anything Hornacek ever did, and he had six seasons that were better than Horny's second-best overall season. I've even heard a rumor that Lever is the only player ever to record 30 points, 15 rebounds, and 20 assists in a single game. I haven't been able to verify this myself, because old boxscores are hard to find, but I wouldn't doubt that it's true. It's just too bad that it couldn't have lasted longer.