Top 100 NBA Players: #68 - Alex English

Alex English

Teams

Milwaukee Bucks - 1976-78

Indiana Pacers - 1978-80

Denver Nuggets - 1980-90

Dallas Mavericks - 1990-91

Playoffs

Appearances - 10 (1978,1982,1983,1984,1985,1986,1987,1988,1989,1990)

Conference Finals - 1 (1985)

NBA Finals - 0

Championships - 0

Awards and Honors

All-NBA First Team - 0 (1983)

All-NBA Second Team - 3 (1982,1983,1984,1985,1986,1987)

Hall of Fame - 1997

*(actual in bold, deserved in italics)

All-Time Ranks

Total Points - #23

Points Per Game - #41

Total Assists - #99

League Leads

Total Points (#1-1983,1986, #2-1987, #3-1985, #4-1982,1984, #5-1989)

Points Per Game (#1-1983, #3-1986,1987, #4-1982,1984, #5-1985)

Field Goal Percentage (#5-1978)

Alex English was a solid player for 4 years at South Carolina, capped off by a senior season where he averaged 22.6 points and 10.3 rebounds, and he was drafted in the second round of the NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, where he would spend the first two seasons of his career in obscurity, putting up less than 10 points per game in each season.

After those 2 years, he was allowed to leave as a free agent, and he signed on with the Indiana Pacers, where he became a starter and averaged 16 points per game, but after a year and a half, the team traded him to the Denver Nuggets for George McGinnis, who had been a huge star in Indiana during their ABA days.

English became a star very quickly in Denver, averaging 21.3 points per game during the tail end of the 1980 season after he was traded, and he scored at least 20 points per game for the rest of the decade with the Nuggets. He increased his scoring in each of his first 7 seasons, culminating in a scoring title in 1983, when he finished with 28.4 points, just ahead of his teammate, Kiki Vandeweghe, who came in #2 in the league.

After Vandeweghe left the team in 1984, English took on an even bigger role, and it resulted in the deepest playoff run of his career in 1985. He averaged over 30 points per game in the playoffs as the Nuggets beat the Spurs and the Jazz, but after English broke his shooting thumb in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals against the Lakers, the Nuggets season was over.

He set his career high in scoring the next year, averaging 29.8 points per game, which put him at #3 behind Dominique Wilkins and Adrian Dantley for the season, but the Nuggets' season ended in the second round. He continued to score big for the Nuggets for the rest of the decade, but they were never able to get past the second round again.

After he averaged only 17.9 points in 1989-90, English was allowed to leave as a free agent. He signed with the Dallas Mavericks, where he scored only 9.7 per game in one season with the team, and he was unable to find a team to take him after that, so his NBA career ended.

English scored more points than any other player in the 1980s, and was the first player ever to score over 2000 points 8 times in a row. Just like the two players before him in this countdown, he won a single scoring title, but never reached the NBA Finals, though English reached the second round 5 times, which was better than the other two, which allows him to sit just ahead of them in this countdown of the greatest players of all time.