What a coin flip can mean to a team: Pacers-Rockets 1983

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070517/SPORTS04/705170558/1247/SPORTS

The Rockets wanted Ralph Sampson so badly they offered to give up the following:

their #3 pick
their #1 pick the next year
Caldwell Jones

Jones would have helped the Pacers immediately at center, and perhaps kept them from trading their future #1 pick in 1984 for a journeyman center named Tom Owens.

The problem: the Pacers were being sold and could not make the deal. The Pacers then lost the coin flip, got Stipanovich instead of Ralph, traded away the pick that could have been Jordan the next year.

The Pacers could have used the #3 pick in 1983 to choose Clyde Drexler, the two top 3 picks the next year to draft BOTHHakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan.

Of course it might have been the Pacers who would become infamous by picking Sam Bowie over Jordan, and Portland would have taken MJ with no Clyde already at SG.

But even "just" Clyde and Hakeem together on the Pacers would obviously have changed the NBA in the 80s, with no Hakeem in Houston and MJ in Portland.

 

to clarify, The Rockets wanted Ralph Sampson so badly they offered to give up Calwell Jones and two number one picks just to get the Pacers to conceed the outcome of the coin flip

I'll let you ponder how many rings the Pacers might have wrestled away from the Celtics/Lakers/Pistons/Bulls/Rockets with Hakeem, Clyde, and MJ in Pacers uniforms.