1980 NBA Draft - Draft Selections and Draftee Career Notes

Draft Selections and Draftee Career Notes

Joe Barry Carroll from Purdue University was selected first overall by the Golden State Warriors. Darrell Griffith from the University of Louisville was selected second by the Utah Jazz. He went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award in his first season. Kevin McHale from the University of Minnesota was selected third by the Boston Celtics. McHale spent his entire 13-year career with the Celtics and won three NBA championships. He also won two consecutive Sixth Man of the Year Award and was also selected to one All-NBA Team, seven All Star Games and six All-Defensive Teams. For his achievements, he has been inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame. McHale was also named to the list of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History announced at the league's 50th anniversary in 1996. Carroll, 8th pick Andrew Toney, 11th pick Kiki Vandeweghe and 25th pick Jeff Ruland are the only other players from this draft who was selected to an All-Star Game.

Eight players drafted went on to have a coaching career in the NBA. Kevin McHale served as the interim head coach for the Timberwolves in 2005 and in the 2008–2009 season. Mike Woodson, the 12th pick, coached the Atlanta Hawks for six seasons. Larry Drew, the 17th pick, worked as Woodson's assistant before he was promoted to the head coaching position in 2010. Bill Hanzlik, the 20th pick, coached the Denver Nuggets in the 1997–1998 season, compiling a 11–71 record, the worst full-season record for a rookie coach in NBA history. Butch Carter, the 37th pick, coached the Toronto Raptors for two and a half seasons. Kurt Rambis, the 58th pick, who played nine years for the Los Angeles Lakers, served as the team's interim head coach in 1999. After working as the Lakers assistant coach for seven years, Rambis received his first permanent head coaching position with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2009. Two other players, Kiki Vandeweghe and Kenny Natt, had brief spells as interim head coaches in the NBA, each of which lasted less than one season.

Read more about this topic:  1980 NBA Draft

Famous quotes containing the words draft, selections, draftee, career and/or notes:

    It is crystal clear to me that if Arabs put down a draft resolution blaming Israel for the recent earthquake in Iran it would probably have a majority, the U.S. would veto it and Britain and France would abstain.
    Amos Oz (b. 1939)

    Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.
    Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

    Why not draft executive and management brains to prepare and produce the equipment the $21-a-month draftee must use and forget this dollar-a-year tommyrot? Would we send an army into the field under a dollar-a-year General who had to be home Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    My weary limbs are scarcely stretched for repose, before red dawn peeps into my chamber window, and the birds in the whispering leaves over the roof, apprise me by their sweetest notes that another day of toil awaits me. I arise, the harness is hastily adjusted and once more I step upon the tread-mill.
    —“E. B.,” U.S. farmer. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)