Forgotten Ballers: Sidney Moncrief
When thinking of superstar basketball players of the 1980s, the obvious guys that immediately come to mind for any basketball fan would be Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the rivals that essentially saved the NBA and two of the greatest players to ever live. Many also recall the supporting cast of Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics; teammates such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish. The Detroit Pistons’ “bad boy era" rose to prominence in the late 80s when they took over the eastern conference from the Celtics and ended up sweeping the Lakers in the 1989 NBA Finals. However, one name seems to never be brought up in the conversation of the 1980s NBA superstars; Sidney Moncrief.
Sidney Moncrief was drafted fifth overall in 1979 to the Milwaukee Bucks, where he would spend the first 10 years of his career before playing an additional season with the Atlanta Hawks to end his career. He played shooting guard but was most known for his ability on defense. Moncrief was easily the best lockdown perimeter defender of his era, earning four all-defensive first-team selections between 1983-1986 and an additional second-team selection in 1982. He even won Defensive Player of the Year in 1983 and 1984, becoming the first-ever guard to win the award multiple times. Moncrief and Gary Payton remain the only guards to win that award at least twice. In addition to his defensive dominance, Moncrief was an efficient scorer. He shot above 50 percent for his career in the regular season at 50.2 percent, an excellent mark for a 6’4 guard. This is not due to a lack of shooting either, as Moncrief in his prime was a 20-point-per-game scorer and finished his career averaging 15.6. Overall, Moncrief’s excellence on defense and efficient scoring earned him five all-star selections, four all-NBA second-team selections, an all-NBA first-team selection in 1983, and a long overdue enshrinement into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
Sadly, Moncrief's career gets overshadowed mainly by Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers and the extremely successful Celtics of the 1980s where they were led to three rings by Larry Bird. Moncrief’s Milwaukee Bucks playing in the same conference as the Celtics certainly did not help either as the Bucks would fail to reach the NBA finals in the 80s with Moncrief. However, a little-known fact is that throughout the 1980s, the Bucks had the third-best regular season winning percentage behind the Lakers and Celtics. His career would be cut short at just 11 seasons as he dealt with a degenerative knee condition and a lingering foot injury that would cause him to miss significant time starting in the 1986-87 season. Nonetheless, Sidney Moncrief’s dominance in his prime still makes him among the better shooting guards in NBA history, and certainly deserves his flowers as one of the best to play the game in his era. From now on, nobody should ever forget about the absolute baller, Sidney Moncrief.
