THE CHRIS MULLIN COLLECTION

When Chris Mullin arrived on the campus of St. John’s University in Queens in 1981, it required only a couple of subway rides from his home in Brooklyn, but it represented the beginning of a long journey that would take him from coast to coast and around the world, ultimately ending up in Springfield, Mass., in 2011 when he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The lanky, crew-cut wearing shooting guard and small forward was already a legendary figure in New York City schoolboy basketball, having made a name for himself even as a youngster in CYO leagues in Brooklyn and in those mythical pickup games that made New York the center of the scholastic basketball universe. Four years at the hoop powerhouse St. John’s only added to the persona, a stint that included three straight years as Player of the Year in arguably one of the toughest conferences in the country, a 1985 nod as the UPI College Player of the Year and even a spot on the 1984 Olympic Basketball Team, which turned out to be the second-best Olympic squad he ever played on. The Golden State Warriors picked him in the first round of the 1985 draft (7th overall), and he quickly established himself as one of the greats at that level, playing a tenacious, relentless game of rough-and tumble basketball punctuated handsomely by dead-eye shooting reminiscent of his basketball idols, Larry Bird and John Havlicek. He cracked the 20 ppg mark in 1987-88, and then averaged nearly 26 points per contest for the next five seasons. Not surprisingly, that kind of production put him in the elite ranks of the NBA’s star-studded galaxy, earned him five NBA All-Star selections and a place on what is presumably the greatest Olympic basketball squad in history. That 1992 waltz by the Dream Team through the international competition in Barcelona was as thorough as it was expected, bringing a second Olympic gold medal for Mullin. He would play five more seasons for Golden State and then three as a member of the Indiana Pacers before a final swan song back in Oakland in 2000-01 to close out his career. Mullin finished his career with nearly 18,000 NBA points to his credit and was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010 as a member of the Dream Team and again as an individual in 2011.

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