When I heard Adam Silver wouldn’t let former Dallas Cowboy great Tony Romo play a few meaningless minutes in a meaningless game between the Mavs and Nuggets, I looked at my WWDS bracelet and wondered what David Stern would have done. Stern is the guy who allowed former NFL player Ahmad Rashad to play a couple of minutes in an NBA game back in 1990.
The reason Michael Jordan’s “Main Man” was wearing a 76ers uniform that night was that the NBA had just signed its first deal with NBC-TV and was about to launch its weekly NBA TV show, NBA INSIDE STUFF, hosted by Rashad. As a promotional gimmick and show topic, they let Rashad play in a preseason game between the 76ers and the brand-new Timberwolves in front of a crowd of 18,296.
In his two and a half minutes of playing time, Rashad knocked down a 20-foot jump shot, giving him a 100% career shooting percentage in the NBA. He also allowed the Wolves to cut an 11-point deficit to five by allowing Tony Campbell to score five easy points on him. Despite Rashad’s defense, the Sixers held on to win 102-96, meaning Rashad also has a perfect record in the NBA.
Ahmad’s performance was also captured on a highly-sought after 1990 Skybox prototype card. Skybox also produced a prototype with his original co-host Julie Moran.
THE IMPORTANCE OF INSIDE STUFF
This might be hard for the social media generation to understand, but there was a time when you not only didn’t get to see a great highlight a minute after it happened, you often didn’t see it until the weekend. And that’s when you tuned into NBA INSIDE STUFF on Saturday morning, and Rashad introduced the clip in either the REWIND or JAM SESSION segment.
My personal favorite memory of the show and Rashad playing basketball is when he played a rookie Shaq one-on-one and watched O’Neal break a backboard and almost his back.
I talked about how exciting this moment was for Magic fans in 92 on @FirstBallotPod
It felt like a trailer for Shaq’s rookie season & the joy of upgrading from Stanley Roberts to Shaq was like my kids’ joy when I upgraded their cricket phone to an iPhone https://t.co/fAGQrlXA31 https://t.co/iNHcUPoX8l pic.twitter.com/lsVTDYPzBL
— David Astramskas (@redapples) May 10, 2024
Nowadays we get multiple angles of every highlight on social media minutes if not seconds after they happen.
Back then, if we missed the 11PM SportsCenter we had to wait a week to hopefully see a highlight on INSIDE STUFF (Rewind, Jam Session) or NBA ACTION (Countdown) pic.twitter.com/r4S7enc55y
— David Astramskas (@redapples) November 5, 2023