At the end of the 1985 season it looked like Dale Ellis' career was at the crossroads. Would he continue to be a bit player or take control of his career and become a scoring machine. For 3 years he had been in their side since his rookie season in 1983 and since his impressive rookie average of 8.19ppg, it only rose slightly to 9.26ppg the next year then dropped 7.06ppg in 1985. Dallas didn't think he had it in him to be the machine so they traded him to Seattle.In Seattle his minutes rose from 15mpg to 37mpg and with this Dale didn't disappoint. He became the man, scoring almost 25ppg that season in what is the greatest scoring turnaround in NBA history. He continued this scoring trend in his time at Seattle peaking at an average of 27.48 in 1989. He was then traded around the Association to Milwaukee, San Antonio , Denver, Seattle and finally in Charlotte. Each season during those trade years his average stayed fairly consistent between 10 and 17ppg.
By the end of his career he managed to score over 20,000 points which in his day ranked in the top 50 of all time, today he is slightly out of the top 50.
Thanks to http://www.viewimages.com/ for the picture and http://www.databasebasketball.com/ for the stats.
Coach Onski
This article was originally posted on http://www.onski.blogspot.com/ on the 27/12/2007
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