Sam Bowie admits to lie, can't change the 1984 Draft

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Bowie revealed in an ESPN documentary that his NBA career began with the center needlessly keeping quiet about how much pain he was in during the days leading up to Portland's selection of the former Kentucky center. A selection that, famously, came one spot before the Chicago Bulls took Michael Jordan with the third overall pick.

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"I can still remember them taking a little mallet, and when they would hit me on my left tibia, and 'I don't feel anything' I would tell 'em. But deep down inside, it was hurting. If what I did was lying and what I did was wrong, at the end of the day, when you have loved ones that have some needs, I did what any of us would have done."

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And Bowie, speaking in 2012, relayed that even while sitting amongst his draft class on that night, he knew that something was wrong. That, "deep down inside I physically wasn't what these guys were."

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And yet Bowie was in pain, though he pointed out in the documentary that he "never told any of the Portland Trail Blazer personnel that it ever bothered me." By this time, nobody was claiming that Bowie was a better player than Jordan — but especially in that era, taking an All-Star level big man over an All-NBA guard was always the way to go. And, in the cruelest of ironies, it should be reminded that Jordan went out with what was nearly a season and career-ending broken foot just one week into his second campaign. Weeks before Bowie's troubles set in

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