Minnesota Timberwolves: Ranking the 5 best Wolves duos for NBA Jam
By Phil Ford
Minnesota Timberwolves: Ranking the 5 best Wolves for NBA Jam
4. Christian Laettner and Isaiah “J.R.” Rider
Let’s travel back to the original NBA Jam roster to see everybody’s favorite player to hate, Christian Laettner, team up with someone slightly more built-for-NBA-Jam than original teammate Chuck Person. His new teammate is nonother than J.R. Rider.
This might be the most controversial pick on the list, but you can’t deny that it would be a blast playing with these two lighting up the arcade.
Laettner and Rider were teammates in Minnesota for two-and-a-half seasons, from 1993-94 through half of the 1995-96 season.
Both were excellent young offensive players, which would suit them well for a game that’s 90 percent about offense. Rider averaged 18.8 points a game in his first three years in the NBA, while Laettner added a cool 16.5 in that span.
And then there’s the fact that Rider won the 1994 NBA Slam Dunk Contest.
Rider would be throwing down monster dunks left and right all over everyone and it would be glorious.
The issue is mostly with Laettner. He wasn’t a high-flying dunk machine, or a block party defensive menace, or a smooth 3-point shooter. So what is his value in the NBA Jam universe? That’s simple, everybody hates Christian Laettner.
He was the quintessential golden boy in his college days at the most hated basketball school at the time, Duke. He was so perfect and yet so smug you just wanted to see him catch an elbow in the face. There’s even a documentary called ‘I Hate Christian Laettner’.
You better believe it would be fun and maybe even hilarious to watch your opponents knock Laettner around on defense, and throw down frequent and escalating disrespectful dunks in his smug little face.
The pairing is almost too perfect. Rider causing the opponents great pain with his 360 windmills dropping in from 20 feet above the rim, and on the other side of the court, one of the most hated players in basketball history getting pounded possession after possession and there’s nothing he can do about it — a true win-win.