Alex English was one of the best players to touch a basketball in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Oh yeah, he also played for the Pacers for a minuscule amount of time.
Alex English was a dominant player for the Denver Nuggets. He was an NBA all-star for 8 consecutive seasons from 1981-1989, and in the 1982-83′ season, he was the NBA scoring champ with 28.4 points per game. On top of his nine consecutive seasons averaging 20 points per game or more, he finished his career with 5.5 rebounds per game and 3.6 assists. In short, he could really do it all; he dominated the game on offense in every facet.
Oh, he also played for the Indiana Pacers at one point.
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Lost in the history of the team is that they had this dominant force on the roster for 135 games from 1978-1980. English joined the Pacers in a rebuilding and rebranding time in the late 1970s and blossomed as a scorer on Slick Leonard’s squad. In an era before the three-point line, English shot 51.1 percent from the floor in his only full season in Indiana, good for third on the team, and averaged 16 points per game. These are great figures in an era where every shot, no matter the distance, counted for the same number of points.
His emergence made him a very popular trade candidate in the 1979-1980 season. He could score from all over the court and his freakish athleticism made him hard to stop. He was a machine who could rise up over you for a jumper or take off from the free throw line and throw it down:
But the Pacers saw an opportunity to trade their young asset for a stud player, and they pulled the trigger. Had they known how English would be as good and successful as he ended up being, they may not have made the trade. But in the end, it still worked out for Indiana.
The Pacers traded away Alex English for George McGinnis. McGinnis, who had already spent some seasons in Indiana when they were in the ABA, was a legend already with the team, so the Pacers made the move for him to put the team on the map in the NBA, too.
McGinnis is now a hall-of-famer who has had his jersey retired with the organization, so maybe it wasn’t all bad. But trading away a player who made eight All-Star appearances after being traded for a player who retired just three years later looks bad in retrospect.
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It is lost in the history of the franchise, but Alex English did, in fact, play for the Indiana Pacers. He scored 2105 points in just one and a half seasons, so he clearly was already starting to show signs of dominance. At the very least, English can be thanked for helping but the Indiana Pacers on track as an NBA franchise.