90s Week: Why I’ll forever love the 1996-97 Arizona Wildcats

Since just before Christmas in 2009, when Shane Battier signed a contract to join the Big Three in Miami, NBA teams have been on a trend toward the style of play we see dominating the league today. (You could, I suppose, argue that this trend emerged almost immediately post-Jordan as rule changes and analytics diffused into league offices around the country, but forget that for a moment). As pick and roll-heavy small ball found great success when paired with versatile, skilled rosters, the league was swept into a glorious symphony of pass-pinging and sweet shooting.

This is all to remind you how we got to the point we’re at now. Perhaps a more practical reminder of the more player-focused style that both the NCAA and NBA are leaving behind is to appreciate what those leagues were like back then. Just as the champions of our current era (Golden State, San Antonio and Miami) tell the stories of the modern state of the league, so the champions of seasons past tell the stories of their respective eras.

Considering that those Heat teams were my first real experience with basketball as more than a collection of dudes throwing a ball at a hoop, it is the logical place to start my own story. But within my family, the story had started precisely four days before my birth, on April 3 of 1997.

In this specific instance, I am referring to the 1996-97 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champions, the University of Arizona Wildcats. Man, oh MAN, did this team have some punch. To hear my father tell it, he had never been much of a hoops fan outside of appreciating the occasional Jordan highlight or Fab Four pontification until the University of Arizona began to dominate the NCAA from down South. Even though we had no family who were alumni or friends who were ballplayers, that particular string of teams found their way into our hearts forevermore.

To understand the joy this team brought to generations of Arizonans, it’s necessary to understand what Arizona is really about. Arizona is about very little. Read it again if you must, but that sentence is as simply put as I can get. For context, our proud state’s “Five C’s” are cotton, citrus, copper, cattle and climate. The climate is legitimately one of the five most interesting things happening in Arizona almost all of the time.

That is, until the Wildcats yowled to life.

I like to imagine that the nature versus nurture debate is all for naught, and that children are only really embossed with what their mother is watching while they’re in utero. In my case, my mother used those last few months to brand basketball into my DNA. With all respect to my father, though, the only real effort he made to mold my fandom into his was a single wall-mounted newspaper clipping from the day after their victory.

To me, it seems silly that anyone might have avoided hearing about this group of guys up to this point, but I’m sure there are many out there who never have or whose memories have failed them. That’s what I’m here for.

While those Wildcats featured a few future NBA stars in the backcourt, they ran their offense predominantly through Michael Dickerson and Miles Simon. Let’s start with those guys, as they deserve the most credit considering they were a step below NBA-level talent.

Simon was a prototypical scoring two guard in an era defined by them. But do not let the prevalence of his archetype sway you from appreciating his brilliance. The swagger and confidence needed to stand above the arc and plead for the ball with the season on the line is rivaled only by the savvy foresight it takes to stay in the lane for the rebound and draw a foul as quickly as possible. Making the free throws? Not even a consideration for a guy who averaged 18.4 points a game that year (perhaps that confidence arose from time spent with head coach Lute Olsen, who sips water from his UofA dixie cup about as calmly as one can for the duration of the video linked above).

His partner in inefficient crime was Dickerson, who averaged almost the same amount of points per game. In Olsen’s system, the players were shot-makers and defenders above everything else. When they were going, it was like in those movies where a car somehow ends up on some train tracks and you know that no matter what happens in the beginning of the scene, it will end with a train screaming toward that car.

Dickerson’s silky shot-making is enough to forgive him for being an early adopter of the No. 23 movement after Michael Jordan rose to prominence. It is not enough to forgive him for often dominating the offense on his way to a .497 True Shooting Percentage.

I hope that was enough time to appreciate Simon and Dickerson, because the real fun of those late 2000s Arizona teams were two guys named Mike Bibby and Jason Terry. Right in between writing the last paragraph and this one, I decided that Mike Bibby is the Pull-Up King. He’s the kind of player YouTube mixes were made for, with an aggression as playful and innocent as a pup’s, and a street style that was infectious for his teammates and his fans. And that blessed pull-up jumper; the sort of jumper a poet puts the pen down for, if that poet happens to be a basketball fan.

Mike Bibby is probably the man to whom I owe the most for my passion for basketball. Around age 10 or 11, I realized how weird it was that the newspaper clipping from April 1 of 1997 (two days before my birthday) was legitimately used by my father as a room decoration for me, his infant son, following my birth. I never really cared about Mike Bibby growing up, as he was on his way out of the league by the time I began seriously following it.

But the feelings my dad had for this short, slick-looking basketball player would probably rewrite the definition of “man crush” if they had hands and developed language skills. With the least shame possible, he would gloat about getting to watch Bibby’s career blossom. (Tucson is only about two and a half hours south of Phoenix, where I grew up). As a short man himself, it’s fitting that Bibby became something of an idol for my dad. Maybe I needed a symbol of hope as strong as Bibby to feel good about the same short stature he passed on to me. The newspaper clipping alone didn’t get me there, but I suppose there’s still time. Without Bibby, though, there probably is no one here to sing to you nostalgically about a team he never actually watched play.

I didn’t forget about JET — I saved him for last because he’s my favorite player, and the guy who makes me feel closest to the old man on the subject. Granted, I never saw the man wreak havoc in Tucson the way I wish I could have. He was also only a sophomore on the championship squad, operating more as a facilitator and defender than the 21.9 points per game scorer he would become in his senior season.

But JET is all that is right in the world of basketball. He is a loose ball that flies from baseline to baseline before bobbling toward an open shooter who splashes it through the nylon. He is a two-man game orchestrated to perfection; a highlight finish you never saw coming. But more than anything, to me and my dad, he was the sort of fun you never imagined a pro could have. In an NCAA world full of determined prospects and goofball slack-offs, JET was a confident beacon of flamboyant stardom. He made basketball fun for fans by having fun himself.

This all was supposed to be a reminder of what once was in the sport of basketball. This iteration of the Arizona Wildcats was 126th in the country in 2-point shooting at 48 percent. They levied their offensive aggression into the third most free throw attempts in the nation, but only made 66 percent of those shots. The old question goes, if I’m not mistaken, a little something like this: how many shots would a Wildcat chuck if a Wildcat could chuck shots? And the answer is a grip. Despite their inefficiency, the team chucked their way to third in the nation with 84 points per game.

Taking stock now, I suppose the reason this particular squad epitomizes the distance the league has sought to create between its current form and former iterations of itself is that it was so supremely enjoyable. And that’s not to say that today’s dominators are not fun — I’m all about Steph’s little shoulder jig and Tim’s blank-faced ref staredowns. But what I’ll miss most about this bygone era of down and dirty shot-making is the charisma and swagger.

For me, that means Bibby, JET and Miles Simon. Maybe for you it’s MJ and Pippen or Laettner and Hill. Perhaps, if you struggle to make friends, it’s Kobe and Shaq. No matter who represents that time in the game’s history for you, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. There’s no better feeling than when your guy takes that pass, surveys what the defense is giving him up ahead, barrels toward his spot and nails the shot everyone knew he would take.

Next time you find yourself on the unpopular end of an impassioned argument about what makes basketball great, throw out the 1997 Arizona Wildcats to show your dumb friend just how fun basketball can really be.