A few years ago, we saw a post saying that only (maybe) four players had ever blocked Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Sky Hook, but we keep finding other guys who did it.
As far as we can remember, Bill Willoughby did it, though it was called goal tending, Bill Walton got one from behind and Wilt Chamberlain once got two in a row. It was very rare and hard to do and there are a couple of others who did it. Well now we can put Nate Thurmond on the list too.
A product of Bowling Green, Thurmond entered the NBA
with the San Francisco Warriors, as they were then called. During his career, he was somewhat overshadowed by Jabbar, Chamberlain and Bill Russell and perhaps Willis Reed, but Thurmond was a superb big man.
He was in particular a great defender who Kareem called the toughest defender he ever faced. He was also the first guy to ever record a quadruple double (22 points, 14 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 blocked shots), in 1974 against the Atlanta Hawks.
As you’ll see in this video, Thurmond was agile, mobile and a force on both ends of the court.
Sadly, Thurmond died in 2016 after being diagnosed with leukemia.
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