Jud Buechler, Jump Man.
#30 brought volleyball skills to the hardwood
Jud Buechler had springs. The kids all knew it. The coaches did too. Jud might have been the last to know just how good he was — when he went to the tryouts in Malibu he did not think he was going to make such an elite team.
“The first practice, I was kind of tentative,” the high school senior said. “I didn’t know much volleyball or the other guys on the team. They had all played as much volleyball in their lives as I had played basketball.”
And so began the dual-sport career of one Judson Donald Buechler. The year was 1985, and Buechler, already a star hooper at Poway High School outside San Diego, was beginning his volleyball career on the advice of his father Don, a volleyball lifer who had played in the 1959 Pan Am Games1. Don Buechler told his son Jud to try out for the National Sports Festival in Baton Rouge.
“I just went up there to try out and see how I stacked up against the other players,” Buechler said in high school. “I couldn’t believe it a couple of weeks later when they sent me a list of the players who made it and I was on there. I wasn’t even an alternate.”
In the summer of 1985, the 6’6, 195-pound star guard/forward spent 11 days in Louisiana in an ESPN-broadcasted tournament and led his West team to the silver medal. His 13 spikes were the most in the gold medal game. He loved the experience. He loved the game. The result? Not his style.
“I’ve never been on a losing team my whole life,” he said in the winter of his senior season about his silver medal. “I like to compete in sports and I don’t really like losing too much at anything.”
He didn’t. And he didn’t. By the end of his senior season, Buechler was All-Palomar League Player of the Year, leading Poway to a three-peat. He signed with Arizona, not UCLA as his hometown expected.2 He had originally planned to transfer out of Arizona after he finished his basketball eligibility and go to a school where he could use some of his volleyball eligibility, but his college career went well enough that the NBA became an option.3
“Volleyball is there for me if other options don’t work out,” he said on the eve of his final NCAA tournament. “But I’m going to pursue every avenue of basketball first.”
When you watched Jud Buechler on the Bulls, you were always watching for the tip-ins. The man had a Rodman motor. With its cutting action and emphasis on getting to a spot, the triangle offense was perfect for him. In a later era, he would have been called a “3-and-D” player. He could knock down a triple and give you 5-10 solid minutes of defense and energy.
But where he stood out was around the rim.
Despite averaging just 9.5 minutes per game as a Bull, down to 7.1 in the playoffs, you always noticed Buechler because of his big impact in small spurts. His basketball skills had translated beautifully to volleyball, and then his volleyball abilities boosted his skills on the court.
“I think volleyball helps basketball,” he said back in high school. “There’s a lot of jumping and hand-to-eye coordination.”
That was Jud’s game: handling spot duties as a backup for both Michael and Scottie, Jud would play his role in the triangle on the wing and then crash the boards with power. He was a menace on the offensive glass. You could count on Jud to keep possessions alive, and you could also count on him to stretch the defense with his corner and wing threes.
Oh, and sometimes you could count on him to do this:
That was from the final game of 1996, our record 72nd win, and Bushy played 30 minutes as Phil let the starters rest and the bench cut loose. The playoffs were pretty much the team’s version of Buechler driving and slamming one on McIlvaine. We lost just one game in the East playoffs — overtime vs. the Knicks — with Buechler playing high-energy, memorable, efficient basketball: in 8.5 minutes per game, he shot 52% and scored 42 points.
His performances in the close-out games:
Heat: 14 minutes, 7 points, 4 rebounds
Knicks: 5 minutes, 5 points
Magic: 7 minutes, 6 points, 2-2 3P
He was one of seven Bulls on the playoff roster looking for their first ring, but the only one who was unsigned heading into 1997.
“This is great — you try to enjoy it for as long as you can because you never know when it’s going to happen again,” he said after the ‘96 Finals. “I hope I’ll be in Chicago again but I don’t really know.”4
Everyone who came in contact with the 90s Bulls became a celebrity — especially if your “contact” was playing on the team. Now an NBA champion, Buechler’s volleyball backstory began to capture the imaginations of Bulls fans. Some would even show up to games with a sign reading “Jud Buechler is the best volleyball player in the NBA.”
It was more than stories. You would hear about Jud playing beach volleyball around the city. At the end of August of ‘96, he played in the Miller Lite AVP Beach Volleyball Tour Championships at North Avenue beach.
“Jud is a great beach player,” fellow volleyball player and Jazz big man Adam Keefe said during the ‘97 Finals. “He’s got control and skills.”
Added 1996 Olympics beach volleyball silver-medal winner Mike Whitmarsh: “If he played a year on the tour, he’d be among the top 10 players. He could make a lot of money. I’m glad he’s with the Bulls and not bothering me.”
Buechler wasn’t so sure. The ‘97 Bulls picked up right where the record-setting ‘96 Bulls left off. They started 12-0, 18-1, 34-4 and then 42-6 at the All-Star break, looking very much like a club that would win 70 games again.
Yet it was around this time that Jud started to feel…
Anxious.
“Here we were winning all these games, I’m on this awesome team, and I wasn’t having any fun because of the way I was playing,” he said before the playoffs.
“I said, ‘That’s ridiculous. These are special years of my life, being on this team.’ I needed to start enjoying it more. I think that’s where I realized, ‘Go out, play hard, and whatever happens happens.”
At the All-Star break, Buechler was shooting 27% from the floor, 21% from three and had scored 41 points in 43 games.
He settled himself down, regained his joy and picked his game up immensely in the second half, shooting 43% from the floor, 43% from three and scoring 98 points in 33 games.
The 90s Bulls were an interesting group, especially the second three-peat. They had the NBA’s best player as well as its best second-best player. They had its best rebounder, best sixth man and best shooter.
And if there is such a thing as a best 10th man, or 11th man, or 12th man, the Bulls always seemed to have that too. In the ‘97 and then ‘98 playoffs, in some of the biggest games in NBA history, Jud Buechler etched himself in history.
My favorite big-time Buechler moments came in the ‘97 Finals, the start and the end. One of MJ’s career signature moments was his fist pump — slow, silent and still — after knocking down the jumper at the buzzer to beat Utah in Game 1. As he celebrated stoically in a sea of crazed fans, two teammates rushed over to embrace him: Scottie Pippen and Jud Buechler.
Scottie — sure, that made sense. Of course he was playing. But you could be excused if you thought Buechler had high-tailed it from his seat on the bench. That wasn’t the case. The reason Buechler got to MJ so fast was simple: he was on the floor.
In the biggest moment of the season to that point, Phil Jackson called upon Michael, Scottie, 1996 6th Man of the Year Toni Kukoc, 1995 NBA leader in three-point percentage Steve Kerr — and the pride of Poway, Jud Buechler.
Five games later, Buechler was playing big minutes in a nail-biting championship close-out game. Early in Game 6, the Bulls fell behind and stayed behind, trailing by 10 in the first half and nine with a minute to go in the 3rd.
That’s when Buechler knocked down a three, his only shot of the game. It was a wild play: the triangle had stalled, and Jordan took a long two that hit just the backboard. It caromed off Bryon Russell, and before it could bounce past halfcourt to a racing Jazz player, Buechler chased it down and immediately drilled a pull-up three as the shot clock wound down.
That play gave the Bulls a bit of a boost heading into the 4th, and it also gave Utah the slightest hesitation soon after when the Bulls swung the ball to Buechler behind the arc.
Instead of shooting, he fired a pass to his left to a waiting Steve Kerr, whose three gave the Bulls a 10-0 run and their first lead since the 1st quarter. Jordan subbed in for Buechler at the next timeout, with MJ and the UC crowd saluting Jud.
“The hand is for Jud Buechler,” Marv Albert said on the NBC broadcast. Matt Guokas continued:
“The great play that he made at the end of the 3rd quarter, and the extra pass, is why he’s getting this kind of reaction.”
Of course, Buechler’s old Arizona running mate Kerr hit the Finals winner and became the hero, with Bushy embracing him and telling him he hit “the big one.” There were a lot of little heroes along the way, though, and Buechler was one of them.
After 1992, the Bulls jettisoned Craig Hodges, Cliff Levingston and Bobby Hansen, giving the ‘93 roster a slight feeling of “the new guys.” I liked the new guys, but I missed the old guys. 1998 was different. Come playoff time, 11 of the 12 players on the playoff roster were going for their third straight ring. The Last Dance felt as much about Kerr, Buechler, Randy Brown, Bill Wennington as it did about MJ, Scottie and Dennis. These were more than ‘role players.’ They were job players. They all had their job.
This was the beauty of the triangle, and the way Phil ran that team. Opportunities were major even in small minutes. The closest we ever came to losing the dynasty was Game 7 of the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals. In a game we won with rebounding5, Buechler grabbed five boards in 11 minutes of play and earned himself another 4th quarter standing ovation.
“We had some key plays from Jud Buechler,” Jordan said after the Bulls squeaked out the win to head back to the Finals and a rematch with Utah. “Jud came in and gave us some great minutes.”
Two weeks later in Game 6 of the Finals, a game in the running for the most famous game in NBA history, Phil gave 4th quarter minutes to seven players: Toni and Dennis each played the full 12, MJ and Scottie about 10 apiece, Kerr six, Harp five and a half, and Jud just over four, during which he grabbed the team’s only 4th-quarter offensive rebound and then hit Toni with an assist on a game-tying three.
Once again, Jordan subbed in for Buechler and played the rest of the game.
Asked after the game what Buechler thought of Jordan, he said what we all would say: “I’d take him on my team.”
Jud, whether volleyball or hoops, I’d say the same about you.
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A big thank you to the great Jud Buechler!
Two bonus items…
The poster for the 1996 Miller Lite AVP Beach Volleyball Tour Championships at North Ave. beach:
And I am pretty sure this is Jud’s father Don in 1967, preparing to return a spike:
In Chicago, of all places!
Buechler’s sophomore year, he was a key bench man for the Final Four Wildcats, forming a dynamic backup backcourt with another two-sport star, 5’11 guard named Ken Lofton. You might know him better as Kenny. Starting ahead of Buechler and Lofton were future NBA All-Star and champion Sean Elliott and a sharp-shooting guard named Steve Kerr. In Buechler’s senior year, he was joined by future 1997 Bulls teammate Brian Williams, later Bison Dele. That’s three members of the ‘97 Bulls all passing through Arizona between 1988 and 1990.
Buechler didn’t three-peat in his final three college seasons. He didn’t even one-peat. But the Wildcats went 89-14 and then 7-3 in the NCAA tournament, with Buechler receiving co-Pac 10 tournament MVP honors his senior year.
Jud’s 1996-97 training camp came down to a positional battle against Matt Steigenga. When the Bulls cut Steigenga, Jerry Krause explained it like this: “Matt had a good camp, but Jud Buechler is here.” Here’s what Steigenga told me about battling Buechler for a roster spot: “He was my target, no doubt about it. And Jud was great. I’m sure he knew it too. We were both 6’7. Kind of similar players. That was definitely my target.”
The Bulls won the boards 50-34.