How the Game Forgot Alex English

Dropped Buckets, No Flowers

How Good Was Alex English REALLY?

You want to talk about disrespect? Let’s talk about Alex English.

The man dropped over 25,000 points in the NBA and somehow got edited out of the Greatest 75 like a typo on a press release. Not just overlooked—scrubbed. And not by some intern, but by the very machine that spent the last five decades pretending it rewards “the right way.” Spare me.

English wasn’t loud. He wasn’t political. He didn’t swing his elbows or call his own number for the cameras. No snarling dunks. No grainy footage of him frothing at the mouth after a crossover. Just points. Pure, midrange, cash-money points—2,000-plus every year for eight straight seasons. That’s not luck. That’s surgery. That’s math. That’s murder with a smile.

But the problem was simple: he didn’t sell sneakers.

He didn’t make noise, so they made sure we forgot the music. The league wanted violence and fireworks. English gave them craft. They wanted theatrics. English gave them truth. But the NBA doesn’t know what to do with truth unless it’s dunking over someone with an Adidas contract.

He played the game like Coltrane played sax—smooth, relentless, a little tragic if you were paying attention. Denver loved him. Real hoop heads respected him. But the NBA suits? They passed him like a salad at a steakhouse. Because what they really wanted was chaos you could market. Tattoos and tantrums. Viral dunks. Highlights at the expense of history.

And now, decades later, when it was time to list the 75 Greatest, they left him off. Again. Left him off like a man who got too good at showing up, too consistent to count. Like the system is allergic to restraint. Which it is. Always has been.

The same league that immortalized guys for moments forgot the man who scored more than Bird, Drexler, Isiah, and even Dwyane Wade. You think that’s an accident?

KNUCKLEHEADS PODCAST (Alex English on the Draft Process in the 70s, Losing the Conference Finals and Nikola Jokic & More)

This isn’t about opinion. It’s not even about narrative. It’s about the willful erasure of the unmarketable. The players who don’t flex. Who don’t explode. Who just show up and do it better than everyone else. English didn’t fit the myth. So they wrote him out of it.

But make no mistake—the game remembers.
Even if the league doesn’t.

So give the man his due.
Not because he asked for it.
But because he earned it—bucket by bucket, year after goddamn year.

Author’s Note

I didn’t write this because Alex English asked for it. He never did. That’s part of the problem. He did the work, led a decade in scoring, made the Hall of Fame—and never once begged for acknowledgment. That kind of grace doesn’t sell. But it should be remembered.

So yes, I wrote this for him. Not to flatter. Not to campaign. But because what he built deserves more than silence. It deserves something sharper than a plaque. It deserves to be said out loud: he was great, and the game knows it—even if the league pretends otherwise.

This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about justice.
And if it shakes a few myths loose along the way, good.
They were never that sturdy to begin with.