T-shirt enfant Jerry Stackhouse Cover SLAM Hardwood Classics Issue 49

Jerry Stackhouse took MVP honors at the '93 McDonald's All American game. As a sophomore he led the North Carolina Tar Heels to the '95 Final Four, went third overall in the '95 draft, and landed on the NBA's '96 All-Rookie First Team. March of '01 put him on the cover of SLAM 49 in. None of it was a given.

Talent like that, flexed in high school, in college and through the early years of his pro career, very nearly went unfulfilled.

Philadelphia figured it had a franchise cornerstone. Two-plus seasons later, he was gone. By his own admission he was winging it back then, a stubborn kid who didn't think he had much left to learn. Detroit handed him a reputation to repair. Most onlookers expected an overconfident two-guard who'd butt heads with Grant Hill, the Pistons' resident star. Instead the reputation got shook, then elbowed and dunked on. Stack put up a then-career-best 23 points per game in his first season in the Motor City, played alongside Hill and helped push Detroit into the postseason. Hill left that summer, opening a superstar-sized hole. Stackhouse filled it happily.

Season two in Detroit was his best as a pro: he led the League in total points, finished second in points per game at 29.8, and made the All-Star team. Growing up, in public. The issue 49 cover reads like a scream pressed into paper — "STACK WON'T QUIT."

He didn't. After that rough start he steadied the ship and kept going: 18 seasons as a player, then 11 seasons and counting as a coach, all of it built on what he sorted out in Detroit.

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