Mitch Richmond came into the NBA after 2 seasons at Kansas State. He was drafted 5th overall in the 1988 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors. He joined forces with Chris Mullin and together they led the Warriors to the playoffs where they pulled off an upset of the number two seeded Utah Jazz by sweeping them 3 games to 0. Richmond had an amazing series averaging 26 points per game on 58% shooting. Richmond cruised to the Rookie of the Year Award and the Warriors had found a superstar that they could build around to join up with their other superstar, Chris Mullin.
Unfortunately, despite finding another blue chipper in Tim Hardaway, the Warriors struggled the next season and missed the playoffs. However, they had found something with the three young players, now known as Run TMC. They rebounded in the next season again advancing to the second round of the playoffs as the 7 seed this time upsetting the Spurs before running into the eventual Western Conference Champion Lakers. Instead of running it back to see if they could do better, the Warriors decided that they wanted to change it up and traded him to the Kings for rookie Billy Owens. Run TMC was gone and Mitch Richmond would not see the playoffs again until 1996.
Mitch Richmond's first season in Sacramento saw the team finish 29-53 followed by a 1992-1993 campaign where they had a worse record at 25-57. However, Mitch Richmond made his first all star team despite only playing 45 games of the 82 game season due to a broken thumb. Richmond had finally started to garner attention from the rest of the league for his great play even though team success had eluded him. Heading into the 1993-1994 season there was excitement for a Kings organization that had just drafted one of the most decorated point guards in college basketball history in Bobby Hurley. Unfortunately, the team was only three games better and their rookie suffered a life threatening car crash that completely derailed his career. In spite of all of this, Richmond had another great season averaging 23 points per game while being selected to his 2nd all star game and making 2nd team All-NBA.
The Kings finally had some success in 1994-95 and 95-96 finishing with a record of 39-43 in both seasons, which was good enough to make the playoffs in 1996. Mitch Richmond continued to find individual success making the all star team in both seasons and being named to the 2nd and 3rd team All-NBA teams. The playoffs matched them up with the eventual Western Conference Champion Seattle Supersonics, where they lost 3 games to 1. Once again, Richmond was great in the series, but it was not enough to get more than one game. The next two years saw the Kings regress in terms of wins and losses, missing out on the playoffs.
In Mitch Richmond's 7 seasons in Sacramento he had made a name for himself as one of the best shooting guards in the NBA although he did not find a lot of team success. He saw the playoffs one time, but made the all star team 6 times in his 7 seasons and made an All-NBA 2nd team three times and an All-NBA 3rd team twice. He was traded to the Wizards after the 1998 season was finished and he had three decent seasons in Washington before joining the 2001-02 Lakers and winning a championship in a bench player role.
Mitch Richmond had a great NBA career and eventually was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Despite not having a lot of team success, he was a great player in the league that was unfortunately traded to a bad team and was never able to change his circumstances. Looking back at his career, he is such a throwback in that regard. The NBA has changed so drastically in the last two decades. This is what the league was like for many guys during this era. If you got drafted to a bad team, it was difficult to get away from that situation. Nowadays, guys change teams easily and nobody thinks any differently. There are so many cases in the league of guys like Mitch Richmond, who were so amazing, that never got a chance to shine on the big stage. As people study the NBA, I hope they look fondly on players like Mitch Richmond whose team circumstances were not always great, but that did not stop him from being great. He is one of the best two guards to play the game and I find myself wondering how his career might have looked had he stayed on the Warriors and they allowed Run TMC to continue to grow together. I guess we will never know. Do yourself a favor and youtube Mitch Richmond and get a chance to see a great player that is often forgotten and overlooked.