(Editor’s note: This week, VICE Sports takes a look at some of the quirkier stories from the historic 1985 NBA Draft on its 30th-year anniversary.)
On resume alone, Calvin Duncan did not enjoy an especially noteworthy professional basketball career. The combo guard spent two summer league stints with the Chicago Bulls in the mid-1980’s, and logged a season in France and multiple years in the CBA. His coaching career was more fulfilling, as he won Coach of the Year honors in the CBA and once interviewed for an assistant coach position with the Dallas Mavericks before leaving the sport in 1997. He was far from a failure, but he won’t endure, either. You almost certainly do not know his name, and there’s good reason for this. Duncan never played a single second of an official NBA game.
Videos by VICE
This is exactly why Duncan is a unique figure in NBA history. The 30th overall pick in the 1985 Draft, Duncan is the highest-selected player in his rookie class never to make an NBA appearance, a fact that’s mostly due to Duncan’s decision to turn down sharing a backcourt with Michael Jordan in favor of playing for Athletes in Action, a Christian sports organization whose teams travel across the globe doing ministry work. Calvin Duncan will forever be the only man who chose Jesus over Jordan.
Read More: ’85 NBA Draft Revisited: Meeting Mr. Irrelevant
“Turning down that opportunity, it speaks of a uniqueness of a person,” says Dave Lower, who was an assistant coach on AIA’s basketball team when Duncan signed on in 1985.
Calvin Duncan did not set out to be unique, at least not at first. He was midway through summer league and making an impact, rewarding the Bulls’ faith after they acquired him from the Cavaliers on draft night. His new three-year contract was non-guaranteed, but a roster spot was all but secured and he knew it. But there was something else in Duncan, a deeper new knowledge, that made the possibility of fulfilling his basketball dreams seem less significant.
A year earlier, Duncan found God, and that spark of faith quickly blazed into the most important thing in his life, even more so than basketball. He badly wanted to keep playing but wasn’t sure he trusted himself to be handle NBA life straight out of college, at least not in a way that he believed would be in line with his faith. Duncan had known about AIA since he was midway through his career at VCU, but had never thought to consider it as a professional basketball option until he got a call from Arle Nichols, the team’s head coach, soon after he was drafted. Though NCAA rules now prohibit it, AIA routinely played exhibitions against some of the best programs in Division I college basketball and Nichols sold Duncan on the promise of not only spreading the gospel, but playing against top-caliber competition while he doing so.
Duncan is now the pastor at Faith and Family Church in Richmond, Virginia. Photo courtesy of Faith and Family Church.
After a month or so of deliberation, he agreed to sign on. Duncan is not the only player with NBA ties to play for AIA. In the mid 70’s, big men Ralph Drollinger and Bayard Forrest both played with the organization before going onto brief careers with the Mavericks and Phoenix Suns, respectively. Duncan was joined on the roster in 1985 by Lorenzo Romar, who had just finished a five-year stint with the Golden State Warriors. But all three of those players joined AIA when they fell out of the league. Duncan, on the other hand, had options; he was very consciously choosing AIA over the NBA. This made Duncan a recruiting coup the likes of which AIA had never experienced before or since.
“It’s like, ‘This never happens,’” says Lower. “[That a] guy that wanted to come to us instead play for the Bulls is beyond reason, in a worldly sense.”
“Obviously, it wasn’t money,” Duncan says about why he chose AIA. “It wasn’t money, publicity, fame. It wasn’t becoming a better basketball player. But it was putting myself in a position to strengthen my faith.”
Unsurprisingly, his decision baffled many. His agent and Bulls GM Jerry Krause were less than thrilled; his friends thought he was insane. But Duncan quickly acclimated to AIA, enjoying it so much that he eventually returned for a second season in 1989. His choice to play for AIA made college students curious, too, and Duncan seized that as his window to share his story.
“A certain group of people who wouldn’t normally be reached would listen to what he said because of the credibility that he had,” says Romar, the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Washington since 2002.
Duncan’s choice to ultimately spurn the Bulls in 1985 cost him his best chance at ever playing in the NBA. He returned the following summer to try and make the team, but suffered an injury. This time, he was on the fringes of the roster, and rather than aggravate it and get cut, he opted to take a guaranteed deal with a team in Cholet, France. Duncan says he never regretted his choice. The way he sees it, he played against some of the best the NBA had to offer—it just happened before they graduated to the league. Thanks to AIA, he squared off against the likes of Gary Payton, Mark Jackson and, in what’s perhaps his favorite memory, Shaquille O’Neal.
“Shaq blocked my shot!” he recalls excitedly. “He was unbelievable. For him to run that fast, jump that high, be that strong—oh man, it was a no-brainer to know he was going to be the best in the NBA.”
Today, Duncan is a pastor at Faith and Family Church in Richmond, Virginia. The church just celebrated its 11th anniversary, and boasts a congregation of over a thousand members. His friend Romar has put 14 players in the NBA, half of them first-round picks. He still claims that he hasn’t seen a player with a quite like Duncan’s blend of finesse and force.
Duncan has never lost his love for the sport, and watches the NBA religiously. “I guess I have my own thing going,” he says. “I guess it’s a good thing, because I was one of the few who made the decisions I made.”
He laughs, ever so slightly.
“I’ll keep my uniqueness.”
