On Saturday night, Tim Hardaway reminded us of what could have been during his Basketball Hall of Fame induction speech.
The 5x NBA All-Star is probably most recognized for his time with the Heat during the ferocious, violent clashes with the Knicks during the 1990s.
But real basketball fans go back to his first few years in the League when he played with the Golden State Warriors as a member of the vastly underappreciated trio, RUN TMC.
RUN TMC was comprised of Hardaway, Mitch Richmond and Chris Mullin.
As of tonight, all three of them are Hall of Famers. Richmond was inducted in 2014 and Mullin in 2011.
In Richmond’s induction speech, he thanked his RUN TMC partners for everything that they gave him when he started his NBA career.
“Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond. RUN TMC. We was legendary,” said Hardaway. “Man. When I came into the NBA, those two guys taught me everything.”
That teaching process began in 1989 when the Warriors drafted the “UTEP two-step” originator with the 14th pick in that year’s NBA Draft.
Mullin, the first member of the trio, was drafted by the Warriors in 1985. Three years later, the team selected Mitch Richmond. A year later, Hardway arrived and the trio was eventually dubbed RUN TMC in deference to legendary hip-hop group RUN DMC.
It was a group that Mullin had hometown connections to as Darryl McDaniels, DMC of the group, attended St. John’s University with Mullin.
In their first year together, the team went 37-45 and failed to make the playoffs. It was a step back from the year prior when the team posted a 43-39 record and lost in the Western Conference semifinals.
But in year two, RUN TMC started to click.
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