Here are a few entries:
1) Bill Russell
2) Eddie House
3) Damian Lillard
4) gary Payton
5) ???????

Dirk Nowitzki almost went to Cal...

Leon Powe supposedly almost got LeBron James to come with him to Cal

Steve Spurrier

I am sure Klay Thompson would have gladly accepted a scholly at Cal over Washington State.

I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

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Did you ever really think that Nowitzki was going to come to the United States as anything other than an NBA player? I thought that recruitment by Braun was just rumor, never real. Was I wrong?

UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

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Michael Jordan, Steph Curry, Pete Maravich... Heck, the list is endless........

UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? ...

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A player that more likely than not would have accepted an offer from Cal.

Don Barksdale (Ucla)
John Lambert ($uSC)

Add:
Leroy Doss (StMu)
Drew Gooden (Ku)
Cornell Green (Ustu)
Dennis Black (uSF)
Tommy Harper (signed w/MLB)

71Bear said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

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Michael Jordan, Steph Curry, Pete Maravich... Heck, the list is endless........

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Seriously.

Kennedy winston

bearister said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? ...

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A player that more likely than not would have accepted an offer from Cal.

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Or could be interpreted as a player we went hard at and we made his final list... like he had a Cal cap on the table at his "press conference", but he put on a different one.

That "mystery grad transfer" would have been nice to have this season.

i should have been more specific. my bad. I should have said what great East bay players wound up elsewhere. That's why I mentioned the four that I mentioned. Players not from the East bay do not count. Come to think of it, let's include players from the Sacramento area because Cal is the nearest major university. I remember thge great Don Barksdale. How did UCLA get him??

SFCityBear said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

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Did you ever really think that Nowitzki was going to come to the United States as anything other than an NBA player? I thought that recruitment by Braun was just rumor, never real. Was I wrong?

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Nowitski commited and May have even signed an LOI with Cal but the NCAA declared him ineligible because he declared for the NBA also (the rule then was you could withdraw if you didn't hire an agent, but the NCAA said that was only for Americans). Cal attorneys appealed the NCAA decision. He played in a Europe vs US all-star game and dominateddrawing NBA attention. In the end he probably goes pro-anyway, but the NCAA gave him no choice.

calgldnbear said:

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Leon Powe supposedly almost got LeBron James to come with him to Cal

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If the one and done rule was in place, LeBron said he would join all his fellow Oakland Soldiers at Cal.

Hakeem Olajuwon said that if he had known about Cal's top rated Islamic Studies program he would have gone to Cal (as Shareef Abdur Rahim did).

helltopay1 said:

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i should have been more specific. my bad. I should have said what great East bay players wound up elsewhere. That's why I mentioned the four that I mentioned. Players not from the East bay do not count. Come to think of it, let's include players from the Sacramento area because Cal is the nearest major university. I remember thge great Don Barksdale. How did UCLA get him??

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Then I like your original list. But Id put Payton above House. And I'd put Lichti between House and Lillard.

Do I need to even say it?...had we landed him, the last few years would have been very different and I daresay that we would be looking like a top 25 team this season. Biggest miss since I have been a Cal fan: Forge Bond.

helltopay1 said:

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i should have been more specific. my bad. I should have said what great East bay players wound up elsewhere. That's why I mentioned the four that I mentioned. Players not from the East bay do not count. Come to think of it, let's include players from the Sacramento area because Cal is the nearest major university. I remember thge great Don Barksdale. How did UCLA get him??

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"How did UCLA get him??" Do you suppose there was some kind of quota at Cal?

Like me and my friends, young Barksdale played basketball at park and rec' centers while growing up. . . Like Mosswood Park; San Pablo Park, Live Oak Park, etc.

He attended Berkeley High School down the street from UC, but couldn't play high school basketball because of a BHS rule limiting the number of black players to one on any varsity team.

We say, "OMG -- did our Berkeley community have a subtle social agenda?" Do remember circa 1945+/-
was a time of barriers and quotas.

Hel-lo-o. . . it was "blatant!" at BHS and throughout the Bay Area, especially post-WW-II when we had a BIG housing crisis. Did any of us ever live in the University Village in Albany before UC took it over? Or Richmond or. . .

Barksdale graduated from BHS and (a 6'7" center) played two years at Marin College (aka Marin Junior College) and earned an athletic scholarship offer to Ucla, the 1947 PCC champs. He was named consensus A-A in 1947.

He was named to the 1948 US Olympic basketball team thst competed at the London Olympics. He was the first African-American on a US Olympic basketball team and won a gold medal. He went pro with the Baltimore Bullets, and was the first black player ever to be named to an NBA all-star team in 1953.
__

**Just for context, in 1945 I was a 2-year old kid living in an apartment at 63rd Street/Telegraph Avenue, Oak-town. My Father worked at the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, and parents bought their first house in EC (1948) for $3K.

helltopay1 said:

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Here are a few entries:
1) Bill Russell
2) Eddie House
3) Damian Lillard
4) gary Payton
5) ???????

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Eric McDonough. Wait, we got him!

MilleniaBear said:

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Kennedy winston

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Are you sure it wasn't Winston Kennedy? And didn't Jay John recruit him? Or was it John Jay?

KoreAmBear said:

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helltopay1 said:

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Here are a few entries:
1) Bill Russell
2) Eddie House
3) Damian Lillard
4) gary Payton
5) ???????

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Eric McDonough. Wait, we got him!

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K.C. Jones, Mike Farmer, Tom Meschery, Joe Ellis.

Dear Ursa: Forgot about Mike Farmer and Joe Ellis. KC Jones and Meschery were SF boys and I'm not including SF boys because Cal and Stanford share the same geographical proximity. FWIW, Meschery was all set to go to Santa Clara but St. Mary's offered him a summer job and so he opted for the Gaels. Meschery and LaCour from SI were supposed to go to Santa Clara as a tandem, but when Meschery opted for St. Mary's, LaCour opted for USF. LaCour never finished school because of grades. He died of cancer when he was 32 years old. He was the best high school player I ever saw.

calumnus said:

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SFCityBear said:

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UrsaMajor said:

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I guess the question is how do you define miss? By one definition, it's any player who went elsewhere--even if there was no chance to get him. I'd have to put Lew Alcindor at the top of that group along with Bill Walton. If you mean players we recruited hard and lost on, I guess Jerod Ward would be up there as well as Nowitzki and James (although the latter was never a real possibility).

---

Did you ever really think that Nowitzki was going to come to the United States as anything other than an NBA player? I thought that recruitment by Braun was just rumor, never real. Was I wrong?

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Nowitski commited and May have even signed an LOI with Cal but the NCAA declared him ineligible because he declared for the NBA also (the rule then was you could withdraw if you didn't hire an agent, but the NCAA said that was only for Americans). Cal attorneys appealed the NCAA decision. He played in a Europe vs US all-star game and dominateddrawing NBA attention. In the end he probably goes pro-anyway, but the NCAA gave him no choice.

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Calumnus, thanks for the info. I never follow recruiting very much, but clearly, I was not as informed as I should have been in order to post about Nowitski.

If we must include SF boys, the great Tony Psaltis of Mission went toUSC. The terrific Ken Flower of Lowell went to USC and the great Don Bragg of Galileo went to UCLA. The great Eugene Brown of Washington went to USF.

helltopay1 said:

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i should have been more specific. my bad. I should have said what great East bay players wound up elsewhere. That's why I mentioned the four that I mentioned. Players not from the East bay do not count. Come to think of it, let's include players from the Sacramento area because Cal is the nearest major university. I remember thge great Don Barksdale. How did UCLA get him??

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[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetrius_%22Hook%22_Mitchell][/url]Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell. Unfortunately, "wound up elsewhere" meant wound up at playgrounds and also a brief JC career. He sure would have been fun to watch though.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetrius_%22Hook%22_Mitchell][/url]

MilleniaBear said:

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Kennedy winston

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Why not Julian Sensley?

Go Hook Mitchell at Mosswood Park.

joe amos yaks said:

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Go Hook Mitchell at Mosswood Park.

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MSaviolives said:

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MilleniaBear said:

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Kennedy winston

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Why not Julian Sensley?

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Did he ever do anything at Hawaii?

Definitely agree about Freddy LaCour. Amazing talent that he basically wasted.

bearister said:

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joe amos yaks said:

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Go Hook Mitchell at Mosswood Park.

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Hopefully he is on his way up in that shot or he ain't getting there. Pretty incredible shot pre-Air Jordan.

SFCityBear said:

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MSaviolives said:

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MilleniaBear said:

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Kennedy winston

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Why not Julian Sensley?

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Did he ever do anything at Hawaii?

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He did OK at Hawaii, however I listed him as a joke because of the reference to Winston Kennedy.