Power forward Terry Cummings is best known as a basketball player both collegiately with the DePaul Blue Demons and professionally with the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1980s. What tends to get often overlooked in Cummings’ 18-year NBA career was how great he was out of the gate for the then San Diego Clippers.
San Diego drafted the 1982 consensus All-American out of DePaul No. 2 overall in the 1982 NBA Draft. Cummings’ time with the Clippers was short, lasting only two years. However, he put up some incredible numbers before being shipped to Milwaukee in the Marques Johnson trade in September 1984.
Cummings was the 1983 NBA Rookie of the Year and obviously made the 1983 All-Rookie first team. That season saw Cummings average a career-high 23.7 points, a career-high 10.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game in 36.2 minutes per contest. Cummings would add another great season for the Clippers in 1983-84 before going to Wisconsin in the high-profile trade of Johnson from the Bucks.
In Milwaukee, Cummings would make both of his All-Star teams in 1985 and 1989, making the All-NBA second team in 1985 and the All-NBA third team in 1989. Cummings would play in the NBA until 2000, with most of those games coming with the San Antonio Spurs in the early 1990s. One can only imagine what Cummings could have done for the Clippers franchise if his stint with the club was more than just two years long.