Nate Thurmond, Dead at 74, Was the NBA Great They Never Told You About

Nate Thurmond died Saturday at the age of 74. Because his contemporaries included Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he is a forgotten legend from an era when basketball was all about the paint.

So let’s take a moment to appreciate the day Thurmond made history by recording the first quadruple double in the NBA.

It was October 18, 1974 and Thurmond, then 33, was making his debut with the Chicago Bulls after spending his first 11 seasons with the Warriors. He was getting old, especially by 1970s NBA big man standards. But the 6-11 Thurmond had averaged 13.0 points, 14.2 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game the season before. He was a rangy rim protector who had made six All-Star teams. The Bulls had been good for a while, and saw Thurmond a missing piece to a championship team.

There was pressure on Thurmond, and first game out, he delivered, scoring 22 points with 14 rebounds, 13 assists and 12 blocks, a Chamberlainian performance that immediately validated the Bulls’ decision, and went down as the first official quadruple double in NBA history.

About that “official” thing, though: Thurmond wrote a piece for the Bulls team website in 2006, and wrote it felt weird to be known for an accomplishment everyone knows was not novel.

"But you know and I know and any good basketball fan knows that there were plenty of quadruple-doubles back in the 1960s. When I first came into the league, I played alongside with Wilt Chamberlain, and there were nights he and I were playing volleyball out there on the floor, blocking shots, deflecting passes, tipping rebounds. So it’s fairly obvious that Wilt had plenty of chances to get double figures in four categories; think about after he was traded from the San Francisco Warriors back to Philadelphia—Wilt led the league in assists with the 76ers! Or what about his move to the Los Angeles Lakers, when he was less a scorer and more a complementary player?"

Blocked shots weren’t officially recorded until the 1973-74 season. And the Chaimberlain-Russell Era is famous for comically inflated rebounding numbers (Thurmond once got 18 rebounds in a single quarter). This had happened before, and it has happened since.

But not much.

Only three other players have (officially) pulled it off  — Hakeem Olajuwon (twice), David Robinson, and Alvin Robertson. It hasn’t happened in 22 years.

"One thing I distinctly remember was going back to my apartment after the game—I was just dead. I didn’t realize I had numbers spread out like that, across four categories until the next morning. It was my 12th year, and from that standpoint, the quadruple-double was just another game. But, as I look back now, I realize just how special a performance it was."

The rest of that Bulls’ season didn’t go as well. They finished 47-35, and lost in the conference finals to Thurmond’s old team, the Warriors.

"I wish I could have kept playing at the quadruple-double pace I started with that first game. It just wasn’t meant to be, just as our dreams of a first NBA title in Chicago weren’t meant to be."

Thurmond retired after the 1977 season. He averaged 15.0 points, 15.0 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game over 15 seasons. He was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985.