CGB Hall of Fame: (4) Shareef Abdur-Rahim v. (13) Dave Binn

(4) Shareef Abdur-Rahim

Shareef's one year was a dandy.

Abdur-Rahim later attended college at the University of California, Berkeley, where he maintained a GPA of 3.5.[1] At California, he averaged 21.1 points per game (ppg) and 8.4 rebounds per game (rpg) in 28 games.[1] He was the first freshman in Pac-10 history to win Conference Player of the Year honors, and was named Third Team All-America by the Associated Press.[1] Abdur-Rahim also set single-season freshman records for points, scoring average, field goals, and free throws.

As for Shareef, LeonPowe has this to say.

I'm just going to talk about the player. Back in 1996, 6'10 225 power fowards who could handle the rock, and play a tall 3 weren't common. Thus "THE FUTURE" (as he was nicknamed) arrived at Cal. As the school's highest profile recruit since Kidd (and until . . .well me), the first time we saw Shareef (from Atlanta) it was the McDonald's All America Game. We were really excited getting the #3 prospect in the country . . .until the skinny guy who matched against him blocked his shot about 10 times and basically destroyed in the All Star Game. (That guy turned out to be pretty good himself)

No matter, when Shareef got to Cal - he made an immediate impact. Team with JUCO transfer Ed Gray, along with Jelani Gardner (ugh) and Randy Duck and Tony Gonzalez, 'Reef was able to garner Pac 10 POY honors, along with dropping in over 22 ppg (is that right?)

But more than that, I remember the effortless scoring. Earlier I talked about "The Future" and ‘Reef was . . . a silky smooth 6'9" power foward who could shoot it all the way out to 3 point range, destroy people on the block with a series of spin moves, and half hooks or face up and take defenders off the dribble, Shareef had the smoothest and most polished offensive game of any freshman ever at Cal.

Additionally, with the middle part of the season falling during the holy month of Ramadan, Shareef was destroying defenders in the paint all the whilein the middle of fasts and spirtual concentration.

The thought of Kelvin Cato blocking anything, much less basketballs, is a wild concept.

(13) Dave Binn

David Binn, recruited by Bruce Snyder out of San Mateo, played college football for the Golden Bears as a linebacker and long snapper, and became a mainstay for Snyder's Bears at long snapper from 1990 to 1993.

Binn went on to the NFL and had a long and distinguished career with the San Diego Chargers:

Binn surpassed Junior Seau and Russ Washington with his 201st career game played as a Charger on November 19, 2006 making him the all-time leader. He was selected for the first time to the 2007 Pro Bowl squad, making him the eleventh selection from the 2006 Chargers chosen to represent the AFC in Hawaii.Binn suffered a hamstring injury in Week 1 of 2010 that ended his team-record streak of 179 consecutive games played.

After 17 seasons in San Diego, he was released on August 30, 2011. He was Chargers' all-time leader in games played with 256, not including 12 in the post-season.