Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,911

This is the grave of Dan Roundfield.

Born in Detroit in 1953, Roundfield was a big kid and thus a basketball player. He was a 6’8″ forward from Detroit. But he wasn’t really a top high school player and was a good student who put that first. The big schools passed him over and he went to play at Central Michigan. But boy did he blow up there. He was the 1975 MAC Player of the Year. Being a small school player, there was some nervousness over how his game would translate to the NBA, but the Cleveland Cavaliers picked him with the 28th pick of the 1975 NBA Draft, which at that point was a second round selection. He didn’t want to play there though and the American Basketball Association still existed, so he signed with the Indiana Pacers of the ABA instead. That league only lasted one more season, but the Pacers were one of the ABA teams integrated into the NBA.

Roundfield didn’t do much his rookie season, but when the Pacers traded Mel Daniels, Roundfield became their starting power forward. He proved to be quite a scoring 4 in an era when that was still really unusual. In fact, scoring power forwards were quite rare until the mid 80s when Charles Barkley and Karl Malone changed the game, as well as Kevin McHale to a slightly lesser extent. Remember that the average 4 in this era was the Kurt Rambis/Cedric Maxwell type of good defenders and rebounders and last options on offense. But Roundfield averaged 14 points a game in the 1977 season and would average between 13 and 19 points a game every year between 1977 and 1985. Most of that was with the Atlanta Hawks, where he signed as a free agent in 1978.

With the Hawks, Roundfield made three All Star teams, from 1980-82. He was also an outstanding defensive player, making three NBA All Defensive First Teams and two Second Teams between 1980 and 1984. He could score a lot at times, with a career high of 38 points in a 1978 game against the Clippers. His biggest honor was making All NBA Second Team in 1980, a sign of just how great he had become.

Roundfield’s career certainly wasn’t the longest though. He began to slip in the mid 80s. The Hawks moved him to the Pistons in 1984 for Antoine Carr and some other pieces. But his minutes and points slipped a lot that year. He then moved to the Washington Bullets, playing two more seasons there and retiring from the NBA after the 1987 season. He played one more season in Italy and retired from basketball entirely in 1988. In the aftermath, he worked a variety of jobs. He was known to work as a bank teller in the offseason anyway. This was not a man to sit around and it’s not as if NBA money was huge back then, but working as a bank teller was not exactly necessary. By the time he retired, he was making about $700,000 a year as a player.

Roundfield died in a sad but noble way. He was vacationing with his family in Aruba in 2012. His wife started struggling in the water. He went to save her. He did save her. But he drowned while doing so. He was 59 years old. I had a friend who died this way, saving his son, also successfully. It was sad beyond words, but also I guess the most noble possible way to go. There was a whole New York Times story on Roundfield’s rescue of his wife.

Dan Roundfield is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery, Roswell, Georgia.

Now for a story. When I was walking back to my car from taking this picture, an old man stopped me. He asked if I worked there and I said no. But then he just wanted to talk. His daughter had died in a car wreck years ago and he was there to lay some flowers on her grave. OK, I guess I could listen to this. But then within 30 seconds he transitioned to noting that he looked like George W. Bush (he did) and then told me that Obama and Biden should be locked up in prison. Ok then! Excuse me, I have a date back on Planet Earth. An 85 year old white man from Georgia, decided not to ask him his thoughts on the civil rights movement back in the 60s.

There’s many ways to measure NBA players, but one of the best is probably +/- over your career. In other words, does your team win when you are on the floor? Or do you hurt your team? By this list, Roundfield is the 210th best player of all time, which seems about right. Among active players, that would place him between Brook Lopez and CJ McCollum, so reasonable. Now, it’s not always super easy to find NBA players for this series since most are still alive. But if you would like this series to visit others more or less around Roundfield on this list, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Connie Hawkins, who comes in at a surprisingly low 196th on this list, is in Brooklyn. Walter Davis, 182nd on this list, is in Charlotte, North Carolina. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.