One of my favorite stories is about the night Scott ‘Skippy’ Skiles set the assist record. The Magic were playing the Nuggets, who were coached by Paul Westhead. To say Westhead eschewed defense doesn’t come close to describing their team. In essence, they simply tried to outscore the other team, so defense was almost completely ignored. Skiles feasted on them, piling up dime after dime after dime. As the game wore on, it became clear that Skiles was on the brink of doing something no one had ever done before. About 2/3 of the way through the 4th quarter he had notched his 29th assist, and needed one more for the record. He must have passed to Jerry ‘Iceman’ Reynolds the next 3 or 4 times down the court, but Reynolds would catch the ball and dribble it, negating the opportunity for an assist. Finally an exasperated Coach Matt Goukas called a timeout, and pulled Reynolds aside to explain to him what Skiles was attempting to do. The next time down the court, Skiles again passed the ball to Reynolds, and this time you could almost see the light bulb go off over Reynolds head, he paused, didn’t dribble, shot the ball, it went in, and Skiles had his record! Still one of my favorite Magic memories. Without looking I want to say it was December 30, 1990, but it might have been 1991.
Think so.