The first player to come up on this list that is truly an all-time great that was coached by Jim Boylen is NBA Hall-of-Famer Clyde Drexler. Now an executive with an alternative basketball summer league called BIG3, Drexler is still firmly inserting himself in this world.
However, Clyde “The Glyde” Drexler didn’t really have the peak years of his production in the NBA while Boylen was on the coaching staff with the Rockets. He was a two-time All-Star selection in his three-and-a-half seasons with the Rockets. But since he was a 10-time All-Star selection through the course of his entire NBA career, that doesn’t encompass much of the accolades.
The long coaching tenure with Boylen as an NBA assistant probably saw him learn more from Clyde than vice versa in the mid to late 1990’s. Boylen got to learn a lot then, as he was an assistant under then Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich.
Nonetheless, Drexler was still posting All-Star caliber numbers with Boylen present on the bench for nearly four seasons in Houston. The numbers for Drexler with the Rockets came out to 19.0 points per game, 6.1 rebounds, and 5.4 assists. It wasn’t necessarily the statistical production that puts Drexler here on the list. It’s the name that comes along with it and what Boylen got to experience early in his basketball coaching career.