NBA Curiosities: Did You Know?

Here you have some nonessential but interesting facts about the NBA and the basketball sport.

• Michael Jordan was drafted third in the 1984 Draft. Houston used their number one pick to select Hakeem Olajuwon and won two championships with him. Portland had the second pick and selected Sam Bowie.
• Kobe Bryant was selected 13 by the New Orleans Hornets and then traded him to the Lakers. Manu Ginobili was selected 57th, and Ben Wallace didn't even made the draft and was signed as a free agent.
• Larry Brown broke a record in 2005-06... No, his 23 season victories weren't the worst in Knicks history, but he used an NBA record 42 different starting line-ups. He started 16 different players and 29 of those lineups were used only once. And you were wondering why his players weren't happy with him...
• In the same 2005-06 season, the other side of the coin was Detroit. The Pistons -- Larry Brown's former team -- set an NBA record by starting the same lineup for 73 consecutive games. Coach Flip Saunders finally was forced to end the streak because of Rasheed Wallace's suspension.
• The Los Angeles Lakers' 33-game winning streak not only is an NBA record, it also remains the best in any major US professional sport.
• In 1894 Dr. Naismith -- the inventor of the game -- asked A.G. Spalding & Bros. to develop the first basketball. Before that, the sport of basketball was played with a... soccer ball.
• Carl Lewis, the 10-time Olympic medallist considered by many as the greatest athlete of all time was drafted by the Chicago Bulls in the 1984 Draft with the 208th overall pick. Of course Lewis never put on the Bulls uniform, other way he would have ended up on the same roster with Jordan, Chicago's first pick that year.
• Kobe Bryant stopped using his famous number 8 jersey in 2006. He didn't like Adidas releasing the shoes Crazy 8 in obvious allusion to Bryant, who was no longer under contract with them. Kobe's new number: 24. Any relation with Jordan's 23?