The Santa Clara Legend: Kurt Rambis
Few basketball players end up in pop culture for such odd reasons as former Santa Clara player Kurt Rambis. In the lore of Broncos history it is Steve Nash who is considered the best player to ever go through the college…and rightfully so. But Rambis was no slouch of a player in his Santa Clara days either. He did earn the West Coast Conference Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year awards during his time in the red and white. He did become the Broncos all-time leading scorer with 1,736 points and was drafted in the third round of the NBA Draft.
Since then Rambis has turned into an odd icon. He has been in some awful, awful television shows, but that is not what makes him an icon. For a while there it was the awful acting that made O.J. Simpson famous to a particular generation, but that is where the comparisons between Rambis and Simpson end. Rambis even went on to be a bad coach, tallying an impressive 32-132 record over two years with the Minnesota Timberwolves from 2009 to 2011. But his bad coaching will not be remembered either.
And he was not that great of a player in the NBA either. He started his professional career in Greece prior to joining the Lakers in 1981. Over the next seven years Rambis won four NBA Championships, but the scrappy forward was more like a lovable walk-on than a star player. While playing he wore some neat goggles and the rest is history. To some, Rambis will be remembered for nothing but the goggles, or thick black glasses technically. I have some swimming goggles that are known as the Rambis goggles. It is a small corner of pop culture, maybe outdated pop culture but that is how I work, but it is Rambis’ corner of pop culture that will be with us for a lot longer than it probably should be. I, for one, will be to blame for keeping it alive 30 years after the fact.
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