Medal record
Competitor for United States
World Championships
Gold
1986 Spain
National team
Tyrone Curtis Bogues (born January 9, 1965, in Baltimore, Maryland), better known as Muggsy Bogues, is a retired American professional basketball point guard and former head coach of the now-defunct Charlotte Sting of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). He played for five teams during his 14-season career in the National Basketball Association, best known for his involvement with the Charlotte Hornets. He also played for the Washington Bullets, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, and the Toronto Raptors. Bogues was, and remains, the shortest player ever to play in the NBA, at 5' 3".
Bogues played at Dunbar High School in his native Baltimore, where he was a teammate of future NBA players David Wingate (graduating class ahead of him), Reggie Williams, and Reggie Lewis (both in his graduating class). He went on to play four years at Wake Forest, averaging 11.3 points, 8.4 assists and 3.1 steals per game in his junior year. He followed with a senior campaign in which he averaged 14.8 points, 9.5 assists, 3.8 rebounds and 3.9 steals per game.
He played for the US national team in the 1986 FIBA World Championship, winning the gold medal.
Bogues was drafted twelfth overall in the 1987 NBA Draft by the Washington Bullets, and was part of a talent-laden draft class that also included David Robinson, Reggie Miller, Scottie Pippen and Kevin Johnson. In his rookie year, Bogues was a teammate of Manute Bol who stands at 7 feet 7 inches (231 cm) tall, and is the second tallest player to have ever played in the NBA (behind Gheorghe Mureşan). Bol and Bogues appeared on three magazine covers together.
The Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets were set to enter the NBA for the 1988-89 NBA season. Despite their weakness at the point guard , Bogues was left unprotected by the Bullets. On June 22, 1988 the Hornets selected him in the expansion draft. As Bogues settled in Charlotte, he established himself as an exceptional passer, a great ball-stealer, and one of the fastest on court.
Bogues spent ten years in Charlotte as the Hornets, led by Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson, became one of the most popular teams in the NBA and a perennial playoff contender. Charlotte Hornets replica jerseys, including Bogues', were worn by children all over United States. Bogues was one of the most popular players in Hornets history, despite the fact that he never averaged more than 11.2 points per game in a season.
He is the Hornets' career leader in minutes played (19,768), assists (5,557), steals (1,067) and turnovers (1,118) and in assists per game (8.7927) and assists per 48 minutes (13.4933). Bogues held the Hornets' single-game record of 19 assists, broken by Chris Paul (another player from Wake Forest University) on Nov. 7, 2007. He also held the Hornets' postseason-game record of 15 assists, but that record was also broken on April 22, 2008 by Chris Paul, when he dished out 17 assists in the Hornets' win over the Dallas Mavericks.
In 1996, Bogues managed to block a shot attempt by New York Knicks center Patrick Ewing, who stands at 7 feet (213 cm) tall.
Two games into the 1997-98 NBA season, Bogues' career in Charlotte ended when he was traded, along with Tony Delk, to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for B.J. Armstrong. Bogues played two seasons with the Warriors, and then signed as a free agent with the Toronto Raptors, where he would essentially conclude his career. Although he was later traded to both the New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks, he did not play a single game for either franchise.
Since leaving the NBA, Bogues worked in the real estate business until August 3, 2005, when he was named head coach of the Charlotte Sting in the Women's National Basketball Association despite a lack of coaching experience. Notably, he was shorter than all of his players, the shortest member of the Sting being Helen Darling who stands 5 feet 6 inches. He lost his job as coach when the team folded in January 2007. He currently works for the Charlotte Bobcats in their front office. His autobiography, In The Land of Giants, recounts his struggle to meet the challenges of growing up in inner-city Baltimore and achieve success in the NBA.
Bogues made a cameo appearance in TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm playing himself, sharing a restroom with Larry David and Richard Lewis and nearly having an altercation with David after catching them looking at his penis while urinating. In 1996, Bogues has a cameo at the end of Eddie in which Whoopi Goldberg's character flirts with him. He then walks out onto the court to support her character preventing Wild Bill from moving the Knicks. Also that year Bogues appeared in the movie Space Jam as one of five NBA players whose playing ability is stolen by the evil Monstars. Charles Barkley, Shawn Bradley, Larry Johnson and Patrick Ewing are the other four. He also appeared in an episode of Hang Time where he spoke against steroids. Most recently he appeared in an episode of the television show Pros vs. Joes (Season 1, Episode 2) along with Bo Jackson, Dan O'Brien, Jennie Finch and Bill Romanowski.
