Best Players in NBL History: Ricky Grace

• Four-time NBL champion with the Perth Wildcats in 1990, 1991, 1995 and 2000
• Named Grand Final MVP twice, including 1993 in a series Perth lost
• Led the NBL in assists per game in 2003 and again in 2004

Ricky Grace arrived in Perth in 1990 as a 23-year-old American point guard on the kind of contract meant to last a season or two, and he stayed sixteen years. That is still the most improbable thing about a career made of improbable things, and it is not the only one.

He was 185cm in a competition growing taller every year. Everything he did was built on court vision, a first step that never seemed to shorten, and a willingness to take the shot nobody else wanted. Four championships followed, along with a jersey in the rafters and a place in the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame. But the numbers that explain him best are the ones he posted after his 34th birthday.

RICKY GRACE – Point guard | No. 15

• Born: August 20, 1966, Dallas, Texas
• Height: 185cm
• Weight: 79kg
• High school: Wilmer-Hutchins, Dallas, Texas
• College: Midland College 1984-1986, Oklahoma 1986-1988
• NBA draft: 1988, third round, 67th overall, Utah Jazz

Playing career  1988-2005

• Clubs: Topeka Sizzlers 1988-1989, Perth Wildcats 1990-2005, Atlanta Hawks 1993-94

PERTH NUMBERS‍

• 483 games, 18.3 points, 4.2 rebounds, 7.2 assists
• Club record holder: 3,472 assists, 8,826 points, 734 steals

HONOURS‍

• Four-time NBL champion, 1990, 1991, 1995, 2000
• Two-time NBL Grand Final MVP, 1990 and 1993
• Four-time All-NBL First Team, 1991, 2001, 2002, 2003
• All-NBL Second Team, 1993
• Three-time All-NBL Third Team, 1995, 1998, 2000
• Led the NBL in assists per game, 2003 and 2004
• Australia, 2000 Sydney Olympics
• No. 15 retired by the Perth Wildcats
• Australian Basketball Hall of Fame, 2010
• NBL 25th Anniversary Team, 2003

Grace played 483 games for the Wildcats between his debut in 1990 and his final appearance on February 24, 2005, averaging 18.3 points, 4.2 rebounds and 7.2 assists across sixteen seasons in the one jersey. He won titles in 1990, 1991, 1995 and 2000. He was named Grand Final MVP twice, once in the 1990 championship run and again in 1993 in a series Perth lost, which tells you more about how he played than the trophies do.

The honours arrived in two bursts with a long gap between them. He made the All-NBL First Team in 1991, in his second season, and then did not make it again for a decade. He made it in 2001, 2002 and 2003, at 34, 35 and 36. In between came a Second Team selection in 1993 and Third Teams in 1995, 1998 and 2000, eight All-NBL honours in all across the three tiers. The shape of them is the story rather than the total.

Then he got better again. Grace led the entire NBL in assists per game in 2003, at 8.0 across 27 games, and led it again in 2004 at 7.3 across 23. He was 37 by then and had been in the league fourteen years. He had already posted a career-high 23.2 points per game in 2001, at 34, and taken the Perth captaincy from Andrew Vlahov, later handing it on to Tony Ronaldson.

Before any of it he was one of the best passers in American college basketball. At Midland College in 1985-86 he averaged 15.8 points and 10.7 assists, and his 363 assists broke a school record of 355 held by Spud Webb. He transferred to Oklahoma and averaged 14.3 points and 7.4 assists in 1987-88, the year the Sooners went to the NCAA final. He still holds Oklahoma season records for three-point percentage, .441 in 1986-87, and for assists, 280 in 1987-88. Utah took him in the third round of the 1988 NBA draft, 67th overall. He played three NBA games, for the Atlanta Hawks in 1993-94, and scored eight points.

He became an Australian citizen in late 1994 and represented Australia at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. For a player who had already given the country a decade, it read less like a naturalisation than a formality.

What he left in Perth is easier to measure than most careers. He is the club's all-time leader in assists with 3,470, in points with 8,802 and in steals with 734. He held the games record at 482 until Jesse Wagstaff passed it in November 2024. His number 15 hangs in the rafters, he entered the Australian Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, and he was named in the NBL 25th Anniversary Team in 2003, while he was still playing and still getting better.