This isn’t how Oliver Miller pictured life after basketball.
The “Big O” is officially the “Big Inmate” after he was recently sentenced in Maryland to a year in jail for pistol-whipping his girlfriend’s brother last April. Apologetic, Miller claims he was protecting his family, but those who grew familiar with watching the bigger than life 6-foot-9 center during his six seasons in the NBA are left wondering how it even got to this point.
Miller wasn’t an all-star by any means, but in the early to mid ‘90’s his name carried weight around the league as much as the man himself.
Back during the 1992 NBA Draft, the likes of Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Christian Laettner owned the marquee as the next crop of talent in the league while the 280 pound Miller went 22nd overall to the Phoenix Suns after a fine college career at the University of Arkansas playing alongside Todd Day and Lee Mayberry.
His rookie season in Phoenix, Oliver teamed with Charles Barkley in clogging the lane on defense and eventually led the team in blocks. Miller was never a scoring threat, but despite pushing upwards of 300 pounds always hustled and made an impact playing 20 minutes a game in 56 appearances. Unlike Shaq, Zo and Laettner (who were the first top-three selected), Miller reached the NBA Finals with the Suns in 1993 against the Chicago Bulls, and averaged 7.2 points and 5.2 rebounds over the course of the postseason.
For a man his size, Miller could run the floor…
Believe it or not, Miller didn’t start having weight problems until he went to the Detroit Pistons in 1994 after two seasons in Phoenix. After arriving to training camp “out of shape”, then head coach Doug Collins used Miller sparingly and the Pistons left the big man unprotected in the 1995 expansion draft featuring the Vancouver Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors.
It was the best move Collins could have made for Miller.
In Toronto during the 1995-96 season, Miller posted career numbers: 12.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 1.9 blocks and 1.4 steals per game in 72 starts for the Raptors. With Miller anchoring the middle and 1996 Rookie of the Year, Damon Stoudamire, running the point the team’s foundation appeared promising.
That’s when issues with Miller’s weight surfaced again. That’s when the Raptors let him go. A stop in Dallas and a brief return to Toronto followed, before Miller took his game overseas to Greece for the 1998-99 season only to return to the NBA with the Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns. Although Miller last played in the league with Minnesota in 2004 at 325 pounds, it’s his numerous international appearances that kept his name resurfacing around the game.
Miller’s itinerary included playing for teams in Greece, Poland, Puerto Rico, China and Italy. He spent two years with the Harlem Globetrotters and bounced around the minor leagues in the ABA, IBL, USBL and PBL, where he last played for the Lawton-Fort Sill Cavalry in 2010.
Two years later, the 41-year old Miller now sports a different uniform at Anne Arundel County jail in the Baltimore-Washington metro area in Maryland.
Sentenced to five years in prison and the judge suspending all but one year, Miller will be on probation for five years following his release.
And for a man who once battled in the NBA Finals and weight troubles throughout his six-year career, Oliver Miller has a whole different wait in front of him.
