The Better Looking Basketball Player
“This is a new idea, an idea I have never heard spoken
aloud: that some basketball players look better than other basketball
players because of the way they play. I want to look better.”
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Julius Erving from Dr J: The Autobiography
Let's see: full, high Afro, neatly cropped goatee, red,
white and blue uniform with socks and wristbands to match, form-fitting knee
pads, long, lean muscles and fingers like tentacles gripping a red, white and
blue ball high overhead, high over everything, soaring, rising, while mortals
remain tethered to the earth, a snarl on his face, a vision fulfilled.
If an artist
were commissioned to paint the Better Looking Basketball Player, that is what
the finished product would look like. Julius Erving at Nassau Coliseum in the
mid-1970s. He looked better because of the way he played and because of
the way he looked.
I owned a pair
of wristbands, one red, one white, and an ABA replica red, white and blue
basketball. The ball was rubbery and bounced higher than the brown leather
versions. Some of my friends made fun of it. But after a good rain, when the
asphalt had not yet been dried by the sun, that ball got a little wet and
became easier to grip, allowing guys with average-sized hands like me to palm
it like Dr J. None of us could jump high enough to get it over the rim, but
under certain conditions, that ABA ball made the game of H-O-R-S-E a lot more
interesting. Guys normally limited to jump shots and basic lay-ups were
attempting finger rolls and spin shots off the backboard. We weren’t trying
Kareem’s skyhook or Havlicek’s running leaner, we were trying to be Julius
Erving, or at least what we envisioned him to be.
I never saw him play—not many did—and that sets him apart
from the rest of my favorite athletes. Oh, I saw him with the 76ers, after the
ABA-NBA merger, but that’s not the guy I’m talking about. My fandom of Julius
Erving of the American Basketball Association’s New York Nets, circa 1974-76,
was pieced together like a collage of basketball cards and magazine covers held
in place by the glue of myth, legend and imagination. There were a few
highlight clips, but in the days before the VCR, and way before YouTube,
you had to be in front of your TV at the exact moment they were shown or miss
them altogether, all 30-seconds worth. For me, Dr J was a professional sports
version of a romantic notion, something in the air—literally—that seemed a bit
out of reach.
Three images
stand out above all others. There was the March 1975 Sport magazine
cover, The Doctor, dressed in scrubs, surgical tongs in hand, preparing to
operate on the patient: a red, white and blue basketball. Then there was his
1975-76 Topps ABA All-Star card, where he appears to be walking on air against
the Kentucky Colonels, waiting for Artis Gilmore to return to earth so he can
reach out and dunk over Dan Issel, who looks to be going down like a spent
prizefighter. The third image was the cover of Sports Illustrated from
May 17, 1976, Dr J dribbling, preparing to turn the corner against Chuck
Williams of the Nuggets during the ABA Finals, the words “Dr J Slices ‘Em Up”
across the top. I remember seeing these images, and thinking, collectively, This
guy has personality, and the coolest nickname in sports, everyone around him is
trying to stop him, trying to catch him. But they can’t.
I knew all the stars of the ABA, but I don’t remember seeing
anybody else on the cover of a magazine. Only Julius Erving.
They called the
ABA a renegade league, said they couldn’t compete with the NBA. But Dr J had
them wondering. Fans who saw him said he was doing things that nobody had ever
done before, playing “above the rim.” Sure, he won multiple scoring titles and
MVPs, there was plenty of individual glory, but the Nets also won two
championships in his three seasons with the team. Whatever he was doing
resulted in a lot of victories, and by the 1975-76 season, it was clear that
Julius Erving was bigger than the league he was playing in, and the league he
was playing in was in trouble. A merger appeared imminent. But would Dr J’s
game translate in the NBA?
In the end, the
NBA took four ABA teams, the Nets, Spurs, Pacers and Nuggets, as part of a
merger that would allow the financially decaying league to save a bit of face.
But the most curious addition would be Julius Erving. Like Joe Namath, six
years earlier, Dr J would be the new face of an expanding league. But unlike
Namath, who had already proven himself to the NFL before the AFL merger with
his fulfilled promise of victory in Super Bowl III, The Doctor’s ABA exploits
would be in question until tested by NBA competition.
So, I was
finally going to see Dr J play, but strangely, part of me didn’t want to. Part
of me couldn’t help wondering, What if the people who said he couldn’t hack
it in the NBA were right? What if all the things I’d heard and imagined were
the product of an inferior league with second-rate competition? For ABA
fans like me, there was a ton at stake. Dr J could not fail.
Before any questions could be answered, a series of
pre-season events took place that would reshape the way I experienced Julius
Erving in the NBA. First, the Nets were forced to pay $4.8 million to the
Knicks for invading the New York territory; this was in addition to the $3.2
million entry fee each of the four new franchises had to pay to the NBA. The
Nets had very little money left to pay their franchise player. The Philadelphia
76ers bought out Erving’s contract, and just like that, Dr J became a division
rival of the Celtics, presenting yet another conflict of fandom for me
(remember, Bobby Orr was in Chicago by this time, and I was a Bruins fan with a
Montreal Canadien as my favorite player).
I never stopped
being a fan of Julius Erving; rooting for him to succeed, while hoping his team
failed (except, of course, when they played the Lakers. Beat L-A! Beat
L-A!). He was the torchbearer of the ABA, and proved the naysayers wrong.
In eleven NBA seasons in Philadelphia, Dr J was named first-team All-NBA five
times, was league MVP in 1980-81, played in the finals four times and teamed
with fellow ABA alums Moses Malone and Bobby Jones to lead the 76ers to the
1983 NBA Title, going 12-1 for the best single-season playoff winning
percentage of all-time. The rivalry between the Celtics and 76ers was fierce,
and the personal rivalry between Larry Bird and Julius Erving was second only
to Bird vs. Magic. There were many memorable moments. And one I’d like to
forget.
The picture
hangs in every sports bar in Boston. Probably in Philly, too. Boston Garden,
early in the 1984-85 season. Larry Bird. Julius Erving. My two favorite
basketball players of all-time looking like they’ll choke the life out of each
other. It started when the two became entangled on the way up court. Bird hit
the floor and got called for an offensive foul by Dick Bavetta (Bavetta was the
only referee working the game due to Jack Madden leaving with a knee injury).
As play continued, frustrations got the better of both men—Bird, over the call,
Erving, over the 21-point Celtics lead—and a melee broke out. Like most
basketball fights, it lasted only a few seconds, but long enough for someone to
snap that famous photo. I hate that photo, and I’m pretty sure the subjects
hate it, too, since they have agreed to never sign it. Just two rivals having a
bad moment. (I liken that photo to another one I hate, which also hangs in
every sports bar in Boston. The Varitek vs. A-Rod fight photo. One reason I hate
it is that A-Rod is in it, another is that Varitek has never been shy about how
much he hates it, and finally, it has always overshadowed the most
important moment from that game, and, arguably, the entire ’04 regular season;
Bill Mueller’s ninth-inning 2-run walk-off homerun off of Mariano Rivera. I
know, baseball in a basketball essay. I can’t help myself sometimes.) I like this photo better:
Not long after
Julius Erving’s first season in Philly, he trimmed down most of his Afro, and
with it went the last of his ABA look. All that hair. All that red, white and
blue. Gone. As a league, the ABA influence would continue to impact the NBA
well beyond that merger season of 1976-77. The 3-point shot and slam-dunk
contest, both products of the ABA, are part of an enduring legacy, and a
constant reminder that the league was a visionary enterprise when it came to
basketball as entertainment. But more than any rule or contest, it was the ABA
players who made the deepest impact. During the first post-merger NBA finals
between the 76ers and Portland Trailblazers, 5 of the 10 starting players were
on ABA rosters the year before. The first high school player to make the leap
directly to the pros and a Hall of Fame career did it in the ABA. Moses Malone
graduated Petersburg, VA, High School in 1974. A year later, he was named ABA
Rookie Of The Year. In 1995, Malone would be the last of the ABA players to
retire. Fittingly, he would end his 21-year career with the San Antonio Spurs,
an original ABA franchise (formerly the Dallas Chaparrals) who were on the
verge of becoming a model NBA franchise. But the NBA’s Grand Prize was Julius
Erving.
He sprang to
life from trading cards and magazine covers. The coolest athlete I’d ever seen.
Dr J of the ABA, New York Nets, 1974-1976, at the time, the best professional
basketball player alive. He did it his way, with class and style. If an
artist had been commissioned to paint the Better Looking Basketball Player, this
is what the finished product would look like:
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