The Big O

by Oscar P Robertson

  Oscar In Limbo

  It was a tough weekend for Oscar Robertson, now in limbo. First the Cincinnati Royals broke his heart. Then Pete Maravich broke his college scoring record.

  When Oscar told Baltimore he wanted $700,000, he put one foot in the basketball graveyard. Sunday night, when the NBA trading deadline expired, he put in the other foot.

  By declaring squatter’s rights on his Royals uniform, by not agreeing to go to Baltimore, Oscar has placed himself in a box and there does not seem to be a way out.

  The Royals have indicated they consider him a six-foot five-inch millstone around their necks. And now the rest of the league knows his asking price. What is left? If he decides to play out his option, he will be 33 years old when he reaches free agent status.

  The breakup of the shotgun marriage between Oscar and coach Bob Cousy started three weeks ago. The Royals had won seven of eight games to pull even with the .500 mark and then they lost games against Milwaukee and Phoenix. Oscar played lackadaisically in both losses.

  Afterwards, sitting in his motel room after the Phoenix loss, Cousy muttered, “If he thinks he can call my bluff, he is badly mistaken.”

  Bob Cousy knew he had failed with Oscar Robertson. He was the only player on the team he could not reach. And the truth was becoming apparent. Oscar would not change, and if he did not, the Royals would never become a running team. While Oscar dribbled, the fast break died.

  It killed Cousy to look on the floor and see Connie Dierking, a 33-year-old ballplayer who was washed-up eight years ago, giving 100 percent. He watched Johnny Green, 36 years old and a reservoir of determination, race up and down the court. He saw Tom Van Arsdale playing with a wrecked knee. There was Norm Van Lier with scarred knees, wrenched elbows, and a bruised body. And he looked at Oscar Robertson and saw a man who had played ten years without a floor burn.

  Five years ago it would have been preposterous to say the C&O Bridge would decay. Five years ago it would have been preposterous to say the Royals would trade Robertson. But now the Royals were willing to do the preposterous. They were going to trade the best player in basketball to improve their team.

  They needed an excuse. The economy provided the answer. Robertson’s contract expires at the end of this season and Cincy was certain he would ask for a huge raise.

  But Robertson’s agreement with the Royals is the worst agreement since the one at Yalta. He vetoed the deal unless he got $700,000 from Baltimore for three years, which figures out to $2,845 per game, or figuring his career average of 40 minutes per game, the sum of $4,268.83 per hour of basketball.

  The Royals traded Oscar because Bob Cousy does not think basketball is a one-on-one game. This is an argument gained from years of winning championships with the Celtics, who never had a star but always had a team. It is an argument gained from years of winning at Boston College, which never before had a winner.

  The Royals would never lose if Oscar and one player from the other team could play one-on-one for 48 minutes. But basketball is not this way and the Royals with Robertson have never been a champion.

  There are some people who say that Oscar Robertson should not be traded, that the city of Cincinnati owes something to him.

  This is a curious argument, one which comes from people, judging from attendance figures, who are apparently not paying their way into the Gardens to see Oscar.

  For these people there is an alternative. Someone should start an Oscar Robertson defense fund. If 30,000 put up $10 apiece the money will be there to retain the Big O. It seems like a small price to pay.

  It all comes down to the fact that the Cincinnati Royals, for the first time, have a coach, an owner, and a front office who are determined to bring a championship to Cincinnati. For the first time they are willing to fight public sentiment, willing to fight against the easy course of action, willing to fight for what they believe is right. The ballplayers are no longer running the Royals. It is a change for the better.

  This piece was the last straw for me. Never mind that it contained cheap shot after cheap shot. Never mind that information was published about my contract negotiations that no reporter would have unless the front office leaked it. If the writer wants to disagree with how much money I make or the position I’ve taken as the head of the players union or what kind of jelly I like on my peanut butter sandwiches, I couldn’t care less. The thing that burned me up the most was the idea that for ten years, I didn’t hustle. I never got my knees hurt going after loose balls. Hadn’t gotten so much as a floor burn. What you see here is a written campaign of character assassination. “All” I had accomplished for the Royals was make first-team all-pro ten straight years. Lead the team in scoring, also for ten straight years. I was all-time assists leader, all-time leading rebounder for guards, the only player in the history of basketball to have a triple-double season. I wasn’t working hard enough? I was lackadaisical and responsible for all our losses? Ten years and I never did anything for the Royals?

  Now, I know that Bob Cousy did not say those kinds of things about me, either to my face or on the record. But I also know that he—or anyone else in the front office—could have stopped the slurring in the paper. At the very least they could have stopped leaking information. Moreover, coaches often take a writer aside and talk to him, asking him to get off a player’s back if the writer is consistently and unfairly attacking a player. I believe Bob Cousy could have done that. Did he agree with what the guy was saying?

  This happened thirty-plus years ago. Time heals all wounds. But I have to conclude that Bob wanted this to happen.

  As soon as I read that column, I called a press conference. It was the first time in more than a month—since talking to Milt Gross at the all-star game—that I spoke to the media. I announced that I would honor my contract and play the remaining twenty-four games of the season, but that I wouldn’t play for Cincinnati the following year. I explained that I refused the trade to Baltimore, foremost because I didn’t want to uproot my family during the season. I was lucky that I was in the situation where I could refuse the trade. If I hadn’t had that clause in my contract, they could have sent me to Timbuktu and there wouldn’t have been a thing I could have done.

  I tried not to let things get to me. I kept going to rehab, working to get my pulled muscle back in shape so I could return to the court. One day I was having a Cincinnati Reds trainer named Marv Pollins examine my injury at Spinney Field, where they trained. Dick Forbes was sitting in the same whirlpool, two feet away. Dick had been a sports columnist with the Enquirer since before I’d signed to play ball at the University of Cincinnati. He’d had an accident and he was there, getting treatment. A friend, Clem Turner, also was there. I fell asleep in the whirlpool and started slipping down into the water. Clem Turner pulled me up and out.

  A call came in for Marv Pollins. It was the Royals trainer asking if I was really hurt. Dick Forbes heard the whole conversation. So did Clem.

  Marv answered that I was sitting right there with an injury that was real. He said I would be ready to play in about a week and a half.

  Well, the next day’s paper featured a report claiming I was ready to play, but didn’t want to play because of Cousy.

  I called Dick and said, “Dick, you heard what the trainer said. Why don’t you write the truth? This is not true.”

  “I can’t,” he told me. “They won’t let me. I can’t afford to do it.”

  I disliked Forbes from that day forward.

  For a long time I held a grudge. Are all journalists like this? Can you trust them?

  Days later, Dick called me. He was writing a column and wanted my side of the story. I got angry. All of a sudden he was acting in official capacity and had put on his reporting hat. But when he’d seen facts for himself, right in front of his eyes, he couldn’t do anything.

  Dick wrote his column and described me in the whirlpool. While he firmly claimed, “Oscar Robertson has an injury, there is no fake about that,” he also stopped short
of writing that the trainer said I could not play, or that the Royals had called and claimed I was a liar.

  To his credit, Dick also wrote: “It will do no good for the Royals to try and keep Oscar, particularly when he says himself he is leaving. But it is a shame what is happening. People come into town who don’t know or understand Cincinnati, and in less than a year they are running an institution out on a rail.”

  In any case, between the public outcry about the paper’s biased reporting and the team’s losing streak (now at four), the situation was turning into a debacle. To smooth things over, the Royals front office called a public conference with boosters and the press. Cousy jokingly called the meeting “the last supper.” One by one he disavowed his previous statements, claiming that the team hadn’t shopped me around the league; they had initiated one phone call and that offer had been rejected. He claimed that his reason for trading me was my salary, and that he and I got along fine. “We’ve never had the slightest personality conflict as I have stated publicly and nationally. If we can’t have Oscar next year, then we have to help the team and that is what the whole thing was predicated on.”

  Our next game was at home against the Knicks. Still injured, I sat on the bench in street clothes and watched as New York hit seventeen of their first twenty-one shots. We trailed only by six at halftime but ended up losing by forty-three. The most entertaining thing about the night was that some fans behind me had made a big banner, which they stretched out over the heads of six or seven people. It said, “Please Stay Oscar.” The national press got hold of a photograph of me sitting with that banner behind my head. Newsweek, AP, UPI, and all the New York papers picked up the soap opera. I kept to myself, not showing anything at all.

  The next day, the Royals lost to the Celtics, 130–117. It was our sixth straight defeat.

  Finally, on February 22, I put on my white-and-blue Royals jersey. The Gardens were as packed as they got that season; over 9,500 fans stomped and clapped through the whole game. They cheered us on while we snapped our losing streak, beating the Pistons 127–119. In my return to action, I played forty-four minutes, scored twenty-eight points, had fourteen rebounds, and eleven assists. A win and a triple-double still didn’t impress the Enquirer: “Robertson’s timing looked off and the layoff obviously affected his conditioning, although he showed no signs of the groin muscle pull (sic) which sent him to the sidelines shortly after the Royals attempted to trade him to Baltimore”—but nothing short of my head on a platter would have at this point. Anyone else with an opinion offered praise, be it Clem Haskins (“You couldn’t tell he missed twelve games. Not on his performance tonight.”); Jerry Sloan (“He looked good, he always does. He could play on one leg and look great. There isn’t anybody better, is there?”); even Bob Cousy (“He made a couple of drives to the hoop today that were as fast and strong as I have ever seen him make.”).

  I think that at this point things between the team and me had gotten so bad that they had to improve. Maybe both sides were looking for a reason for the circus to end, and my return provided it. Management and I never officially spoke. We were entering the final month of the season, and though I’d gotten tired of dealing with management and their hired sharks, the game itself never stopped being fun for me. I played through the final month, sometimes inspired, other moments just driving on autopilot, wanting the year to be over.

  On March 20, 1970, I put on Cincinnati’s jersey for the final time. My old teammate and friend Jerry Lucas scored thirty-one points and twenty-five rebounds as the San Francisco Warriors beat us, 118–111. In defiance, I did not shoot during the final nine minutes of the game. Cousy was asked about “the situation.”

  “Leave me alone, will you, babe? I pass. There’s one game left. Leave it go. I pass.”

  We finished the season 36–46 and for the third year in a row didn’t get a playoff berth. I led the team in scoring, averaging 25.3 points, 8.1 assists, and 6.1 rebounds per game, and had my tenth straight all-pro season. But there had to be one last slight. Instead of risking humiliation by letting the players vote for the most valuable player, management gave the award to Johnny Green. Nobody had ever heard of a front office naming the MVP before. Johnny and I were friends. I truly was happy for him.

  I told him, “Johnny, don’t worry about it. I know what these people are trying to do. You just go ahead and play. Forget about them.”

  The Lakers had Jerry West. The Knicks said, “Well, we have Frazier.” Phoenix was immediately interested, and, eventually, almost every team called to talk about trade possibilities and bidding prices. But an idea had been forming in my head, gathering momentum.

  I wanted to stay on in the Midwest. I liked the change in seasons. I wanted good schools for my children. I wanted them in a good neighborhood. I told J. W., “I just might like to play in Milwaukee.” “If I can get you a three-year contract for seven hundred thousand dollars,” J. W. asked, “is that a deal?”

  In 1968, R. D. Trebilcox of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, had been one of forty-five people who suggested that the state’s new entry into the National Basketball Association should be known as the Bucks. On his contest entry form, Trebilcox wrote: “Bucks are spirited, good jumpers, fast and agile.” R. D. won a new car for his efforts, and soon afterwards the team mascot—a male deer with massive antlers—was unveiled, as were team colors of forest green and crimson.

  Bucks owner Wesley D. Pavalon, thirty-seven, was the youngest owner in the league. Alternately referred to as an eccentric maverick; a wonderboy millionaire; a glorified, fast-talking carny barker; and “the Jewish Howard Hughes,” Pavalon had made his fortune through a trade and technical institute known as the Career Academy, which did business through franchise schools and mail orders. Known to work all night, making long-distance calls across the planet, sleep all day, and then arrive at his office at 4:00 P.M., Pavalon was a huge basketball fan. He readily admitted that his team’s big break had come through pure chance, when, on a spring day in 1968, during a three-way telephone hookup, NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy flipped a coin, and Richard Bloch, president of the Phoenix Suns, called heads.

  The coin landed tails, and Pavalon won the rights for seven-foot-two college superstar Lew Alcindor (the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).

  Pavalon then secured the new star by outbidding the rival ABA in negotiations that over the years became legendary because the ABA’s negotiator had a million-dollar check in his pocket and refused to offer it. Lew signed with the Bucks. With Flynn Robinson as the team’s playmaker, Jon McGlocklin at guard, Bob Dandridge and Greg Smith as forwards, and the rookie Alcindor as its center, it took only one season for Milwaukee to spring from last place into the playoffs.

  Over the years, Pavalon would develop an almost pathological fondness for his superstar center. Under his orders, Herman Cowan—Pavalon’s executive assistant and the vice president and director of public relations for Career Academy—would take the rookie Alcindor under his wing, show him around, and get him on national talk shows. Cowan was the man behind the curtain for the Bucks. When he heard about my call, he quickly rounded up Pavalon and the rest of the Bucks execs into one room for a closed-door meeting. That afternoon, J. W. Brown was invited to Milwaukee.

  It was the first time my salary was negotiated in a way that did not resemble a combination of dental drilling and secret service interrogation. Pavalon simply told Jake, “We want to pay Oscar what we think he is worth. Milwaukee had a fine season, used lots of young players, and all they need is Oscar to join with those kids.” J. W., who was a brilliant negotiator, couldn’t believe how easy it was. Later, he marveled, “There was no dickering. Oscar quoted a figure. Milwaukee said we are going to pay it because you deserve it. That was the end of the discussion on money.”

  Brown wrote out a deal memo in longhand on two duplicate pieces of paper: seven hundred thousand dollars for three years, a no-cut clause, an injury clause, approval on trades, and deferred compensation in case of a trade.

&
nbsp; Cincy’s hands were tied. If he wanted to trade me, Joe Axelson had to start dealing with Milwaukee.

  The Bucks were going to offer their starting forward Bobby Dandridge for me and put a kid named Bob Greacen in Dandridge’s place. Dandridge had just finished his rookie season, and he had an awful lot of potential. I wasn’t about to go there if they messed up their starting unit. I told J. W. that if the Bucks traded Dandridge or Greg Smith (their other starting guard), there would be no deal.

  Yvonne was unhappy about the prospect of leaving Cincinnati, but at the same time, this year had been so awful. It seemed like getting away could mean a fresh start. Throughout the whole soap-opera season, she had been her usual supportive self. But it got to her, seeing what was in print. Sometimes I think she was madder than I was about it.

  She and I both liked the idea of Milwaukee. We grew up in the Midwest; our kids were born there. They liked having four seasons and the wintertime. I knew with Lew down there, my job would be easier, but it would be different. I told Yvonne, “Things are going to be different. It will be good.”

  The Knicks changed their mind about me and offered me a chance to line up with Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed, and Walt Frazier. Maybe that would have been a great team, but it was too little, too late. Baltimore also made some overtures, and Phoenix tried to pretend that I hadn’t nixed them. Finally, J. W. and I met and agreed to go to Milwaukee.

  On April 12, 1970, Knicks fans got a treat at the Garden. Willis Reed outmuscled rookie Lew Alcindor and pushed him around the paint until Alcindor fouled out of the game. He walked back to the bench while fans sang “Good night, Louie,” and the Knicks blew out Milwaukee, 132–96. With that game they took the Eastern Conference championship 4–1 and advanced to the NBA finals.