Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  25.

  Meanwhile, Charlie isn’t happy about playing in the ABA. I respect Charlie and I know it’s his team. It was his squad up at the Rucker and he was a Squire before me. I can’t help it if sometimes I show him up because of the different natures of our games. We never have an argument about whose team it is, but that’s also not really my style. I see Charlie like a big brother, but we don’t confide in each other. My best friend on the team is my fellow rookie Willie Sojourner. On the road, Willie and I room together. At home, Willie lives in an apartment in Norfolk, and he drives himself around town in this red Datsun Roadster. It’s the damnedest thing, seeing this six-foot-eight brother driving around with the top down in this tiny little car. He looks like a big, black Shriner. But Willie and I are close, and we socialize together, going out to parties. Norfolk doesn’t offer much in the way of nightlife, so we actually end up spending more time at college parties. Norfolk State, Old Dominion, and Hampton University are all local, and I’m still college age anyway, so my teammates and I end up going to lots of house parties or even the frats. The white guys and the black guys would head out together: Neil Johnson, Doug Moe, Charlie Scott, George Irvine, Fatty Taylor. If we had a night off we’d check out the college scene. Occasionally a musical act would come through Norfolk and play the Scope—Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder—but Norfolk isn’t exactly a hot spot for black culture. It’s a Navy town, with plenty of servicemen and government contractors, so as basketball players, we are definitely cultural outliers.

  Maybe that’s why Charlie becomes frustrated playing for the Squires. He feels he would get more exposure in the other league, where, instead of Memphis or Tallahassee or Salt Lake City, he’d be playing in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, or Philadelphia. He does have a point. He goes to Earl and tells him he’s unhappy. Earl asks him what he wants. Charlie says he wants the Squires to sign Bob McAdoo, then a junior at North Carolina who is putting up big numbers. Charlie knows Bob from his own North Carolina days, and he tells Al and Earl that this guy is a legit superstar, a big man who can shoot from downtown, which in the ABA means 3-pointers.

  Earl wants to reassure Charlie that he has big plans for the Squires, so he and Al go to watch McAdoo play at Maryland and Earl manages to sign him despite the fact that he’s still a junior and has the Olympics ahead of him. But it’s a secret contract, of course, that only three people know about: Bob, Earl, and Charlie. In fact, to prove to Charlie that he signed McAdoo, he shows Charlie the contract and they put it into a safety deposit box in a bank in Norfolk. Earl takes one key and gives Charlie the other.

  26.

  The ABA isn’t known for its defense. The games are more fluid than in the other league, and the Squires in particular are not a lockdown team. We win by outscoring opponents rather than keeping them in check in the half-court. We allow nearly 119 points a night, which explains why as we’re winding up the long season, we’re barely over .500. Then, with about 9 games left in the season, Charlie vanishes. Nobody knows where he is. Al and Johnny are calling his apartment. They’re asking me if I’ve seen him. Chopper doesn’t know anything. We have a game coming up against the Condors in Pittsburgh and Charlie isn’t on the flight. He’s our leading scorer, our team leader, and he just doesn’t show up?

  “Charlie’s left the team,” Al tells us in Pittsburgh.

  “He’s hurt?” Willie asks.

  “No, he’s jumped to Phoenix.”

  “He’s been traded?”

  Al shrugs. Charlie just left. The Suns signed him and told him he had to get on a plane and come that night. He was at practice the day before and now he’s in . . . Phoenix? The Suns indemnified him from any potential lawsuit arising from his jumping leagues.

  We have 9 games left in the season. We lose six as we refocus the offense to flow through me. It’s hard to make up for 33 points a night. We’re the second-worst defensive team in the league. It’s fun to watch, but well, what am I supposed to do now? Score 63 a night? Still, we end up in second place in the Eastern Division, going 45-39, a distant second to the 68-win Kentucky Colonels with Gilmore and Issel.

  Fatty Taylor, our point guard, is warning me, “Doc, you got to save some tricky stuff for the playoffs. That’s what matters. It’s a different season.”

  Al explains that in the playoffs, the rotation shortens down to just eight guys—or seven, now that Charlie is gone—and I’ll be playing almost every minute. Al is coolheaded—he’s not the kind of coach who shouts in practice or screams at the referees, but I can tell even he’s jacked about the playoffs. Our opening round is against the Floridians, who finish in fourth place in the East. I’m looking forward to the playoffs. Ever since those first-round NIT defeats, especially the game I fouled out of against North Carolina, I’ve been eager to prove myself in the postseason.

  The Floridians are a team built around a couple of good guards, Mack Calvin and the very tough Warren Jabali, a famously physical player, and after playing forty minutes against him I always feel it in my rib cage. I’m not saying he’s a dirty player—maybe he’s just anatomically gifted with larger and sharper elbows than most men his size. Jabali has an uncanny ability to get to any spot on the floor, but he can’t keep up with me. I know I can beat him with my first step, and their center, Manny Leaks, isn’t much taller than I am and can’t match my vertical game. My mid-range game is working, and I’m drawing the defense away from the basket, which opens up the lane. The arena is packed that night, twelve thousand fans screaming out, “Dr. J! Doctor! Doc!” and I’m loose, so loose I feel like I’m levitating, soaring up above the Floridian defenders and watching them rise and fall on my way to the basket.

  I don’t feel like we’re missing Charlie Scott at all. George Irvine is stepping up and shooting nearly 70 percent from the field, and I’m averaging just over 30 points, 20 rebounds, and 8 assists through the first two games.

  In game 3, I end up scoring 54, an ABA playoff record that will never be broken, and collect 27 rebounds.

  We sweep.

  Somehow, the New York Nets have upset the Kentucky Colonels, which means we get home court advantage in the next round and don’t have to face Artis Gilmore.

  The Nets have their own superstar in Rick Barry, a Hall of Famer in his prime who carries the team. Normally, he’s got a great wingman in veteran NBA point guard Bill Melchionni, who is having the best year of his career. But Barry will be missing his floor general. Melchionni is out this series with a bad back.

  It doesn’t matter. I’m looking forward to seeing my old friend Lou Carnesecca, the coach of the Nets, and I can’t wait to show him what he passed up by not signing me out of UMass.

  The first two games are at Scope, and we win both easily. They don’t have anyone who can stop me, and I match up pretty well against Rick Barry, forcing him away from the boards, where he’s so dangerous.

  I’m in that zone where I just want to keep playing. It’s like Rucker League all over again: just keep the clock running. But instead of taking a night or two off, we take a nine-day break before game 3. The Nets’ home arena, Island Garden, is booked for a circus and the league doesn’t want to move the game to Commack. So commissioner Jack Dolph makes a decision to simply wait until Island Garden is free. We spend the week practicing and lose two of our guys, Doug Moe and George Irvine, to injuries. By the time we finally fly up to New York, over a week later, we’ve definitely lost all of our momentum. And meanwhile, the Nets have got Melch back from his injury.

  I’m still scoring, but now Barry and Melch have the Nets believing again, and they win all 3 games on their home floor, extending the series to 7. Back at Scope, we’ve lost some of our swagger and Barry and Melch force us into a grind-it-out, half-court game, which isn’t really our style. Still, we have a chance until Barry hits a 3-pointer that banks into the hoop in the final minute.

  Even though we don’t win the title, this is still a fine rookie season. While Artis wins the MVP and the Rookie of the Year
award, I end up outscoring him (he finishes with more rebounds). My final numbers are 27.3 points, 15.7 rebounds, and 4 assists. Still, I don’t make first-team all-ABA, as they end up picking Gilmore, Issel, and Barry as the first-team front line, and it’s hard to argue with three Hall of Famers like that. I’m second-team all-ABA, but as Irwin tells me when I meet with him up in New York, I’m the guy everybody is talking about.

  Back in April, while we were taking apart the Floridians, Irwin negotiated a deal with Atlanta Hawks president Bill Putnam. They are giving me a $250,000 signing bonus, and $200,000 a year with a $15,000 raise every year for five years, of which they have to pay me $75,000 up front on October 1 of each year. We also negotiate a new Jaguar XKE and an apartment in Atlanta. We’re all excited about the prospect of me playing with Pete Maravich. But as part of the terms of the deal, Putnam promises to keep the deal secret until after the ABA season.

  27.

  As soon as the season ends, Irwin tells me, I need to get out of Virginia, literally across state lines, just in case the Squires subpoena me in an attempt to prevent me from leaving. We pack up the Mark, and Freda, Barry, Keith, and I drive down to Atlanta. I’m excited about the move to the NBA, and the Hawks are loaded with talent. Besides “Pistol” Pete Maravich, they have Walt Bellamy and Lou Hudson. This team has some serious capital. I have my new Jaguar, the $250,000 signing bonus in the bank, and the paid-for town house in East Point. Atlanta is a real city, was one of the centers of the civil rights movement, and has an active and visible black community. I feel like I could put down some roots. And it’s not far from Batesburg, South Carolina, where my people are from. And Freda likes it there, says she never felt comfortable in that old suburban A-frame.

  Putnam and the Atlanta Hawks figure they aren’t going to waste a first-round pick on me because they already have me under contract. They figure they’ll wait until the second round to pick me. The Milwaukee Bucks, however, have two first-round picks that year, and GM Wayne Embry, who knows me from Shamrock Basketball Camp, decides to take me with his second pick in the first round. I’m now signed to two different contracts with two different teams in two different leagues, while my rights are held by a third team, a team that happens to have Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as their star. When I ask Irwin about that, he says we don’t want to play with Kareem.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s the star. We need for you to be the star. That’s how you make the big money. And they have Oscar Robertson, another star, so you would get their third billing.”

  I think about my situation with Charlie, about how it seemed my success started to wear on him and may have contributed to his leaving the team. If I got into that situation with Kareem, who do you think would be the guy who would have to hit the road? And with Oscar Robertson already there, Irwin’s right, I would be the third option.

  “Let’s make it work in Atlanta,” I tell Irwin. That’s where I’m living anyway.

  I drive the Jaguar back up to New York, where I’m going to play the Rucker League again, stop off to see my mom and Mr. Dan and pay a visit to Marky’s grave, where I tell him about all that’s happening with me. I choke up thinking about Marky and how excited he would be about all this. He would just be starting college himself.

  But I’m grateful to have Barry and Keith in my life, and to be able to be a father figure and big brother to them all at the same time.

  28.

  I make a trip up to Amherst to visit with Carol and talk about our relationship. Carol and I have been trying to make it work. She came down to a few games, saw us suffer those tough playoff losses in Long Island. When I see her, I still have this powerful feeling that she is the woman for me. She gets along so well with my mother, with my sister. It’s hard for me to imagine a future without her.

  But I’m still a young man, just twenty-two now, and while the idea of fidelity to one woman seems the righteous and moral thing to do, I know enough about my own failings to recognize that it’s not realistic.

  In the car on the way up to Amherst, I think that what we need to do is test our love for each other. If we agree to see other people, to have an open relationship, then we’ll know, after those experiences, whether we are truly right for each other. This seems the only logical step.

  When I see her, I give Carol a big hug and we take a ride in the Jaguar. She’s as beautiful as ever, and she represents to me my own history. She’s more than my long-term girlfriend, she’s also a connection to my past, to college, to UMass, to a more innocent time, before groupies and contracts and jumping leagues and all that. But I’m not that person anymore. Seeing Carol is both wonderful because of how easily I can fall back into being myself, into being June or Julius and not Dr. J or the Doctor. She knows me as this big goofy kid shivering on a winter afternoon in two layers of overcoats on my way to the student union, not this guy with a big Afro in a three-piece suit driving a Jaguar. She sees immediately through all this style and noise to the person she knows. The son of Mom and Tonk, brother of Marky and Freda. The other stuff, the player sleeping with a different girl every night, that’s not really me, or, at least I don’t want to believe that it is.

  She puts a head on my shoulder and we drive.

  Finally, I tell her my plan: to test our love by seeing other people.

  Carol is dubious.

  I tell her if we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, then we need to know, to be absolutely sure, and how can that be if we haven’t experienced other lovers? It’s like a test, I tell her, and if we don’t pass the test, then we aren’t meant to be. I don’t explain that I’ve already been seeing other women, so my position is built on some falsehoods.

  Carol is an intelligent woman. She can see that what I am actually saying is that we are . . . no longer really together.

  I’m telling her, no, no baby, that’s not it. This is a good thing. Positive. We’re gonna be stronger than ever after this.

  “Stronger? Really?”

  I nod. Oh, yeah, baby, that’s because we’ll know, for sure, forever.

  Carol wipes away tears, looks out the window at the tobacco fields we are driving past, and she turns back to me. “You’re sure, Julius?”

  I nod, holding back my own tears, oh, yeah, I’m sure.

  But somehow, I know what I’ve done. I may have negotiated away the best thing I ever had.

  29.

  I’m moving so fast, in the Jaguar, at Rucker (I’m playing again on the Westsiders), and shopping downtown with Clyde Frazier for some new threads. With the $250,000 in the bank, the new car, I definitely feel wealthy. And I am. I buy my mom and Mr. Dan a new house, back in Hempstead over on Williams Street. I put the money down myself and arrange to pay their mortgage payments, too.

  That’s the very least I can do for my mother. Every place I’ve been, everything I’ve ever done, is because of her, because of how she raised me. From my first day of school, I somehow knew how to behave, and that was because of her example and ceaseless teaching.

  I talk to Clyde a little bit about the NBA, about what I might expect. Clyde was the leading scorer on a Knicks team that lost to the Lakers in the NBA finals last year. He’s a superstar. If anyone knows how to play in the NBA, it’s Clyde. The biggest difference between the two leagues, he says, is that the NBA has bigger centers and more of them. In the ABA, unless I’m playing against Artis or Mel Daniels of the Indiana Pacers, I don’t have to face the kind of skilled big men that abound in the NBA. There’s Wilt, for one, and Kareem, Bob Lanier, Willis Reed, Nate Thurmond, Dave Cowens, and Wes Unseld, among others. I’m going to have to adapt my game, and that’s what I work on at Rucker, figuring out how to find angles to the basket by going under guys, if I have to, or shaking a big man by using the pick and roll instead of just trying to sky over him. I’m looking forward to the challenge of scoring in the NBA.

  Irwin meanwhile has filed suit in New York City to “vacate and terminate” my contract with the Squires. His lawye
r, Louis Nizer, is arguing that because Steve Arnold was working for both me and the club, he “had failed to exploit more favorable opportunities.” We’re also suing for over $300,000 in damages. There’s a city marshal in Norfolk looking for Earl Foreman to serve him with a subpoena.

  The ABA, meanwhile, has a new commissioner, Bob Carlson, and one of his first acts is to sue me in criminal court, seeking an injunction against my playing for any team other than the Squires. Meanwhile, Milwaukee is insisting that they own my rights from the draft, so if I’m going to play anywhere in the NBA, I should be playing there. The NBA board of governors agrees, ruling that I have to play in Milwaukee, which prompts a $2 million lawsuit from Putnam and the Hawks, who claim the NBA draft is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

  If I’d stayed in school I would only be getting out of college now. Instead, after just a year in the pros, I’m tangled up in a legal web that I can’t even explain to my mother.

  Still, the only contract that I consider to be valid is the one I’ve signed with the Hawks, so I report to Hawks training camp in Savannah, Georgia.

  30.

  What nobody ever talks about with Pete Maravich is that he’s a big guy. Not only is he tall, at over six foot five, but he is well built, muscular, strong. At that stage of my career, I’m still wisp-skinny, so when we meet for the first time at Savannah College and we’re sizing each other up, I have maybe an inch on him but Pete is actually broader than I am. I’ve been hearing about Pete and watching him for years. He went pro a year before me, after scoring 44 points a game in college. I have to admit I had been a little dismissive of his college career. I always believed I could have scored a great deal more in college if Jack had let me shoot as much as Pete. Pete was coached by his dad at LSU, so I figured he had every advantage in terms of scoring. He won every award out there and was a three-time All-American. In some ways, Pete is the opposite of me. I’ve always been underestimated, forced to take the back door instead of being ushered through the front, transferring to Roosevelt before my freshman year, going to UMass instead of a traditional hoops power, being an alternate on the Olympic development squad, joining the ABA instead of the NBA. I’ve had to work for every break I’ve gotten, had to prove myself at each stage before I was recognized. And here I am, finally on the verge of the big stage, the NBA, and who do I find but the golden boy, the player whose name has always been up on the marquee.