Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  We win the first two games at home against the Colonels and then go down to Louisville for game 3. Through the first three quarters, the game is a physical matchup, with both teams expending their energy playing defense and Wendell expending his energy diving after loose balls, including one notable leap where he goes over the radio broadcast crew and ends up with cables, microphones, and headsets dangling from his body like Christmas tree ornaments. Supposedly, the radio feed was out for the rest of the game. We’re trailing 89–87 with fifteen seconds left, and we get the ball back. Kevin calls a time-out, and he’s drawing up a play for me, with second options for a kick out to Williamson or, if Artis collapses over on me, a pass in to Whopper. I put my hand on his shoulder and I say, “Kevin, I’ll take the last shot.”

  “Okay,” Kevin is saying, “but if Doc misses—”

  “I’m not gonna miss.”

  Kevin puts down his chalk and looks up at me. “Okay, let’s get Doc the ball. Let’s go.”

  Brian gets me the ball up near the right side of the key, about twenty feet out. I dribble to kill a few seconds and then go into my move, driving down to the right side of the foul line, as the entire Colonels defense collapses on me. I go up off my right foot, and I’m falling backward because I have to get the shot over the entire Colonels’ defense.

  I bank it in.

  Buzzer.

  After that, we know the Colonels are done, and we beat them by 13 in game 4.

  The feeling among the guys is that nobody can stop us, and we act as if beating Utah is an afterthought.

  The Utah Stars had started life as the Anaheim Amigos, before moving up to LA to play at the Sports Arena where they actually made the ABA finals in 1970 and then—why not? This is the ABA after all—they decamped again, this time to Utah, winning the ABA title in 1971. When they play us, several of the key pieces of that championship squad are still in place, most notably, Zelmo Beaty, an NBA and ABA stalwart who was among the first big stars to jump leagues when he signed with the Stars in 1969. Zelmo is so strong that Wilt Chamberlain has said he was the single player who gave him the most trouble—which may have been more of a dig at Bill Russell than praise for the Big Z—but is still remarkable considering that Zelmo is about three inches shorter than Wilt and played the last ten years of his career with no cartilage in his knees.

  The three best scorers on this Utah team are Willie Wise, Ron Boone, and All-ABA point guard Jimmy Jones. This is a balanced, fast team, but with Big Z injured, I’m able to score 47 points at home in a rocking Nassau Coliseum, in front of friends and family. Turq is nearly at full term, but she is so fit and fierce, I can actually hear her shouting encouragement from the stands. Game 2 is even more satisfying—and more violent—as Ron Boone comes out and floors Brian Taylor, who gets up and socks Boone in the mouth. Amazingly, neither player is ejected or even receives a technical. The whole team gets involved in this win and our sagging, fast-rotating defense shuts down their three-guard attack.

  We end up putting Utah away in five games and I finish the playoffs with a 28.2 average, 11.4 rebounds, and 5 assists.After we win the final game at home, we’re in the locker room, pouring champagne over each other and the announcers. I give Wendell a big hug and I look around at this group of brothers and I think, These are the finest men I have ever known: Brian, Kat, Mike, Whopper, Super John, Billy, Bill, Wendell, Willie. And after I embrace Roy Boe, I sit down in front of my locker and put my head in my hands. I’m not crying, I’m just remembering Marky, and Tonk and Bobby, but also the many men who were there for me, Don Ryan and Ray Wilson and Earl Mosley and Jack Leaman. And of course my mother, Callie Mae, who taught me so well.

  And then I get back up and start celebrating with my teammates. I’m sorry, Don, but this is a night for winning and boasting.

  We end up at the Salty Dog around dawn and continue toasting each other until Wendell and I head back to the beach a couple of hours later.

  Wendell says, “This feels great, doesn’t it, Doc? It feels like, I don’t know, it feels better than meeting a fine young lady.”

  I laugh. “Wendell, you need to get some sleep.”

  11.

  The next afternoon, when I finally wake up, I can hear my mom’s voice, and for a moment I’m transported back to our house over on Beech Street, and my mom is in the kitchen, making pancakes, and I’ve just come back from the paper route and I’m waiting for my second breakfast, and she will envelop me in warmth before I go out again into that cold day. I rouse myself and I realize she is out on the front deck, sitting in the white wood furniture on the patio overlooking the Atlantic. If the water is calm, I know, she likes to come out and drop a line off one of the boat launches into middle bay and see if she can catch some snapper or even sand dabs, which she’ll cook up in oil just like they did when we would visit South Carolina when I was a boy.

  If the water is too rough to drop a line, she’ll just take a seat on the porch and drink iced tea and visit with Cheo. Since Turq is expecting, Mom wants to be helpful, but there is only so much Turq will let her do. I tell Mom not to take it personally, that Turq just has her own way.

  I can hear Mom talking to another lady, an older white woman by the sound of her voice. I get dressed and go out to say hello and see she is visiting with Mrs. Ladner, who flew up for the finals and must be looking for Wendell. The two of them, a black lady from Long Island and a white lady from Mississippi, are chatting about fishing and catfish recipes and they might as well be on a porch down in Batesburg or Necaise Crossing, talking to their neighbors. It’s a beautiful sight to see these two ladies from two different worlds getting along as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  When I say hello to both, Mom turns to me and says, “June, you know Mrs. Ladner?”

  I tell her I do.

  “Her boy is Wendell, your teammate.”

  “Yes, I know, Mom.”

  “She says she was supposed to come over to visit with Wendell, but he’s not here. Or he’s still asleep.”

  I’m not surprised. The sun is high in the sky, but it’s still awfully early for Wendell.

  “But, June, remind me, who was the young man on the team you were telling all those stories about, who is going off with a different woman every night and who has a young lady in every city you all visit? I want to make sure that Wendell knows to stay away from that boy.”

  12.

  I wasn’t there when Cheo was born, of course, so I didn’t know the euphoria of that instant when a man becomes a new father. At Long Island Jewish Hospital, I watch my son Julius being born. I’m in scrubs, a surgical mask, and Turquoise is pushing, pushing, working harder than any athlete I’ve ever seen, veins bulging, her skin turning splotchy as capillaries are bursting on her forehead and cheeks. She is so strong, and with each contraction she pushes and struggles and Julius Winfield Erving III’s crown appears and then this boy is thrust into the world. My wife is fierce and awesome and powerful, yet so full of love that as soon as the baby appears she reaches up for him, and the doctor lifts him into her hands. She takes our slimy, bloody boy and holds him to her breast and that’s our trophy, our prize, a second boy, another blessing in this season of blessings, in this life that God has made so full and rich that I am crying.

  Fatherhood is another of life’s great challenges, perhaps the greatest, but just as I was prepared for basketball through the Sal and high school ball, I have been prepared for fatherhood through being an uncle to Barry and Keith and living with them as infants and young boys. So I want to teach boys how to be good men, and I need to pass on to you what my mother passed on to me, what those strong men passed on to me, what all our ancestors passed on to me. Everything our ancestors and relatives ever did, every journey and struggle and even every basket and rebound, all of this led to you being born, right here, right now. You are the sum total of all my dreams and all of our ancestors’ dreams.

  I need to rise to your needs.

  13.

  Th
is, then, is the American dream, isn’t it? Successful athlete, wealthy, beautiful wife, loving family, sturdy sons, even a dog, a Belgian shepherd named Cain, and Turq and I are expecting another child. I’m the star player on a championship team and the toast of my hometown. Yet there are troubling signs if I look closely. Our championship series wasn’t broadcast nationally. Our average attendance was below nine thousand. How can Roy Boe continue to operate at this level—and to pay me—if even with the superior product he is putting on the floor every night, he can’t make a profit? The rest of the league is in even worse shape. Earl Foreman and the Squires are almost bankrupt, the owners in Carolina and Kentucky want to sell, the owner of the Memphis Tams is looking to raise money by selling his hockey team, and the San Diego Conquistadors aren’t going to last long playing in a high school gymnasium. More and more I am hearing that I am the league. I reject that. I’ve played with and against too many great players to think in those grandiose terms, but I do worry about the future of my contract if I keep playing in front of empty stadiums on local UHF stations, as I will through the disappointing 1975 season. Fortunately, my off-the-court income has drawn almost equal to my basketball salary. Irwin is starting to land big-money endorsements for me, with Converse, Spalding, Dr Pepper, and ChapStick. In the off-season, Hoop magazine flies my family down to Puerto Rico, along with Jo Jo and Deborah White and John and Beth Havlicek. Because this is an annual event for the magazine’s advertisers, this also becomes a yearly vacation for us as we begin to spend our off-seasons with the Havliceks. My children, meanwhile, spend their summers in resorts around the Caribbean, instead of taking a bus to Long Beach and eating sandy peanut butter sandwiches out of a waxed-paper baggie like I did.

  Irwin and I assess my financial situation—and I take a look at how crowded our condo is getting—and agree that for tax reasons, it makes sense that I step up and buy some substantial real estate. Turquoise and I find our dream house, a classic Tudor-style estate at the end of a cul-de-sac in Upper Brookville on the North Shore of Long Island. The place sits on three and a half acres of grounds, with a swimming pool, skating rink, basketball court, four-car garage, and a half dozen bedrooms. Nine thousand square feet and half a million dollars pretty clearly demonstrate how far I’ve come from Hempstead. We need the tax protection of a big mortgage, so I put down a hundred thousand and borrow the rest.

  This is a significant move for me, a kid from the South Shore, from the Parkside Gardens projects, moving up to the North Shore, to Gatsby country. In cultural as well as financial terms, I am making a statement about how Turquoise and I see ourselves. I sometimes joke to Turq that we’re like the black Kennedys, and she’s like Jackie O. That’s how scrutinized we feel, and now that we are living among the landed gentry, among the old-money scions and new-money dentists, I feel like we have to acclimate to a whole new lifestyle. Our kids will be going to private schools, we buy a Volvo station wagon, and navigating this new landscape will require that Turq and I learn the behavioral characteristics of an entirely new tribe: rich people.

  One of my new neighbors is Kenneth I. Starr, a lawyer and accountant who, the first time he comes into my house, starts digging through the freezer, pulling out pork chops, and offering them, frozen solid, to my kids. He has a strange sense of humor, an eternal optimist with a smart answer for every question. He seems like a guy who is on his way up—like me—and has a reputation as a sharp lawyer. I start to use Ken as my attorney on most of my deals. He and Irwin become my business team. Over the years, Ken’s business will grow so that he is managing money for clients like Al Pacino, Natalie Portman, Carly Simon, and Sylvester Stallone.

  In the off-seasons, I start the routine of going over to the French Riviera for a few weeks before training camp begins. I like to run from the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc all the way into Antibes, and then run back, so it’s about a four-mile run along the highway. There are a couple of other Americans over in France playing ball and I train with one of them, Michael Harper. (Harp will go on to play for the Trail Blazers.) There are a few outdoor courts on the beach, so we sometimes put on a little show for the locals, but the main thing I am doing is getting my legs under me, so that I turn up at camp already running a sub-six-minute mile. But I love being over in France because nobody knows me over there. I can walk the streets and they don’t pay me any mind, or any more than they would any very tall brother.

  Our first trip over there, we’re having dinner at the Hôtel du Cap—you can only pay in cash, or bank check, or, I suppose, gold bullion, at that place—and I can hear someone loudly saying, “I heard there’s some American ballplayers in here making a commotion!”

  And I turn around and it’s Bill Cosby.

  It was Cosby who first told me about this spot. He’s been coming here for years, staying a month every year, overlapping into my preseason September.

  We have dinner with Bill and Camille. They invite us up to their suite, and I can see that Bill and Camille have brought over steamer trunks full of clothes, and Camille has Polaroids taken of each of her outfits so she never wears the same combination twice. Cosby is going on about how he and Camille come to the Hôtel du Cap regularly and how it’s the best place on the Riviera, and that’s it, I decide from now on I’m staying at the Hôtel du Cap with Cosby.

  Cosby loves tennis and is urging me to play. I take up the sport, and that becomes one of my main off-season fitness regimens, a steady and regular tennis game with Bill Cosby. We end up doing a Coca-Cola commercial together in which we say two doctors agree that Coke tastes great, and then Cos says, “You know, I was a pretty good basketball player in my days at Temple.” My punch line is, “One out of two doctors agree on that.”

  Turq and I are moving in very different circles now, as our fame and wealth allow entrée to virtually anywhere we might wish to go. New York City in the ’70s is a hotbed of African-American culture. One of the centers of it is Cosby’s Manhattan brownstone in the East Fifties. He and Camille have cocktail parties and I meet everyone over there: James Earl Jones, Flip Wilson, Jesse Jackson, even Eartha Kitt and Miles Davis. Because of my nascent tennis game, Cos introduces me to Arthur and Jean Ashe, who are basketball fans and also good friends with Knick guard Dean Meminger. I invite Arthur and Jean over to Brookville, and we begin to socialize with them quite a bit. My own tennis game is improving. I’m a professional athlete in my prime, and I’m starting to think I could join Arthur on the tour!

  At one point I make the mistake of challenging Arthur to a tennis match. We’re at his country club down in Florida.

  “You really want to do this?” he asks.

  “Yeah, Art, come on. I’ve been working on my game.”

  “You want my A game?”

  “Of course.”

  We’re on the court and Arthur nods and serves and shouts, “Fence!”

  I’m thinking, What is he doing? But when I try to return the serve with a forehand, it goes ricocheting off my racket and into the fence.

  “Fence!”

  “Fence!”

  He’s putting so much crazy sidespin on the serve that I can’t control it.

  I’m thinking I’ll stick with basketball.

  14.

  One night I’m over at Cos’s and Miles is there. We’re in Cos’s front parlor, and Miles takes out his trumpet and starts playing. Everyone is nodding their heads like we’re all digging it, but I’m thinking, What is this guy on? Later, I will realize it’s something from Bitches Brew, but at the time, this sounds new and alien to me, unpleasant to my ears. I look around and think that somehow, all these sophisticated people—Bill Cosby!—are digging this music. Why can’t I dig it as well? I realize, there are so many levels of culture and society, too many layers of privilege, and I am just beginning to appreciate so many of these finer things. It’s like, say, escargots, which we have been eating in France—or as we would have called them back in Hempstead, snails—and how at first, just hearing that we will be eating snails sounds disgu
sting, but after I try it and get used to it, it becomes very special.

  We are changing, Turquoise and I, becoming accustomed to these moments where we glimpse how our social betters are living. We are invited into this community. I like to think it is because I am an artist as well, a painter on a canvas that is a basketball court, but that is also vanity speaking. I’m just June, an overgrown kid, and sometimes, when I’m standing in Cos’s front parlor, I have to remind myself of Bobby or Marky and fishing in a canal down in South Carolina and running barefoot all summer, and, well, look at us now.

  I decide one thing then, standing there with the swells and listening to Miles Davis. And that is: there are people who come here, who become part of this life, and they think that is who they are, that they are special and better than the rest, and I will never succumb to that mistaken self-love. I can’t get caught up in who I’m supposed to be. I have to remain who I am.

  15.

  Road life in the ABA remains grueling, plenty of four-cities-in-five-days kinds of trips, regional flights to Louisville, a bus to Memphis, a flight to St. Louis and then San Antonio and then Utah, and back to New York all in one week. Most of the guys crammed into economy seats, maybe a few veterans—and by now I clearly qualify—in first class if any seats open up, breathing in that secondhand smoke, eating awful food, arriving at three a.m. for an afternoon game. Guys playing poker on fold-down tables, Wendell still getting read like a book, Super John winning pots and reminding us, of course, “That’s why they call me Super John.” We’re still largely the same team that won the championship, with the significant difference of adding backup point guard Al Skinner, a kid I helped recruit up at UMass. A rookie like Al sits in the back.

  Kevin and Rod are up front, talking over how to defend the Stars lineup and this new kid they have named Moses Malone or the Spirit of St. Louis and their amazing rookie tandem of Marvin Barnes and Maurice Lucas. Again, I owe so much of my success as a professional athlete to being able to sleep on planes, and so I arrive usually better rested than the average player. But that season, my knees are starting to feel the pounding of these hard ABA floors and the deep playoff run we made last year. Also, perhaps because of that groin injury last season, I have been favoring one knee and strained the tendons. But even after 3 games in a row, a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I won’t take a Monday practice off. Kevin will ask me if I want to rest my legs, and I always tell him no. I play forty minutes a night, third highest in the league, and score 27.9 a game, second best in the league to George McGinnis, with whom I share the MVP award.