Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  We fly out to San Diego after a five-day layover in February to take on the Conquistadors, who have parted ways with Wilt Chamberlain. (In fact, the entire team will soon be taken over by the ABA, as the current owners are abandoning the franchise.) After the good break and long flight, I feel well rested, my knees are fresh, and the Qs, as we call San Diego, may be the worst defensive team in the league. Their best player is probably Caldwell Jones, my future teammate in Philly.

  Tonight, it doesn’t matter who the Qs send out to guard me, as this is one of those games where every path to the basket seems to open up just enough for me to get there, going up and over guys or around them. On one dunk in the second half, I take the ball straight at Caldwell, going up against him chest to chest, and then I just keep rising. I finish regulation with 45 points. After four overtimes, I have 63 points, but we end up losing, 176–166. And even more distressing, there are only three thousand fans on hand to watch the highest-scoring game in league history.

  We end the 1975 season in a tie with Kentucky for the Eastern Division title. We lose a one-game playoff to Artis and Issel and the Colonels and have to face the Spirits of St. Louis in the first round. And while we beat them eleven out of eleven times in the regular season, the Spirits are a lot tougher than their 32-52 record. For one thing, in Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, they have one of the great shooting big men in the game, a guy with a McAdoo-like touch. They have Fly Williams, who led the NCAA in scoring last season, and Maurice Lucas, another physical big man who can shoot the mid-range jumper. And at the end of the season, they add Don Adams, a tough, physical rebounder who is willing to go punch for punch with the Wendell Ladners of the league and can finish any fight Bad News starts.

  Marvin gets into the news plenty, for leaving the team, for threatening to jump leagues. At one point, the media reports that he has thirteen telephones in his house. Supposedly he drives around St. Louis in a Rolls-Royce. He is also famous for some questionable decisions on and off the court. One famous example is Marvin receiving the ball out on the break with four seconds left in the first half of a game and a clear path to the basket. Marvin dribbles back four steps to put up a three.

  But at his best, he is as pure a scorer as there is in the game and may also be among the fastest big men I have ever seen. And in the first game in Nassau, he puts up 41 points, but we beat them anyway by 6 points. A few troubling trends emerge that carry over into game 2. Don Adams is playing me tough, fouling me frequently and generally getting under my skin a little bit, so that through the first three quarters, I only have 6 points and I’m getting so angry at Adams, I might floor him. Kevin takes me out to cool down but by then the result is a formality. Marvin scores 37 and gets 18 boards and the Spirits blow us out.

  Games 3 and 4 are back in St. Louis and Marvin continues his rampage and we lose both. No matter, I figure we’re heading back to Nassau and will even this up at home. We are actually up by a point with fifteen seconds left when I take the inbounds and get hit with a traveling call, a terrible turnover. The Spirits take the ball in and Freddie Lewis catches a pass just over the half-court line, muscles Brian Taylor out of the way, and hits a 20-footer to give the Spirits the game and series.

  I can’t believe it. Our season is over. And while I question the call on me, I have to take the blame. If I’m the leader of the team, then when we lose, I have to be willing to accept that burden.

  In the locker room after that home loss, I’m sitting with my knees wrapped in ice, reporters gathered around me. I’m explaining how disappointing this is for me personally because I feel like I let down my team. I look over and I see Wendell, and he’s already showered and changed and he’s combing his hair and shaking his head.

  He looks at me over the heads of the sportswriters and he mouths something.

  “Wait, wait,” I tell the writers. “What’s up, Wendell?”

  He smiles. “I’m just asking, ‘How’s my hair look?’ ”

  My dog, Cain, is chewing up the leather interior of my Avanti. We’ve been sending him to obedience school but the dog won’t stop barking, taking J’s bottle, and ripping up the indoor and outdoor furniture. But when he starts getting into the leather seats of the Avanti, tearing big chunks out of the passenger seat, I start thinking, This dog has to go. I’m like, you’re supposed to be my road dog, and you’re treating my car like it’s a big steak bone? We try another obedience school and when I drive over to Glen Cove to pick up the dog, Cain seems chill. He’s wagging his tale, happy to see me, and I’m thinking, Good, okay, now we have man’s best friend coming home with me.

  Two days later, he’s back into the car seats, tearing up the Volvo. And he manages to gnaw through a kitchen cabinet door, which I’ve never seen any dog do.

  I’ve never had a pet before, so this is new for me. Turquoise has had it with Cain, and I’m finding it difficult to build any kind of deep relationship with this hound. And with my schedule, I don’t have the time to invest in really fixing whatever behavioral issues Cain might have. I do worry that this might be a symptom of the kind of home we are making here. Are Turquoise and I too busy to give a dog the kind of love he might need to thrive?

  My mom says that down in South Carolina, if a dog starts acting up, well, they just put the bitch down. That’s not how we do things anymore. But I can’t keep him.

  So I load Cain into the Volvo and drive out to Huntington where we have found a family willing to adopt him. Cain’s a good-looking dog, I think, so I’m sure the family will take to him. Maybe they’ll have better luck with raising Cain. I stop the car at Cain’s new home, open the front door. Go on, boy. He doesn’t even look back.

  When I’m driving home, I’m listening to WABC and a newscaster breaks into “Why Can’t We Be Friends” mid-song and says an Eastern Airlines 727 has crashed at John F. Kennedy Airport. The announcer is saying there were 124 passengers and crew on board. Wreckage is scattered along Rockaway Boulevard, a sort of ring road around the airport. There are numerous fire and rescue vehicles at the scene. From the way he is talking, it doesn’t sound like there are many survivors.

  The flight had originated in New Orleans.

  At home, I turn on the television and I’m watching the news. The footage is frightening. The camera crews are casting stark light on the scene and we can see what look like body parts.

  I’m still watching when Kevin calls me and he says he thinks Wendell was on that plane. He was flying up from Necaise Crossing to film a commercial. (Wendell is hopeless when it comes to commercials. He can never remember his lines. Eventually, the directors and sponsors just let him talk about how much he likes potato chips or whatever it is until they feel they have something they can use.)

  The TV cameras are panning the wreckage and Kevin tells me he sees what looks like a New York Nets logo on a duffel bag. But in a few hours it’s confirmed that Wendell was on that flight. They ID him by his championship ring.

  We all have to make the reverse flight down to Necaise Crossing a few days later to attend Wendell’s funeral. Bill Melchionni and I are among the pallbearers. “He was my protector,” I say in my eulogy, “my shining shield.”

  How does a team come back from a loss like this?

  16.

  I went pro when I did in part because Steve Arnold, my so-called agent at the time, was one of many who were warning that an ABA-NBA merger was imminent and players would lose their negotiating leverage. The closest they actually came to a merger was in 1971, when an agreement was reached and ratified by the two leagues. (The only team that wasn’t going to join the NBA was the pre–Dr. J Virginia Squires.) The NBA Players Association filed suit, alleging that the merger would create an illegal basketball monopoly.

  That lawsuit, which was widely known as the Oscar Robertson Suit—I always think of a dignified tweed whenever I hear that expression—kept the two leagues effectively apart for five more years and allowed the Marvin Barneses and George McGinnises and, yes, Julius Ervings of the world
to play both leagues off against each other and become wealthy doing it, and, if we wanted, to have over a dozen telephones in our house.

  The Oscar Robertson Suit is settled in 1976, after Oscar has actually retired, and that removes the last major obstacle to a merger. But even before that settlement, there have been signs that the ABA may not be around for much longer. There are the usual ownership and financial crises around the Squires, the Conquistadors, the Stars, and whatever the Memphis team is being called this week (actually, never mind, they’ve moved to Baltimore, and they’ve been renamed the Claws). Their financial situation is so dire that when the team folds after just three exhibition games, and the players go in to the Claws office demanding what they are owed, they are told that there isn’t any money but that they can take anything they want from the office. So Dave Robisch and Mel Daniels end up making off with a bunch of typewriters, telephones, and Claws swag instead of their game checks.

  Adding to the sense of instability is the fact that Roy Boe and the Denver Nuggets’ owners have applied to join the NBA—I didn’t even know you could do that. These are the two most successful franchises in the league, and if we go, then the ABA is essentially finished. When Roy tells me what he’s doing, I feel a great twinge of sadness. I love the ABA and, like so many of the players, I have a strong sense of solidarity with the league. I didn’t play at a major basketball university, I was an alternate for the Olympic development squad, I wasn’t even drafted out of college. I joined a backwater franchise in the league that many—though not me—consider second rate. This is part of my identity. You never see me coming.

  What we do over here, it’s like a secret that only real basketball fans know about. So many of the games, some of my best moves, aren’t even on tape. They are one and done. You literally have to be there or you will miss it. I once saw this documentary about Pele, the soccer legend, and how half of his greatest goals, these amazing runs where he touched the ball sixteen times and ran the length of the field, they only exist in the memories of these old guys who were at Maracanã Stadium when he was in his prime.

  That’s the ABA for me.

  The only reason Denver and New York don’t join the NBA is that the NBA wants $6.15 million from each team. Where is Roy Boe going to get that kind of money?

  And for that matter, how is he going to take care of me? He has promised to raise me up to $500,000 a year. Irwin says he’s not sure Roy can come through. I tell him I’ll take $100,000 less to stay, figuring that means I don’t have to move and pay all that resettlement cost.

  But in a league where the championship finals aren’t even televised, how is Boe going to come up with the commas and zeroes he needs to pay me and to join the NBA?

  As it is, the league starts the 1975–76 season with just nine teams, and two of those will fold within the first 20 games.

  Personally, I don’t even want a merger. I’d much rather see, say, the Boston Celtics, the 1974 NBA champions, play the New York Nets, the 1974 ABA champions, in a world series of basketball. I don’t know who would have won, but I have my ideas.

  17.

  Before the season starts, we make a big trade, sending Larry Kenon, Billy Paultz, and Mike Gale to San Antonio for Swen Nater, Chuck Terry, Kim Hughes, and Rich Jones. The idea here is to bulk up and we succeed. Larry and I were a great, high-flying combination, but we were too similar and along with Whopper didn’t make for a physically durable front line. I think it’s good for Larry so he can get out of my shadow a little, and he does thrive in San Antonio, where he joins James Silas and George Gervin in a dynamic lineup that will make San Antonio a perennial basketball power.

  Then we trade big Swen down to Virginia for Jumbo Jim Eakins. It’s a new lineup, more rugged even than our Wendell-era teams. Rich Jones especially adds a ferocious element to our defense. He’s skilled with a nice shot, but he can bang. Actually, he’ll take your fucking head off, he’s one of those guys. And we still have Boogie Man, Tim Bassett, another tough guy. I appreciate how Kevin is trying to take care of me and lighten my rebounding load. He says that one of the reasons we faded down the stretch last year, or at least came up short in the playoffs, was that the team relied on me too much. “Doc, you can’t do it for us every night.” With these new additions, the New York Nets are going to be fine on the court.

  The league we are playing in, however, is crumbling around us. At one point, while we are on an early season West Coast trip, and we’ve just beaten the Nuggets, we’re hearing rumors that our next opponent, the Utah Stars, are going out of business. They’re trying to sell Moses Malone and Ron Boone to the Spirits of St. Louis. This is a team that played us in the finals two seasons ago. And more urgently, where are we supposed to go? Should we fly to Salt Lake City or skip that and go on to Virginia? Or maybe not; Kevin is hearing that the Squires are also on the verge of folding.

  We’re sitting around in hotel rooms for days, waiting for the league to tell us who we’re supposed to play. The league keeps changing the schedule, trying to stay one step ahead of the collapsing teams. With so few teams, we end up playing the Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs a dozen times each. You get to know your opponents very well, on and off the court. I’m still very close with Darnell Hillman of the Pacers, and my ex-teammate George Gervin is thriving in San Antonio, and when I’m in town we always go out, along with my former teammates Mike Gale and Billy Paultz.

  When Utah and San Diego fold for good about a quarter of the way through the season, the league is down to seven teams. That’s not even enough to have two divisions, so now there’s just one. The problem with that is how can you have an all-star game with just one division? In 1975, we played the game in San Antonio, and they gave Freddie Lewis of St. Louis, who ended up being the MVP, a horse. What does Freddie need a horse and saddle for? So he auctioned off the horse and, supposedly, it died two weeks later.

  But the 1976 all-star game is in jeopardy. Finally, the league decides to hold the game in Denver, as planned, only the game will feature the Denver Nuggets, who have the best record in the league and a fantastic rookie named David Thompson, against the rest of the league’s all-stars. The ABA has always gone all out with all-star promotions, and for this one they’ve brought in Glen Campbell and Charlie Rich to do a pregame concert. The strangest idea they have, however, is something they are calling the Slam Dunk Contest. It’s going to be at halftime, which means instead of a rest, five of us will have to be on the court, and it comprises five dunks from different spots on the floor, including some free-style dunks. They say they are going to judge it based on “artistic ability, imagination, body flow and fan response.”

  Most of my dunks happen in the flow of the game, that’s where I feel like I am at my most creative. But this is going to be at halftime, so we’ll be jumping on tired legs. There is some prize money at stake, about $1,000 and a new Pioneer stereo system. And we’re all competitive guys. Mainly we do it because they say it will be good for the league. Larry Kenon, George Gervin, Artis Gilmore, and David Thompson are my fellow dunkers.

  Before the contest I’m talking to Doug Moe, my old Squires teammate who is now coaching the Nuggets, about dunking from the foul line. Jumping Jackie Jackson, who I played with barnstorming in New York City, could supposedly do it. But Doug says I can’t do it. We make a $50 side bet.

  During warm-ups David Thompson looks like the real competition. He’s doing these cradle dunks where he is throwing the ball down through the rim with such authority that his hometown crowd is going crazy. But in the competition, despite some typically smooth Gervin moves, and a monstrous 360 degree dunk by Thompson that is actually my favorite of the whole contest, the crowd is won over when I count off the steps from the foul line back to the opposite top of the key—there is no real reason I do this, but it makes for a better show—and then I make my approach, leaping from the foul line, palming the ball up over my head, outstretched, like Lady Liberty holding her torch. I hit the mark perfectly, though Doug Moe
is immediately insisting I stepped on the foul line.

  I don’t admit it to him then, but I will now: Doug, my foot was on the line, but that still counts as a dunk from the foul line. Nobody else was within a foot of me.

  18.

  With two sons at home, and we’re expecting another baby in October, my outlook on the game has changed a bit. I love basketball. I view it as a sport and as an art form all in one. There is nothing more meditative for me than being in the flow of a game and finding these improvisational flourishes that seem to shift for a few moments the sense of what is possible in this universe: I grab a defensive rebound and I’m looking to start the fast break while I’m still in the air. The passing lane is blocked, I do a 360, change hands, and flip the ball left-handed to Super John. Where does that move come from? I don’t know. Yet I see it also as my business, and I never lose sight of the fact that I am doing this as a job, albeit a high-paying job. When I am out there, and the fans can often lose sight of this, I am in some sense no different from a mason laying stone. That’s what you are watching.