Now Billy is also convinced we need to trade George McGinnis. George actually had a very productive season, averaging 22.6 points and 11.5 rebounds, though he underperformed in the playoffs again. Still, we won 55 games and broke our own home attendance record. But Billy’s view is that this team, as it is presently constituted, will not win a championship. I’m all for winning, but I’m not a GM or coach. There is a chance we can get Bobby Jones, the great Denver forward who I know well from the 1976 ABA finals. Bobby is a team player, a relentless defender (hence his nickname, the White Shadow), and a guy with unique basketball intelligence. He’s a decent scorer, but what is most impressive is that he is incredibly efficient. He used to lead the ABA every year in field goal percentage.
If we have a chance to get Bobby, then Pat has to do it. It takes Pat a few months, but he’s dogged, and when he’s done, we’ve added Jones to our team. And that’s the same off-season where Pat drafts Mo Cheeks.
The addition of Bobby and Maurice changes the personality of our team. For one thing, the coach doesn’t have to yell at Bobby and Maurice because they know the plays and are always in the right spots on the floor. I’m delighted with Maurice because now we have a guard—I’m thinking of you, Mr. Free—who will always look for me and get me the ball where I want it. In fact, Maurice looks for me so frequently that Darryl starts complaining, “Man, I see Maurice Cheeks coming down the floor and he’s got his Dr. J eyes on. All they can see is Dr. J.” Even Billy lights into him a couple of times. “Why are you throwing the ball to Doc?”
“Because Doc asked for it,” Mo replies.
“But that’s not the play I called,” Billy says.
“But Doc asked for it.”
That was about as mad as Billy got at Maurice.
“If Doc asks for the ball, I’m going to get it to him,” says Maurice. “I know what it takes for me to stay around.”
That’s a smart guard. And it makes sense. If I’m bringing the ball up court, and my performance is measured in part on how many assists I collect, then I’m going to pass the ball to the best finisher. If Doc is cutting, then isn’t that the highest percentage option, regardless of what play is called? I think so.
The arrival of Mo makes a difference, as my scoring goes up, to nearly 27 a game in 1980, and my shots per game goes up to over 20, and I average well over 50 percent from the field.
Bobby Jones is a character as well. There are other devoutly Christian players in the league, and others who don’t approve of some of the salty language athletes use. But Bobby is the first player I’ve been around who we actually heed. “Motherfucker!” Dawkins will shout as he throws down a dunk.
“Will you rotate, God damn it!” Billy shouts.
Bobby will just give them that look. “You know I don’t approve of that.”
Maybe it’s because we know Bobby is an epileptic and that it is an amazing act of courage for him to even be out here. He could have a seizure at any moment. Guys actually curtail their swearing. A little.
On the road, while the rest of us are out catting around at the nightclub, Bobby will be in his hotel room, reading his Bible, while in the next room is Caldwell Jones and his bathtub full of bottled Budweiser on ice.
Pat and Billy keep fine-tuning our team. They trade Lloyd Free to San Diego for a first-round draft pick. Lloyd can score anywhere, anytime, but Billy feels he’s a one-dimensional player. Maybe he is, but that is one fantastic dimension.
The biggest adjustment we have to make as a team, however, is the declining role of Doug Collins, a great player who is missing dozens of games every year because of various injuries. We finish with 47 wins in 1979 and take apart New Jersey and my old teammates Super John Williamson and Tim Bassett, and a great young scorer named Bernard King, in the first round.
In the conference semifinals, we’re playing another former ABA team, the Spurs, with George Gervin, the Kat, and Billy Paultz. Iceman has just led the league in scoring, with 29.6 a game on 54 percent shooting. Kenon and Paultz added solid contributions.
And they take us apart at home to go up 2-0 in the series. Back home, we’re not much better, salvaging a split to send it back to the Alamo for an elimination game 5. I score 32, Steve Mix, Bobby Jones, and Mo Cheeks all come through, and we blow the Spurs out at home. Then in game 6, back at the Spectrum, I have a quiet night, but Dawkins and Caldwell step up and we win a squeaker to force a game 7 in San Antonio.
San Antonio’s rowdiest section of fans are called the Baseline Bums. I remember during ABA games, they would be wearing sombreros and drinking beer from pitchers, and supposedly they were dumping guacamole on opposing players and coaches. At one point, they had 10-cent beer night, so this is a fan base that gets pretty wild.
They are rocking that night in San Antonio, and the Baseline Bums are doing their level best to psych us out. In the first minute of the game, Dawk sprains his ankle and is out. With Collins already injured, Dawk is our second option on offense, averaging 16 points a game in the playoffs. Now we’re without two of our three top scorers. I try to offset that by going for 34 points, but it isn’t enough, as we lose 111–108. Near the end of the game, I literally hear something pop in my groin area. I play through it.
Now I’m starting to wonder if we’ll ever get back to the finals.
27.
After that series, I’m driving up the turnpike and my knees and groin are hurting so bad, I have to pull in at a truck stop. I am actually thinking that this is it. I can’t play anymore.
My knees have never been 100 percent since I’ve joined the NBA. My problems with tendonitis in my knees started after my second year in Virginia, when I began to favor one knee because of my groin injury. I played forty minutes a game that year. Chopper had kept me on the court, but that was mostly through novocaine, cortisone, and Darvon, a combination that left me able to perform but in a state where I’m not aware of how bad a pounding my knees are taking. In the off-season, my knees hurt so much I can barely stand to drive from New York City to Long Island. I decided after that season that I wasn’t going to take any more pills or needles, and I instead switched to a regime of heat and ice. John Marshall at the Hospital for Special Surgery designed a knee brace for me, which I wore throughout my ABA career.
That was the conventional wisdom: that you brace the knee itself to create stability.
This off-season I go to work with a guy named Joseph Zohar, who is part of the evolution in sports medicine that takes a more holistic approach. He works with me to strengthen my groin and my knee. Everything around those two problem areas must be fortified—my hamstrings and my glutes. I’m doing three hours a day in the off-season, starting with just one- and two-pound weights.
I recover enough to resume swimming and playing tennis in the off-season, and by the time camp starts, I’m almost at full strength again.
28.
Pat and Billy never stop tinkering with our roster, trying to find the combination that will get us back to the finals. By now, the mantra in Philly is “We Owe You One,” based on an ad campaign the team launched after we lost in 1977. My feeling is, we owe you three, because every year we don’t get to the finals, the disappointment sets in deeper. And one of the biggest differences in this league versus the ABA is how our fans keep turning out for us night after night, even when we’re in a slump and the columnists are tearing us apart in the papers. The fans keep bringing their Dr. J banners and the kids want me to sign their programs. I remember going to the Garden as a kid with Don Ryan and the rest of my Sal teammates and waiting outside after the game for the Knicks players to come out and sign some autographs. We’re just kids, standing in the snow, and here comes Art Heyman, a Long Island guy, and he snubs us, walks past as if we’re not even there. I’ll never forget that. That’s why, despite being a New York kid, I never really became a Knicks fan.
I remember that feeling of being snubbed by one of my heroes. I’ve always taken the time to talk to my fans, and especially the kids. I d
on’t think I deserve any praise for this. It’s simply the right thing to do, as a fellow human being. It’s just the way I conduct my business. I don’t think there are many folks who can say they’ve met me or seen me in public who would think I was dismissive or rude to them. If someone comes over to me, I say hello, shake their hand, sign whatever it is they happen to be holding out, and if I’m busy with a business meeting or family, I excuse myself and that’s that.
But I develop a special relationship with the Philly fans. And we are living through a great sports era in Philadelphia: the Flyers are coming off back-to-back Stanley Cups in the mid-’70s and they would make the finals again in 1980. The great Phillies teams of the late ’70s made three straight National League Championship Series and then won the World Series in 1980. Even the Eagles make the Super Bowl in 1980, losing to the Raiders. This is an era when the famously fickle Philly sports fan could easily have shunned the 76ers—despite our playoff runs, we’re the least successful team in town—and it’s a tribute to Pat Williams and his relentless drive to improve that we not only keep the fans interested, but they never stop believing or buying tickets.
It helps that the NBA itself is undergoing a renaissance. The greatest player of my era, and maybe any era, is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He and I are both in our primes throughout the ’70s, though he’s a couple of years older than I am. I don’t think there has ever been a human being that big who is as graceful and athletic as Kareem. He’s the basketball player that I always measure myself against, and too often, I have to admit, I find myself coming up short.
That’s why it’s always a special thrill when I get the better of our matchups and throw down a dunk on him.
But in 1979, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird both come into the league. They are coming off their NCAA Championship matchup and there is a ton of buzz around this pair of rookies. It’s good for the league to have dynamic young players in Boston and Los Angeles, but I’m more interested in our rookies, Jim Spanarkel, Billy Ray Bates, and Clint Richardson.
The guy with the most talent is Bates, a third-round pick out of Kentucky State. I’ve never seen a player who looks better in drills than Billy Ray. He’s the fastest sprinter on the team, the best miler, and he can beat you in a foot race when he’s dribbling and you’re running. He can shoot from anywhere. He’s just an amazing athletic specimen. But you put him in a game situation, and he falls apart. He can’t remember plays, he’s always in the wrong spot on the floor. This goes back to the difference between the outdoor game and the indoor game. Billy Ray would be a guy I would love to have on my team up at Rucker or back in my barnstorming days. But on an NBA team, he just doesn’t have the mental tools to understand the situational nature of the team game. We rely on one another. In every play and every variation of each play, depending on the defensive look we are getting, I need to be sure my teammates are going to be where they are supposed to be. And on defense, where we have to rotate or drop down to help, I need to be sure my teammates have my back. Billy Ray, the most gifted athlete on the floor, seems lost. He’s gone by the second preseason game.
Later, it will turn out that Billy Ray is illiterate, and he can’t read the playbook.
But Clint Richardson, a far less assuming rookie, becomes a regular contributor, and along with point guard Lionel Hollins, a leader of the Trail Blazer team that beat us in ’77, who is acquired mid-season, he will be a crucial addition to our team.
It’s clear, playing against Magic and Larry from the start, that they are both complete players who embody the creative flair of the outdoor game with the intelligence and discipline of the indoor game. The first time Boston comes to town with Larry Bird, it’s November 1979, and he scores 22 against us. Bobby Jones guards him, and that’s a pretty good showing against one of the best defenders in the league. (I score 37 that night.) What I notice right away about Larry, even as a rookie, is that not only can he get his shot—and he has amazing range for a big man—but he will make it, too. He may be the best shooter I’ve ever seen. And he is a smart passer, able to thread the ball through inches of daylight. And he will not stop working. At one point, after John Havlicek has retired, he’s talking to me in the off-season and he says, “Man, if I knew how good Bird was going to be, I wouldn’t have retired.”
Bird and I have an interesting relationship on the court. When I defend him—and when the Celtics draft Kevin McHale and move Larry to small forward, that becomes a regular matchup for me—if he puts the ball down the floor, then I think I have him. I can poke the ball away and maybe get a steal. Larry’s game doesn’t have any weaknesses, but among his relative strengths, he’s least skilled as a dribbler. When he’s guarding me, he can’t stay with me. But I’ll be honest, I can’t really stop him, either. And at that point in my career, he’s a better rebounder than I am. But remember, he’s ten years younger.
We have some great wars over the years. We’ll match up in the playoffs four times between 1980 and 1986, with the winner going on to the finals every season. I feel like those rivalries, Sixers-Celtics, Sixers-Lakers, and Celtics-Lakers, are the most hard fought of that era. So when Larry says, as he has, that Michael Jordan was the best player he ever faced, I find it a little disrespectful. We beat them up pretty bad in some playoffs, and they got the better of us in others, but those are the toughest matchups for both of us. I don’t think it’s fair for Larry to say that Michael is the best based on one great playoff game, the 63-point performance in Boston Garden. But then, Larry is always playing mind games, so he’s probably still trying to psych out Magic and me.
But I don’t hate Larry. I never hated Larry. I hated Boston, I hated the Celtics. Larry and I do Converse commercials together, we are friendly. I’m sure he doesn’t hate me, either, but I bet he hates the Sixers and hates Philadelphia. My beef isn’t with Larry, it’s with his team. That’s how I look at it. The rivalry between Philly and Boston predates Dr. J or Larry Bird, it goes back to Wilt and Bill, to the Celtics and the Sixers meeting five straight years in the playoffs from 1965 to 1969, to even before that, with the Celtics and the Philadelphia Warriors battling three times between 1957 and 1962. Bill Russell versus Wilt Chamberlain may be the defining sports rivalry, or forget that, the defining rivalry, of all time. Dr. J and Larry Bird are just the latest chapter.
I remember hearing about Magic from Terry Furlow, who had gone to Michigan State and played a season with us in 1977. He was telling me about this high school junior who could play pro right now. I’m thinking, unless he’s Darryl Dawkins or Moses Malone—and those were mountainous men—then I don’t believe it. I remember myself at that age, I was maybe six foot two and weighed about 140 as a high school junior. So, imagine what Artis Gilmore could have done to me back then. But Terry didn’t tell me this kid was six foot nine and could handle like Tiny Archibald.
Magic actually comes to see me after he wins his NCAA title against Larry and Indiana State. He has just been drafted by the Lakers and he comes to the Spectrum to catch a Sixers game and I invite him to stay over at my condo. He’s with Dr. Charles Tucker, a psychologist who is a longtime friend and mentor. Magic is this buck-toothed, smiling, happy kid, but he’s also got very practical reasons for his trip. He wants to talk about the NBA and especially about how he should handle his business. He’s auditioning agents, and so out of courtesy to a young draft choice I sit down with Magic and Irwin Weiner. I have no idea that he is going to become one of the all-time greats. I’m in my prime and Magic, and Larry, for that matter, they’re just a couple of highly touted rookies coming into the league. No big deal. I’m more concerned with the guys I’ve been tangling with for years: Kareem, Elvin Hayes, and Wes Unseld.
By the end of that season, I will be thinking an awful lot about Bird and Magic.
29.
We have a great training camp. Our young players look promising. Our veterans are healthy. Even Doug Collins looks like he’s going to give us a full season, which has all of us optimistic. We’re all buying into
the Billy C and Chuck Daly system. And I’m gratified because to a great extent, this team has been built around my skills. Pat and Billy recognize that our best chance at winning is to play through me. I’m aware that I have been given more of an overt leadership role on this team, and with that come certain responsibilities. At one point that preseason, Billy loses his cool shouting at me during a break in practice for missing an assignment on defense, telling me in typically salty language that I need to get my head in the game. I’m steaming. I’m a veteran player and I don’t like being shown up like this, not in front of my teammates, not in front of the rookies, but I make a decision. I’m going to stay calm. I look at Billy, I nod, I betray no emotion.
“Okay, Billy,” and I wipe my face with a towel.
That sends a message to the guys. We are going to listen to our coaches. We are going to work together and no one is bigger than the team.
We’re poised for a good run, with the right mix of veterans still in their prime, and good young players like Mo Cheeks and Clint Richardson.
And we also have Darryl Dawkins.
The Sixers had taken Dawk right out of high school, back when NBA teams only drafted guys out of college. It had been controversial, but Pat Williams is willing to take chances when it comes to acquiring the best talent he can. And Dawk was a rare physical specimen, at six foot ten and 260 pounds and, supposedly, still growing.
He is always eccentric, usually in a harmless way, such as when he claims to be from the planet Lovetron, or is it Chocolate Paradise? He’s definitely ahead of his time in terms of bling, wearing a few pounds of gold, diamonds, and pendants with various nicknames: Sir Slam, Dr. Dunk, and, of course, Chocolate Thunder. Less charming is his habit of shooting from long distance. Darryl actually has a good touch, but it’s not as effective as when he batters his way to the basket.
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