Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  Turquoise and I have some violent fights. A man can’t win these fights. If I hit back, then that only enrages Turq more and she’s going to start swinging harder.

  I’ve hit her, but only in self-defense. I’m not inclined toward that kind of confrontation. I may not always be the best judge of a situation—that is, coming downstairs and handing that letter to Turq—but I don’t ever touch her unless I’m being attacked. There are guys I know, ballplayers, who say, “Hey, if a girl starts a fight, slap her and she’ll back down.” But I know Turq. She doesn’t back down from a fight. Ever. That’s also what I love about her.

  I get in my new Mercedes and I’m driving out east, along the Long Island Expressway, all the way to the Hamptons, where I check into a motel.

  I call Irwin and we hire this hardball attorney from Philadelphia who is going to handle the paternity issues. He says we need to do a DNA test and, until we get those results, we need to sit tight. In the letter, Samantha wrote she was sure I was the father. But I did wonder how she could be certain, since I was suspicious she’d been with another player as well as another sportswriter, but something about the letter made me believe her.

  The tests come back confirming that Alexandra is my daughter.

  Turquoise calls me after three days and tells me, “You need to come home.”

  “You’re gonna hit me!” I tell her.

  “Our babies need you,” she says. “I won’t hit you. I may kill you, but I’m not gonna hit you.”

  I come home. Turquoise tells me how it’s going to be. The lawyers will draw up an agreement, providing support for the child—Turq doesn’t care about the money—but I am to have no contact with the mother or child. Ever. It is to be a purely financial arrangement. There will be no emotional connection. The child should not even know I am her father.

  What choice do I have?

  We have the lawyers draw up the contract. I will give Samantha $4,000 a month until Alexandra is eighteen. She will get a car when she is sixteen and there will be private school tuition.

  I’m not happy about this, but I need to work on the family that I have right here.

  39.

  A few years later, I’m doing a basketball clinic in San Diego, and I notice Samantha is there, standing behind a crowd of about thirty children. I’m playing with these little kids, and Samantha comes over and she says, “You know, that’s your daughter over there.”

  I look over and see in this crowd of kids a beautiful little girl. She looks like Jazmin, my other daughter, and my heart aches as I see this child with no father. I know what that feels like.

  40.

  We are having a fine season, winning 58 games, cruising through the first round, and then coming up against those always tough Milwaukee Bucks. It is the great misfortune of the Bucks of the early ’80s that they happen to be sharing the league with the Sixers and Celtics of that period. These Bucks, with Lanier, Moncrief, Marques Johnson, Pat Cummings, Junior Bridgeman, Quinn Buckner, are a loaded team, coached by Don Nelson, that wins at least 50 games every year from 1981 to 1987 and never makes it to a championship final. But sorry, Don, we take your 55-win Bucks out again 4-2, winning game 6 in Milwaukee.

  We’ve lost Lionel Hollins during the first round when he and Tree Rollins found themselves in the middle of a Three Stooges routine as Tree elbows the Train and then the Train punches the Tree in the back of his head. Tree chases Lionel behind the basket, down the aisle, into the crowd, and then back onto the floor. But no one is laughing when Lionel is diagnosed with a broken hand from punching Tree in the head.

  Playing on just one day’s rest after the tough Milwaukee series, we get obliterated by Boston in game 1 of the conference finals, with Larry putting up a triple-double. The biggest addition the Celtics have made is Danny Ainge, a slick playmaker out of Brigham Young, but it doesn’t matter because no Celtics guards can stop Toney, who in game 2 explodes for 30. We come back to Philly and win games 3 and 4, playing smothering defense and holding the Celtics to under 100 in both. The Boston Strangler torches Chris Ford, Danny Ainge, and the other Celtics guards for 39 in game 4.

  It’s bothered Billy for a while that we are too nice a team. He believes that we lack a certain killer instinct, and the Boston Strangler is helping to eliminate that. But Billy also believes we have to adopt a more aggressive mind-set. He tells us he hates it when we give a hand to opponents who have fallen or been knocked over. That basic courtesy, which I’ve extended all my life, on the court or off, communicates that we are soft. He says we should leave them to die.

  Instead, we’re the ones who look to be heading for another playoff grave. For the second year in a row we have gone up 3–1, only to squander the lead and stand on the brink of losing the series. We’re heading back to Boston for game 7, and, judging by our awful rebounding and terrible shooting in the last two defeats, there doesn’t seem to be much hope for us to get past the bruising Bird, Parish, and McHale front line. Maybe Harold Katz is right: we just aren’t big enough. And maybe Billy is right: we’re not tough enough.

  The Philadelphia Inquirer describes our situation as “Hopeless.” One of the Boston papers runs a headline that reads, “WILL SIXERS CHOKE?”

  We’re nervous. The day before our flight to Boston, we’re practicing in the Palestra, the gym at the University of Pennsylvania. Our whole team is in a funk. We’ve been playing center by committee all season. Every game, Billy looks around and asks, “Who wants to start tonight?”

  And now, after 6 games, our big guys are looking at each other and saying, “Not me.”

  I’m like, “Shit, man, come on!”

  We need to show a little more confidence than that.

  Billy and Chuck walk us through practice. But by now, after playing the Celtics twenty-three times in the past two regular seasons and playoffs, we know all their plays and tendencies and they know ours. There is only so much the coaches can do.

  Finally, Billy looks around and says, “You know what, we’re leaving. You guys need to figure out what you are going to do.”

  After they exit, we’re standing around on the court. The Palestra doesn’t have wooden or cushioned seats, it has concrete seats, about eight thousand of them, and there is not a soul in that building besides the twelve of us on that court. It’s like a mausoleum in there, silent, echoey; if one of us shifts his weight, the sneaker squeak reverberates up to the rafters.

  “That’s it?” I say. We usually practice for about two hours. “All right, you guys, we’re going to have a team meeting.”

  So we go back down to the locker room and close the door and we’re all sitting there on the benches. “Most of you guys were here last year, so you know it’s going to be war up there in Boston,” I say. “Total war. We’ve got to bring everything in our repertoire to win this game. And right now, I don’t feel like our team is ready. But I don’t have a crystal ball. So, let’s get our feelings out there. Let’s say what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling.”

  We go around the room. Toney is talking about wanting more shots, Caldwell says something unintelligible, Darryl promises to “put something on their ass.” And then we get to Clint Richardson, and he stands up and he says, “You know what? It’s just us. Nobody believes in us. Nobody thinks we have a chance. Man, the coaches left. The fans gave up. Nobody in Boston thinks we can win. Nobody in Philly thinks we can win. It’s just us.”

  Clint never says shit. But he’s onto something. I repeat it. “Just us. I like that.”

  Mo picks it up. “It’s just us!”

  Dawk shouts, “Justice!”

  “No, no, just us,” I say. “Like, J-u-s-t u-s.”

  Dawk nods. “Yeah. Justice!”

  But Clint has us all fired up. We’re all nodding, chanting, “Just us!”

  “Let’s hold on to that,” I say. “Let’s take that to Boston.”

  On the bus from our hotel in Cambridge to the Garden, we’re repeating that sentiment, how it’s us against the world.
But after shoot-around, we go back to our locker room, and somehow the Philly front office has gotten in here, and they’ve put all these letters up from everyone back in Philly, from janitors and secretaries and locker room attendants all the way up to team officials. There are so many of them. “We believe,” “Come back with the victory,” “We’re all in this together.” It’s amazing. We’re all looking at each other and reading these letters and it’s like, it’s not just us. It’s all of us. It’s all of Philly. They have been here all along, rooting for us and supporting us.

  We’re all inspired by that. Whoever arranged to get those letters up there is a motivational genius, because we come out of the locker room all loose and ready to kick some Celtic ass.

  During warm-ups, a few Boston fans are walking around in white bedsheets with “Ghosts of Celtics Past” on the front. At first glance, when I see them, they look like the Klan. Maybe I hear Bill Russell whispering in my ear about the tortured history of Boston and black folks. I just have to laugh at my first impression.

  We take them down, opening up a lead in the first quarter and never letting up. I score 29 and Toney torches M. L. Carr for 34 points. Mo Cheeks and Bobby come through with big games and we pull away in the fourth quarter, eventually winning by 14. The Boston fans show their class by chanting “Beat LA. Beat LA.” And a few of them even have a red number 6 up in the stands.

  I can’t overstate the significance of that seventh game. It may have been the most important game of my career. Back then, those Sixer-Celtic series felt bigger than championship finals, or certainly more emotional. Those games are tougher and more mentally grueling than any others I’ve ever played.

  That’s why the finals almost seem an anticlimax. Our deficiencies on the glass were pretty clearly exposed by the Celtics, who, even in losing game 7, outrebound us by 11.

  I’m not making excuses, but each of the three times we make the finals, the Lakers are waiting for us. During that period, the Celtics will make the NBA finals five times, winning three titles. But they have the good fortune to face the Houston Rockets in two of those trips instead of the Lakers. With all due respect to the Rockets, they just weren’t the Lakers. The Celtics will finish the decade 1-2 against Kareem and Magic in the NBA finals, the same as ours.

  The Laker team we face is a juggernaut, with four future Hall of Famers (Kareem, Magic, Jamaal Wilkes, and Bob McAdoo) and additional all-stars like Norm Nixon and Michael Cooper. Cooper doesn’t start on that team and he’s an eight-time first- or second-team All Defense player and eventual Defensive Player of the Year. Norm Nixon is an all-star in 1982, scoring over 17 and dishing out 8 assists a night, and he has fewer assists than Magic, who is technically their shooting guard that year. Magic actually averages more rebounds than our centers.

  They get their split in the first two games, and then we go out and lose our first two in LA. These Lakers are a great running team, and they start out most games looking for fast-break opportunities. Their defenders are always leaving their men early and taking off, which puts pressure on our guards to pick up Jamaal or Cooper or Magic or whoever is running the break. They do this so often and so quickly to open games that it takes us out of our offensive rhythm, because we are already thinking about defensive matchups and getting downcourt to stop the break.

  Game 6 is typical of the series, as the Lakers open up a lead with their Showtime offense, and we have to fight and claw to get back into the game. We’re trailing 8–0 when I finally get us on the board with a 15-footer. Usually, the way Billy likes to run our offense is for me to defer to the other guys in the first few minutes to try to get them in the flow. Billy’s reasoning is that I’m going to get my shots because I play the most minutes on the team, but to win, we need to get Andrew Toney going, and Mo Cheeks, and maybe see how Bobby’s shooting the ball.

  On defense, we play our matchups pretty straight up to start. But when Kareem has the ball, then we’ll threaten to double-team, and if Kareem dribbles, I’ll drop down, force him to pass the ball. But we can’t really slow down the Laker offense, and they score 66 in the first half.

  During halftime, Billy is furious, screaming, “Sixty-six! That’s a hundred thirty-two points in a game. We can’t win basketball games giving up a hundred thirty-two. We’re not rebounding and we’re turning the ball over. They are exploiting our exterior defense.”

  He wants us to stay more disciplined on offense, and to look for me down low, even if I’m covered, because that is still a good matchup for us. As it turns out, the way we begin to break down their trap is that Andrew Toney gets hot on his way to 29 points and keeps us in the game. We pull to within 1 a couple of times but are never able to take a lead. Each time we get close, then Magic gets fouled and goes to the line, or Kareem hits a big shot. We just can’t impose our will, despite 30 points from me.

  I am generally considered the best player on these Sixer teams, but there are significant stretches, even to close out games, where our offense goes away from me. Billy, and Gene before him, calls plays for Andrew or Darryl or Bobby (or George or Lloyd, and so on) and sometimes I don’t handle the ball at all. It’s the state of the game: team play, no one arguing with the coach, not even the superstars. Every scoring champion since Lew Alcindor in 1971 has come up short in the playoffs. Teams aren’t designed to be top heavy.

  That game 6 against the Lakers is a case in point. Down the stretch of an elimination game, our offense resembles the kind of balanced attack made famous by North Carolina’s Dean Smith. Billy played his college ball in Chapel Hill, and I can’t help but think he draws some of his offensive philosophy from his undergraduate experience. With five minutes to play, we’re down by 3 points and over the next seven possessions, I handle the ball twice and draw one foul after the game has largely been decided.

  I’m not saying I could have won that game to force game 7, but I’m just pointing out how hard it is—and will be—to compare players from different eras (Michael, Kobe, and LeBron—my lineage—will all shoot over twenty times a game for most of their careers; I did only once in the NBA). And I’m not sure anyone could have stopped the Lakers that year. With four minutes left, Kareem makes a jumper in the lane, draws a foul, and then hits his free throw to put the Lakers ahead by 6 and we unravel from there, unable to stop Wilkes, Nixon, Magic (the Most Valuable Player for the series), and McAdoo. The Forum erupts as the Lakers win their second title in three years against us.

  I’ve never believed in the knock on some athletes and teams, how they “can’t win the big one.” But now, watching Pat Riley and the Lakers celebrate, seeing McAdoo rejoice at winning his first title, and Magic grinning and hugging Kareem, I have to wonder why our team just keeps coming up a little short. I’ve won championships in the ABA, so I believe I know what it takes to win in these kinds of high-pressure situations. There has to be a reason this keeps happening. Bill Russell tells me that there is no such thing as a jinxed team. There are very good teams that beat other very good teams to get to the NBA finals, and then they lose to an even better team. And I have to admit, this Laker team is deeper than ours. I believe I can match up with any player in the world, but what about the rest of our guys? What about our big men? We finish game 6 with 35 rebounds. The Lakers finish with 49. We will not beat Kareem and the Lakers, never mind Parish, McHale, Bird, and the Celtics, if we can’t compete on the boards.

  I’m thirty-two years old. How many more shots at this am I going to get? That’s why I cry in the locker room after the game for the first time in my pro career.

  I don’t cry when we beat Boston. I don’t cry when we lose to Boston. But this time, I feel like the window is closing. Even more worrying, the Lakers have the first pick in the 1982 draft. They’re going to reload again, adding James Worthy to a championship team.

  How are we going to beat these guys?

  41.

  My contract with the Sixers requires that I permanently relocate to Philadelphia. We sell our house in Upper Brookville, t
urning a nice profit. Turq and I decide on our new home: a 12,000-square-foot Normandy-style mansion in Villanova with a tennis court, swimming pool, basketball court, and huge circular drive. We pay $650,000—I’ll later sell it for $3 million—and take on a permanent staff of two. This is an even more opulent home than our house in Upper Brookville, and as soon as we arrive on the Mainline, we start entertaining in an even grander style than we had in Long Island. Philadelphia has embraced me to a degree that New York never had, outside of a few communities in Long Island, and I feel that Turq is happy here in part because we are farther from my family. Turq and my mom and Freda still don’t get along, and that’s a source of constant tension for me. Of course my mom wants to see her grandkids, to spend time with Cheo, J, Jaz, and Cory, but Turq makes it clear she doesn’t like my mom to be around. Turq’s mother, Willia, whom I am fond of, and her brother James, come up and spend extended stretches as our guests. But my mom is not made to feel welcome.

  To this day, if you ask Cheo or J or any of our kids about their grandmother, they will think of Turq’s mom instead of mine.

  I’m always trying to resolve this issue. I’m good friends with the musician Grover Washington Jr., who the year before released the song “Let It Flow” (for “Dr. J”), as a smooth jazz tribute to me. He plays it over a montage of some of my dunks, and I like to think of it as art inspiring art. I ask Grover how I can somehow connect my wife and my mother.

  “You can’t make two cats like each other,” Grover says. “All you can do is impose your will and force them to be civil. But whether or not they like each other is not something that you can decide.”

  He looks at me. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Two cats can’t dig each other if one cat doesn’t dig herself.”