Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  He’s already a roughneck teen, in denim and $100 sneakers, a good-looking kid who, despite his time spent in custody and in rehabs, doesn’t have a whiff of thug about him. He’s still my boy. “Come on, explain your thinking?”

  He nods, considering how to answer. “You know the people in North Philly? They steal, but they steal because they have to, because they don’t have anything and nobody gives them any respect and that’s why and that’s okay.”

  “Really?” I say. “You condone people breaking into homes and carjacking because they are the have-nots of the world?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And if they came and stole from us, that would be okay?”

  He thinks this over. “No, that wouldn’t be okay. Not if they stole from us, but the fact that they steal? That’s okay. I understand the mentality.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “From being out on the street.”

  “And what about the law?”

  He shrugs. “What about it?”

  I’m trying to understand his ideas, but I disagree. This is America, the land of opportunity, and there is always some way that you can make it work, without breaking the law. Right? Always, always, right? (Or is my position somehow exceptional? Is my rise unique to me or my circumstances? I have to believe that in America, anyone can parallel my rise; it will just be in a different field or walk of life. It can be in business and not in basketball. This was my path. But it is one among many.)

  I become the father always worrying over his prodigals. Those last few seasons in the league, I am compartmentalizing my life more than ever. I am asked to serve on corporate boards, I am joining civic organizations, I am a paragon of citizenship, at least by the external measures of the world. Yet my marriage is an effort, an act of will, but isn’t every marriage? We get up every morning and decide we will do it again, one more day. My boys are in and out of trouble, throwing house parties when we are out of town, the police coming to raid the place. And through this, I tell myself I am not failing as a parent, as a father, I’m trying, but why can’t I get through to these boys?

  During this period, I am driving back and forth to New York where Freda has fallen out of remission, where the diagnosis is dire as the cancer has now metastasized throughout her body. Irwin finds her the best doctors, a team of oncologists at Westchester Medical Center, but by the time they open Freda up, there is nothing to do but close her, the cancer marbling her lungs, her spleen. There are drugs, the doctors tell me, some experimental therapies, but Freda is fading, drifting in and out of consciousness, unable to focus on me, on her boys, Barry and Keith, both trying to be strong in the hospital room, but both frightened, their eyes wide and red with grief.

  I try to manage the situation, to help make decisions. We measure time in days, then hours. Is that all she has?

  My sister, who I looked up to and admired and who showed me what it is to be a good student, a good person, who led us, who was the captain Marky and I followed. She is reduced to this shattered husk on this hospital bed, the pain gripping her when she is awake. She is delirious, but still there are moments where she sees me. “June, you tell the boys to turn off the gas.”

  Mom is with us, sitting in a corner, her hands busy with a Bible. She is strength itself, to have buried one child and now sitting at the deathbed of another.

  There is nothing I can explain to Barry and Keith as to why their mother is being taken. I could spin hokum about shortages of angels up in heaven, but these boys need her here. They know I will help them out, will do what I can.

  I want Freda to know that blood will always care for blood. She knows.

  She slips into a coma, her breathing steady but weak, so that when I arrive one morning where there was once my beautiful Freda, there is a frail woman attached to machines, screens blipping numbers, and nurses coming in to scribble on charts. Her fluids are measured, how much going in and out is carefully noted. Why? I don’t know.

  We pray. We hold hands around the bed. We remember fondly the good times, but there is no rationalizing why God would take Freda, on a rainy night in 1984, at just thirty-seven.

  Turq stays away.

  2.

  Now, remember that bedroom back in the Parkside Gardens projects on Beech Street? There is only me, still jumping, still trying to see over that windowsill.

  3.

  Basketball doesn’t recede in importance. Perhaps it was simply never as meaningful as it seems. It is why you know me, know my name, but it is not me. It is my profession, what I do—it’s a strange profession in that those who become very good at it also become famous. Great dentists and accountants are unremarked upon when they enter a restaurant. Great basketball players are never unnoticed.

  There is a fatigue that sets in after we win our championship, the accumulation of seven-game playoff series and championship finals spread over the years leaving us emotionally and physically drained. Perhaps that afflicts the Lakers when we sweep them; they are, like us, in their third final in four years. Long playoff runs tire out a team, as we are forced to return again and again to our emotional and spiritual wells. This could explain Boston’s sweep the previous season at the hands of the Bucks. They were exhausted after their consecutive deep runs.

  Despite the return of our front line intact, our all-star backcourt, we are taken out in the first round of the playoffs by the New Jersey Nets in a strange series in which neither team wins a home game. My knees are sore and my groin injury has recurred throughout that series, so I’m hobbled, feeling my age and playing through pain, averaging over 18 a game but never exerting my will the way I have in playoffs past.

  4.

  The next September, Billy and I are standing on the sideline at the Franklin and Marshall College gym watching a young player we’ve drafted out of Auburn, and Billy turns to me and says, “This kid is going to end my career.”

  I always make it a point to greet rookies, even rookies on another team. I’ll go over and shake their hands and welcome them to the NBA. It’s an easy gesture to make.

  And it doesn’t mean I won’t be dunking on that rookie in the first quarter.

  Charles Barkley is part of a new wave of players coming into the league. He’s in the same rookie class as Michael Jordan, and both players are part of that generation of superstars who will become more powerful than coaches and general managers. They are great players who, in an era when salaries start to transform the relationship between player and organization, become so influential that they determine the course of franchises. I don’t know if that’s what Billy is thinking when he makes his casual comment, but he is speaking the truth. A coach’s greatest skill in Billy’s era is understanding and exploiting matchups and diagramming plays to take advantage of those matchups. In Billy’s case, he also relies on his emotional feel for the game to figure out where he wants to go with the ball. (Also, he had Chuck Daly, who is a Hall of Fame basketball coach in his own right, as his assistant.) For coaches today, the primary talent is getting along with your superstar player, who for the first time is paid in multiples of your salary.

  I am living through this transition, though I’m too late in my career to exert that kind of influence. When Barkley joins the 76ers, we have Moses, we have me, so he’s not necessarily anything more than a promising rookie, a high draft pick who Pat picked up to add another rebounder. But when Charles shows up, he’s a different rookie than any we’ve had before. He’s still so country, all “yes, sir” and “no, sir,” and nodding as he listens to Billy give instruction, but once he’s out on the court, he just takes over. He’s so intelligent that it’s not a matter of not understanding or remembering the plays—or perhaps at that point in his development it is—but it’s just that he’s going to do things his way. If we’re trying to run the break, the plan will be for Charles to get the rebound and make the outlet to Andrew or Mo, but Charles starts dribbling through traffic, beats five guys, and then dunks the ball. That’s what has B
illy shaking his head, worrying about his career.

  Charles just takes over practices, and this is a roster that has won a championship. His practice opponent is Marc Iavaroni, a starter on our title team, and Marc is a tough competitor, a Long Island guy who will stand up to anybody, but after a few days, I’m watching this with Little Mo and I tell him, “Charles is going to injure Marc.”

  Billy is screaming at him to give up the ball, and Charles isn’t listening—because Charles can stop guys, and he can score on them, too. And that’s basically the game. He’s just not doing anything according to any plan that Billy recognizes. He’s rocking and rolling, taking off, not giving the ball up. “Pass the ball, biscuit head,” I shout at him on the break.

  “Man, I can take it,” and he goes up and dunks the ball over Marc. He doesn’t do it the way it’s drawn up, but it works.

  Charles alters the dynamic of everything, so that the rest of us are scrambling to adapt to his game. I’ve never seen a rookie come in and do that before. But this is a different era, and Charles is ushering it in.

  Charles reminds me a little of Bad News Barnes, only with the work ethic that Marvin never had. After signing his big rookie contract, he must have gone out and bought a half-dozen new cars, Mercedes, a Porsche, some huge SUV, a couple of BMWs. I only notice this because he’s driving a different car to practice every day.

  At one point, I stop Charles as we’re walking back to our cars.

  “How many cars do you have, Charles?”

  “I got six.”

  “You don’t need six cars, man.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “One,” I tell him. “You don’t need six fancy cars to be somebody. With one car, everybody knows it’s me behind the wheel. It’s not about the car, it’s about the brother driving it.”

  I tell Charles to be careful with his money. There are too many cases like Bad News Barnes who wound up broke, too many multimillion-dollar contracts that end up with a player deep in debt.

  I hope I’m getting through to him.

  I tell Billy, maybe it’s like with our kids. “You have to meet this guy halfway.”

  5.

  This is still a team built around Moses and his rebounding, but Charles has arrived and he quickly displaces Iavaroni in the starting lineup. And we win 58 games that year, finishing behind Boston and their 63 wins, including an early season 130–119 pasting the Celtics hand us in Boston, during which Larry Bird and I get into a famous fracas. At the time, the whole dispute seems unremarkable to me. It’s office politics, the squabbles of men at work, a situation that escalated because the game was being officiated by only one referee, Dick Bavetta, because the second, Jack Madden, was forced to sit out with a knee injury.

  Quinn Buckner of the Celtics is bringing up the ball. Larry and I get entangled as we’re running along the left side of the court around the 3-point line. We’re both pulling and tugging at each other, and Bird hits the floor. Bavetta calls the offensive foul on Larry, and I don’t think anything of it and run back up the floor, taking up position on the left side of the lane. I’m aware that Larry is upset, telling Bavetta he thinks it’s a “bullshit call,” and he’s still steaming as he runs down the court. I can see by his expression and the way he is squaring up that he’s not really getting into defensive position. He looks like he’s getting ready to take a swing. Or at least that’s what I think, so I reach out, just wanting to make sure that Larry can’t clock me. I end up with my right hand on his chest, and my fingers around his neck, which infuriates Larry, who swings upward, trying to break my hold. It feels like a punch to me, so then I start swinging and it’s on.

  My teammates have my back, and it’s Charles and Moses who quickly come over and grab Larry from behind.

  Then M. L. Carr puts down his towel and grabs me and the benches have cleared. I’m not a fighter. I remember Ray Wilson telling me that if I get in a fight and get ejected, I’ve just let the other team impose their will. But sometimes, as the team leader or coach or even a bench player, you just have to take one for the team.

  Larry and I are each fined $7,500. But Larry and I harbor no hard feelings because of it, and it never gets in the way of our working together in commercials or to promote the One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird video game that will come out in 1983.

  The only time we’ll ever talk about it is when we both decide we aren’t going to sign photos of the fight. That’s not who we are.

  Moses has his usual stellar year, averaging 24.6 points and 13.1 rebounds. I score 20 a night, and Toney contributes nearly 18 a game but is starting to struggle with the foot problems that will eventually end his career. It’s a shame because Andrew is one of the great clutch players of all time, and had he stayed healthy, he would have been a Hall of Famer. Charles has a very good rookie season, averaging 14 points on 55 percent shooting and 8.6 rebounds in just twenty-eight minutes a game.

  We have a deep playoff run, sweeping a 59-win Milwaukee team before losing to the Celtics in 5 games in another conference finals. I average only 17 a game, and against Boston I realize that at this point in their careers, the front line of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish is simply too strong for us. Mo and I are a little too old and Charles is a little too inexperienced. And the addition of Dennis Johnson slows down a hobbled Andrew Toney enough to put the Celtics over the top.

  Billy quits after the season.

  6.

  You can look at our roster the next season—Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, Julius Erving, Maurice Cheeks, Andrew Toney, Bob McAdoo—and say, How is it that this team doesn’t contend for a title? Under Matt Guokas, we win 54 games and get to the second round of the playoffs before Don Nelson and the Milwaukee Bucks finally exact their revenge. We’re an old, slow team, and it becomes clear as the season goes on that Charles is the future of this franchise. Charles and Moses can’t coexist. They both need real estate near the rim, and they both collapse defenses, but there are only so many post plays we can run for both of them. At this point, Charles is outrebounding Moses 12.8 to 11.8 and averaging 20 a game while shooting 57 percent.

  But more important, Matty wants a faster, more wide open offense, which doesn’t suit Moses at this stage in his career.

  Owner Harold Katz trades Moses to the Washington Bullets for Jeff Ruland, which is sort of like trading the best center in basketball for a knee problem. I mean, Moses will play through any injury. As long as he can—and sometimes even when he can’t—he will get you 20 and 10. If I need one player to build my franchise, and Kareem isn’t available, then the next call I’m making is to Moses Malone. I don’t care if he’s eighteen years old or thirty.

  As for the thirty-six-year-old Dr. J? Maybe that’s not a call I would make. (The twenty-two-year-old Dr. J is another story.) I spend my final season playing shooting guard. My knees are bothering me, my groin injury is acting up all season, but I am still a steady contributor to a 45-win playoff team.

  One of the greatest challenges to playing as long as I have is the generation gap that develops with the younger players. The guys coming into the league are kids, with the concerns of teenagers, while my concerns are so often about my teenage children. I’m thinking of how to get from practice to my daughter’s ballet recital while the younger players are thinking of where they can go to meet women. The Sixers and Matty make a special dispensation, allowing me to get to games on my own. I don’t always travel with the team that last year, making my own arrangements and meeting the team in Milwaukee or New York or Chicago for shoot-around, playing the game, and then going about my business, which could have me making my own way to our next city.

  The league throws a season-long farewell party for me that is unprecedented. Every city we play in that final year has a ceremony for me. I remember when John Havlicek retired, that there had been plenty of speeches and pregame festivities, but this was of a different magnitude. Each night on the final road trip, the home team is presenting me with plaques, banne
rs, trophies; it’s a remarkable outpouring and this is from opposing fans. Since coming into the NBA eleven years ago, I’ve managed to make even the fans in Boston somehow sad to see me go. That’s the greatest tribute I can imagine as an athlete, more important than MVP awards or scoring titles or any of that, even more important than championships. That’s what I’m thinking as the fans in Milwaukee and Chicago are cheering for me and I give them my little speech thanking them for the memories. I gave them something. I made them feel something.

  I’m not sure why me and not some other players. Why am I the one who touches them? Is it physical ability? Certainly that’s a part of it. But it goes back to what Leon told me years ago when we were barnstorming. Somehow, when people watched me, they got a taste of what it was like to be me. I bring them with me as I rise.

  They talk about how I transformed the horizontal game and made it into a vertical game. But that was bound to happen at some point. While I am studying for my degree, I read about Martin Luther and the demands he nailed to the church door in Germany. One of the points the author made is that eventually someone was going to start the Reformation; it just happened to be Martin Luther. The tides of history were moving that way. Does that diminish Martin Luther’s achievement?

  I’m not comparing myself to the great German monk.

  But basketball was moving in a certain direction. The playground game was coming indoors. Connie Hawkins and Elgin Baylor were transforming the sport, taking it airborne. What I was doing was simply refining the new version of the game we were all playing. It was going to happen eventually. I am just the player who nailed it.

  7.

  In my final home game at the Spectrum, I score 36 points. My last basket, an eight-foot turnaround, puts me over 30,000 for my career. Only Wilt and Kareem have reached that plateau at the time I retire. I averaged 24.2 points and finished eighth in games played with 1,243, seventh in career minutes, third in field goals, and fifth in field goals attempted, for a lifetime shooting percentage of over 50 percent. I even finish the all-time leader in steals.