Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  There are eighteen thousand there that night. They have made a sign that says, we’ll never fill your shoes, doc. thanks for the memories.

  I think to myself, Wait, it’s not like I’m dying. As I tell the fans in every city, “Don’t be sad, you should be as happy as I am happy, as my family is happy, that we are able to walk away from this beautiful game. . . . I’m going to take the time to understand myself better, to understand my family better and my family’s needs and not volunteer to get into any situation that would be as consuming as this profession has been. . . . I’d like to be freed so that God’s hand can work for me and my family in my life after basketball. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m going to allow my creator to tell me what’s next.”

  8.

  Shortly after I retire from basketball I honor my mother, and Marky and Freda, by completing my bachelor’s degree.

  9.

  It has been a blessing. To escape from the jewelry store basement of life, and to be given a chance to travel, to see the country and the world, to make friends high and low, to have visited the White House three times, to have met presidents and First Ladies, artists, intellectuals, actors, musicians, the voices and leaders of my generation, and all through a game I play. I rise from those projects to these great heights, never forgetting where I am from or who I am—as if my mother would ever allow that to happen—and yet when I am finished with the game, I am almost surprised at this long ribbon of life still ahead of me, ahead of us, my family.

  I sometimes go see Sixers owner Harold Katz up at his office building in North Philadelphia. Harold has built Nutrisystem into the second-largest weight-loss business in the country. I like to talk to him about how he got his start and just generally understand the mind-set of a successful entrepreneur. He tells me that he feels he has become a victim of his own success, that his business demands that he be there every day, that the success or failure of it depends on his micromanaging, and that’s a big mistake. It sounds like a grander version of the old jewelry store back in Rockville Centre. I don’t want that.

  I have been preparing for this day for my last few seasons, knowing I will transition into business. My investment with Bruce Llewellyn in Philadelphia Coca-Cola has been lucrative, and with my degree in hand I am offered numerous seats on corporate boards, learning firsthand how the upper echelons of capitalism function. This, too, is one of the blessings of my rise, that I make connections with captains of industry, am invited to join them on the golf course and tennis courts, am called to take my place in society, another suburban dad, balancing children, wife, family.

  I don’t retire with the $100 million or more a modern-day star of my stature might walk away with. My highest salary was under $2 million a season, a fortune for a kid from Hempstead, and when I leave the game, I have about $4.5 million in cash and another $4.5 million in assets. Additionally, the NBA and David Stern pay me a few hundred thousand dollars a year to work for the league as a goodwill ambassador, helping to promote the game globally, talk to rookies and international players about the transition to playing in the NBA, and appear on behalf of the league in corporate and cultural settings. Still, I know this is transitional work for me, a perquisite of completing a successful career.

  I fully plan to work every year for the rest of my life.

  I’ve started the Erving Group to oversee my investments and centralize the managing of what we now call the Dr. J brand. I’ve always loved one-on-one basketball, believing it is a terrific way to hone my skills. It’s been a part of my practice routine my whole career. And I remember those matchups with Pistol Pete and George Gervin as some of the highlights of my career. Why not share that with the fans and see if we can make some cash doing it? David Wooley, a Philadelphia business associate of mine, and I conceive the Clash of the Legends Pay Per View Event. The system is already in place, so we are just providing the content. If just 5 percent of the pay-per-view audience buys it, that’s $18 million in revenue. Donald Trump has built a reputation by televising boxing and wrestling, and I have a good relationship with him. We plan three matchups at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, Rick Barry versus Connie Hawkins, Tiny Archibald versus George Gervin, and for the main event, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar versus Dr. J. Kareem and I are guaranteed six-figure paydays, while the rest of the guys get a little less and we are all going to share in the pay-per-view sales. The event is going to be produced like Wrestlemania, with fire pots and smoke and loud music. And if this works, we can expand it, make it a regular event: Magic versus Bird, Michael versus Drexler, who knows?

  One thing I don’t consider is that one-on-one basketball is not as much fun to watch as it is to play. While the event generates plenty of buzz and media coverage, the actual PPV buy is disappointing as only fifty-five thousand fans pay to watch Kareem beat me 41 to 23 in four five-minute quarters. I won’t defend the business decision, which definitely overestimated the amount of interest in one-on-one basketball, but I will defend my result, saying that Kareem had more time to prepare, since I was working so hard on putting together and then promoting the event.

  Still, I have to give Kareem credit. He’s the greatest.

  10.

  I’m inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993. It’s an honor to go in with Calvin Murphy, Walt Bellamy, and old, worthy adversaries Dan Issel and Bill Walton. As I am inducted, I feel Marky and Freda there with me.

  My children Cheo, J, Cory, and Jaz are there. So is Turq.

  Have I earned your love, all of you? No matter, I have to earn it every day again. That’s what Ray and Earl and Don taught me. That’s what my mom taught me.

  11.

  Every famous athlete retires twice, first from the game and then from talking about the game. The familiar career for the ex-jock is to take my place behind a desk, to sit with Bob Costas, Bill Walton, Peter Vecsey, Hannah Storm, and other pundits and players and spout wisdom and platitudes about the game. It takes a certain knack, a quickness of mind, and an ability to say nothing while sounding like I am saying something. I have to learn to speak while a producer is talking into my ear, giving me some statistics that I can use in support of a vacuous thesis about the first half of a basketball game that will be forgotten tomorrow. During the season I travel every weekend up to New York City to work at the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center, and then for the NBA finals I fly to the host cities, where I sit with Walton and Costas and Vecsey at our desk in the stands where we weigh in during halftime on how the Houston trapping defense is slowing down Penny Hardaway or Nick Anderson or how Hakeem is getting the better of Shaq down low. I find the analyses numbing. It is remarkable to me how we can fill hours, days even, of television talking about basketball, and yet I always feel that we are failing to communicate the truth of the game. Even here, in this book, I worry that I am not up to the task of explaining the essence of basketball as it is played at the highest levels. I feel that it is like trying to explain music through words or to describe a painting through text. You can give a feeling of the work, or compare it to something else, but you can’t re-create the actual feeling of being on the court, or making that move, of imposing your will, of the precise moment that you realize you can reach the front of the rim. Because it is not a moment, it is a sense, an instinct, a flicker of insight and nerve so sudden that you have to act on it before it is a thought. What do you see? A subtle shift of weight, a lowering of the hands, a leaning forward, a glance, and that is enough to set off a chain of events. They are actions that stem from a thousand tiny instincts. But from where we are sitting above the court, we are unable to explain the game through these small moments, and instead talk about the Bulls’ second chance scoring and the Rockets’ bench production. I understand the need to do that, I have done some of that in this book, but I also know that we are simply describing a simulation of the game, rendering a three-dimensional activity in two dimensions. The truth, I think, is two men facing each other on a playground somewhere, and one of them senses the
other is leaning to his left, only the defender isn’t actually leaning, he is trying to force the ball handler to his own left, and so on, the game spiraling upward in complexity and reaction and twitch and rise, from asphalt to high school, college gymnasiums to NBA parquet, and finally to here, where I sit behind this desk, talking about all of this as if it is nothing more than just those two kids in that school yard.

  But as I make that drive every weekend up to New York to take my place behind the TV desk, or to fly down to Orlando or Houston or Chicago or Seattle or wherever the NBA finals are, I am reminded of something, of that boy riding his English racer bicycle along Sunrise Highway to work at Goldy’s Jewelry Store. I’m a grown man in a fine suit behind the wheel of an imported automobile on the New Jersey Turnpike, but the feeling is exactly the same: I am headed back into that mailroom.

  I don’t want this. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about basketball.

  12.

  When Pat Williams of the Orlando Magic asks me to join him in Orlando as executive vice president of operations, I’m drawn to the position in part because it’s not the typical ex-player job, but a real business position. Pat and John Gabriel, another former Sixers employee who would become Executive of the Year as Magic GM, coax me down to Orlando with a $1 million-a-year contract and the opportunity to work building up the team’s off-the-court business opportunities.

  I appreciate Pat and John believing in me as a businessman. And I’m eager to move on from NBC, so I decide to move down to Orlando.

  Turquoise wants to stay in Philly. We talk it over. We’ve been through so much together, so much betrayal and reconciliation, the worried nights talking over what to do with our kids. The joy of Jazmin graduating high school and going on to Spelman College, and the disappointment over Cheo getting arrested and ending up in a state penitentiary. J and Cory are finding their way; however, both have their issues with substances, sometimes following Cheo’s lead. But through each of our hardships—and my own failings as a husband are part of that—we somehow pick up and carry on. We go through hell together. Somehow, there are enough good times to more than balance that out.

  This time, however, Turq says she’s not coming with me. Cory is still in school, and she wants him to finish in Philadelphia. It’s not the best thing for the relationship, I know that.

  “Are we separating?” I ask. We’ve been together over twenty-five years.

  Neither of us is sure of what exactly we are doing. But we are certainly leaving the traditional marriage space, if we’ve ever really been in it. This is trouble. If I’m living on my own for a month, and I have an urge, then I’m likely to do something about it. Not every man is like that, so I have to acknowledge that this is my issue. Every man has his own time frame when he might stray, but for me, I know that going to live on my own in a new city is likely to be trouble.

  Yet the relationship is durable. When Cory graduates high school, Turq moves down to Orlando and we pick up again. She is a soldier, I have to give her that. Cory has moved down with us as well, and he has struck up a friendship with young Orlando Magic player Corey Maggette. The two of them are the same age, and I’m pleased by this relationship. Corey is a good influence, a Duke alumnus who is focused and disciplined. My son Cory, at nineteen, is still growing and I think he sees in Corey a role model. And removed from Philadelphia and some of his old influences, Cory is thriving down in Orlando. I tell him if he’s not going to school, then he’s going to have to get a job, and he gets part-time work at a Panera Bakery, and he’s also starting back up at a junior college in Lake Mary, Florida.

  I have a policy with all my children: if it’s school, they know I will support their effort financially and emotionally. I believe in education. If they are looking for help with a business venture, then I need to look at that strictly as a dollars-and-cents issue, with the obviously more generous view that I’m inclined to make toward my own flesh and blood.

  My middle son, J, or Julius Erving III, has gone on to become successful in his own right, building the music management firm Erving Wonder along with Troy Carter and selling that to the British management company Sanctuary. J has developed and worked with acts like Angie Stone, Floetry, Tyga, and Nelly. He’s an unquestioned success in his field and if leveraging the Julius Erving name has helped him, then I’m both proud and impressed, because sometimes even I struggle to leverage that name.

  After college, Jaz was in sales at Saks Fifth Avenue before starting her own events planning company, Jazmin Tea. Jaz now lives in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in psychology.

  Cheo still breaks my heart, as he has been in and out of prison. He’s even told me he doesn’t mind prison, that he appreciates the routine. I don’t always understand him, and we may not always be friends, but we will always be family. A father’s love for his son transcends understanding.

  13.

  Occasionally over the years I hear about Alexandra. I know she’s a promising tennis player. In that world, the pro tennis circuit, there are already plenty of rumors circulating about who her father is. I run into the tennis legend Pancho Gonzalez down in Miami, and he starts talking to me about Alexandra, about what great strokes she has and the way he’s saying it, it’s obvious that he knows she’s my daughter. And at one point I’m walking with John McEnroe through LaGuardia Airport—we’re actually on our way back from Michael Jordan’s golf tournament—and he’s telling me about Alexandra, how good she’s getting, how she’s turning pro. So, among tennis people, my paternity is well known.

  Still, I’m caught off guard in 1999 when Alexandra turns pro two weeks after graduating from La Jolla Country Day School and makes a great run at Wimbledon. She’s the first woman qualifier in the Open Era to make a semifinal. The English are going crazy over her play and her dainty curtsies as she acknowledges their applause after another victorious point. But the speculation is becoming rampant about who her father is. A sportswriter from a local newspaper has been calling me repeatedly, asking questions about Alexandra, which I’m careful to dodge. But when Alexandra makes the semis, the paper publishes a story that I’ve denied being her father, which I never do. I simply refused to corroborate his story.

  I have no choice but to release a statement confirming that I am the father and asking the media to give her space on this issue. I’m hoping that will put the story behind her before her semifinal match against Lindsay Davenport.

  I also have to tell my other children that they all have a sister they haven’t known about. I’ve paid a terrible price for my sins, I suppose, and there is some justice in that. But why should Alexandra have had to pay any price? What sin did she commit?

  Samantha obviously did a fantastic job as a single mom raising her daughter, and I have nothing but praise and admiration for both of them. As I said, there are facets of my life that are less than heroic. This is an area where I wish I could have done it differently. I wish I could have been there for her from the start, to have fought harder against Turquoise’s ultimatum about how this was to be handled. (I can’t blame Turq, of course. She was just protecting our family.) There is no villain here, though I would say—and this is my book—that there is one person who is more at fault in this affair than the rest, and I raise my hand.

  Alexandra and I have since reconciled and have spent plenty of time trying to forge a relationship after over twenty years of a vacuum. She knows her brothers and sisters, and they know her. I’m trying to encourage those relationships. She’s had some problems with injuries. As she’s making her comeback, she’s asked me to come watch her play, and I did, going to a tournament in Hilton Head. I’ve given her substantial financial support as she tries to revive her tennis career. She’s a wonderful athlete and deserves that opportunity.

  But she’s also got to be sensible. Is it really worth spending several thousand dollars in air travel, accommodations, and additional expenses only to come in third and win $900? At one point in Los Angele
s, we sit down and have a talk.

  “I want to be involved in your life,” I tell her, “but I don’t want it to just be a financial arrangement.”

  She nods.

  “I want us to be father and daughter,” I say, “and that means more than you calling me and asking for checks.”

  Relationships with grown children are complex, and perhaps ours was bound to be even more complicated because of all the time we missed. How could it not be? But at least we have a relationship.

  I miss her. I always missed her.

  14.

  Turquoise and I are planning a dinner party. We’ve always thrived in social settings, in many ways getting along better in public than we do in private, which in a lifestyle such as ours is not as superficial as it sounds. We spend a great deal of time in public as Julius and Turquoise Erving. A dinner party, a fine meal with some good friends, is an important step for us in reestablishing our bond, in figuring out how we are together.

  Turq is in the kitchen, working, and she asks Cory if he’ll run out to get some bread from Panera Bakery. He’s done this plenty of times. It’s a bread run, like my going up to Mrs. Pete’s back in Hempstead. He gets into his black Volkswagen Passat, carefully pulls his seat belt over his dress shirt so as not to wrinkle it, and he’s gone.

  When Cory was eighteen, we visited former NBA point guard and head coach John Lucas’s rehab facility in Katy, Texas. (John was the point guard on the Bucks team that knocked us out of the playoffs my last season in the league.) I had taken Cory down there because of his dabbling in drugs, and after a few days, John called me and said he didn’t think Cory was an addict. Yet he was definitely prone to experiment with drugs, but then there are doctors and lawyers and NBA players who do that and aren’t considered addicts. First with Cheo and now with Cory, I’ve tried to find the right approach: rehab, tough love, counseling, therapy, I don’t know. I do know that a drug addict is going to use until he hits bottom, and that bottom is very often jail, or an institution, or worse.