RIP Al Attles

Anyone here remember the annual NBA GUIDE from The Sporting News?

In the front would be a page for each team. With pictures of the owner, GM and head coach.

On the Golden State page, it was always just Attles - who was usually dressed like Superfly - and whatever coach who was about to get fired.

I loved Attles immediately.

 

John Bach immediately came to mind.

 

You'll love the book. My copy is in tatters.

Found the 1975 Finals on YouTube and may watch it tonight after the convention. It'll be the first time I will have watched the series and heard Burnt Hamberder on the call, because in those days, everyone in the Bay Area muted their TVs to listen to Bill King. Dude was that good. It's nice he's in Cooperstown, but needs to be in Canton and Springfield as well.

 

Amazingly, he also did hockey! Back when the San Francisco Seals were in the (EDIT: Western) Hockey League, he and Roy Storey did play-by-play of either the 1962 or 1963 finals from the Cow Palace on KFRC. Roy told me that was before King grew the moustache and goatee.

 

Recall until the mid-80s, the Warriors were owned by Franklin Mieuli, not exactly a face the NBA wanted to present to the public then.

 

There's a recording on one game on the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame page. But he did a little of everything: Bradley hoops (broadcasting against Chick Hearn), Cal football and basketball (during the Pete Newell era) and fill-in on the Giants when Lon Simmons was doing the 49ers. There's even recordings of him reading emergency instructions in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake,

 

A true beacon of dignified sportsman not only for the NBA, the Bay Area, and the Warriors, but all of sports.

When he went after Riordan, that was awesome (I'm old enough I actually saw it on TV live).

 

Posting this (on a tape-delayed basis, of course):

 

So I'm watching this. Good gawd. No score bug, on screen clock or shot clock. No 3-point line, of course. Center jump to start every quarter. Mussburger and Oscar Robertson sound like they hadn't seen a Warriors game all season, and the matching leisure suits are worse.

Crazier, Mussburger gave an update on the Indy 500, which would be shown on delay ... on ABC!

But ya gots print reporters covering the game from the floor, where they belong.

 

This is how Mieuli usually appeared in public. Like Sherlock Holmes turned hippie.

 

He went after Riordan and got Unseld. Not a great trade.

 

What I remember about that book was the players’ pages were in alphabetical order, and people (other than me) were often surprised to see who was first: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Most people expected him to find him in the Js.