Dr. J - the Special

I remembered you mentioning that a couple of months ago. By the way, someone posted a link to MLB CLassics uploading about 200 complete games onto Youtube. One of those uploaded was Nieve's no-hitter.

 

This top picture is amazing.



And no one dunks like Erving. Look how far away he is as he lines up the basket. That is insane.

 

The saddest thing to note about that last game for Doc: His final shot attempt was blocked by Randy Fucking Breuer. That's just not the way for a guy like him to go out.

 

For those who weren't around in the 1970s, Dr. J in the ABA had legendary status like no player has ever had since.

ABA teams were virtually never on TV and even game footage was very limited. So as a result virtually all you ever saw of him were highlights.

Plus most of his ABA career was in New York which helped to boost his legendary status.

Old ABA hands will still swear that most of America never saw the real Dr. J -- he had minor knee surgery in 1975 IIRC, but in the 1970s no knee surgery was really 'minor,' and supposedly that took a couple inches off his vertical and half a step off his to-the-basket burst.

He was still great when he got to the NBA but supposedly his greatest games were played in dingy ABA arenas in the early 1970s.

 

I remember him always wearing something on his knee. Those two pictures did not have anything on his knee, so you could be right about Doc pre-surgery.

Those hands just helped him control the ball so much on dunks.

 

As a young kid following the Bucks I was well aware of Dr. J because the Bucks were already loaded and had taken him with their first-round pick (12th overall) in 1972. I had no idea who he was at the time, but learned quickly. Could you imagine if he teamed up with Kareem and the Big O for a couple of seasons? Probably one of the worst moves ever by the Bucks was not getting him to come to the NBA until after the merger. I vaguely remember the Hawks signing him (and now just looked it up) the day before the draft after Erving sued his agent and the ABA. But my memory didn't recall the signing actually being the day before the draft.

 

Probably a lot of Dr. J's supposed offensive throttle-down when he came to the NBA had to do with the dramatically more physical defense allowed in the older league (and slower game pace).

You also read a lot of quotes at the time from old NBA hands citing the fact that almost every NBA team had a 7-foot, 250-ish center waiting in the lane to block shots if guys like Dr. J, Gervin or David Thompson broke by the defense on a drive, while except for Artis Gilmore, most ABA centers tended to be more of the 6-9/6-10 beanpole variety. Plus most ABA centers were jump-shooting types so a lot of the time they weren't even IN the lane.

Also, when Dr. J got to the Sixers he found George McGinnis, who was also a forward who wanted the ball a lot. In order to maintain any type of team chemistry, Dr. J was going to have to defer to McGinnis some of the time.

 

Here's the story of Erving, the Hawks, the Bucks and the ABA's Virginia Squires.

http://www.nba.com/hawks/history/DrJ.html

 

For those who asked, World B. Free has worked in community relations for the Sixers for a number of years. As for Bobby Jones, he has in fact been in coaching -- used to coach at Charlotte Christian School (where a future NBA player, Todd Fuller, was among his players) and now coaches younger kids.

 

Thanks, Mo. Congrats on getting the Pistons job.

 

I thought the documentary was fantastic. I grew up on Bird, Magic, and Jordan, so I missed most of the Dr. J years, at least from what I can remember. And I am bitter about that. Also, how bout Erving averaging 26 and 20 at UMass? Jesus.

That Rucker Park footage was awesome, especially the stills of the crowd, which Devil posted above. That's just insane. SI's Jack McCallum put up an interesting post last night trying to put Dr. J's career in perspective as to how it relates to any "All Time Team" discussions. You never, ever hear Dr. J mentioned in any All Time Starting Five discussions. Which is probably accurate, despite how goddamn awesome he was. McCallum said he couldn't even put him on the third team.

http://www.jackmccallum.net/2013/06/12/followup-to-the-doc-doc-how-good-was-erving/

I know a lot of people have complained that they left out the stuff about his other kid, the tennis player, and that it takes away from the entire Dr. J story, but that didn't bother me at all. Just a tremendous job by the NBA TV guys, or whoever put that together.

Dream Team last year. Dr. J this year. What's next?

 

Samuel L. Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction was named after Dr. J, right? I feel like I'm the last person to realize this.