Dr. J - the Special

Excellent work, Bubbler, but a quibble with your conclusion: I'm also 41. And Jordan was our generation's Jordan.

Dr. J was everything else you say, though.

 

Bubbler, loved that summation. I identified with nearly all of it.

And you're right, if you asked my third grade class who Julius Erving was, you'd have gotten a bunch of blank stares. But if you asked who Dr. J was, you'd have heard pure gushing from nearly every boy in the room.

And you're right about how his image with kids was more akin to a superhero than a person. A superhero who wore a star spangled uniform, flew through the air and did things with a basketball that humans can't do.

Funny thing is when I watch Doc's highlights today they don't look nearly as impressive as I remembered them back then. Seems that Dominique, Jordan, Lebron and all the other high flyers that came after him have jaded me. But, to little kid in the late 70s, they were mind-blowing.

 

Bubbler, definitely a pretty good summation.

From someone a tad older (I got you by a decade); I had seen the 70's Knicks, the JoJo White/Chaney/Havliceck/Cowens Celts, the Alcindor/Big O Bucks, the UCLA Bruins dynasty, the Rick Barry Warriors, but nothing compared to the swooping of Dr. J, not just thunderous dunks, but also the teardrop finger rolls. It was so sweet.

He was hip (the part that MJ lacked) without being off-putting. Well spoken, respectful.

 

41, too. Grew up in L.A. and my first years of serious hoops fandom coincided with Magic's rookie season and Game 7 in the Spectrum, 42 and 15.

As my love of the NBA grew I always watched as many games in those killer Sixers-Celtics playoff series as I could the next 3-4 seasons. Too bad they couldn't have played in the Finals.

I also enjoyed those Bucks squads but they were always the odd team out, never destined to break through.

Anyway, not that I didn't enjoy or appreciate Dr. J because I did, but Magic Johnson was everything to me and everyone else was miles away. When it came to the Sixers I loved Toney and to a lesser extent Bobby Jones, and dreaded Moses. But there was something about Andrew Toney. Dude just busted so many nuts.

We had season tickets from '86 thru '89. I was at Dr. J's final game at the Forum when they rolled out the rocking chair and Kareem gave a wonderful tribute speech.

And the '83 Sixers devastated the Lakers, which crushed me for a week after the sweep.

 

Found a little video of Kareem's tribute:

http://youtu.be/YNUytfXiQDA?t=1m49s

 

I get it. And I can't knock that.

I was in eighth grade for Jordan's rookie season and because the Bulls were akin to a dead franchise before he arrived, he was hardly on TV that year, so his word-of-mouth cred was sky-high.

Certainly, at that time and through high school, he drew the ooh's and aah's much as Dr. J did. He obviously adorned many a high school student's poster wall at the time. (It's ironic, probably only to me, that Jordan's rookie Bulls team was knocked out by the basically the same Bucks team that ended Dr. J's career.)

I guess the difference for me is when they emerged. I was a kid when I was exposed to Dr. J. Everything was new and the wonderment is at a different level. I was 13 when Jordan debuted. Different level of awe at that age, not quite the same as when you're real young.

 

Yeah, I can see that. Dr. J was certainly something unique. The weird thing is I don't remember him destroying the Bucks quite as much as the other guys did. (As I noted previously, I really hated Andrew Toney.)

But he was just too cool. And when they brought in the dunk contest and the first one was basically a Dr. J homage, that was another sign of what that guy really was, at a time you and I were definitely too young to remember.

 

Hey, Bubbler, lifelong Sixers fan here. While IMO the '83 team is not the best in franchise history, because the '66-'67 team is, there's no doubt it's relatively ignored in NBA history. I don't think that's Simmons' fault, though, as horrible an historian (as opposed to media mogul, at which he's quite good) as he is. That was going on even in the '80s. The whole league wanted Celtics-Lakers and the 1983 season was conveniently broomed from history.
PS: To be just, I covered the 1984 and 1985 Finals, and they were pretty damn historic (also operatic) too.

 

I think it has to do with a few things.

That particular collection of players didn't play long together after that. Dr. J began to slowly fade. Malone eventually left for the Bullets. Jones didn't play much longer and Toney got injured. Only Cheeks had longevity in Philly beyond the mid 80s.

It didn't help that the '84 Sixers were dumped in the first round by the Nets. The 1985 Sixers, who have to be one of the most forgotten 58-24 teams in history (Dr. J, Malone and Barkley), were the last gasp of that group. They waxed the Bucks in the Eastern semis, but were then waxed themselves in the last true Celtics-Sixers series of the era 4-1.

By then, the Sixers were being re-cast as Barkley's team and the others were out of sight, out of mind.

The Celtics and Lakers continued to be championship relevant with their 80s casts to the end of the decade -- though I think the Lakers don't get enough credit for basically re-inventing themselves mid-decade with a new supporting cast. The 1981 Celtics and 1987 Celtics are pretty similar. Aside from Magic and an end-of-the-road Kareem, the 1980 Lakers and 1989 Lakers were totally different.

 

How true about the Lakers. In 1987, the big beef here in Boston about the Celtics, led by my pal Charles Pierce, was that K.C. didn't play Reggie Lewis enough. K.C. made his last stand with that team and they with him. Noble if futile. That Finals was like watching the Charge of the Light Brigade.

 

Dr. J's ABA stuff looks even MORE impressive now. As much as his vertical rise, the awesome thing about Doc in his ABA days was his one-hand control of the ball -- he would simply pluck the ball off a full-speed dribble and take off in the sky.

People don't do that now, because if you drive to the hoop you get four guys hacking their arms across your thighs, and about the second time you get the ball knocked loose trying to palm it, Clipboard Boy over on the sideline screams, "If I ever see you try to pick up the ball with one hand again you'll be running laps until you can't eat supper."

 

"one of the most forgotten 58-24 teams in history?"

What's so special or memorable about winning 58 games?