Quote of the Day (Dr. J, on the Origin of His Flying Dunks)

“There's a sensation associated with flying. For me it started as a kid, in the park, jumping out of swings. Right next to my housing projects we had swings, and they were in a huge sandbox. It was white sand. So when you came home dirty, you had sand on you. There was ultimately a fence out there, and I always worried if I went too far I'd hit the fence. I always found a way to land. In the early days, when I was six, seven, eight, it was like a tuck-and-roll. I got to the point where I could jump out of the swing, land and nail it, like in the Olympics, when they do the vault. Height never bothered me. It was early training, and I didn't even know it.”—NBA Hall of Famer Julius Erving, quoted in Mark Bechtel, “Doctor, Reveal Thyself,” Sports Illustrated, June 17, 2013

At 75 years old—the age he attained yesterday—Julius Erving is a long way from that little kid on the swings. 

But, for those of us lucky enough to behold and gasp at his greatness in the Seventies and Eighties, he remains the prototype for so many electrifying players to follow, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Isaiah Thomas, and Dominique Wilkins.

Call him what you like—artist, acrobat, magician—but to see him once with the ball in his hand, torqueing his body midair on the way to the basket, means never forgetting what he meant to so many of us in our youth.

(For a fine summary in different moments in the career of the great small forward who so influenced pro basketball, see this 2008 post from David Friedman’s “20 Second Timeout” blog on “Great Julius Erving Stories.”)