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.”)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘White Men Can't Jump,’ With an Epic Bit of Trash Talking)

Billy Hoyle [played by Woody Harrelson] [intentionally antagonizing Spike and Willy, during the basketball tournament] “What, you still throwing up bricks? What is this, a Masons convention? Wha... clank, clank! I need, like, a welding torch to play in this league! I got an idea... let's just stop right now and gather up all these bricks and let's build a shelter for the homeless so maybe your mother will have a place to live!”— White Men Can't Jump (1992), written and directed by Ron Shelton

There were definitely times in the recently completed NBA playoffs when I groaned at all the “bricks” being hurled from three-point range. At those moments, Harrelson’s taunt came to mind.

Thankfully, those images of basketballs bouncing loudly off the rim will fade from my consciousness until the start of the pro basketball season this fall.

Flashback, May 1973: Knicks Reach Peak of Greatness—and Start a Half-Century of Frustration

Fifty years ago this week, the New York Knicks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 102-93, taking their NBA championship series four games to one—their second title in four years.

I wrote about the squad in a prior post from a decade ago. But I find that with the passage of time, additional poignancy accrues to this achievement, and more can be written about the larger meaning of it.

The victory secured the Hall of Fame credentials of coach Red Holzman, as well as several starters from that squad: Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Earl Monroe, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed, and Jerry Lucas.

Ecstatic fans like me couldn’t imagine at the time that this was a summit the team would not reach again for 50 years and counting, as I write this.

We were reminded of it, brutally, this week, as the Knicks were beaten in the second round of the playoffs by the Miami Heat. (One consolation: thank God it didn’t happen at Madison Square Garden, on Wednesday, the 50^th anniversary of that earlier victory, with Frazier himself in the stands, doing his best to cast whatever residual magic he had left on Jalen Brunson, Julius Randle and Co.)

Particularly over the last two decades, the teams have been so woebegone that longtime fans were just grateful for the team to be competitive, let alone that it would have a championship run.

It was all so different back in the early Seventies.

For the Knicks players, their success in ’73 meant that their title in 1970 was no fluke; that they had avenged their loss to the Lakers in the 1972 Championship Series; and that they deserved to be considered not just among the best of their time, but eminently worthy of emulation through their team-oriented style.

For Holzman, it meant the vindication of his trade the prior year for Earl Monroe, who, many observers wondered would be able to blend his style with backcourt partner Frazier, as well as sweet revenge in the Conference Finals against nemesis Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics president and GM given to off-court gamesmanship to rattle foes (like changing the Knicks locker room when they were visiting for games in the Boston Garden). Holzman savored the fact that the Knicks became the first team to win an elimination game in the Celtics’ home court.

For New York fans, the Knicks’ triumph was something far greater, analogous to what Pittsburgh Steelers championships were about to accomplish: boosting the spirits of a Rust Belt metropolis badly in need of it.

In the early Seventies, New York City often seemed nothing like the “Fun City” that Mayor John Lindsay proclaimed it, with crime, population lost to the suburbs, graffiti-strewn subways, and strained finances that would plunge the city toward financial crisis in the middle of the decade. And that was on top of other strains that New Yorkers experienced like other Americans in those years: the Vietnam War and Watergate.

In contrast, the Knicks gave New Yorkers something that not only distracted them from the outside world, but that even united them in pride for a team that sacrificed individual goals for the good of the whole. Fans paid attention not just to the more celebrated ones, like the Rhodes scholar Bradley, the indomitable Reed, and the too-cool-for-school Frazier, but even role players.

(Several weeks ago, I astounded a close relative when I mentioned one of these from the 1973 squad, Harthorne Wingo. My relative insisted that I must be making the name up. Nope!)

Back then, it really was like the title of a book and documentary about the team from several years ago: “When the Garden Was Eden.”

They’d never won a championship before hiring Holzman as head coach. They haven’t won one since he left the sidelines, either.

In reading about the aftermath of the Knicks’ second title, I couldn’t help but wonder if I were seeing something similar this week in the case of the squad that, perhaps more than any other over the last decade, reminds me of them on their emphasis on defense and hitting the open man: the Golden State Warriors.

With the Warriors’ loss to the Los Angeles Lakers only a few hours after the Miami Heat ushered this year’s Knicks squad out of the playoffs, the resemblance to Holzman’s team suddenly hitting its twilight years seems hard to miss.

Just as Holzman had to deal with the sudden departures of injured and aging veterans Reed, DeBusschere, and Lucas after the ’73-’74 season, Warriors coach Steve Kerr must now contend with 38-year-old Draymond Green, 35-year-old Steph Curry, and 33-year-old and injury-plagued Klay Thompson in the last stretch of their career.

And, just as Holzman found in the late ‘70s that highly touted young players like Ray Williams and Micheal Ray Richardson couldn’t really take the place of his former Knick core, Kerr must be wondering after his team’s second-round exit when Jordan Poole, Moses Moody, and Jonathan Kuminga are ready to take the baton from Curry, Thompson, and Green.

I could not conclude this post without words of praise for Red Holzman. The numbers of six of his players, now retired, hang from the rafters of MSG. So does a number associated with their coach: 613, the number of wins he notched in leading the team.

The Knicks coach was glad to see the success of one of his former players, Phil Jackson, as head coach of the Chicago Bulls. But Jackson’s self-created “Zen Master” image was nothing like the modest style of Holzman.

Holzman started by effecting an attitudinal shift when he took over the Knicks. As Frazier put it four decades later: “He cut out all the shenanigans.”

A typical quote of his, in Mort Zachter’s 2019 biography, Red Holzman: The Life and Legacy of a Hall of Fame Basketball Coach, is, “A good team doesn't have any superstars. They fit together, make sacrifices and do things necessary to win."

According to Holzman, there were five essential factors for winning: emotional maturity, the will to win, good fellowship, leadership and alertness.

Ultimately, he focused the team’s attention on fundamentals: Ball movement, teamwork, and spontaneity, culminating in the two “D’s”: Discipline and defense.

Indeed, it’s not so much an image from those years that comes to mind but a sound, a mighty roar from the Garden faithful that came through loud and clear as I listened to games on the radio: “DEEE-fense, DEEE-fense!”

Quote of the Day (Shaquille O'Neal, on Halle Berry)

"So when I was young, I used to stutter. She's the only woman that makes my stuttering come back."—Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal, on his reaction to seeing Halle Berry coming down the stairs during a Los Angeles Lakers-New York Knicks game, quoted in Antoinette Bueno‍, “Shaquille O'Neal Recalls When Halle Berry's Beauty Completely Stunned Him at the Free Throw Line,” ETOnline, Sept. 22, 2021

Well, that’s not the end of the story. At the free-throw line, Shaq turned Coach Phil Jackson apoplectic at something other than a referee when he called a completely unnecessary timeout in this game to urge teammates to get him the ball, as Ms. Berry would be watching him.

But, in the end, the Lakers coach couldn’t have minded too much. O’Neal, whose 52% career free-throw percentage made him one of the worst shooters from the line in NBA history, managed to make his this time as he felt himself watched by the actress.

I burst out laughing when I heard this anecdote on my car radio last week. It was such a typical Shaq thing to say and do, wasn’t it?

Speaking of Ms. Berry and sports…congratulations are due on her directorial debut, Bruised—a movie in which she also stars as a single mom who works as a mixed martial arts fighter. If the film is good, let’s hope the Oscar-winning actress gets another shot behind the camera in her future.

(The image accompanying this post was taken of Ms. Berry in Hamburg, Germany, on Aug. 5, 2004—right around the time she left such a vivid impression on Shaq.)

Quote of the Day (Bill Russell, on Kindness as ‘An Act of Strength’)

"Real kindness is an act of strength and a tremendous leadership asset. Two thoughts my grandfather left me with were to praise loudly and blame softly, and not to forget a throne is nothing more than a bench covered in velvet.”—NBA Hall of Fame player and coach Bill Russell and David Falkner, Russell Rules: 11 Lessons on Leadership from the Twentieth Century's Greatest Winner (2001)

This Day in NBA History (DeBusschere Landed in Knick of Time)

Dec. 19, 1968—With Christmas only days away, New York Knick General Manager Eddie Donovan gave Coach Red Holzman an early present for the holidays: the player who would form the missing piece of the puzzle he needed to secure two league championships. 

The team, even with several fine players, had inexplicably started to sputter when Donovan traded center Walt Bellamy and point guard Howard Komives in exchange for a player much-coveted by much of the rest of the league: rugged forward Dave DeBusschere. 

Standing 6 feet, 6 inches and weighing 225 pounds, DeBusschere had already made his mark in his early twenties by playing two professional sports (the second was baseball, in his time as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox) and serving as player-coach for the Pistons. 

His years with the Knicks would, surprisingly enough, only constitute half of his dozen years in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Yet New York was where he secured the reputation that would lead to his uniform being retired by the Knicks and with DeBusschere himself enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

No other trade in Knick history would have such a long-lasting, positive influence on the team. Since 1963, Donovan had acquired a raft of talented young players in Willis Reed, Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson. But until DeBusschere came along, a team that should have contended was consistently out of sync. 

Holzman's offensive credo was simple to state but harder to apply without the right players: "See the ball, hit the open man." Komives had not only proven inadequate to that task, but had annoyed Russell by often overlooking him on court, even when he was wide open, according to Bill Gutman's Tales from the 1969-1970 New York Knicks.

As for Bellamy, there was no doubting the skill of this former Rookie of the Year, but he was three years older than another natural center then playing out of position—Reed—and without the latter’s passing ability or leadership skills. 

While these factors made Bellamy and Komives expendable, DeBusschere brought a number of assets—some immediately visible, others only observable over the long term. He was already demonstrating that he could be an essential cog in the pressing defensive alignment that Holzman hoped to put into action. 

Invariably, he would be designated the player who would shadow and stop the opposing team’s offensive star. DeBusschere, Phoenix Suns dazzler Connie Hawkins once observed, "took away my first, second, third, and fourth offensive move." 

But he could also pass well—a prerequisite for “hitting the open man”—sneak behind picks for shots, and inspire teammates with his durability and fearless, all-stops-out physical style.

Had it simply involved acquiring a talented player, the swap’s impact would have been limited. After all, obtaining Bob McAdoo and Carmelo Anthony—among the most prolific scorers of their eras—did nothing to improve the Knicks’ standing.

Instead, the trade—while bringing aboard a tenacious rebounder and defender who could, when the occasion warranted, sink a well-timed jumper from the corner—was so important for the way it allowed other players to assume other, more natural roles, as detailed by sports journalist Pete Axthelm in The City Game:

*Willis Reed, a bit slow at power forward to stop fast smaller players, could use his bulk at his natural position—center—while using his feathery outside shot to lure the opposing center away from the basket.

*Bill Bradley, who had been shuttling unsuccessfully between guard and forward, settled at small forward, where Madison Square Garden fans could see the deft shooting touch and court awareness that made him a star at Princeton.

*Walt Frazier, knowing that Reed and DeBusschere could cover for his mistakes, took more frequent gambles in stealing the ball, becoming one of the leading defensive stars of the National Basketball Association (NBA).

*Cazzie Russell learned how to make an instant impact as an offensive sparkplug.

*Dick Barnett, at shooting guard, found new life in his post-30 legs.

In short, DeBusschere changed the alchemy of the team. He would also exemplify its consistency and cohesiveness, as he himself put it after his retirement: "The key to our team was the willingness to sacrifice without expecting anything in return. Period.”

The forward’s impact was immediate: Not only did the team halt their losing streak, but it would go on to to the Eastern Division finals, which they lost to the Boston Celtics in six games. 

The following year, when I began to avidly follow them over the radio, was their season of glory, when they won their first NBA championship. DeBusschere would be essential to that success, averaging 16.1 points per game in the team’s 19 total playoff contests. He would prove equally essential in the team’s 1973 championship run.

Following his retirement in 1974, DeBusschere would become one of only two men to serve as general manager of two New York professional teams (George Weiss, with the Yankees and Mets, was the other executive); engineer the merger of the NBA with the American Basketball Association (in which he acted as the last commissioner of the league); and, in his four seasons as Knicks GM in the 1980s, lay the cornerstone for contention in the 1990s by drafting Georgetown All-American center Patrick Ewing as the overall #1 pick in the league.

DeBusschere’s indomitability on the court made his 2003 death by heart attack at age 62 all the more shocking and sad to fans like me. Few of us could identify with Frazier’s off-court flash, Bradley’s mixture of court smarts and intellectual brilliance, or Jackson’s counter-cultural instincts. 

But DeBusschere was the lunch-bucket hero, the guy who would shrug off a sharp elbow, a blow to the face, or an aching knee to get his work done, night after night, only to smile afterward with a beer in hand over a job well done.

(Accompanying photo of Dave DeBusschere taken from 1974 New York Knicks program.)

This Day in NBA History (Chamberlain Deal Shifts Balance of Power West)

July 8, 1968—With the dominant player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the last half-dozen years deciding to pull up stakes from his Eastern team, the competitive balance in the league shifted decisively in the direction of the Los Angeles Lakers. 

But check that dateline again. It’s not 2008, but 1968. LeBron James wasn’t even born then. No, it’s Wilt Chamberlain I’m talking about. 

Two blockbuster trades occurred in the league in 1968. The one pulled off by the Knicks in December, bringing Dave DeBusschere over from the Pistons, was one of chemistry, as several players (notably Willis Reed) assumed different positions and roles. 

But the Chamberlain trade, sending him away from the Philadelphia 76ers, was more akin to the one bringing Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors, creating a supernova of talent on a team already blessed with All-Stars--and foreshadowing an era when the game's greatest talents had more of a say in both their futures and the fortunes of the major teams. 

The Lakers hadn’t won the NBA finals since the 1953-54 season, when they had been in Minneapolis rather than the City of Angels. They had come agonizingly close with five finals appearances since their move to the coast in 1961, but, even with the likes of All-Stars like Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, had never made it to the promised land. But the old order was about to change with the arrival of Wilt the Stilt.

How he hated that nickname! It was as if it referred only to his athleticism, he claimed, while discounting his court sense. And while he was at it, when were people going to start crediting him as a team player?

By rights, that latter recognition should have come at the end of the 1966-67 season, when—agreeing to focus less on the scoring that had made his reputation and more on rebounding and defense—Chamberlain led the Philadelphia 76ers to an NBA championship, with a thrilling victory in the Eastern Division finals that ended the Boston Celtics’ skein of eight straight championships. 

Chamberlain had enjoyed great rapport with coach Alex Hannum, who, as he had done while with the San Francisco Warriors, convinced “The Big Dipper” to buy into an egalitarian style of offense in which he was used as the passing focal point rather than the principal offensive weapon. 

But the next year, when the 76ers lost to the Celtics in the playoffs, Hannum jumped to the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA), and Chamberlain’s relationship with Philadelphia’s front office deteriorated. 

Years later, General Manager Jack Ramsey recalled that Chamberlain had taken an active interest in Hannum’s replacement when, out of the blue, he tossed his own hat into the ring. The idea of a player-manager was not uncommon in the 1960s (indeed, the last one in the NBA, Dave Cowens, filled the role in 1979 for the Celtics), but this request caught Ramsey and owner Irv Kosloff by surprise.

After he had had a week to consider, Ramsey decided such a move could work, and was ready to talk about it with Chamberlain. But now, the big man told the front office that he had changed his mind. Not only did he not want to be a player-coach, but he did not want to play in Philadelphia anymore. If the front office could not arrange a trade to a West Coast team—Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles—he was ready to jump to the ABA.

Ramsey and Kosloff might have been angry, but they could hardly have been surprised. In 1965, after his trade to the Warriors, Sports Illustrated’s Frank DeFord had noted that this was the fifth time that Chamberlain had used a threat to quit as a bargaining chip. In this pre-free agent era, that—and now, the presence of the ABA—represented the only available bargaining chips for a player.

But Chamberlain wasn’t really “a player.” In 1960s basketball, he was an outsized figure who, like baseball’s Babe Ruth, wrought, like Babe Ruth, a revolution in how his sport was played. In 1962, he had not only scored 100 points against the unfortunate New York Knicks but also averaged more than 50 points per game for the entire season. With no nagging injuries at this point, he was not beyond going on a similar scoring binge again. 

Rather than simply lose their most valuable player to the ABA with nothing to show for it, Ramsey and Kosloff decided to try to obtain as much value in return as they could. The deal they worked out—three players (in this case, Jerry Chambers, Archie Clark and Darrall Imhoff) for Chamberlain--resembled the magnitude of the transaction that brought The Big Dipper to Philly in the first place. 

AJ Neuharth-Keusch of USA Today, in an article two years ago, listed it among the most lopsided trades in NBA history. Metaphorically, one can liken the trade’s impact on the Western Division to an earthquake. But you begin to run out of adequate descriptions for this event when you recall that this was the first time that the reigning league Most Valuable Player—the winner of that honor for the fourth time, no less—had ended up getting traded.

Philadelphia would not win an NBA championship again until Julius Erving and Moses Malone ended the heartache in 1983. The Lakers, while experiencing initial growing pains involving Chamberlain (the Big Dipper was far less jovial than new teammate Elgin Baylor, and disagreed with the game plans of coach Butch van Breda Kolff), still had a quicker payoff: four finals appearances in five seasons, including a title in 1972 season, when he was named most valuable player of the finals.