The Book of Basketball (25 page)

The 1984 Finals.
Or, as it’s more commonly known, the Single Biggest Break in NBA History. Two years after the NBA extended its season so CBS could show the Finals live (raising the very logical question that I pray you’re asking: “Wait, what the hell took the NBA so long?”), the network finally obliged … and, of course, they hit the ratings jackpot. Not only did you have the rebirth of the league’s most storied rivalry, you had Bird versus Magic II; East Coast versus West Coast; Jack Nicholson versus Busty Heart;
¹¹⁸
Johnny Most versus Chick Hearn; the Garden versus the Forum; the two best passing teams of that decade; two loaded squads with eighteen quality guys (including eight future Hall of Famers); and a seven-game donnybrook that featured four ESPN Classic-caliber contests (including Gerald Henderson’s steal saving a potential sweep in Game 2). Game 4 (Boston 129, L.A. 125 in OT) was probably the most entertaining/dramatic/physical/hostile/loaded Finals game to that point, an exceptionally played, hypercompetitive slugfest that featured Kevin McHale’s series-turning clothesline on Kurt Rambis; Kareem nearly whistling an elbow off Larry’s noggin and the two of them exchanging face-to-face eff-yous;
Magic improbably falling apart in crunch time and OT; Bird just missing a desperation three to win it and McHale missing the bunny follow; Bird’s backbreaking turnaround over Magic in OT; Maxwell walking across the lane and giving Worthy the choke sign after Big Game James clanged a huge free throw; and M. L. Carr’s improbable steal/dunk to clinch it.

Here’s why I know we will never see another basketball game like that: the rules don’t allow it. You won’t see that many great/good players on the same court in the salary cap era, and you won’t see that level of hostility and passion because of the rules now in place against taunting and flagrant fouls. The NBA, where diluted pussyball happens! If you listen to me on anything, I hope it’s this: just watch the damned game sometime. It’s that good. Even as the Celtics were euphorically prancing off the court with McHale flashing his armpits, it felt like the axis for professional sports had been shifted a little. And when Boston prevailed in a heated Game 7 in equally dramatic fashion, the days of anyone wondering if the league was too black (or whether the league would make it, drugs were ruining the sport, or they might lose their TV contract) were finally over. So, um … yeah.
¹¹⁹

The 1984 draft.
You will not find a bigger month for a sports league than June ’84 for the NBA. Not only did the Finals revive the sport, not only did the world embrace the power of Stern’s mustache, but Chicago stumbled into the future of professional basketball (Jordan) in a draft that included three other legends (Hakeem, Stockton and Barkley). When Nike signed Jordan to a then-mammoth $2.5 million deal during the same summer when Bird and Magic filmed their famous Converse commercial, the door opened for NBA players to cross over to mainstream advertisers and become their own mini-corporations. Jordan did it first with his posters, Air Jordan sneaker line and Mars Blackmon commercials; others like Magic and Bird quickly followed suit. The League That Was Too Black had become the League That Raked In Shitloads of Money, and it would never look back.

Anyway, that’s how the hell we got here. And yeah, maybe we never covered overexpansion, JumboTrons, luxury boxes, skyrocketing ticket prices, the growth of sports radio and fantasy hoops, the influx of foreign players, the addition of a third referee, video games taking off, the underclassmen boon, the HIV scare, the impact of the Dream Team (and the negative impact of Dream Team II), RileyBall, the lottery changes, rookie opt-out clauses, Latrell Sprewell’s choking habits, the ’99 strike, the rookie salary scale, the ban on high schoolers, advances in ACL surgeries, the art of finding cap space, tattoos and baggy shorts, the marijuana epidemic (that’s right, epidemic), the perils of overcoaching, KG’s $120 million contract, the ’99 lockout, Mark Cuban and the Maloofs, the Internet boom, Barkley’s TV career, Moochie Norris’ afro, the Artest Melee, the dress code, ESPN’s Trade Machine, the Donaghy scandal, All-Star Weekend in Vegas, the scary stretch from 1994 to 2004 when defenses became too effective and games slowed down too much, or even the economy’s recent collapse and its effects on a league that I nicknamed the “No Benjamins Association” in a February ’09 column. For our purposes—figuring out who mattered and why—we got to where we needed to go. Just trust me.
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1.
MST 3000 and Letterman created the unintentional comedy genre: mocking things that weren’t originally intended to be funny. Nearly 15 years later, I unveiled the Unintentional Comedy Scale on
ESPN.com
, with Dikembe Mutombo’s voice earning a perfect 100 out of 100 and at least 20 different professional golfers earning a zero (because of the little-known rule that you must endure six electroshock treatments upon getting your PGA Tour card).

2.
That was nearly the title for this book:
A Brief and Occasionally Biased History of the NBA.
The titles I loved most (but ultimately was talked out of):
Tuesdays with Horry … Love Child of the Basketball Jesus … Tell Me How My Book Tastes … Where a Pulitzer Happens … The Greatest NBA Book I’ve Ever Written … Majerle and Me … The Hoops Testament … Black Men Can Jump … The Second Best Basketball Book Ever … I Love This Game … I Should Have Been Black … The Basketball Bible … A White Man’s Thoughts on a Black Man’s Game … Secrets from a Topless Pool in Vegas … The Association … Weekend at Bernie Bickerstaff’s.

3.
It’s hard to believe that Boston College didn’t give Molinas an honorary doctorate.

4.
They didn’t have these things in 1954. Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention. Although it would have been fun to read blogs with mean-spirited names like “Bob Cousy’s Lisp.”

5.
Koppett’s book
24 Seconds to Shoot: The Birth and Improbable Rise of the NBA
proved to be an enormous help for this chapter. He’s dead, but I’d like to thank him anyway.

6.
Our top five shows in 1954:
I Love Lucy, Dragnet, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, You Bet Your Life
and
The Chevy Show
featuring Bob Hope. Isn’t it weird that someone 55 years from now will look at the 2009 top five and say, “I wonder what the hell happened on
American Idol
?” just like I wondered, “I wonder what the hell happened on
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts
?”

7.
Four great Biasone facts: he was born in Italy and did the Ellis Island thing; he made his money owning a bowling alley; he wore long, double-breasted coats and Borsalino hats; and he smoked filtered cigarettes. I don’t know what Borsalino hats are and that still sounds fantastic.

8.
Also noteworthy: Earl Lloyd and Jim Tucker became the first black players to play for a championship team.

9.
Extending this analogy, Bob Cousy was Seka, Dolph Schayes was Marilyn Chambers, Joe Fulks was Harry Reems, Red Auerbach was Gerard Damiano and George Mikan was definitely John Holmes.

10.
Keeping the Mikan-Holmes analogy going, this comeback went about as well as the last two years of Johnny Wadd’s career, when he became a junkie and dabbled in gay porn to support his habit.

11.
We definitely would have seen Richie Cunningham wearing Hawks T-shirts and jerseys, and possibly a retro cameo with Pettit and Clyde Lovellette wearing bad wigs and pretending they were 20 years younger, then Clyde insulting the black chef at Arnold’s and Fonzie kicking his ass.

12.
Pettit’s quadruple-printed card remains the easiest to find. Go figure, they quadruple-printed Pettit (white) and single-printed Russell (black). I’m sure this was a coincidence. Russ’ rookie fetches from $500 to $4,000 depending on its condition.

13.
Once the NBA started stealing black stars away from the ’Trotters, it was only a matter of time before the ’Trotters morphed into something else—namely, a fan-friendly hoops team that did tricks, whupped the Generals, and had a sweet
Wide World of Sports
run. You know who loved them? Young Jabaal, that’s who.

14.
Other rules or phrases named after NBA players or personalities: the Ted Stepien Rule, the Magic Johnson Rule, the Trent Tucker Rule, the Jordan Rules, Hack-a-Shaq, the Larry Bird Exception, the Allan Houston Rule and the Ewing Theory.

15.
You know what’s really weird? The network’s number one announcing team in 1959 was Marv Albert and Hubie Brown.

16.
Teams routinely played 25–30 preseason games as well as a 72-game regular season and any playoff games, and the guy who did the schedule back then was apparently suffering from a major head injury. Details to come.

17.
The other factor: every new NBA star was black. Well, then! Down the road, NBC made up for this apparent burst of racism by greenlighting
The Cosby Show, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
and even the unwatchable
A Different World.

18.
When M.J. scored 37.1 per game in the ’87 season, he averaged just 27.8 shots and 11.8 free throws. All right, maybe we didn’t need the word “just” in there.

20.
The numbers from ’94 to ’04 dropped because of overcoaching, superior defense, far fewer possessions, overexpansion, more physical play and a noticeable dearth of elite talent (thanks to bad drafts, the influx of high schoolers and youngsters getting paid too soon).

21.
Also, the number of black NBA players increased to 25 out of a possible 96 (26 percent). Actual quote from Al Attles in
Tall Tales:
“I came into the league in 1960 and the word was that there could be up to four blacks per team.” Nowadays, only New England prep schools think like this.

22.
This was the astonishing two-parter in which an older assistant set off a racial powder keg by saying Smash Williams was better off as an RB than a QB. If
FNL
was MJ’s career, Lyla Garrity’s slam-page episode would be the 63-point game in Boston (the coming-out party), the two-parter with Smash would be the ’91 Finals (when the show’s considerable potential was realized), the story arc where Landry and Tyra killed her stalker was MJ’s baseball career (far-fetched and a complete waste of time), and Season 3 was like Jordan’s last three title seasons (cementing its reputation as the greatest sports-related drama ever). Glad I got that off my chest.

23.
Cousy started the Players Association in 1954, although its initial goals were to curb the endless barnstorming tours and get players paid for personal appearances. Not until the mid-’60s did they begin to make headway on medical plans, pension plans, the reserve clause and everything else. Our first two presidents of the Players Association? Holy Cross grads! Who says the Cross couldn’t crack the Ivy?

24.
And with that, we’d never have another white celebrity named Maurice.

25.
I loved Arledge for coming up with
Superstars
and
Battle of the Network Stars
, two of my favorite shows as a kid. If not for him, I never would have seen Charlene Tilton’s hard nipples in the softball dunk tank or the watershed Gabe Kaplan-Robert Conrad 100-yard dash (the “USA 4, USSR 3” of reality-TV moments).

26.
You have to admire me for running a Halberstam excerpt when he’s an infinitely better writer. I have no ego. I’m like Russell—I don’t care about stats.

27.
Leading by 10 with 40 seconds left, Red lit up his victory cigar right before a furious comeback—the Lakers scored 8 straight before the C’s finally ran out the clock. Imagine the Auerbach era ending with the biggest choke in sports history
and
a jinxed final victory cigar.