Doc

Vincent Mallozzi

Description

The definitive biography of basketball genius Julius Erving--the icon who transcended his sport and defined an era

Julius Erving, aka Dr. J, was a wizard with the basketball, performing feats the world had never seen before: midair spins and whirls punctuated by powerful slam dunks, which he was the first to glamorize. In a career that lasted from the 1970s well into the 1980s, he was one of the first players to make extemporaneous individual expression an integral part of the game, setting the style of play that has prevailed ever since. He's also long been respected as a gracious, dignified, and disciplined man. As there are great men of history, there are great men of sports, and Dr. J is just such a man.

This book tells Dr. J's amazing story, following his basketball journey from his Long Island childhood to the street games of New York City to a college career as his skills, reputation, and character grew. It follows his entrance into the ABA, where he revolutionized the game by glamorizing the dunk, and his conquering of the NBA, where he was Michael Jordan before there was a Jordan. It relates the family struggles he's had since leaving the game and charts the transformation of the man into myth.

• The first complete biography of one of the greatest and most popular basketball players of all time
• Draws on interviews with Dr. J's childhood friends and his family to teammates and coaches at all levels
• Written by a New York Times sports journalist and author of Asphalt Gods: An Oral History of the Rucker Tournament
• Includes Erving's years as a player with the Virginia Squires, New York Nets, and Philadelphia 76ers

Read Doc and follow the incredible journey of the basketball genius who elevated the game off the hardwood and helped make it America's passion.
Foreword by Dave Anderson.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

1 A Leap of Faith.

2 Decisions, Decisions.

3 Doc Signs with the Squires.

4 Julius and Dave Down by the Schoolyard.

5 Asking for Another Raise.

6 Coming Home.

7 In a League of His Own.

8 Another Contract Dispute.

9 A Philadelphia Phenomenon.

10 Waiting to Hit Pay Dirt.

11 Swan Song.

12 The Ghost of Samantha Stevenson.

13 Cory Disappears.

14 Up Close and Very Personal.

15 Just Like Old Times.

Epilogue.

Index.

Sujets

• Sport
• Sports collectifs
• Basketball
• Baloncesto
• Basket-ball
• National Basketball Association
• 76ers de Philadelphie
• Recreation
• Philadelphia 76ers
• Sports

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 08 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470506646
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
 
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
 
Chapter 1 - A Leap of Faith
 
Julius and Archie at “the Garden”
Basketball Salvation
Julius at Roosevelt and the Legend of Joe Blocker
“A Super Nice Guy”
 
Chapter 2 - Decisions, Decisions
 
A Perfect 8
Friendly Rivals
Growing Pains at UMass
Tears for Marvin
Bigger and Better
Opposite Directions
The Secret Starts Getting Out
 
Chapter 3 - Doc Signs with the Squires
 
The Making of the Nets
 
Chapter 4 - Julius and Dave Down by the Schoolyard
 
The Doctor versus the Destroyer
Batman and Robin
The Boy Wonder
Like a UFO
 
Chapter 5 - Asking for Another Raise
 
Returning to Rucker Park
The Wrong Kind of Bucks
 
Chapter 6 - Coming Home
 
Roy Boe’s Four Million Dollar Gamble
A Familiar Ring
Grounded
 
Chapter 7 - In a League of His Own
 
The Prisoner and the Pro
One Last Charge
 
Chapter 8 - Another Contract Dispute
Chapter 9 - A Philadelphia Phenomenon
 
The Honeymoon Is Over
Driving Mr. Erving
Getting It Together
The Turquoise Letter
 
Chapter 10 - Waiting to Hit Pay Dirt
 
Another Lost Opportunity
Moses and the Promised Land
“Dr. Dr. J”
Signature Slam
The Rookie Couldn’t Sleep
Brawling with “Larry Legend”
Taking Five
 
Chapter 11 - Swan Song
 
A Good Doctor to Thank
A Not So Memorable Comeback
The Hall Calls
Commenting on the Doctor
Life after the Final Buzzer
Sorry, Fellas
One on One with the Doc
A Man for All Seasons
 
Chapter 12 - The Ghost of Samantha Stevenson
 
And Then Came Barbara
 
Chapter 13 - Cory Disappears
 
More Bad News
 
Chapter 14 - Up Close and Very Personal
 
In the Shadow of a Legend
Calling Samantha
Turquoise Sees the Light
Losing a Coach—and a Friend
Tearing Down Memories
 
Chapter 15 - Just Like Old Times
 
An Unexpected House Call
 
Epilogue
Index

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Copyright © 2010 by Vincent M. Mallozzi. All rights reserved.
 
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
 
All photos on pages 125-133 © New York Times except for page 125 (top) which is courtesy of Mike Cingiser.
 
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eISBN : 978-0-470-50664-6
 
This one is for you, Mom—you left us way too soon. I picked up the phone to call you on April 7, 2008, shortly after Mark was born, and then I put it down. For a brief moment, I had forgotten that you moved to heaven.
Foreword
By Dave Anderson
 
 
 
The phrase “the best basketball player I’ve ever seen” is usually attached to a famous name, seldom to an unfamiliar one. However, in the winter of 1971, at a weekly luncheon of New York-area college coaches and basketball writers at Mama Leone’s restaurant on West 48th Street, Jimmy McDermott, the Iona College coach, stood up to report on his team and said, “We went up to the University of Massachusetts and lost, but I saw the best basketball player I’ve ever seen.”
The best basketball player McDermott had ever seen? As a prominent small-college coach in the New York area, McDermott was respected because he had seen the best of that era come through Madison Square Garden as college and National Basketball Association (NBA) players. His opinion meant something, but who could this best player be? Furthermore, if this player was really that good, what was he doing in the woods of western Massachusetts? Even more important, what was his name? Before anyone could ask, McDermott told us. “Julius Erving,” he said.
That was the first time I ever heard of the six foot six inch basketball player who would soon be better known as Dr. J and widely recognized as one of the best players in history.
Shortly after his junior season at UMass ended in 1971, Dr. J walked into the Long Island offices of the New York Nets, not far from where he grew up playing in Roosevelt Park and at Roosevelt High School in Roosevelt, New York. “I want to play with the Nets,” he told Lou Carnesecca, then the general manager and coach. “We’d love to have you,” Carnesecca said, “but our policy is not to sign undergraduates.”
It was not, however, a policy of the Virginia Squires, for whom Dr. J, in the first year of his four year contract for five hundred thousand dollars, would average 27 points a game as the American Basketball Association (ABA) second-team all-star and rookie of the year. After that season, he was eligible for the NBA draft because his UMass class had graduated.
The Milwaukee Bucks quickly grabbed him up because their general manager, Wayne Embry, had remembered a visit to a teenage camp in the Adirondack Mountains when he was with the Boston Celtics. “I was playing one on one against this skinny high school kid from Long Island,” Embry said at the time. “He was six-three, six four then. I was six-eight, 250 [pounds], going into my ninth season in the NBA, and this kid was beating me.”
The day after the Bucks chose Dr. J, the Atlanta Hawks announced that they had signed him prior to the draft as a free agent. Contractually, however, he remained committed to the Squires, which prompted a legal dispute that would require a federal judge’s ruling.
On a Sunday afternoon late that summer, with Dr. J’s future in limbo, I stopped by the Holcombe Rucker Memorial Playground across from the tall red-brick Polo Grounds project apartments on Eighth Avenue in Harlem. To stay in shape, Dr. J, like many other pros in that era—Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Willis Reed, and Connie Hawkins, to name four Hall of Famers—often played there against other pros and playground legends on the blacktop courts in the Pro Rucker for no pay with no box office and no ticket takers. Anybody from anywhere could join the crowd of 3,500 sitting on the wooden bleachers, standing in the aisles, perched in the trees, hanging atop the wire fence, and enjoying the show in which a player’s moves provoked more of a reaction than a routine basket did.
“You really a surgeon, Doctor,” somebody shouted that day when Dr. J shimmied, soared, and dunked on an embarrassed opponent. “You really operating on that man.” At the Rucker, there were no locker rooms and no showers. The players changed in the Parks Department workroom, and that’s where Erving told me how he got his nickname.
“In high school,” he explained, “a friend of mine kept telling me he was going to be a professor, so I told him I was going to be a doctor. We just started calling each other that, ‘Professor’ and ‘Doctor.’ And later on, in the Rucker League in Harlem, when people started calling me ‘Black Moses’ and ‘Houdini,’ I told them if they wanted to call me anything, call me ‘Doctor.’”
Not long after that, a federal judge ruled that Dr. J still belonged to the Squires, so he had to return there for another season, in which he averaged 31.9 points per game. On August 1, 1973, he finally joined the Nets, along with center Willie Sojourner, in a trade for forward George Carter, the draft rights to Kermit Washington, and cash.
After the news conference that day at the Nassau Coliseum, I asked him to take me over to Roosevelt Park, where he had developed his game. When we got there, he pointed to a far basket on one of the two green cement courts with white lines.
“That’s the best basket, that one there,” he said. “That’s where I played the most. I’d ride over here on my bike and play one-on-one here, two-on-two, three-on-three. Sometimes on Sunday, kids from other towns would come over, and we played five on five all day. The years I was in college, I ran the league in the park. I had the key then; I turned the lights off when I left, sometime around midnight. I worked on shooting and dribbling. If somebody else was around, I’d play 100 points won. We didn’t play for money. We just played for ego, for pride.”
Dr. J had been playing for money with the Squires, of course, and