The Team That Wasn't There....
Dec. 22nd, 2019 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogPithy updates on the rest of life: water heater's in and works fine. Car took forever to get back but works fine. Christmas things are mostly sorted. New Star Wars film was wonderful and weepy. Still slightly sick and with a suddenly flared-up foot condition that I'm treating as if it were gout (different place than usual) and probably is because it seems to be better. More updates on these to come, but I have a couple of pictures from last weekend which a just-found Newsday link from 2017 reminded me of:
As Nassau Coliseum readies for the return of professional basketball with the NBA G-League Long Island Nets, the echoes of Dr. J’s thunderous house calls still resonate on the grounds.
Old Nassau Coliseum once was the stamping grounds for Julius Erving and the New York Nets, a team that had the makings of a dynasty if circumstances had been different.
Erving, who played on the Salvation Army basketball team in Hempstead before starring for Roosevelt High School and the University of Massachusetts, came to his hometown American Basketball Association team from the Virginia Squires in 1973 and led the Nets to two championships in three seasons.
I'd seen the signs outside the building, heading in to see the Islanders. They, along with the Nets of the then-upstart ABA, were co-tenants of the building when it first opened. What, then, were these signs of a Return of the Net-i outside?
Ahhhh, a D-league affiliate of the now-Brooklyn big team. ("Developmental league" is the NBA's largely failed experiment at taking player development away from college basketball and running it through their own "minor league" affiliates.) It's been an occasional fun time for fans, but nothing like the thrill of seeing highest-level professional players there 40 years ago, as we often did for next to nothing,
The American Basketball Association was an upstart modeled on football's AFL. Its hallmarks were a red-white-and-blue beachball of a rock, a painted arc on the court beyond which baskets would count for 3 points rather than 2 ("home run" was the ABA's term for them- the nickname didn't make it to the NBA, but the 3-point shot eventually did), and a much more aggressive style of play. Their shot clock was actually 6 seconds longer than the big boys', but that gave teams more time to develop fun dipsy-doodle pass-and-dunk plays. Teams were legendary for coming and going in the dead of night, moving or folding as money for payroll ran out. The Pittsburgh Pipers, Kentucky Colonels, San Diego Conquistadors and Miami Floridians (eventually just "the" Floridians- kinda like "Cher") were among the opponents who eventually show up at the then- New Barn in Uniondale.
The Nets themselves were born as the New Jersey Americans, holding down the Teaneck Armory as home before clothing impresario Roy L.M. Boe moved them to a series of crumbling Long Island barns while waiting for the Coliseum to be built. One of their players, Billy "Me and Mrs. Jones" Paultz, was with them as an eventual championship team was formed:
Paultz, 69, who now lives in Seabrook, Texas, watched the Coliseum being built while the team played at Island Garden, where, according to a 1972 Sports Illustrated story, promotions included giving away live baby turtles to young fans and releasing a dove in honor of former St. John’s player Sonny Dove.
Boe also landed the Islanders franchise from the NHL, a shameless attempt by the established league to keep hockey's own upstart competitors, the WHA, from securing a Coliseum lease. His biggest basketball coup, though, was bringing Julius "Doctor J" Erving back to his home town of Hempstead in time for their two runs to the ABA title.
We lived barely three miles away, and game tickets were cheap and plentiful. The team papered local stores and schools with freebies and deep-discounted passes for their games, and in those championship years in the mid-70s from 8th to 11th grade, we'd ride our bikes over, or my friend Dennis's mother would take us in her Rambler sedan, to see the Doctor dunk, Super John Williamson set picks, and eventually, center Swen Nater sink free throws. (That was an inside joke Dennis and I still share; we'd made a Stratomatic-style league out of real NBA and ABA players, and Nater was assigned stupidly large scores for hitting foul shots.)
Free throws back then also involved another interesting but killed-off idea: after a certain number of team fouls, the victimized shooter would be given "three to make two," which would have been a boon for Shaq or other later bricklayers. The Coliseum announcer would confirm this if the player made the first two by saying, "That's all." I still use that epithet on a weekly basis.
The Nets won ABA championships in 73-74 and 75-76; I can't remember if we made it to playoff games, but we definitely listened. Just as the ABA was considered the older league's little brother, the team's games were literally announced by a little brother- Al Albert, younger sibling to the Knick's playman Marv. Those banners still hang from the Coliseum rafters-
- along with the Doctor's retired 32. Oddly, they've never put up the other two from the ABA era which still hang from the now-NBA franchise's rafters in Flatbush:
:
(One other number from an ABA Net, Wendell Ladner, was also sort-of retired on account of his death in a plane crash, but his has never been raftered and the team has given out his number since.) Super John died in 1996, but Melchionni is still quite well and full of memories of their days:
Bill Melchionni, 72, who played for the Nets from 1969-76, said from Philadelphia, “Except for Madison Square Garden and The Forum in L.A., it was as good as any facility in the NBA.’’
Unfortunately, Long Island fans got little if any chance to experience that once the "merger" went through. It was more of a murder than a merger, especially for the Nets. Unlike the NFL-AFL experience of a few years earlier, which was more a merger of equals, this deal was essentially terms of surrender put forth by the NBA. Only four teams survived long enough to make the jump; of them, only the San Antonio Spurs have had any history of success since. The teams were cut out of TV revenue for their first three years and, in the weirdest part of the deal, each had to share part of their later TV proceeds with the owners of a defunct ABA team who were still making millions off the deal as recently as 2014 (and even now get a smaller chunk of it). The four teams got no picks in the first year's combined draft, no voice in gate receipt distribution, their team records were excised from the books, and worst of all, each of the four had to pay a then-hefty $3.2 million "expansion fee" to join, with the Nets socked with an additional "indemnity fee" of $4.8 million on top of that for their supposed invasion of the Knicks' "territory." (Those would be the Knicks whose games have been sold out since 4 BC on account of Spike Lee and other celebrities spending money on them no matter how much they suck, which since the 1970s has been "a lot").
In comparison? When the Jets and Oakland Raiders "invaded" the turfs of the established NFL Giants and 49ers, the whole incoming 12-team league divided up $18 million to compensate them, but they got 20 years to pay it. The Nets, though, had to pony up $8 million in mid-70s dollars up front to make the move. The only way for them to do it was to sell off their star player, Julius Erving. A year after the resulting depleted team tanked out the joint in their only NBA year on Long Island, their owner Roy L.M. Boe (the initials now standing for "Let's Move," per one Newsday wag) shipped them off to the New Jersey of their birth, where they held forth at Rutgers until moving into the Brendan Byrne I'm Not Dead Yet Arena in the Meadowlands (where Jimmy Hoffa is) for several decades of further depression. Then Brooklyn beckoned, along with a shiny new arena just for basketball, where they remain in some semblance of decent play these days.
The NBA has adopted the three-point line and enshrined dozens of ABA alumni in its Hall of Fame for careers including those magical years. The beachball makes occasional appearances during All-Star events. I've never seen Brooklyn going back to the ABA racing-stripe look, as the LA Clippers have done at least once this year to honor their beloved Buffalo Braves heritage, but as long as the banners hang on Atlantic Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike, we'll still have the memories.
That's all.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-23 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-25 10:39 pm (UTC)I amazoned it. It'll be here in two days, or I suppose this being the ABA, maybe three.