Dr. J and the ABA (1999) | Edited #HappyBirthdayDrJ

and beyond comprehension so what you saw of dr jay was clips you see clips and highlights and you think man this guy can't do this all the time at six foot six for the new york that's the fabulous dr j julia survey he was pretty much the aba that's all we really heard about even before i joined the aba only one i really knew about was julia zurban welcome back to victory yard i'm al trout again you're watching classic sports when i was a kid growing up on long island in new york i was a ball boy for the new york nets of the aba the american basketball association and as a result became one of the few people who had a chance to see up close and personal julia serving at his very best for a long period of time when he was in the aba since the aba had very little national television exposure and received very little press coverage its history is one of the few remaining mysteries in sports there's just very little documentation about what most people agree who saw it a great time in basketball in fact one could say it is a lost classic and here at classic sports we pride ourselves on discovering those lost classics over the next two hours we will detail dr j's career in the quote-unquote other league from his days with the virginia squires to his championship seasons with the nets and the first ever slam dunk contest in 1976 which he won we'll hear from the men who were there such as you be brown artist gilmore david thompson george girvin and in a little while julius irving himself in victory yard will join me and we'll relive the new york nets 1976 championship season so for those of you who don't remember or never knew that dr j was in a different league let alone on another team before he was a philadelphia 76er sit back and enjoy julia serving in the aba [Music] so the julius irving story began on the playgrounds of roosevelt long island his high wire act conjured up memories of former new york playground legends like connie hawkins but irving was determined to carve out an identity of his own when i left to go play in the pros julius was playing in harlem in the same area when i was playing in and he was out there doing some things that they saw me do and they started calling him little hawk and so one time he went in for a shot and dunked and everybody started calling him lil hawk and jumped up and yelled and screamed and he called time out and he went and grabbed the microphone and said my name is laura hawk my name is dr j don't you forget it after a stellar career at roosevelt high school the young doctor left long island for the university of massachusetts although he received little exposure in then basketball baron new england irving dominated he averaged 26 points and 20 rebounds a game in his two seasons at amherst becoming one of only six players in ncaa history to average more than 20 points and 20 rebounds a game in his career in his first season of varsity ball irving led the minutemen to 18 wins their most victories in their 60 years of basketball by his junior year the college game was no longer a challenge for dr j and he decided to forego his senior season and go hardship since the nba did not allow the signing of underclassmen irving turned to the aba signing a four-year contract worth five hundred thousand dollars with the virginia squires despite the flashy nickname the squires still weren't sure what they were getting in dr j we got this kid that we think is pretty good but we're really not sure he's got big hands and he looks like he can run and jump a little bit but you're never really sure well we had this practice and i was dominant and that showed up in the first three minutes here's this guy dunking and jumping and running and i mean it was just that people were just like you know in awe i was like somewhat wired johnny kerr who was the general manager i was coaching the team leans over to me and he says i think we better get him out of there so he doesn't get hurt i said yeah you're right took that as a compliment i said all right i'll use the rest during irving's years at umass the ncaa did not allow the dunk shot but now in the pros the doctor was allowed to dunk and the combination of his acrobatics with the freewheeling aba created a perfect synergy once he got out of college and went to the pros now it's like the chains are being taken off you know you can go with uh play with reckless abandon you can go to the hoop with authority [Music] and the aba was a perfect stage for doing that it was just frantic furious action and dr j was uh so indicative of that style of play he made it a lot of fun to watch although it wasn't broadway dr jay quickly became the aba's marquee headliner he averaged 27 points a game in his first season and almost 32 a game in his second but irving's baskets did more than just add two points to the scoreboard he's the only player that turned the crowd sell out crowd at home against your team he would fly down the side and have those tremendous dunks and all the people at that time when julius was coming down the side of the forward starting to rise out of their seat looking for something spectacular to happen i'm in my first time seeing him play out in high school he came to virginia state college and he just put on a great show each time he paid a visit to one of those particular cities the fans expected a lot and he on every every night he either met expectations or exceeded expectations i never saw him have a bad night you know people love to see a show julia serving was more than a basketball player to the aba he was the aba and the league would do anything to keep him from the rival nba after his second season the virginia squires in a move to keep irving from signing with the atlanta hawks sold the rights to dr j to the new york nets for 500 000 irving then received a new five-year deal worth two million dollars and he was now on his way home to new york i don't anticipate having problems playing with any of the nets i i think uh you know i can play basketball with anybody as long as our objectives are the same and that is to win coming up next winning with style as the entire nation gets to see julius irving at his best the 1976 aba slam dunk contest when dr j and the aba returns on classic sports network more than 20 years after he first delivered it we go back to look at the signature dunk of one dr j julius irving and boy did that day change a lot of things 1976 the american basketball association was desperately trying to hang on as an entity the nba was looming and some people thought that there would be a get-together but there were no guarantees and so the aba looked and scratched and clawed for every little competitive edge that they could find one of the things they created was the first ever slam dunk contest and it was held in 1976 at halftime of what would be the very last aba all-star game and it was in denver colorado now the first three contestants were the a train artist gilmore as he was called he of course of the kentucky colonels from the san antonio spurs larry special k keenan and then there was george the iceman girvin but they were only the preliminaries because everyone knew the duel was going to come down to the high-flying david thompson of the hometown nuggets and julia serving of the new york nets while many fans in the sellout crowd of 15021 came to see a pregame show of glenn campbell and charlie rich hey who knew they left talking about dr j we turn it over now to al albert as he calls the original slam dunk contest between david thompson and julius irving the two remaining david thompson and dr j and here is the denver nuggets david thompson [Music] oh [Music] a double pump david thompson [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] twist around slam dunk [Applause] good david thompson finishing it with a twist around patented slam dunk and now the doctor goes to work [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] baby and that sense everyone really julius [Applause] irving [Applause] [Music] [Music] julia serving of the new york nets and the winner julius irving [Applause] and that sense everyone really julius irving it was uh almost like a a moment that just swept you away time stood still at halftime i think everybody knew they were watching something that was very special i thought i had a good chance to win it you know i had some dunks that were pretty unique uh you know the windmill and the 360 that a lot of other guys couldn't do you know david was just 6'4 and he was jumping higher than anybody out there you know jumping off two feet i mean which was you know a hard feat for anybody and david goes out into the corner and uh he comes out of the corner he elevates and then he does like a complete 360 degree turn and he dunks the ball and he's in his home town you know we're in denver so we're in his building and the building just you know goes bananas about it and i'm like oh i think i'm in trouble when it came down to julius irving and you know he knew he was behind in points to david it became a match race between the two of them he had to come up with something that was not just spectacular super spectacular when doctors start to go back in the direction of the other end of the floor and set his paces and everybody just uh become emotionally really involved people did not know what he was doing i remember doug mullen a couple of guys on the side because they were betting i couldn't dump the ball from there and i dunked the ball from it thousands of times so doc took off running and his afro was blowing in the wind and he took off from the free-throw line he flew in the air i mean he was a bird in the air when he came down with such a force with the tomahawk slam it's as if the whole arena went through the hoop with him it was like a vacuum and the place went crazy all the players on the sidelines just jumped up and was giving each other five so he used that particular event as his stage he was magnificent you know when dr j did it nobody has seen it up to that point and the way he did it so easily man it was very spectacular you know kind of established a uh a standard standard for slam dunking from that point on the slam dunk was in another stratosphere and it was all thanks to julius irving doc was the guy walking in there before there was a real [Music] heir [Music] interesting thing about that that wasn't really one of my best dunks coming up next julius irving's championship season with the new york mets when dr j and the aba returns on classic sports network in 1973 julius irving became a new york net and teamed up with young coach kevin lockery offensively he liked to see the firepower and you know that made for a pretty good transition for me uh going there you know three years and that's uh you know we're the dominant team in the aba the season before irving came to long island the nets won 30 games his first year there they won 55 and the doctor won his second straight scoring title and his first of three aba mvp awards what had been the stuff of myth in virginia became reality in new york and the aba became julius irving's league he used to do two dunks in the aba he would be coming on the fast break down on the right hand side with brian taylor john williamson and they would hit him and as he turned the corner he would take off and he would be coming from the baseline from the corner and as he came to dunk it he would tap the top of the box which is 11 feet and slam it down now the first time he did in the nba first couple times they cut him down and so he never did he stopped doing it on the middle of the fast break he would come down and he would take off at the foul line and he would take it up with two hands and if artist gilmore was back the second strongest guy ever to play the game behind will chamberlain at 7 2 285 he would take it up with both hands and as gilmore would go to block it he would swing out to the left-hand side and if you came for the ball he would come back over the top of you and slam it down i want to tell you something that's incredible if he did that today in the nba he would have 9 000 commercials okay not two or three i remember one game specifically the nets played against the san diego conquistadors and it was a game that went into four overtimes and at the end of each sequence the end of the fourth quarter the end of each overtime the ball went to julius and julius scored to send in the next overtime eventually the nets won that game julius played 66 minutes and scored 63 points while the high scoring games and spectacular dunks left everyone breathless it was the nets championship in 1974 that validated irving's claim to greatness the nets won more games than anyone in the aba that season and the playoffs was a coronation not a contest kevin lockery combined the talents of rookies larry keenan and super john williamson with veterans like senator bill pauls to compliment irving and make the nets unbeatable the nets lost only two games in their three postseason series in the finals against the utah stars dr j scored 47 points in game one as the nets won their first ever championship in five down two games irving tries finger rolls all good that is it but that's our number one i think the next years were the most special of all the years we didn't have any ego problems because it really was a one for all all for one situation and it was one of the rare times in which you know experienced that and knew it to be true and we all needed each other julius irving carried the aba torch for two more seasons and while his years in the other league remain a mystery to most those who were there swear they saw dr j at his best i don't think there's any question about it no one no one saw no one in the nba saw what we saw his first couple of years in the aba julius his heyday was in the aba i mean people have no idea how good doc was okay i mean they have absolutely no idea there were more headlights and highlights in the aba you know because we had more wide open games plus you know between age 21 and 26 you know just letting it all hang out coming up next julius irving joins us in victory yard to relive his second championship in the aba the 1976 aba finals against david thompson bobby jones dan essel and the rest of larry brown's denver nuggets when dr j and the aba returns on classic sports network he was number 32 when he was with the nets in the aba and we're celebrating dr j and the aba right now on classic sports and he's with us in victory yard and we're going to go back to a game that we're so happy to have uncovered i mean so p so many people when you talk about the aba they say there's no evidence but there's a little bit of evidence in the 1976 final series between you guys and the denver nuggets is part of it can you tell us about how these teams matched up they had david thompson you had you yeah john williamson yeah we had williamson brian taylor and uh we had kim hughes in the middle um if i remember correctly and uh uh tim bassett and rich jones at that time he was an aba veteran that guy richard jones express taylor right and super john williamson and al skinner and al on that team so uh in denver they featured uh david thompson bobby jones your career iron beck right uh ralph simpson and uh you know so they had a pretty good team and they had they had a strong team they had handled us pretty well during the regular season and uh that was the frightening part because they had the uh they had the home court advantage and they had the altitude and you know everybody had this psychological thing when you went to denver you know you were going to lose your breath and you know a lot of teams had oxygen you must have been excited about it now if you're thinking about it today i mean you must have been thinking about it then if you're thinking about it now yeah well you know it was probably a psychological advantage that they had and in the first quarter believe me if you ran all out that's why they always like to have running teams you know you'd find your tongue hanging down and you know single to the coach take me out but uh prepping for this series uh we had come off uh playing san antonio in a tough series and uh and knocking them off and you know that was teamwork girvin and uh a few other few former nets billy pauls and larry keenan after facing that challenge we had the nuggets we were not the favorite team uh but we were probably the more determined team and you know the game is so much willpower as much as physical capability and i think our team had a strong will a stronger will than theirs even though they might have been a little more talented what was the mood in the league then doc there was a franchise that didn't even get out of training camp they folded there were talks of merger but there had to be things that had to be resolved in court if i remember correctly it was down to seven teams did it mean as much or six teams did it mean as much to win it then because the league was in a shrinking mode or did it mean more because the teams that were left were so good i think it meant uh for me you know it meant so much because we had we had been a championship team in 74 and then went out in the first round at 75. so and we had the same coach and we had the same nucleus we made a couple of trades we had the same nucleus of players and uh this team was determined to make up for what had happened the previous year when st louis had knocked us out and uh and we were not going to be denied and as you know it went down to six game and we were down as much as 23 points don't give it away yeah we're gonna take this thing this memory one game at a time now as i mentioned to you these tapes and games of the aba are so rare we don't even have the first half of game one of the 1976 aba finals if you can believe it but we do have the second half or at least most of it as it appeared on wor-tv in new york it was steve albert and bob goldschall at the mic and in case you're not sure racing from yonkers is coming up when the game is over let's see how it unfolded in denver that day we will get you back to game one of the 1976 aba finals as we celebrate dr j and the aba here on classic sports in a moment how much of this game is is crystal clear to you i mean you had an awesome game but still you had so many great games in your career do you remember no i don't i don't remember it bit by bit you know i i know coming down the stretch uh well i know there were a lot of players yeah i won't give away the the we'll get to that yeah but uh you know kevin lockery coached a lot like doug collins coaches now you know he runs a lot of isolations um you know guys uh the game plan you go through the game plan and it's very exact but as the game goes on you know he was able to make a lot of adjustments based on you know what he would see from having experiences as a player and a good player and i see doug do this with with uh detroit all the time and and uh the the role that grant hill has now with them was very similar tomorrow uh you know play a lot of uh point forward you know where you're handling the ball create isolations you create stuff for yourself or set other guys up uh as you as you look back on this game and your thing that you had with bobby jones you're handling him pretty good what about the rivalry between you and him that may have developed as this series went along which would play out later as you would come to philadelphia with them it's an interesting question you know because uh when bobby first came in i mean this was this was bobby's third year let's say my fifth year uh he didn't like me very much he said he told me when he got to philadelphia he said i didn't like you back then when you had that wild hair you played so aggressively you know and i was i was probably a little more vulgar than than i became later on when we were teammates but uh but he liked me a lot as a teammate and uh and he liked me as a person after he got to know me but it was always a great challenge for him because you know i was a high scoring guy and he was a great defensive player and high scoring guys when they had good nights they would always damage great defensive players reputations what do you mean vulgar you were vulgar well you know i mean i i i used to curse a lot on the course on the court but there was a lot of guys get upset yeah you got upset they didn't make it does not mean i because it made you seem like about six nine i was into the period you know and i think the you know i dealt with alter egos dr j was one character i think julie searling was another and on the court you know this this player came out his energy came out you know off the court i really didn't want to be perceived that way i was basically kind of quiet and shy and good listener and uh you know more of a student off the court but on the court uh i was into you know teaching guys what i knew that guy on the playground who called you the doctor because you called him the professor yeah you know what you look like you're the professor today with the glasses and the suit and everything but that's all part of the that's all part of the legend as we go back now to pick this up in the second half it's still uh heading into the fourth quarter you guys have built up a little bit of a lead it's noisy yeah in denver and you've got that altitude thing and you're in the midst of a game uh where the point total is going to be noteworthy is this as we watch it one of the top 10 games of your career or or not even that uh i would have to say yes oh god i think i think at the beginning of that series i was i was playing basketball as well as i could ever play and really ever hoped to play i mean it was the prime time of my career at age 26 i think between that window between 26 and 30 or 20 26 and 32 you're at your best it's when physically you know what's going on and mentally you know what's going on you know what it takes to win and this was this was a game that we were not favored in so uh you know no matter what kind of lead you had on the nuggets you know they were always going to come back and if i'm not mistaken the summer before you had played in the rucker maybe for one of the last times right i had played unbelievable yeah i played the summer imagine as you watch this then it's one of the top 10 games in the career of one of the best 50 players in the history of the nba and in that regard he's right at the top of the list and that this was a player who prior to that could be seen on a rucker playground on the streets of new york was an amazing time in basketball in america let's go back now to denver colorado once again it's steve albert and bob gold troll out the mic as it appeared on wor-tv in new york it was julia servings new york nets up by six game one of the 76 aba finals so in typical aba style it was pretty wide open and a high scoring game one of the aba finals in 76. dr j is in with kevin lockery and the rest of your teammates john williamson is an option with four seconds to go maybe on your mind but maybe in the minds of denver what did you think of in last second situations like this was it healthy for you to take the shot or was it healthier for you to be the diversion so that someone like a super john could take it well i think it's healthy for me to take the shot medium range or try to take the ball to the hoop and then you got to look at who's defending you and what they do well i mean some guys are better at blocking shots other guys are better at knocking the ball away some guys are better at drawing charges uh bobby happened to be good in all those areas he was probably less of a shot blocker man-to-man he was better as a block shocker shot a shot a shot blocker when he's trying to help out because so playing you straight up you know he'd always play you for the drive and then he'll play you two run into him play for the charge because you've had such a good game against him do you feel partly like you've gotten him beaten already because of that at least mentally or not well i mean i knew that i could elevate and shoot over him and i wasn't worried about you know i think i think there was more risk in driving the ball to the hoop than there is and pulling up and shooting a jump shot against a player like him yeah because he's always going to have his body in the right position but he's not going to leave his feet unless he's absolutely sure would kevin lockery at this point have drawn something or would he basically just say you come off a low screen and we're getting the ball to you docking well it depends on where the ball's been taken out from i mean in this situation we had set plays from out of bounds and uh and then there's you know place to be created i'm not sure what happened in this one how about four seconds to go when i tell you you've got four seconds to go on an inbounds play what do you say in your head that you've got time to do i feel as though uh if the score is tied it's a no lose situation you know i gotta i gotta take the shot right uh when i'm comfortable and when i wanna take the shot uh if i can take it you know where there's a couple of ticks on the clock so we got a chance for an offensive rebound if it misses fine but you don't want to leave enough time for them to get a rebound call timeout and then have another crack at the basket if this is one of the top 10 games in your career which you said earlier what about this shot in in a final situation without giving it away was this a oh boy i'll tell you what we'll do this one in a moment okay i got trapped there i don't want to ruin it okay so let's go back now it's 118 118 denver nets game 176 finals and four seconds are left so the shot falls and the nets take a one to nothing lead in that best of seven series how about it i almost ruined it before but top ten games how about top 10 shots buzzer beater final situation well you know i made a three-pointer against boston in the spectrum one night off of a jump ball between charles barkley and mikhail shot from the other side of half court against dallas which was uh obviously a three-pointer when the score was 120 120 and everybody was kind of settling in waiting for the overtime you're setting me up for this was pretty good but not one of the all times i had some i had some shots that are memorable this one because it was not that far away from the basket the significance of it was huge but the shot was somewhat routine now doc uh so rare for people today to get a chance to to see this game i mean we're really excited that we could allow everybody to see it how about you how many times have you gone back and looked at tapes of of you playing in the aba well you don't even have probably any tapes yeah i i have some aba footage um but it's very rare for me too i haven't been able to sit down and enjoy it and you know i'm thinking about my 15 year old son while we're talking about this uh because he's playing he's a sophomore in high school now i don't think he's ever seen any aba footage other than the slam dunk contest i think it's time though yeah i think yeah i think i'll let him know so you could you could get a kick if i if you had a free night and i handed you the 76 second half of game one you'd get a kick out of have a nice question no question it would be great all right now the series continued the nets had a chance to wrap it up in game five in denver and claim their second aba championship but it didn't happen so the scene was set in game six in new york and we'll talk about that in a moment with dr j julia serving on classic sports in a moment as we mentioned the new york nets had gone to denver for a game five and lost a chance to win the series and it's amazing to me as i've been in sports for so long to see what an emotional up and down a seven game series is there times when you think it's not happening then there are times you think you can't lose and then there's another time when you think you can't win how crushing was it do you remember to lose that game five well you know the weirdest thing is that we had not won in that building all year prior to that first game so uh although we had hopes of winning uh realistically uh we didn't we didn't think we were gonna win uh going back to denver and you know they had they had such a great home record i mean that year i think they had won 63 games or what have you so they were very dominant at home and the one we got gave us the home court advantage so we felt very comfortable that we now had the home court advantage we didn't want to come home and lose that and force a seventh game which would be back in denver right so we don't have again a lot of game six because so little exists of any of these games but we do have enough to give you a sense of what happened you guys are down by 22 points at one point in the second half did you allow yourself as you as you knew going back to game seven in denver was not something you wanted to do did you allow yourself to think that now you had to get ready for that possibility it's now or never i mean this is the last aba championship if we're going to win it we have to win this game there's no question about it uh if we go back to denver uh the vanda they'd have such an advantage over us there was no way we're going to win this if we don't if we don't win the sixth game we don't we don't win the seven steal by dr j [Applause] dr j if it's a doctor [Applause] that's what they do so they have trimmed it to 14 points it's going to be a significant uh end of game six for john williamson too uh tell us a little about the late great super john williamson well you know soup was one of those players who uh you hate to play against what you love to have on your team you know because he's so unpredictable you don't know what he's going to do from from from game to game uh you know he's going to come in in a good mood smiling and joking he's going to come in with attitude what have you but if he's on your team you know you know what the uh what the pen words were you know how to bring him into the fold and i knew better than anybody because john had a tremendous amount of respect for me but he never respected our opponents and a tremendous amount of respect for the game and you know for himself and he was a warrior he was like andrew tony who i had later on in my career uh as a teammate a guy who you had to harness to a degree but there was sometimes if you just let him go he's scoring anybody williamson williamson open williamson williamson finds the shot got it i tell you john williamson believes he can score off anybody would it surprise you uh as you look back at this game to see how dominant he could be in such a critical situation for your team i mean this is a game where if i say one net dominated game six that could give the nets a championship it's gonna be you yeah but for some reason i didn't have a bad game i'm not saying that a bad game doc what was it like something like that but if i tell you one of the guys is gonna have 16 points in the fourth quarter as good as he was i don't think it would be him what does that tell everybody about about him uh just about his physical gifts and his his attitude his focus uh 16 points and a quarter you know john could do that on any given night whether it was gonna be first second third or fourth he probably couldn't do it for four quarters uh wouldn't do it for four quarters but on any given night and i think there were other nights in which he had 16 or 17 points in a quarter and this one in being the most significant game in the history of the just made it that much more gratifying you know for all of us because he was one of us i was 15 used to play him one on one after practice all the time and of course i never won but one day i was winning i was a point away and he comes back and he ties me and then he gets the ball and he slaps his hand in my chest and literally takes me and throws me to the floor and lays it in and looked at me and said you didn't think you're going to beat me did you that's the competitiveness john had the competitive juices and you know the warriors mentality ten seconds to the championship skinner has the ball five seconds to the championship it turns it's all over it's all over with three seconds to go and the crowd storms on the court one second the clock is out and the ball game's over [Applause] pandemonium as the new york nets win 112 106. when the game is over and you guys win you beat denver at the nassau coliseum big crowd was there a moment of quiet reflection that the aba and everything that had been was over did you think about that or was it just sheer euphoria that you had won a championship well i think the euphoria that we won the championship and that you know we had uh sort of clean the skeleton out of the closet from getting knocked out the previous year when we were by a team that we were better than spirit of st louis the idea of it being the last aba game i think at this time the nets and nuggets had already made application into the nba and uh we knew that those franchises were no longer going to be aba franchises whether there would be an aba or not it was unlikely where each of us would be uh that was to be decided doc called it himself the prime of his career that year in 1976 he helped the nets win their second aba championship and one of the men who was there at the microphone at a young age for him as well was steve albert who recalls how good doc was in 76 and i'll never forget in that series he averaged close to 38 points a game better than 14 rebounds and he shot 60 percent from the field and this one being guarded by the premier defensive forward in the league of bobby jones and it really it was only fitting that dr j julius irving won that last aba title a couple of minutes for some final thoughts from dr j julia serving who in 1976 following the absorption of the four aba teams into the nba was sold by then owner roy beau of the nets to the philadelphia 76ers because roy beau just couldn't afford it now in a book by terry pluto called loose balls about the aba roy beau talks about offering you to the new york knicks which would have well it would have changed the course of history of basketball in new york and been one of the greatest things to ever happen to the next franchise do you remember any such thing well there was discussion about the knicks when i reached my impasse with the nets and it was decided that i was no longer going to be a net and i selected three franchises uh new york philadelphia because of the commutability right and los angeles just for the idea of changing the environment all all together and the decision was made by uh roy bowe that he would not sell my contract to the knicks that it was going to be philadelphia los angeles and i selected philadelphia a lot of people look at times like that as an exciting time other times people look at that and say they don't like all the indecision they don't like of all the change and all that what do you look back on that time for you was there the sadness of the aba being over was it uneasiness about your own future what was it i was never uneasy about my future i mean i knew that i could play basketball and i could play at some level whether it was in america or in europe or with the globetrotters what have you i was going to have an opportunity to play basketball being vice president of players association i was concerned about the fate of the other players in the aba and that was something that as an association we fought very hard for uh with this absorption and they ended up having a dispersal draft so that you know players like moses malone maurice lucas ended up you know in portland and made them a championship team with dave torczyk and uh other guys were dispersed around the league and then the guys who didn't have guaranteed contracts were still compensated to a degree you mentioned mo lucas yourself obviously bobby jones guys who made a name for themselves in the quote-unquote inferior aba who went on and were a big part of the top ten categories in a lot of areas of the nba represented the all-star game if i'm not mistaken 14 guys that next year were in the end it was 11 11 out of 24. and then the three guys who had played some in the aba like rick barry and charlie scott who played some but they didn't go in that particular year but they had played part of their career was that personally satisfying to you to see these guys prove themselves where a lot of people thought they couldn't uh very much so you know then the knock had been that uh we were an inferior league uh you know and our rationalization was that maybe we didn't have the depth of the nba but we knew that the cream of the aba was as good as a cream in the nba and that all start we can prove that hey doc if there's one guy who should sign a red white and blue ball that's endorsed by the nba it's you would you please sign this for us so we can keep it forever here no problem thanks a lot all right 50 years to get there huh well you 50 years there we go he's dr j julius irving the one and only one of the best 50 players in the history of the league and appropriately he's going to put his signature on a ball that carries through the generations of basketball red white and blue and of course in the nba today our thanks for joining us here on classic sports as we celebrate it dr j and the aba we'll see you again soon [Music] so [Music] you

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Id: nVRGOEp4viE

Length: 41min 49sec (2509 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021