Speaker 1: If you love basketball, there's a good chance you love
Speaker 1: movies about basketball. I even had the chance to be
Speaker 1: in one, like Mike. You've probably seen it. It's about
Speaker 1: a kid named Calvin Cambridge played by Lil bow Wow,
Speaker 1: who comes across a mysterious pair of old sneakers inscribed
Speaker 1: with the faded initials MJ and.
Speaker 2: The rest Ah. Well, you should watch it.
Speaker 1: Here's one of my scenes which we shot on the
Speaker 1: set of the NBA on NBC.
Speaker 3: The big story in the NBA, Calvin Cambridge, the four
Speaker 3: foot eight dynamo, has now signed a lucrative contract with
Speaker 3: the Knights, and no wonder after he led them to
Speaker 3: have come from behind win over the Spurs with twenty seven.
Speaker 2: Points a kid was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Another one of my favorite hoops movies is a send
Speaker 1: up of something.
Speaker 2: A little closer to reality, at least for me.
Speaker 4: Very successful and this ninth Annual ABA All Star Game Shining.
Speaker 1: Games Semi Pro starring Will Ferrell, set in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: the final year of the American Basketball Association in semi pro,
Speaker 1: the fictional Flint Tropics are doing.
Speaker 2: Whatever they can to survive a merger.
Speaker 1: With the NBA despite having the worst record in the league.
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell's character is a team owner, head coach, starting
Speaker 1: power forward and pregame analyst Scott Armstrong wrote the film,
Speaker 1: they had.
Speaker 5: To compete with the NBA, which was like impossible for
Speaker 5: them at the time. In order to compete with them,
Speaker 5: they had to like step up, you know, the showmanship
Speaker 5: and step up the excitement of the game. So they
Speaker 5: added things like the three point line. They added the
Speaker 5: dunk contest, They had like a rainbow ball to play with,
Speaker 5: and like gave out prizes and had halftime shows.
Speaker 1: What makes Semi Pro fun for me is that many
Speaker 1: of the teams actually existed. The characters are based on
Speaker 1: real people, and some of the crazier stun like bear wrestling,
Speaker 1: those actually happened.
Speaker 6: In the ABN the Destroyer wrestled Victor the Bear four
Speaker 6: hundred pound Victor the Bear.
Speaker 5: I saw a charity event in pure Illinois, and like
Speaker 5: the early nineties, like I happened to see like people
Speaker 5: like were allowed to wrestle a bear for charity or whatever,
Speaker 5: and like now you would never ever ever be allowed
Speaker 5: to do that, but they used to do stuff like
Speaker 5: that in the seventies, and so that kind of inspired
Speaker 5: that scene where like Will Ferrell would wrestle a bear
Speaker 5: at halftime, we worked to a real grizzly bear and
Speaker 5: we were in the gym with like a trained grizzly
Speaker 5: bear for half of it.
Speaker 7: Of course, like Will was never in danger or.
Speaker 5: Anything, but there was one moment where there's this guy
Speaker 5: just like blowing a whistle and like the bear was
Speaker 5: not listening to the whistle and I'm like watching this
Speaker 5: and he's going like like that, and then the trainer's
Speaker 5: just like everyone get in the bathroom, and like we
Speaker 5: all had to like go into the bathroom of the
Speaker 5: of this like stadium that we built, and we're like
Speaker 5: hiding in there with like the door. When you're in
Speaker 5: the ring with that bear, you got to keep them
Speaker 5: busy or he's able to just walk away from me
Speaker 5: and wander to ring and back to his cage. So
Speaker 5: the bear just wandered around the stadium by himself and
Speaker 5: not eat anybody.
Speaker 8: It was hilarious.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, how did the bear finally get to
Speaker 1: where it was supposed to go?
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 5: He just started like listening again, and like we're and
Speaker 5: of course, like we need to get like a certain shot,
Speaker 5: so we're like, can we just.
Speaker 9: Do one more? I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Man, Like it's like like it's like that balance of
Speaker 5: like will the director get eaten?
Speaker 8: How bad do we need the shot?
Speaker 1: The film captures the essence of the ABA players, coaches,
Speaker 1: and executives like my dad, Mike Storren, a gang of
Speaker 1: ambitious dreamers who loved basketball and were determined to be
Speaker 1: part of the NBA. Was there anyone real that you
Speaker 1: modeled some of your characters after got Gae?
Speaker 5: There's some moments, you know, like trading for a washing machine,
Speaker 5: like when Monix got traded for what really happened? I mean,
Speaker 5: there are kind of amalgamations of like types, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. So I can't say it was like
Speaker 5: someone you know, but like again, I know it's a ridiculous,
Speaker 5: silly movie, but like at the heart of it, there
Speaker 5: is sort of like being the best you could possibly be.
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy that it exists, that the film exists,
Speaker 1: because I think that so many people and really my
Speaker 1: motivation for doing this podcast was, you know, not only
Speaker 1: because I grew up around the ABA, but I was like,
Speaker 1: I know that there's so many people who watch a
Speaker 1: game today that have no idea. They don't know that
Speaker 1: this took place. They don't know where all this came from.
Speaker 8: I can't believe it happened.
Speaker 5: It really didn't happen. It really was insane, like these
Speaker 5: guys traveling on buses and like dunking, like doing stuff
Speaker 5: in a way that was like to half filled stadiums.
Speaker 8: There's a freedom to it.
Speaker 5: It's like seventies America, Free Love, Free basketball.
Speaker 1: Every movie has an ending, and so did the ABA.
Speaker 1: It was over in nineteen seventy five when a fraction
Speaker 1: of the team left from the league's heyday made their
Speaker 1: way into the NBA. It's the journey to get there
Speaker 1: that is part of the screenplay of my life, and
Speaker 1: this podcast documents all the plot twists, storylines and characters
Speaker 1: along the way.
Speaker 2: I'm Hannah Storm and this is NBA DNA Episode two, The.
Speaker 10: Merger Waken out last Lloyd af here push it from
Speaker 10: you to Brown. He wants to tuck you to get
Speaker 10: it up quickly. Now as the end of the theory
Speaker 10: that think that on the post to go more he
Speaker 10: got it into position.
Speaker 11: Throughout the history of the ABA, there was always an
Speaker 11: underlying belief on the part of certainly every owner that
Speaker 11: we should merge with the NBA.
Speaker 6: Danny will only here in Manhattan.
Speaker 8: The Lakers keep up the pressure.
Speaker 11: The issue was that if we can create a merger
Speaker 11: with the NBA, we will then become one big, happy family.
Speaker 11: Our franchises will be very valuable, and we will be
Speaker 11: economic and psychological success. So every time a new owner
Speaker 11: came into the league, and there were a lot of them,
Speaker 11: one of the things that they believed was, I will
Speaker 11: create a merger.
Speaker 1: That's my dad, Mike Storren, the ABA's fifth commissioner, in
Speaker 1: the same twenty fourteen interview you heard in the last episode.
Speaker 1: At the time the ABA was formed in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: the NBA was just over two decades old and had
Speaker 1: been fending off competing basketball leagues. Potential investors in the
Speaker 1: ABA were told they could get a franchise for half
Speaker 1: of what would cost to get an NBA team, With
Speaker 1: the price as low as ten thousand dollars for a team,
Speaker 1: at one point, many were scraping by. Here's Saint Louis
Speaker 1: Spirits play by play man thrown out mL car. This
Speaker 1: is a twenty footer.
Speaker 8: Kentucky eadbounds death, no joke.
Speaker 12: There were times when we would, let's say, arrive in
Speaker 12: Denver and they're about to pass out the keys, but
Speaker 12: they won't give them to us because we haven't paid
Speaker 12: the bill from the last time, you know. And teams
Speaker 12: take the Virginia Swires, they threatened strikes, player strikes because
Speaker 12: the last few checks had bounced. That's kind of what
Speaker 12: the ABA was, at least for some of the franchises.
Speaker 7: Doctor J out of the Unbelievable Doctor J.
Speaker 13: You know, if you got a check, you ran to
Speaker 13: the bank real quick. It made a deposit, just to
Speaker 13: make sure, make sure it held up.
Speaker 2: Make Surrey be cash.
Speaker 13: mL car was he talks about it the most. He said, Man,
Speaker 13: I had to get down there quick. I didn't want
Speaker 13: my check to balance. I want to be the first
Speaker 13: one in line, not the twelfth gap, because it's twelve
Speaker 13: men on a team, so maybe by the time you
Speaker 13: get to.
Speaker 8: The twelfth guy there's a problem with his check.
Speaker 1: The Holy Grail was an National TV contract to make
Speaker 1: the ABA viable. One of the league's founders was NBA
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer George Mikeen.
Speaker 4: There are some fires to Miken and when Big George
Speaker 4: Gip said sixty nine sixty eight, the Laker.
Speaker 2: Who became the ABA's first commissioner.
Speaker 11: George, after being the foundation for creating the league ownership group,
Speaker 11: decided he wasn't the right.
Speaker 9: Man to move the league forward.
Speaker 11: And I don't even remember who the section commissioner was,
Speaker 11: but there was one. And then the owner said, oh,
Speaker 11: we need a guy with television experience because we need
Speaker 11: a television contract. So the next commissioner was a guy
Speaker 11: named Jack Dolph who was formerly vice president of sports
Speaker 11: Programming for CBS.
Speaker 9: And everybody said, oh, this is great.
Speaker 11: Jack's going to get us a million dollar television contract
Speaker 11: and we're all going to die and go to heaven
Speaker 11: and the ABA will be very successful. Well, Jack couldn't
Speaker 11: get him a tele vision contract, and they couldn't dine
Speaker 11: and go to heaven with all the television money they expected.
Speaker 9: They said, we got to get somebody else in here.
Speaker 1: Seven commissioners in nine seasons. My dad was tapped as
Speaker 1: number five, in large part because his Kentucky Colonels were
Speaker 1: perennial contenders for the title.
Speaker 13: Kentucky Rebounds Day, your Fishline.
Speaker 1: Selling out every night fifteen to eighteen thousand fans packed
Speaker 1: into Louisville's Freedom Hall to watch dan Issel, Louis Dampier
Speaker 1: and artist Gilmore put on a show.
Speaker 4: Gilmore setting up low inside beached Roberts to come out
Speaker 4: the fleet, throw out and stores.
Speaker 11: My goal as commissioner was not to create a merger,
Speaker 11: but was to create a league that would be the
Speaker 11: best basketball league in the world. So I was a
Speaker 11: logical choice to take the league forward to build a
Speaker 11: league on its own merits, and to that spend all
Speaker 11: of my time trying to figure out how it was
Speaker 11: we could get a merger.
Speaker 1: The basketball itself, as we have documented, was highly entertaining,
Speaker 1: but another part of the ABA legacy is the show
Speaker 1: around the game, anything to get people into the seats.
Speaker 1: Some of my dad's ideas through the years worked out
Speaker 1: better than others.
Speaker 11: One of the great promotions that I created was a
Speaker 11: punkin carving contest, and the theory was that at halftime
Speaker 11: we would select ten people from the stands who would
Speaker 11: come down and carve punkins, and we would turn lights
Speaker 11: out and the crowd would be excited by the wonderful
Speaker 11: punkins they'd carved. Well, of course, it takes a long
Speaker 11: time to carve a punkin. So we pre carved the
Speaker 11: punkins them, so all they had to do was come
Speaker 11: down and pull the pieces out. But we turned the
Speaker 11: lights out and several of the people fell down with
Speaker 11: their pumpkins, and the pumpkins splattered.
Speaker 9: On the floor.
Speaker 1: A bit more successful, perhaps, was the time my dad
Speaker 1: featured a team of Playboy bunnies on the court at
Speaker 1: halftime of a colonel's game. There were also cow milking competitions,
Speaker 1: the first ever Halter top night, and let's not forget
Speaker 1: the famous bikini clad ball girls in Miami. Now, since
Speaker 1: this wasn't on TV, it was really up to the
Speaker 1: writers to document it all. Here's longtime basketball writer Peter VESSI.
Speaker 7: I don't remember anything but the cheerleader.
Speaker 2: Course you don't.
Speaker 7: You know now Lucky will tell you that he thinks
Speaker 7: that I dated a cheerleader from every city, and he's right.
Speaker 1: Peter started covering professional basketball in the nineteen seventies when
Speaker 1: he wrote about the ABA for the New York Post,
Speaker 1: or maybe Lived it would be more accurate.
Speaker 7: After the game, we would all go out and party.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you weren't getting to bed
Speaker 1: early because of that early flight. That was not happening.
Speaker 1: No one of the trainers. Fritz Masman taught me early
Speaker 1: that you got to go to sleep with your clothes on.
Speaker 2: Say step in the morning.
Speaker 9: That was big. That was big, you know.
Speaker 7: So whenever you went to sleep with that night, you
Speaker 7: were waking up with that next morning, so you know,
Speaker 7: you might get two or three hours sleep whatever. We
Speaker 7: were out partying.
Speaker 1: Back to Bob Costas, who was rolling with the Saint
Speaker 1: Louis Spirits.
Speaker 2: What'd you guys do when you were hanging out?
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, sometimes we'd go to dinner together.
Speaker 12: Sometimes we'd you know, gather in the hotel our road
Speaker 12: game afterwards. I practices. I could shoot. I couldn't play.
Speaker 12: It was too small to really play. I couldn't guard anybody,
Speaker 12: and if I was guarded, I couldn't get a shot off.
Speaker 12: But if we were just shooting free throws back then
Speaker 12: I could shoot and I would win bets. I would
Speaker 12: get in three point contests and in free throw contests
Speaker 12: with some of the guys who I knew I could be. Wow,
Speaker 12: and then they got wise because I was taking their money.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was crazy, but crazy fun, and the sports world
Speaker 1: took notice. Peter Carey, who would eventually become executive editor
Speaker 1: of Sports Illustrated was assigned to cover the Renegade League.
Speaker 6: First of all, the ABA hit a three point shot,
Speaker 6: which the NBA didn't have at that time. The game
Speaker 6: was more open in the way it was played, so
Speaker 6: it was more running, more excitement, and so on and
Speaker 6: so forth. A guy came out of nowhere named Julius
Speaker 6: Serving and he became a very compelling player, and people
Speaker 6: wanted to see.
Speaker 1: One of the more enduring ABA ideas is something we
Speaker 1: see every All Star weekend, the Slam Dunk Content Test,
Speaker 1: which took place in nineteen seventy six at the ABA's
Speaker 1: final All Star game before the merger.
Speaker 4: The judges will score on each dunk on a basis
Speaker 4: of five to ten points.
Speaker 2: Here's Doctor j.
Speaker 13: The first was in Denver. It was an ABA idea.
Speaker 13: You know. The lineup was me and Larry Keenan, George
Speaker 13: Gerb and David Thompson.
Speaker 4: The man that has turned the slam dunk into an
Speaker 4: r got six foot six for the New York That's
Speaker 4: the fabulous Doctor j. Julius Ervant.
Speaker 1: So didn't you start by dunking two balls and the hoop?
Speaker 1: Isn't that how you began that.
Speaker 14: I've seen the video a few times, and I think
Speaker 14: it was, you know, duncan two balls at the.
Speaker 4: Same time, and now the doctor goes to work.
Speaker 13: Which was something there. You know, not everybody could do that.
Speaker 13: I mean there's funny guys who can't do it. Easy
Speaker 13: to go one in the other and two at the
Speaker 13: same time. It was a little bit different. But I
Speaker 13: think the question was why a you synonymous with dunking.
Speaker 8: I think that dunk contest and dunking from the.
Speaker 13: Foul line at the end and David missing on one
Speaker 13: of his dunks kind of paved the way because he
Speaker 13: was doing great dunks too.
Speaker 8: He was doing pirouettes from the corner.
Speaker 4: And David Thompson finishing it with a trush around. Pattna
Speaker 4: slammed dunk.
Speaker 13: With his leaping ability, and he was at home because
Speaker 13: he played for the Nuggets.
Speaker 8: You know, I felt a little threatened, did Okay?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I felt I felt I felt threatened by him.
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, he.
Speaker 1: Thought the Skywalker was gonna maybe take that dunk title
Speaker 1: instead of you, that nobody had the title.
Speaker 8: That's right, this was a title to be earned.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me about the free throw line dunk. Where
Speaker 2: that idea came from?
Speaker 1: You know how many times you had done that?
Speaker 4: That's everyone.
Speaker 13: Really, I'm gonna definitely credit Converse with that one, because
Speaker 13: if I didn't have the Converse, it never.
Speaker 8: Would have happened.
Speaker 13: And the reason and the reason I had the Converse
Speaker 13: on is because I did basketball clinics for Converse for kids,
Speaker 13: and I would always end.
Speaker 8: The clinic with a dunk from the foul.
Speaker 13: That was my exit. You know, It's like, you know,
Speaker 13: somebody's on the stage. They danced, they got the cane
Speaker 13: and they dance, and they danced their way into the
Speaker 13: off the stage and they come back out for the ovation.
Speaker 2: Was just dunk your way off the court and then I.
Speaker 8: Leave and then I leave it and then like all
Speaker 8: standing up on crazy and I come back out and
Speaker 8: take a bound.
Speaker 2: So cool. What did you think when you saw mj
Speaker 2: do it years later?
Speaker 13: Well, here's what happened because I was there and we're
Speaker 13: like courtside, and Michael's knew heated battles with domin Ainsbury.
Speaker 2: Now, Michael Jordan told me he had something special.
Speaker 10: He may be trying to take off from the freefront line.
Speaker 8: I'll af Julia serving let's see what happens.
Speaker 9: He kind of measured it.
Speaker 8: From there and he looked old with me, and I'm like, Poyton,
Speaker 8: do it. Go back down there and he talks about
Speaker 8: this and then interviews.
Speaker 13: So whatever said, go back then, So he runs back
Speaker 13: and then he comes dribbling.
Speaker 8: And you know, and when he jumps, he does a
Speaker 8: little pump. That's gotta be it.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 8: Rest was history.
Speaker 2: It was derivative of the ABA's approach.
Speaker 12: Well.
Speaker 1: Great players like Well Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul Jabbar were
Speaker 1: not allowed to dunk in the NBA and dunks weren't
Speaker 1: allowed in college.
Speaker 2: For that matter.
Speaker 1: The ABA allowed playground moves that made the game so exciting,
Speaker 1: moves popularized in places like Rucker Park, a Harlem court
Speaker 1: that's hosted some of the greatest players to ever play
Speaker 1: the game. Vessi coached in Rutgers Summer League. That's where
Speaker 1: he first met doctor j.
Speaker 7: So Julius is coming out of college and I had
Speaker 7: a friend of mine who played at Hofster, guy named
Speaker 7: but Dave Brownville. I went to Hofster for a year,
Speaker 7: played ball there for a year, left before they asked
Speaker 7: me to leave. So I asked Dave. David was very
Speaker 7: good friends with Julius. You know, do you think Julius
Speaker 7: would want to play for me and the Rooker I'm
Speaker 7: starting a team, he asked them. And he came or
Speaker 7: coming into Rutger Park for the first time, me first
Speaker 7: time him, and we sit on a bench to three
Speaker 7: of us, and Julius says to me, how much am
Speaker 7: I going to get paid? And I said, Julius, as
Speaker 7: far as I know, nobody's getting paid in the Rucker Tournament.
Speaker 7: And he said, okay, he said, let me think about it.
Speaker 7: So him and Dave walked around the park, came back,
Speaker 7: started leasing up the sneakers. Let's go. And so the
Speaker 7: first game that he played, we played against Tiny Archibaal's
Speaker 7: team and it was raining, so we had to go indoors.
Speaker 7: And Tiny's team was loaded with pros, just like my
Speaker 7: team was. I had Charlie, I had Julius, I had
Speaker 7: Billy Paul, sayed Ali Taylor. But he did too. He
Speaker 7: had Austin Carr, you know the year before, he had
Speaker 7: Dave Cowen's rookie year. Wow, you know loaded. Each team
Speaker 7: was loaded, and they beat us indoors. But on one
Speaker 7: play in the first half, Julius is driving down the sideline,
Speaker 7: right sideline and he takes off. There are two people
Speaker 7: in front of him. One guy was Marvin Roberts, remember him.
Speaker 7: He was like six ' nine. So Julius takes off
Speaker 7: from about fifteen feet twenty feet away from the hoop
Speaker 7: and we're like, what is this. He goes over both
Speaker 7: of the tough and dunks wow. And we had never
Speaker 7: ever seen anything like that.
Speaker 13: The Rucka Park happened before the ABA. I mean, I
Speaker 13: actually my junior year of college, before training camp started.
Speaker 13: You know, Charlie Scott, who's the leader and the captain
Speaker 13: of the Virginia Squires, he and Fatty Taylor, he invited
Speaker 13: me to come and play in the Rutger and when
Speaker 13: we were playing for Peter Vesti's team, you know, one
Speaker 13: of the things that I really love to do was
Speaker 13: going to dunk the ball. So when I got to
Speaker 13: the rugby League, you know, it was I mean, my
Speaker 13: jaw dropped. Players were playing at the highest level of
Speaker 13: playground basketball.
Speaker 2: What does it feel like to dunk a basketball?
Speaker 1: Because you know, ninety nine point nine percent of the
Speaker 1: population has never.
Speaker 8: Been I never felt it, you know what I mean?
Speaker 13: You never climbed the ladder and just you never never
Speaker 13: climbed up the steps. That Okay, it's probably be hard
Speaker 13: to hold the ball one hand too.
Speaker 15: Right, Yeah, yeah, So I have made a hole in
Speaker 15: one of golf second year when I was playing, and
Speaker 15: holding one's a lot harder than dunking the ball.
Speaker 13: It exceeds the experience of dunking the ball. And dunking
Speaker 13: the ball is kind of parallel. If anything, it might
Speaker 13: be knocking it out of the park on a given
Speaker 13: day because in the course of the game, you know
Speaker 13: there's going to be a certain number of home runs
Speaker 13: or whatever when you knock it out the park, you know,
Speaker 13: dunking the balls like knock it out the park. You know,
Speaker 13: come in and you know there's going to be some
Speaker 13: kind of resistance or maybe not today's game.
Speaker 8: But.
Speaker 13: Somebody there. There was always somebody in my era, in
Speaker 13: the previous era. There's always somebody there trying to knock
Speaker 13: your teeth out or trying to put you put you
Speaker 13: on the ground and put you in your place.
Speaker 16: And my place is here in your chest, dunk in
Speaker 16: his basketball.
Speaker 8: That's my place.
Speaker 2: Is what's your favorite dunk? Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 8: So Elvin Hayes was great basketball.
Speaker 4: Dennis Aufrey at six against Delvin Hays Hayes at six ' nine,
Speaker 4: and you see Larry Wright coming up whether it's moving.
Speaker 14: Two year eleven Hall of Famer earned his kudos, and
Speaker 14: the only floor he had from my perspective, was when
Speaker 14: he defended the basket.
Speaker 8: You jump in the air, you have both hands up
Speaker 8: in the air, and I saw him.
Speaker 13: This time and time again. So we're playing the Bullets,
Speaker 13: Washington Bullets, and I'm I'm coming off the wing and
Speaker 13: I get around Bobby Dandridge and Elvin's back there defending
Speaker 13: the basket.
Speaker 8: To this so it looked like gold posts.
Speaker 16: Right when you're playing when you're playing football, and you
Speaker 16: got gold posts right, So that was the goal post defense.
Speaker 8: I end up chest to chest.
Speaker 13: I actually feel his chest against my chest and we're
Speaker 13: both in the air, so.
Speaker 17: With chest to chess and I'm coming with my right
Speaker 17: hand and I move it over to in between the
Speaker 17: goal posts and then I dunked the ball and the whole.
Speaker 8: Capital Senate gets quiet. It was like because that was
Speaker 8: their guy. But that moment goes down with me.
Speaker 13: Is probably the best endgame dunk that I ever had
Speaker 13: because you know, he's six foot nine, six ten.
Speaker 8: And he's strong.
Speaker 13: And then it happened, and then it was punctuated.
Speaker 8: I love it, and dunk isn't greater unless it's punctuate.
Speaker 1: Peter Carrey wrote the first national article about Julius.
Speaker 6: I say that this guy's an emerging figure. We've got
Speaker 6: to put him on the cover, right. So I'm writing
Speaker 6: the story and it actually approached Julius before the game
Speaker 6: and said, do you feel comfortable dunking in warm ups?
Speaker 6: Which I knew he did, but I didn't want to
Speaker 6: ask him to do something you want to do. And
Speaker 6: he said yes, And I said, okay, we're probably going
Speaker 6: to have a photographer shooting you while you're dunking in practice,
Speaker 6: because I want a picture of your dunking. He says, okay.
Speaker 6: So the teams come out on the floor and there's
Speaker 6: no Julius. Oh, and I'm sitting scratching my head. I'm
Speaker 6: sort of standing behind the nets bench and Julius isn't there,
Speaker 6: and they're they're doing all their shooting and stuff. And
Speaker 6: then finally over in the corner of the stands on
Speaker 6: the opposite side, I see Julius is talking to a
Speaker 6: guy and a little kid in the stands. I don't
Speaker 6: know what the hell's going on. Anyway, So time passes
Speaker 6: and the pregame warmups have ended and he comes loping
Speaker 6: across the floor. He doesn't even go to his menk.
Speaker 6: He comes directly to me and he said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: but that man up there is a rabbi from I
Speaker 6: think Buffalo, and he's brought his son down here to
Speaker 6: me play as a bar Mitzer present. So I thought
Speaker 6: I had to, you know, pay some attention. I said, okay,
Speaker 6: he said, but don't worry, I'll get you dunk in
Speaker 6: the first quarter.
Speaker 8: I love it.
Speaker 6: A few minutes into the first quarter, steals the pass,
Speaker 6: goes down the floor, takes off it about the foul line.
Speaker 2: He had a kind of a very ari.
Speaker 6: Afro and so when he was really going fast, it
Speaker 6: sort of got swept back a little bit and he's like,
Speaker 6: you know, a foot above the basket, coming down really hard.
Speaker 6: And that ended up being on the cover of the magazine.
Speaker 8: Wow, and he willed it.
Speaker 2: That is incredible.
Speaker 1: So why was this incredible talent in the ABA instead
Speaker 1: of the NBA. Well, that had a lot to do
Speaker 1: with my dad, who helped create what was known as
Speaker 1: the hardship Rule, enabling doctor j to play as a
Speaker 1: pro in the ABA after his junior year in college,
Speaker 1: something the NBA did not allow.
Speaker 13: You know, stepfather work for the sanitation department and he
Speaker 13: made about ten.
Speaker 8: To fifteen thousand dollars. The two of them together probably
Speaker 8: made ten to fifteen thousand dollars, right, So the economics
Speaker 8: of it were off the charts, and they had a
Speaker 8: caveat where they were paid over seven years. So it
Speaker 8: was fire for two thousand dollars, but you get paid
Speaker 8: over seven years, so you basically making like seventy two
Speaker 8: thousand dollars a year. I wasn't making anything in college,
Speaker 8: so I called my mom and we had a heart
Speaker 8: to heart and she said, well, you only one year
Speaker 8: away from graduating, and you know, we will be very
Speaker 8: proud of you if you graduated, and if you promise
Speaker 8: me you're going to graduate, then do what you want
Speaker 8: to do.
Speaker 1: Julius signed a four year, five hundred thousand dollars contract
Speaker 1: and years later he did graduate in nineteen eighty three. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, sits the norm for players to leave college
Speaker 1: early or skip it all together, as in the case
Speaker 1: of Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, and Kevin Garnett. But it
Speaker 1: actually took a lawsuit for the hardship rule really.
Speaker 4: Truly all right gifted, greaceful athletes.
Speaker 9: Here's Haywood Heywood.
Speaker 1: Spencer Haywood was the Denver Nuggets first ever MVP, long
Speaker 1: before Nikola Jokic, and in nineteen seventy he sued the
Speaker 1: NBA for barring him from signing a six year, one
Speaker 1: and a half million dollar contract with the Seattle SuperSonics.
Speaker 1: The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Peter Vessi covered the story.
Speaker 7: So Spencer Haywood did play college ball. He didn't come
Speaker 7: right out of high school, you know, like Moses did,
Speaker 7: or Toby did, or many others.
Speaker 12: With the thirteenth pick in the nineteen ninety six NBA Draft,
Speaker 12: the Charlotte Hornets select Tovey Bryant from Lowerman.
Speaker 7: He winds up signing with Denver in the ABA, and
Speaker 7: he has a sensational rookie year, MVP of this MVP
Speaker 7: of that rookie of the year year, top score, top rebound.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, he's out of control. At the
Speaker 7: end of the year. The NBA comes courting and Seattle.
Speaker 7: Sam Schildan was the owner, so Denver wouldn't do anything
Speaker 7: of his contract, and Seattle was willing to bring him
Speaker 7: into the NBA right And so the NBA said, no,
Speaker 7: we don't allow underclassmen to come until their class graduates.
Speaker 7: So there would have been another year for Haywood. He
Speaker 7: was never in the NBA draft, so Seattle felt that
Speaker 7: they could take him, and so it went to court,
Speaker 7: and it went to the Supreme Court, and he wins it.
Speaker 2: Here's Bob Costas.
Speaker 12: So eventually the hardship rule comes into play, which now
Speaker 12: is gone where you had to at least establish some
Speaker 12: kind of hardship. Now it doesn't make any difference. Your
Speaker 12: family can be millionaires. If you want to come out
Speaker 12: directly from high school or come out after one year
Speaker 12: as so many do now from college.
Speaker 8: You can.
Speaker 7: With the first pick in the two thousand and three
Speaker 7: NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select Lebron James.
Speaker 12: When we look back on it and think about what
Speaker 12: even the least the players makes now, the last guy
Speaker 12: on the bench, it all seems so trivial. But these
Speaker 12: guys had to fight for the right to have free agency,
Speaker 12: and the right to have some sort of control over
Speaker 12: their own lives and careers, and Spencer Haywood was kind
Speaker 12: of at the forefront of that. And I think what's
Speaker 12: lost to history largely is what a good player he was.
Speaker 8: He had a really good player.
Speaker 11: Every year in the existence of the ABA, there was
Speaker 11: a competition for players coming out of college. So each
Speaker 11: year in college and each year of the pass there
Speaker 11: are always great players leaving college and having to make
Speaker 11: a choice between the NBA.
Speaker 9: And the ABA.
Speaker 11: There was Kareem Abdul Jabbar. There was Dan Essel, there
Speaker 11: was Artist Gilmore, there was Bill Walton Siel.
Speaker 9: Again, thatsl just all over the place tonight.
Speaker 11: Certainly, one of the greatest players to ever play at
Speaker 11: the University of Kentucky was Dan Issel. Dan was number
Speaker 11: one draft choice of the Detroit team. But tell me
Speaker 11: who would want to go to Detroit and you know
Speaker 11: the snow when you could stay at home with all
Speaker 11: your friends at play at Freedom Hall.
Speaker 9: So Dan signed with US.
Speaker 1: Doctor j Artist Gilmore, and Dan Issel were all huge
Speaker 1: wins for the ABA. But then there's the one that
Speaker 1: got away for my dad, that was lou Al Cinder.
Speaker 4: Kareem what a.
Speaker 17: Big pressure shot.
Speaker 2: Later known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
Speaker 11: The League appointed me to put together a strategy for
Speaker 11: signing lou Elsinder, and as a result, in order to
Speaker 11: keep this whole project a secret, I named it Operation Kingfish,
Speaker 11: examining who he was, where he grew up, what his
Speaker 11: history was, what was his relationship to his agent, what
Speaker 11: was his relationship to UCLA, what were the psychological things
Speaker 11: that could impact his decision. I kept the document in
Speaker 11: my desk called Operation Kingfish, and there was an employee
Speaker 11: who got his hands on that. I suspected this, and
Speaker 11: so the document in my desk wasn't valid, and I
Speaker 11: put a document in there that said we'd signed him,
Speaker 11: and the person before being fired passed the information onto
Speaker 11: the NBA that we had an operation and that we
Speaker 11: had already signed.
Speaker 1: Another tale from the ABA's oral history. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the whole Operation Kingfish thing with Kareem ad Bill Jabbar.
Speaker 1: Do you know the story of the ABA trying to
Speaker 1: get lou Elsender?
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, of course, I mean because he was drafted
Speaker 7: by the Nets right, and he was drafted by Milwaukee, right,
Speaker 7: and so he said, and he was obviously serious, I'll
Speaker 7: accept one bid from each team and that's it. And
Speaker 7: the Nets lowballed them. Now they tried to come back
Speaker 7: and make them another offer, and he said no. Years later,
Speaker 7: this is fact I heard from Ray Patterson, who was
Speaker 7: the president of Milwaukee at the time. So look before
Speaker 7: I go there. So the Nets, of course, the whole
Speaker 7: league was willing to pool their resources to get out there,
Speaker 7: so they had the money. Then if Ray tells me
Speaker 7: that the NBA pooled its resources also, and I never
Speaker 7: knew that at the time when I was writing about it,
Speaker 7: I wish I had.
Speaker 18: He said, yeah, we couldn't afford to pay you know
Speaker 18: what we paid. So it was a you know, it
Speaker 18: was it was a group It was a group issue
Speaker 18: on both sides of the of the of the Ledger.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I just, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: My dad used to love telling this story and he's like,
Speaker 1: George Miken had a million dollars of cash and a
Speaker 1: briefcase and was so convinced that Louel Sinder was going
Speaker 1: to come to the ABA that I didn't give him
Speaker 1: the money and left town. And then El Sinder took
Speaker 1: the money and went. Now I don't know that any
Speaker 1: of that is true. Though I want to say, I
Speaker 1: have no idea.
Speaker 7: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, you don't believe your father.
Speaker 2: Well, he's pretty good at spending toil.
Speaker 7: I don't know. I think it was true. I think
Speaker 7: there must have been some truth to that.
Speaker 1: By the mid seventies, it became evident that it was
Speaker 1: in everyone's best interest to forge some sort of merger.
Speaker 1: The NBA had grown from nine franchises to eighteen and
Speaker 1: was looking to get stronger.
Speaker 2: Here's my dad.
Speaker 11: With the progression of time, not getting a big television contract,
Speaker 11: with the economic failure of many teams, and the escalating
Speaker 11: price for players, having ownership in the league became increasingly difficult.
Speaker 11: As the ownership became conversant with the NBA ownership, a
Speaker 11: merger became a reality, and four teams did in fact
Speaker 11: merge with the NBA.
Speaker 1: Those teams were the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs, and.
Speaker 2: New York Nets. Here's Peter Carry.
Speaker 6: I think the NBA finally realized that, better than fighting
Speaker 6: this war, well, we'll get together with these guys. They
Speaker 6: have pieces of terrif for already marked out. They have
Speaker 6: some pretty attractive players, and the ABA teams as I recall,
Speaker 6: I don't think the ABA teams did all that badly
Speaker 6: right from the gun.
Speaker 1: How about players specifically like Doctor J, George Gervin, Moses Malone.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are among the greatest players of all time.
Speaker 6: I mean, is he a human highlight film or is he?
Speaker 13: Yes? He is.
Speaker 1: How do you think the ABA contributed to their development?
Speaker 6: Well, Moses is such an allone.
Speaker 2: Off college but he gets it.
Speaker 10: That's the bill collar job.
Speaker 13: But most.
Speaker 6: You can put Moses in wrestling match and the bear
Speaker 6: he would have won. It gave me chance to play,
Speaker 6: to really show off in a way they probably couldn't
Speaker 6: of the day they arrived in the NBA. So when
Speaker 6: they did get in the NBA, they were pretty fully developed.
Speaker 1: Players had all sorts of reasons to choose one league
Speaker 1: or the other, and for Doctor J, it was a
Speaker 1: seminal choice central to who he would become as a player.
Speaker 13: So that period, you know, being League MVP and winning
Speaker 13: to championships, you know, winning seventy four, seventy six, you know,
Speaker 13: winning the ABA titles during its he is having Kevin
Speaker 13: Lockery as a coach, he gave me the freedom to be.
Speaker 1: Doctor J, which meant what the freedom to be doctor
Speaker 1: j What did that mean?
Speaker 8: I think you know, you go over a game plan
Speaker 8: in the locker room and then you know, sometime late
Speaker 8: in the form first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth
Speaker 8: for the coach kind of looks at you and says, Okay,
Speaker 8: we've stuck with this plan long enough, and now we're
Speaker 8: down five points and I want you to do something.
Speaker 13: You know, So that type of trust and you know,
Speaker 13: and the team, the team rallying is okay, we got
Speaker 13: a leader who's done make the right play and make
Speaker 13: the right decisions out here, and whether it's him scoring
Speaker 13: or getting somebody else set up, you know, the trust
Speaker 13: worthiness of the feeling that this is what's going to
Speaker 13: happen next, and it happens. I look back and it's
Speaker 13: probably one of the better things about the ABA that
Speaker 13: has stuck with me all these years. That type of
Speaker 13: trust was given to me and I succeeded.
Speaker 2: With Here's Bob Costas.
Speaker 1: What's the most important legacy of the A B A
Speaker 1: and your estimation?
Speaker 12: First of all, fun craziness of the stories can be
Speaker 12: told and some cannot. But also the three pointer, the
Speaker 12: improvisational nature or just let these players be creative. Let
Speaker 12: them do what their talent allows them to do, as
Speaker 12: opposed to what some guy put on on the x's
Speaker 12: and oh's on a chalkboard.
Speaker 8: The ABA was flawed, but it was exciting. It was
Speaker 8: really every night was exciting.
Speaker 2: Why do you think it was flawed? Why didn't it survive?
Speaker 12: In the end, they were under financed and they could
Speaker 12: never get a true national television contract. You know, the
Speaker 12: NBA was in most of the preferable markets for a
Speaker 12: lot of folks. The ABA was just a rumor, but
Speaker 12: the rumors turned out.
Speaker 8: To be true.
Speaker 12: You know, the skeptics just said, let's see how good
Speaker 12: these guys are. The first year after the merger, half
Speaker 12: of the starters in the final between Philadelphia and Portland,
Speaker 12: five of the ten had played in the ABA, And
Speaker 12: that first year in the All Star Game, ten of
Speaker 12: the twenty four All Stars had played in the ABA.
Speaker 8: That's how good the league was.
Speaker 1: A half dozen ABA teams folded before the merger or
Speaker 1: accepted a buyout. My family's beloved Kentucky Colonels were one
Speaker 1: of them, while Bob costas Is Spirits of Saint Louis
Speaker 1: cut one of the greatest business deals of all time.
Speaker 12: The NBA wants to make sure that there are no
Speaker 12: anti trust suits file. They've got to indemnify these others somehow,
Speaker 12: And I think they led John Y Brown, who then
Speaker 12: owned the Colonels buy in with Buffalo. They took care
Speaker 12: of the Squire's debts in Virginia. And so the Spirits say,
Speaker 12: wait a minute, if we got in, we'd be entitled
Speaker 12: to a slice the TV money.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 12: Well, the TV money then was relatively inconsequential, less than
Speaker 12: a million dollars per team annually from network television. So
Speaker 12: they say, how about this. There were seven ABA teams
Speaker 12: at the time that the league folded. Okay, so how
Speaker 12: about if we take one seventh of the total that
Speaker 12: the four teams would take one seventh and the NBA
Speaker 12: just wants them to go away. They say, okay, but
Speaker 12: the Spirit's attorney inserts an important clause in perpetuity man,
Speaker 12: and then it all explodes. Bird Magic, Jordan, the Dream Team,
Speaker 12: David Stern takes it global. If they had put an
Speaker 12: NBA franchise on Jupiter in the twenty third century, the
Speaker 12: Silma's airs would still be collecting. But eventually, after collecting
Speaker 12: hundreds of millions of dollars. On the basis of this deal,
Speaker 12: the NBA came back to them for like the fifth
Speaker 12: or sixth time and said, couldn't we possibly close this out?
Speaker 12: So nobody infefitted from the ABA like these two dudes did.
Speaker 1: The ABA's merger with the NBA also helped change the
Speaker 1: course of East host basketball for decades. As Doctor j
Speaker 1: ended up with the Philadelphia seventy six ershame.
Speaker 12: Up in Walton space, and Walton said had to be
Speaker 12: offense that Julius is unbelievable.
Speaker 9: In a wide open situation.
Speaker 1: Four ABA teams had to pay three point two million dollars,
Speaker 1: but for the Nets for your team it was worse
Speaker 1: because they were Knicks territory, so they had to pay
Speaker 1: an additional four point eight million. And then all these
Speaker 1: teams were kind of vying for your services, you know, Milwaukee,
Speaker 1: in LA and Philly, and the Nets actually offered your
Speaker 1: contract to the Knicks and returned for waiving the fee,
Speaker 1: and the Knicks declined. Is that true because they wanted
Speaker 1: the money instead of like one of the greatest players
Speaker 1: of all time?
Speaker 2: Is this is this how it went down?
Speaker 13: I have no idea that I wasn't a party to
Speaker 13: the conversation.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 13: And when it came down to the two leagues merging,
Speaker 13: you know, they're like, you're not making You're making the money.
Speaker 8: The top players make it, right. And so now we
Speaker 8: got back into the financial discussion and the Nets wouldn't
Speaker 8: do it or couldn't do it, and they still owed
Speaker 8: the Knicks money. I just bought a.
Speaker 13: House Long Island, upper Brookville, and you know, had started
Speaker 13: a family. I didn't really want to go too far
Speaker 13: from Long Island, so it was the Knicks or the
Speaker 13: Sixers or maybe Washington. I wanted to be back home,
Speaker 13: so I wanted to live in my house, and I
Speaker 13: thought that I would be able to still commute to
Speaker 13: any one of those places and be a player there
Speaker 13: and live there in an apartment, you know, and do
Speaker 13: part time. And that's exactly what happened. I was happy
Speaker 13: with the geography because I had cousins in Philadelphia, so
Speaker 13: I had relatives in Philadelphia, and Long Island.
Speaker 8: Was commutable bringing up for the Lord, so we thought.
Speaker 13: So that first year in Philly world, be Free was
Speaker 13: commuting from Brooklyn that I was commuting from Long Allan,
Speaker 13: so I would spend by and pick him up.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 8: Really, we come rolling in, we come rolling into practice,
Speaker 8: rolling in the gays.
Speaker 16: We're coming from New York, like to New Yorkers were
Speaker 16: holding onto holding.
Speaker 2: On to ash.
Speaker 8: Oh wow. And then and then that.
Speaker 13: That went for a year, and then the second years
Speaker 13: he said, man, you got to move to Philly.
Speaker 2: We need to.
Speaker 1: What kind of car were you guys driving back and
Speaker 1: forth from New York to Philly.
Speaker 8: I had a van.
Speaker 13: It was like a you know van, customized vans in
Speaker 13: those days they were they were all stricked out.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't a sports car. It was a van.
Speaker 13: Now, oh oh, man, it was a man and I'm
Speaker 13: driven Sometimes he built other times.
Speaker 1: As Doctor J's fame and fortune continued to grow in
Speaker 1: the NBA, his game was now on display for all
Speaker 1: to see and to reckon with, and he wasn't alone.
Speaker 1: In the first All Star Game after the merger. Ten
Speaker 1: of the twenty four players had played in the ABA,
Speaker 1: including Doctor J, who was named the game's MVP, and
Speaker 1: seventeen ABA players, along with two coaches, would be inducted
Speaker 1: into the Basketball Hall of Fame. In the front office,
Speaker 1: times were changing too. In nineteen seventy eight, just two
Speaker 1: years after the merger, an ambitious young lawyer by the
Speaker 1: name of David Stern took a job as the NBA's
Speaker 1: general counsel. As my dad would later tell it, from
Speaker 1: day one, everyone knew Stern was a star.
Speaker 11: And as David came in and took over, David recognized
Speaker 11: that professional basketball is first and foremost an entertainment vehicle,
Speaker 11: and the people that are entertaining in basketball are the
Speaker 11: star players. And David was one of the first people
Speaker 11: to acknowledge and recognize the wide open I say, the
Speaker 11: wide open style of play that the American Basketball Association
Speaker 11: brought to the NBA and therefore its growth and popularity
Speaker 11: throughout not only the United States but the world.
Speaker 1: David Stern would become my mentor and everything that the
Speaker 1: ABA brought to the table that was my father's basketball
Speaker 1: it would shape my life for decades to come.
Speaker 2: Next, on NBA DNA.
Speaker 8: They had us out at them all. One day we
Speaker 8: had a couple of.
Speaker 10: Players and they have a banner meet producton LOTE that's
Speaker 10: an elderly lady comes up, Oh my god, I love
Speaker 10: you guys.
Speaker 8: How do you fit in those space yifts? She thought
Speaker 8: we were with Massop For some strange reason my father
Speaker 8: accused of taking the year.
Speaker 6: The Euston Rockets select.
Speaker 2: I came elied you one.
Speaker 11: It's totally the truth, because we're going keylie when I've
Speaker 11: played right there in town ivers he used it.
Speaker 1: NBA DNA with Hannah Storm is a production of iHeart Podcasts,
Speaker 1: the NBA and Brainstorm in Productions. The show is written
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Hannah Storm, along with Julia
Speaker 1: Weaver and Alex French. Our lead producer and showrunner is
Speaker 1: Julia Weaver. Our senior producers are Peter Cowder, Alex Wrench,
Speaker 1: and Brandon Reese. Editing and sound design by Kurt Garren
Speaker 1: and Julia Weaver. The show's executive producers are Carmen Belmont,
Speaker 1: Jason English, Sean Ttone, Steve Weintraup, and Jason Weikelt