Nov 4, 1977: 76ers at Nets

47 years ago this week, the 76ers, one of the most entertaining teams in basketball history, played the brand new, New Jersey Nets, in an early season game to remember

This is a bit of a different post for The Sports Time Traveler™. As long time readers know I almost always focus on a specific sporting event from precisely 50, 60, 70 or 100 years ago.

And right now I am in the process of working on an article for you on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics which took place in October of that year. That article fits the tradition of this newsletter since it took place precisely 60 years ago.

But this morning when I was going through my Facebook feed I came across a picture that caught my attention and filled my mind with special memories. It was this grainy picture below of the 1977-78 Philadelphia 76ers:

I’ve never even been a 76ers fan. But this picture made me pause and think back to that time. They were a team that was incredibly entertaining to watch. They were also a team that I envied at the time, because they were contenders, unlike my New Jersey Nets, who were the worst team in the NBA.

In the fall of 1977, I was 14 years old living in central New Jersey. My dad Stanley and I were huge basketball fans. Just a few years earlier we had followed the Knicks in their last great 1973 championship season. This was the old Knicks of DeBusschere, Bradley, Reed, Frazier and Monroe, who played the ultimate team “dee-fense” and rocked the Garden more times than Billy Joel.

And just a year earlier, in 1976, we had spent many evenings in the old “Barn” at Rutgers, the loudest 2,000 seat arena in the world, rooting for the undefeated Scarlet Knights 26 - 0 team led by Phil Sellers, Eddie Jordan and James Bailey. That Rutgers team is the only one to ever reach the NCAA Final Four.

Now, my dad pulled off the greatest deal ever in my 14 year old mind. He had managed to get season tickets to the Nets.

The Nets had just moved from Long Island to New Brunswick, NJ. The team was in dire financial straits. Owner Roy Boe was reeling from the $5 million fee he had to pay the Knicks to join the NBA in their territory the year before. FYI - that was why the Nets had to sell Julius Erving to the 76ers, something for which many fans never forgave them.

The Nets desperately needed season ticketholders for the new arena in New Jersey, so my dad wrote to the Nets that he would purchase 2 season tickets under 1 condition, the seats had to be at midcourt. The Nets, apparently not wanting to risk any chance of losing even 2 season tickets, sent my dad a letter showing a seating plan of the arena and a little dot where his season tickets would be if he purchased them.

The dot showed the seats at midcourt.

And it seemed to show that the seats were also in the 1st row!

We looked at this sheet of paper and we were incredulous.

My dad said the dot must mean there is a box of seats there and we’re somewhere in the box, maybe in the 3rd or 4th row. It can’t mean we’re in the 1st row.

My dad went ahead and paid the price of the season tickets - $820.

That’s not $820 for a game.

That’s not $820 each.

That was $820 for the entire season of 41 regular season games - for 2 tickets combined.

That’s right, the price of the individual season tickets was just $10 per game. That’s really hard to fathom.

When we got the actual tickets it was another surreal moment.

The tickets showed us very clearly that we were in fact in row 1.

What ensued was one of the great father-son experiences anyone could ever have as we sat 1st row mid-court together.

That first season in 1977-78 we went to every single home game together.

Sometimes I look back and I don’t know how we had the time to do that. Even though the arena was just 20 minutes from our house, I had homework every night. I was on the track team. My dad was busy as an accountant during tax season. And yet we never missed a game.

Seeing every NBA team come in to play the Nets was the highest form of entertainment to me at that time. But there was no better show than when the 76ers came to play.

The anticipation of that Sixers team reminded me of the circus coming to town. They just had so many high quality acts.

First of all there was Julius, “Dr. J” Erving. There was no player like him in the NBA. And there really has never been since. Erving, a few years earlier, led the Nets in the ABA to the 1974 championship, and in doing so he became the only player ever to have an entire season in which he posted the following:

25+ points per game

10+ rebounds

5+ assists

2+ steals

2+ blocks

50% FG shooting

40% 3 point FG shooting

Erving followed that up with another ABA title with the Nets in the last year of the ABA in 1976.

By 1977, Erving resembled a basketball artist. His every movement on the court was designed to have fan appeal. He no longer dunked, he more gracefully deployed a finger roll. And he glided up and down the court with elegance.

But Dr. J was just one of an array of incredible individual talents.

The Sixers also had George McGinnis, one of the outstanding power forwards in the league, and the 1975 MVP of the ABA. McGinnis had biceps that looked like they had been blown up with a bicycle pump.

At center they had the serivceable Caldwell Jones, a 7’1” stopper who had earned the nickname, “Doctor of Defense.” And at guard they had all-star and 1972 Olympian, Doug Collins and former Knick Henry Bibby, who had been Walt Frazier’s back up on the 1973 championship team.

But the most unique things about this Sixers team was that the biggest personalities were guys who were on the bench.

Darryl Dawkins was a 21 year old who was one of the first to go straight from high school to the NBA. He was 6’11” and built like an NFL linebacker. He had nicknames for his dunks like “Chocolate Thunder” and “In-Your-Face- Disgrace.”

He also had superhero like strength. In November, 1979, in an NBA game, he delivered such a vicious dunk that it shattered the backboard. 3 weeks later he did it again.

As a result, the NBA had to innovate and create new shatter proof backboards.

Dawkins strength was initially revealed during the 1977 NBA championship the prior spring, when after he was ejected from a game, he was so angry that he ripped a urinal out of the wall in the locker room.

In addition to Darryl Dawkins there was Lloyd Free. Free fashioned himself to be the best basketball player in the world. Even though he was perhaps the 5th or 6th best player on his own team. In 1980, playing for a below .500 team, the San Diego Clippers, he got his dream to be the “man” and averaged 30 points per game.

On the 76ers in 1977, Free was not content to just come off the bench. He made sure he put his stamp on the game every time he came in, throwing up his rainbow jumpers that seemed to impossibly go swish more than half the time. Free was so high on his abilities that he legally changed his name in 1981 to World B. Free.

And that was not all the Sixers had on the bench. Steve Mix was an in your face 6’8” tough man with a patented fall back jumper that was deadly. Mix could also change a game with his presence, and played like he wanted to be in the starting line up. He had in fact been a starter on the Sixers for 3 seasons prior to Erving joining the team.

NOTE From The Sports Time Traveler™

I interrupt this article to tell you that back a few years ago while I was attending a Mets spring training game in Port. St. Lucie with my old AT&T boss, John Keselica, we ran into Steve Mix. He was an usher at the Mets games. And he was as nice as could be.

Now back to 1977.

The 76ers also had other players with fun nicknames like Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, Kobe Bryant’s father. And Harvey “Hi-C” Catchings, the promising young 3rd string center who is also the father of former WNBA star Tamika Catchings.

This Sixers team was loaded with talent.

Even the coaching staff was stellar. Hall of Fame player Billy Cunningham took over the reins early in the season. Cunningham brought in an assistant coach later that season who had no prior NBA experience, but had been the long time coach at the University of Pennsylvania. His name was Chuck Daly. Daly went on to coach the Detroit Pistons to 2 consecutive NBA championships. That led to him being named coach of the original Dream Team for the 1992 Olympics.

Watching that 1977-78 Sixers team was NBA entertainment at it’s very best.

A FRIDAY NIGHT TO REMEMBER

In particular I remember the first time the Sixers came to the Rutgers Athletic Center on Friday night, November 4, 1977, to play the Nets. It was just the 5th home game for the Nets in New Jersey, but it was the first sellout.

The atmosphere was riveting as the Sixers warmed up.

We had already seen the Jazz with Pete Maravich, the Celtics with John Havlicek and the Lakers with Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and their coach Jerry West, come through the Rutgers Athletic Center.

But that was nothing like seeing this Sixers team.

This was Billy Cunningham’s first game as a head coach in the NBA, and consistent with the circus like atmosphere surrounding this Sixers team his instructions to the players prior to the game was, “to go out there and have a good time,” according to Billy Livingston of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Of note, between Cunningham, Erving and McGinnis, the 76ers had the personnel that won the final 4 MVP awards in the ABA from 1973 - 1976.

The Nets had lost 5 of their first 6 games and had the 2nd worst record in the NBA. We didn’t watch those games as much to root for the Nets, a team we still didn’t really know yet (we never followed them when they were on Long Island) as we did to see all the greatest players in the world come to play the Nets.

When the game started it looked like it would be the blowout we expected. The 76ers led 13 - 6.

And then something special happened.

Nets small forward Bernard King scored 10 straight points, all while being guarded by Dr. J. And the Nets took a 16 - 13 lead.

After 3 quarters the Nets still led the defending Eastern Conference champions by a score of 77 - 70. Naturally, we had to cheer for the Nets.

And it was not hard to fall for this Nets team because they were led by this brilliant rookie - Bernard King.

And King was doing something that completely endeared us to him, something so stunning that we became instant Bernard King fans that night.

King put up 22 points in the 3rd quarter, again while being guarded by Dr. J.

That was a team single quarter scoring record, eclipsing anything Erving had ever done for the Nets in their ABA championship years.

We had already seen first hand a glimpse of the potential Bernard King had. We had just witnessed him score an unbelievable (for a rookie) 39 points in a home game against the Lakers two nights prior. In that game he had shot a head shaking 16 for 25 from the field. Most of his baskets coming on his difficult signature shot - a one hand push shot from just outside the key in which he went skyward with the side of his body towards the basket, and using his shoulder to ward off the defender. The Nets had come up just short in that game losing 107 - 102.

Against the Sixers, the Nets continued to maintain the lead and had the same 7 point advantage at 104 - 97 with 1:29 to play in the game.

20 year old Bernard King had already posted a new career high with 41 points (in just his 7th NBA game).

What’s more, Bernard King had held Dr. J to just 11 points.

And then playing like champions do, like true professionals do, the Sixers simply flipped a switch, and went from circus mode to serious mode. They scored the game’s final 10 points over the last 89 seconds and literally stole the game 107 - 104.

Gene Hailey, writing in the New Brunswick Home News, describe how it happened, “The Nets turned the ball over four times in that last minute and a half, and the alert 76ers, playing their first game under new coach Billy Cunningham took advantage… The Nets lost an inbounds pass and McGinnis fed Doug Collins for a layup. Again the Nets had trouble with the inbound pass. Collins stole the ball and fed Darryl Dawkins… his successful conversion put the Nets down 105 - 104. Any chance of a comeback was nullified with another errant pass that led to a layup by Henry Bibby.”

It was one of many games the Nets lost in similar fashion in that first year we had the season tickets. But it didn’t take away from the great experiences my dad and I had watching the games together.

In this photo from the November 5, 1977 New Brunswick Home News you can almost see us at midcourt under Darryl Dawkins leg.

Thanks for reading.