With this look back at late 1974 in both the college and professional games, Sports74 Gold concludes as the original Sports74 series did.
PRO BASKETBALL
Bill Walton is the No. 1 pick in
the '74 NBA Draft, and he goes to the Portland Trail Blazers. In his
first season, he gets 441 rebounds in 35 games.
The NBA's New Orleans Jazz plays its first season,
but first, LSU alumnus Pete Maravich is traded from the Atlanta
Hawks May 3, 1974. The Jazz plays at Municipal Auditorium (capacity 7,853)
until the Louisiana Superdome (47,284) opens in '75.
Three arenas that open are Richfield Coliseum in northern
Ohio (home of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and the WHA's Cleveland
Crusaders), Market Square Arena in Indianapolis (ABA Indiana Pacers
and WHA Indianapolis Racers), and Kemper Arena in Kansas City (NBA Kansas
City-Omaha Kings and NHL Kansas City Scouts).
The Capital Bullets change their name to the Washington
Bullets.
Among the NBA-ABA exhibitions in the preseason is Sept. 28,
when the New York Nets defeat the Bullets 101-98 in overtime at the
Capital Centre. Something had gone wrong in handling luggage, so Julius
Erving and four other Nets players have to wear Bullets road uniforms.
The two leagues discuss merging, but one difference
between the leagues' team owners is that the NBA's want to keep the option
clause in place and the ABA's want it gone. The ABA sues the NBA for a total of
$600 million. Oscar Robertson himself had filed a suit in 1970. The option clause will be dropped in the '76 offseason.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar plays
what will prove to be his final season with the Milwaukee Bucks.
This season, Rick Barry of the Golden State
Warriors makes his 4000th free throw between ABA and NBA games.
Lenny Wilkens, having coached the
Seattle SuperSonics for three years before, is back to coaching after two years
of playing for Bill Fitch on the Cavs. He begins his stint as head coach
of the Trail Blazers.
Moses Malone, who had briefly been
enrolled at the University of Maryland, leaves and signs with
the ABA's Utah Stars in August, having been drafted by that team in the
third round.
The Buffalo Braves play six more games at the cold
Maple Leaf Gardens in '74-75. A Toronto franchise is approved for '75-76, but
it will not be formed, reportedly because investors don't have enough faith in
the stability of sports at this time.
This is, after all, a season in which, according to ABA
president John Y. Brown, the leagues lose $16 million. "There's no
way professional basketball can survive if 25 of the 28 teams in both leagues
lose substantial amounts of money every year," he will say.
In October, the New York Knickerbockers gain the NBA
rights to Pacers power forward George McGinnis from the Philadelphia
76ers, who had drafted him in 1973. When McGinnis instead signs a new
contract with the Pacers, the Knicks lose those rights, and what follows in '75
will be a dispute between the two NBA teams over McGinnis.
The season opener for both the Cavaliers and the home Trail
Blazers goes to quadruple overtime. Each team scores exactly eight points in
the additional periods of this Oct. 18 game, except for the Blazers in the
fourth OT, who score ten to win it 131-129.
In a game against the Hawks at the Omni Coliseum, Elmore
Smith of the Los Angeles Lakers has three chances to make two free
throws Dec. 28. All of the shots are air balls.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL
In his final year at N.C. State, David Thompson
averages 29.9 points per game and gets 229 rebounds (8.2 per game). The Atlanta
Hawks will use their No. 1 overall pick in the '75 NBA Draft on him, and so
will the ABA's Virginia Squires in their own league's draft, but he will
go to the Denver Nuggets (who had been the Denver Rockets until after
the '73-74 season) after they trade with the Squires.
This season is the last for UCLA coach John
Wooden. By March, it will be the Bruins' last NCAA tournament appearance under
Wooden and the program's tenth championship season.
Pat Head (later Summitt) begins her
long coaching career with the Tennessee Lady Vols soon after graduating
from the University of Tennessee-Martin.
Bob McCurdy of 16-12 Southern
Conference member Richmond leads Division I with 32.9 points per game.
This season will be followed by the first Division III
tournament.
Larry Bird, fresh out of Springs
Valley High School in French Lick, Ind., initially goes to Indiana
University but quickly transfers to Indiana State.
Butch Morgan, coach at the College
of St. Joseph the Provider (in Rutland, Vt.), reads a poem called
"Don't Quit" to the players and has them discuss it prior to the Dec.
11 game against Castleton State College. The process takes so long that
the team gets five technical fouls for being late to the court, and the other
team makes three of the five shots. Final score: Castleton 79, St. Joseph 78.
Later, Morgan will recall that he thought his team would lose by much more.
NOTE: Over the course of this three-week
interval, I received a new smartphone with a larger screen (about 5 1/2 inches),
so I tested this post Oct. 1 to see how it would look on the five-inch screen
of the phone I had for four years.
