Sports74 Gold: Basketball Early in '74-75

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.

Sports74 Gold: College Basketball '73-74

From stars being made to dynasties on the wane, here's the college scene and a little more of amateur hoops.

North Carolina State wins the NCAA tournament. En route to a 76-64 win against Marquette in the championship game, the Wolfpack defeats the powerhouse that is UCLA 80-77 in double overtime. N.C. State's record for the season is 30-1.

The Bruins' loss to the Wolfpack is one of four that season; the first, against Notre Dame Jan. 19, brings their 88-game winning streak to an end. The Fighting Irish, playing at home, overcome an 11-point deficit in the last 3:30 to win 71-70.

The next two are on consecutive nights: Feb. 15 against Oregon and Feb. 16 against Oregon State. The Bruins hadn't practiced on a Sunday before, but there's a first time for everything, and that time is Feb. 17.

Bill Walton wins three of the five outstanding player awards he had swept in '72 and '73 (namely: UPI, U.S. Basketball Writers' Association, and the Naismith Award). At the end of his time at UCLA, his total is 1,370 rebounds. He has 398 in '73-74 and averages 19.3 points per game, but those marks aren't as high as the ones for his sophomore and junior years.

Instead of giving Walton the outstanding player award for a third time, the AP and the Helms Foundation both choose David Thompson of N.C. State. Thompson averages 26.0 points per game this season with 245 rebounds (7.9 per game). He is also the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, with a .514 field goal percentage, a .786 free throw percentage, 17 rebounds, and 49 points in two games. Walton and Thompson tie for the Helms Foundation award according to the '91 Information Please Sports Almanac; Sports-Reference.com says Thompson alone won it.

In fact, Thompson is the runner-up for the AAU's prestigious James E. Sullivan Award, covering all sports.

The consensus All-America team is as follows: Walton, Thompson, Keith Wilkes (later Jamaal Wilkes) of UCLA, John Shumate of Notre Dame, Marvin Barnes of Providence.

Who is the Coach of the Year? UPI says Digger Phelps of Notre Dame, the USBWA and the AP say Norm Sloan of N.C. State, and the National Association of Basketball Coaches says Al McGuire of Marquette. In '75, all of those awards will go to Indiana's Bobby Knight.

Indiana, despite being good enough to be ranked No. 9 in the AP poll, does not make the NCAA tournament, but the Hoosiers do win the end-of-season Collegiate Commissioners' Association tournament, narrowly defeating Tennessee and Toledo before dominating USC in the finals.

Larry Fogle of independent, 14-12 Canisius leads the NCAA with 33.4 points per game, or, by another set of standards, it's William Averitt of 8-18 West Coast Athletic Conference member Pepperdine with 33.9.

Barnes has 597 rebounds in 32 games, the top NCAA mark for that category. He had 571 in 30 games the year before, but finished second on the leaderboard.

The per-game rebound leader, for the second time in a row, is Kermit Washington of American, a 16-10 Middle Atlantic Conference team. His average was 19.8 last season and an even 20.0 this season.

Al Fleming of Arizona finishes the season with a .667 field-goal percentage, tying Kent Martens of Abilene Christian in 1972 and Lew Alcindor of UCLA in 1967, the former two having attempted exactly 204 field goals each and the latter having gone 346-for-519.

Lute Olson, future Iowa and Arizona coach, coaches this year at Long Beach State after a year at Long Beach City College. He takes over for Jerry Tarkanian, who will begin the first of many years at UNLV next season.

Speaking of Long Beach State, the 49ers' home winning streak ends at 75 sometime in '74. Their 94-84 loss to San Francisco ends a run that began in 1968. Another home-court winning streak begins this calendar year: the UNLV Rebels' 72 times defending their home.

Duke leads by eight with 17 seconds left in the March 2 game against hated rival UNC, a much mightier team against which the Blue Devils have put up a fight. The Tar Heels rally back, culminating in a long shot by Mitch Kupchak. Duke goes on to lose in overtime, having fallen apart. Pete Kramer's free throw in the fourth period would have been the difference.

Purdue wins the NIT with a 97-81 win over Utah in the final. The Utes' Mike Sojourner is the tournament MVP.

Morgan State wins the College Division (later known as Division II) title.

Alcorn State, a future NCAA Division I school, loses the NAIA final to West Georgia.

Lloyd Free, later to be known as World B. Free, is an NAIA All-American. The Guilford guard also makes second team AP Little All-America.

This is the first year that freshmen are eligible for varsity teams.

In the school's last year before the shuttering of its doors, Englewood Cliffs College (N.J.) sets a record Jan. 20, losing to Essex County Community College by 143 points. The victorious Wolverines also set a record with their 210 points, with the official scorecard and game ball going to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Immaculata University wins the AIAW title for the third year in a row in the third edition of the women's tournament.

OUTSIDE THE COLLEGE GAME

Moses Malone leads Petersburg High to a second consecutive state championship in Virginia high school basketball. His 896 points in 25 games (for an average of 35.8) is a single-season total-points record that will stand for 19 years. Malone's career scoring average of 27.2 remains one of the best in state history.

The Soviet Union wins the FIBA championship in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yugoslavia finishes second in this tournament, which is the last of the quadrennial world championships with a round-robin to decide the champion instead of a single final game.

From the A's to the whys, division races to drunken rabble, fastballs in California to baring it all in Chicago, stars at play to disputes over pay, it's a deep dive into the American League, coming March 1.

[EDIT 5/2/2024 1:55-1:56 p.m. EDT: It's not "the" UPI. Is it?]

Sports74 Gold: Pro Basketball in '73-74

The NBA and ABA were near the peak of their rivalry. Dribble onward and take in this funky time.

In a seven-game NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics defeat the Milwaukee Bucks in all the odd-numbered games to win their first title since 1969. John Havlicek, now a member of the Celtics for seven of their championship seasons, is the MVP of the playoffs.

The New York Nets, a young team with the inexperienced Kevin Loughery as head coach, are ABA champions after a five-game final against the Utah Stars.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Bucks is the NBA's MVP for the third time. He averages 30.0 points per game and 14.5 rebounds per game.

Julius Erving, brought to the Nets from the Virginia Squires before the season, wins his first ABA MVP award and his second scoring title for the league (with 27.4 PPG).

The former Baltimore Bullets play their first season at the new Capital Centre in Prince George's County, Md. They are called the Capital Bullets for one season, and they win their division.

The 1973-74 season is the first in which the NBA keeps track of blocks and steals. The inaugural official NBA leaders in those stats are Elmore Smith of the Los Angeles Lakers, who blocks 393 shots (4.85 blocks per game), and Larry Steele of the Portland Trail Blazers, who lives up to his name 217 times (2.68 steals per game).

Smith's 17 blocks in a game Oct. 28 will still be a record 50 years later. His performance is the second of six times in the season and in his career that he makes a triple-double with points, rebounds, and blocks.

Bob McAdoo of the Buffalo Braves wins his first of three consecutive NBA scoring titles. The sophomore has 30.6 points per game in '73-74.

The Braves' Ernie DiGregorio, NBA Rookie of the Year, leads the league in assists with 663, or 8.2 per game. He also has a league-best .902 free-throw percentage.

The Bullets' Elvin Hayes leads the league in rebounding with 1,463 boards, or 18.1 per game.

More ABA stats leaders: Al Smith of the Denver Rockets with 619 assists (8.1 per game), Ted McClain of the Carolina Cougars with 250 steals (2.98 per game), and Caldwell Jones of the San Diego Conquistadors with 316 blocks (4.00 per game).

The West wins 134-123 at the NBA All-Star Game in Seattle. Bob Lanier of the Detroit Pistons is the MVP with 24 points and 10 rebounds. Lanier's scoring average for the regular season is 22.5, and his average next season will be 24.0. Also doing well for the West is Spencer Haywood of the Seattle SuperSonics, with 23 points and 11 boards in the exhibition.

The East wins 128-112 at the ABA All-Star Game in Norfolk, Va. Artis Gilmore of the Kentucky Colonels is the MVP with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Swen Nater of the San Antonio Spurs scores 29 points and gets 22 boards. Nater is named Rookie of the Year at the end of the season, and Gilmore leads the ABA in rebounds with 1,538 (18.3 per game).

The NBA's Coach of the Year is the Pistons' Ray Scott, while the Executive of the Year is the Braves' Eddie Donovan.

Sharing the award for ABA Coach of the Year are the Colonels' Babe McCarthy and the Stars' Joe Mullaney.

The All-NBA First Team: Abdul-Jabbar, the Golden State Warriors' Rick Barry, the New York Knickerbockers' Walt Frazier, the Lakers' Gail Goodrich, and Havlicek.

The All-ABA First Team: the Cougars' Mack Calvin, Erving, Gilmore, the Stars' Jimmy Jones, and the Indiana Pacers' George McGinnis.

In a game against the Portland Trail Blazers March 26, Barry scores 64 points on 30 field goals, both marks of which the NBA hasn't seen the likes since Wilt Chamberlain's best years.

Counting NBA and ABA games, the Cougars' Billy Cunningham reaches 15,000 points sometime this season.

Oscar Robertson of the Bucks retires after the season with 26,710 points and 9,887 assists.

Also among the players retiring after '73-74 is Jerry West of the Lakers, who has 25,192 points, including 1,213 free throws.

The Hall of Fame welcomes Bill Russell in the '74 offseason.

In addition to having traded Erving before the season and Nater early in it, the Squires sell George Gervin to the Spurs Jan. 31. They go from 42-42 to 28-56, and the team will have a league-worst record of 15-69 next season.

This is the struggling Memphis Tams' last year in green and gold and their last under Charlie Finley's ownership, as is the California Golden Seals' case in the WHA. They finish with the worst record in the league. The Tams will be known as the Sounds next year.

After retiring from the NBA, Chamberlain tries his hand at coaching with the Conquistadors. He originally intends to be a player as well, but the Lakers sue to keep him on the bench. Despite Wilt not being on the court and sometimes not even on the sidelines, the Q's go 37-47 -- a seven-game improvement over '72-73 -- and defeat Denver in a tiebreaker for a higher playoff seed. Just like the year before, though, Utah sweeps San Diego in the first round.

The Braves play nine regular season games and one exhibition in Toronto, where the players complain of not enough plastic foam separating the court from the rink.

Warriors guard Jim Barnett takes the ball from the referee Dec. 18 and drop kicks it "into the cheap seats on the third level" (according to his account). The resulting technical foul, in addition to a "T" called on him before, means he is out of this game against the Braves, but the Oakland fans cheer as he goes away.

Braves guard and captain Bob Kauffman argues with referee Lee Jones until second official Richie Powers tells him to return to the bench. At this March 9 game, Kauffman imitates the ref's way of walking. Powers gives him a talking-to, but Kauffman switches to impersonating Powers. The Buffalo fans love it, but Powers certainly doesn't. One technical foul is called, then another. Without even playing, Kauffman costs his team the game against the SuperSonics.

That's how the pros did. What about the college kids? It's the season of a school in red that won the big one and a rival in blue that lost big time. Plus, there's the most lopsided game ever. More roundball Feb. 9.

FIBA World Championship

 With FIBA's Basketball World Cup beginning today, here's a look back at how it was in 1974.

Puerto Rico hosted 13 other teams from across the globe. Of these teams that gathered in three Puerto Rican cities, eight advanced to the final round. All teams that won medals finished 6-1, points scored divided by points allowed breaking ties (or so USA Basketball says).

The Soviet Union featured Aleksandr Belov, the man who "scored" the "basket" that "won" the gold medal two years prior. That team's leading scorer in 1974 was a future two-time Olympian, Aleksandr Salnikov, who scored 38 points in the last game July 14. Salnikov made his first international tournament appearance that summer, but Modestas Paulauskas (a Lithuanian) was one of the five players from the 1972 Olympic team, as were Sergei Belov, Aleksandr Boloshev, and Ivan Yedeshko.

Despite a three-point loss to the United States, Yugoslavia (having defeated the Soviets by three) finished second, with a young Drazen Dalipagic making the first of four world championship appearances in his Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame career. One of his teammates was a Croatian named Zeljko Jerkov.

Wouldn't you know it, the USA was undefeated in the tournament until the Stars and Stripes faced the Hammer and Sickle on that second Sunday of July. This was a clear-cut, 11-point loss that put Team USA in third place, even though Yugoslavia's ratio of points scored to points allowed was 1.107 and the USA's was 1.182 (the Soviets led with 1.228).

Guards John Lucas of Maryland and Luther "Ticky" Burden of Utah led the team in scoring for the tournament, and they along with forward Tom Boswell of South Carolina made the all-tournament team according to USA Basketball, but Land of Basketball has it that no Americans did.

Seven U.S. players got called for four fouls or more in the game against the Soviets, including Lucas, Burden, guard Steve Grote of Michigan, and guard Quinn Buckner of Indiana (an Olympian in 1976). Boswell fouled out, as did center Joe Meriweather of Southern Illinois and forward Myron Wilkins of Northwestern Oklahoma A&M Junior College (the team's oldest player).

Rounding out the selection of 12 collegians: forward Gus Gerard of Virginia, center Rich Kelley of Stanford, guard Frank Oleynick of Seattle, forward Rick Schmidt of Illinois (playing for his school's head coach, Gene Bartow), and forward Eugene Short of Jackson State.

EDIT, 3:26 p.m.: For perspective, Team USA finished fifth in 1970 and fifth in 1978, and fourth in both '63 and '67. This was the first U.S. medal in the worlds since 1959 and only one in the '60s or '70s. The Americans medaled at every world championship held in the '50s, '80s, and '90s.

EDIT 8:51 p.m., 10/26/24: Had originally spelled Salnikov's name "Salinkov" in the first reference.

SOURCES
FIBA hub for tournament information
USA Basketball PDF on team history, with 1974 on Page 41
Land of Basketball hub for more on the tournament format, possibly

Before They Were the Nuggets

The Denver Nuggets have become the second ABA team to win an NBA championship. They never won an ABA title, and neither did the five-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.

Meanwhile, the Indiana Pacers and Brooklyn Nets have been the champs of the ABA (five times between them) but never the NBA.

The 1973-74 season was the franchise's last as the Denver Rockets, and it ended when they lost a tiebreaker for fourth place in the West and the playoff berth that came with it.

The score of the March 29 game at the Mile High City's small Auditorium was San Diego Conquistadors 131, Denver Rockets 111.

All-Star guard Ralph Simpson failed to average 20 points per game for the only time in a four-year span. He contributed 17 to the tiebreaker game.

Fellow guard Al Smith, in the middle of a five-year career in the ABA only, dished out 20 assists. He was also the league's assist leader with 619 in total and with 8.1 for each contest.

Center-forward Byron Beck, who had played at Denver University before joining the original Rockets, was entering an ebb in his career, and he was one of the two who scored 18.

The other, fellow center Dave Robisch, is determined by metrics developed much later to have had the best "offensive rating" in the entire league.

Rounding out the starting five was forward Julius Keye. Later in '74, he was traded to the Utah Stars, then to the Memphis Sounds, who waived him, and that was the end of his career.

Coming off the bench and spending the most time on the court was Steve Jones, a shooting guard who joined the team in mid-season. Less than a month after trading for Jones, the Rockets waived an All-Star at his position.

That was the controversial Warren Jabali (born Armstrong). Denver struggled in his absence, but he had apparently gone too far for the team's tastes by the time the All-Star Game was through.

Team ownership changed, head coach Alex Hannum was fired, Larry Brown replaced him, Jan van Breda Kolff was drafted, and the rechristened and re-energized Nuggets went 31-5 before the end of the year, 65-19 overall. Needless to say, the franchise became valuable enough to eventually bring into the NBA.

Pat Summitt, 1952-2016

Pat Summitt died Tuesday. Her accomplishments in the sphere of women's basketball are unparalleled.

One of the most appreciated individuals in University of Tennessee history, Pat Head received her physical education bachelor's in 1974 after four years on the Martin campus, and that fall she started coaching in Knoxville. She was teaching in Martin when she received the letter requesting that she dedicate her winters to the "excellent potential team" that was the Lady Vols. They finished 16-8 in her first year, and the 16-11 team of the next year would remain the only Tennessee squad on her watch not to win at least two-thirds of its games.

Head was so young in the mid-'70s that after her first season on the sidelines in Knoxville (and the one grad school year it took for her to get her master's), she was on the court for the US team at the 1975 women's world championship and the subsequent Pan American Games. She won a silver medal at the '76 Olympics, and she coached the national team in 1980, the year she married the man with whom she'd stay for over a quarter-century.

Her first staff included Judy Rose, UNC-Charlotte's future athletics director. Though Rose began her time at Charlotte in 1976, she remained a close friend over the years. Rose recalls, among many other things, Summitt's willingness to "mentor younger people coming up," something she saw on frequent encounters in high school gyms with the woman who'd hired her in '74.

There was much more to Summitt than her signature stare. She was all business when she needed to be and less serious other times. Like any good coach, she'd have players work hard (and preferably smart), but even while she was on the job, they could call her Pat.

[EDIT 11/30/2023, 2:15 p.m.: Added "basketball" label]

Moses Malone, 1955-2015

In 1974, Petersburg High School beat West Springfield 50-48 to remain basketball champions of the Commonwealth of Virginia. That season, Moses Eugene Malone, a Petersburg senior, scored 896 points to set a 12th-grade record that stood for almost forty years.¹ Then, twenty-one years before Kevin Garnett started the wave, the ABA's Utah Stars selected Malone in the third round, at a time when no other team was willing to have anyone make that jump.^2 3

He had 1,209 rebounds, including a league-leading 455 offensive, his mark of 128 blocks was among the league's top ten, and his .571 field goal percentage was third-best in the league. His play was good for an All-Star Game appearance and a place on the All-Rookie Team.

The next season, after the team folded, he played with the Spirits of St. Louis, but due to his injury and his contract holdout, he took the court nearly halfway through.

He made his NBA debut with the Buffalo Braves, Portland having claimed him in the dispersal draft. After two games, he was traded to Houston. Each team got draft picks for Malone; Portland drafted Rick Robey, while Buffalo drafted Wesley Cox and Micheal Ray Richardson. The latter ended up being dealt to the Knicks and started a solid career.

As for Moses, you don't need me to tell you what happened next. I could just throw a bunch of numbers, many pertaining to his rebound totals, but here's the nitty-gritty. Over the course of 19 seasons, he was a three-time MVP, a 12-time All-Star, and Most Valuable Player of the '82-83 NBA Finals. His jersey number, 24, is retired in Houston. In Philadelphia, his #2 should be. He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in 1996 and gained a place in the Hall of Fame five years later.

Here's to the career that began in the year of '74.

<sup>1. [Andrew Rowsey of the 2013 Rockbridge County Wildcats now holds that record.]↩
2. [The next year, by the way, NBA teams drafted two guys out of high school. And also, he's not the first player to make it to the pros without going to college, as I've heard at least once today; I remember from an old sports almanac that a few guys did so in the '40s (namely Kappen, Simmons, and Graboski).]↩
3. [His Topps NBA cards are unusual in that a simple "NO" follows the colon after "DRAFTED." He was drafted, just not by an NBA team at first.]↩</sup>

More '74

Congratulations to the Golden State Warriors on their first championship in 40 years. The Warriors went 23-12 in the last four months of 1974, and they won 11 of 15 in November. They were much hotter this season, going 25-5 by the end of the calendar year! I might add some individual player stats to this entry sometime.

This summer is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, awarded to the Soviet capital October 23, 1974, by a vote of 39-20 at the 75th IOC session. The same session confirmed the selection of Lake Placid as host city for the 1980 Winter Olympics, Vancouver having withdrawn earlier in the month.

While transferring files to my new external hard drive, I decided Thursday it would be a good time to look at some library books that were almost due. One of them was The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (N.Y.: Free Press, 2001), and the following caught my eye because the year was 1974. It tells of an El Paso second baseman, Jerry Remy, who wonders if he'll ever be a major leaguer. Dave Garcia, the Diablos' manager, started a conversation that went something like this.

DG: Listen, do you know who is playing second base for the Angels?
JR: Denny Doyle.
DG: Who runs better, you or Denny?
JR: I do.
DG: Who throws better?
JR: I do.
DG: Who hits better?
JR: I do.
DG: Well then, you're going to the major leagues.

The next year, Doyle was traded to the Red Sox only to be released in 1978, as once again Remy replaced Doyle as second baseman. Remy played in the '78 All-Star Game to begin a seven-year run with the Red Sox after three with the Angels. As I looked things up for this entry, I learned he's now doing color commentary on NESN, but this May he was too ill for a road trip. Also, due to financial trouble, his restaurant near Fenway Park was closed for a time in March before being sold, and another location in his native Fall River was also sold later in May. He was back in the booth by June, though. Hope things are going better!

Basketball: The Early '74-75 Season

[EDIT 6/22/2015: Removing the apostrophes Microsoft Word forces.]

I cannot apologize enough to myself for missing those two updates, but I couldn't get to a place where I could update this for most of the last three months. Here's what I would have posted in October: a look at all of basketball; at the end of 1974, it was too early for most of the season to have happened at either level.

PRO BASKETBALL

Bill Walton is the #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 play their first season. LSU alumnus Pete Maravich is traded to the Jazz from the Atlanta Hawks May 3, 1974. The Jazz play at Municipal Auditorium (capacity 7,853) until the Louisiana Superdome (47,284) opens in '75.

Three arenas that open for NBA and ABA teams as well as NHL and WHA teams are Richfield Coliseum (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 Kings, NHL 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. Due to an error in handling luggage, Erving and four other Nets players have to wear Bullets road uniforms.

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 a free throw in the pros for the 4000th time.

Lenny Wilkens, having coached the Seattle SuperSonics for three years before, is back after a two-year absence and begins his stint as coach of the Trail Blazers.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL

In his final year at NC State, David Thompson averages 29.9 points per game and gets 229 rebounds (8.2 per game). The Hawks will use their #1 overall pick in the '75 NBA Draft on him, but he will go to the ABA's Denver Nuggets (Rockets until '74) after they trade with the Virginia Squires, who also make him the #1 overall pick.

This season is the last for UCLA coach John Wooden. By March, it will be UCLA's last appearance in the NCAA tournament under Wooden, and the school'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 Richmond leads Division I of the NCAA with 32.9 PPG.

This season will be followed by the first Division III tournament.

Larry Bird, age 18 as of Dec. 7 and fresh out of Springs Valley High School in French Lick, Indiana, initially goes to Indiana University, but quickly transfers to Indiana State.

Bill Walton in the '70s, as Clippers broadcaster Ralph Lawler recounts
The Jazz when they got their name and logo, according to, well, the Jazz
ABA-NBA exhibitions on RememberTheABA.com
David Thompson video highlights from NCAA Web site
John Wooden's last championship, according to the school he beat, Kentucky
Something on Larry Bird's time at IU from Inside The Hall

And that's all I prepared for 2013-14. Thanks for viewing.

COMING SOON: A special bonus.

College Basketball: The '73-74 Season

[EDIT 6/22/2015: Making apostrophes show up right in all kinds of encoding]

[EDIT 2/4/2023 9:35 a.m.: One player's name was different in college]

[EDIT 11/30/2023 2:18 p.m.: Adding "basketball" label]

Posting this one just a little before March.

North Carolina State wins the NCAA tournament. En route to a 76-64 win against Marquette in the championship game, they defeat the UCLA powerhouse 80-77 in double overtime. NC State's record for the season is 30-1.

The Bruins' loss to the Wolfpack is one of four that season; the first, against Notre Dame Jan. 28, brings their 88-game winning streak to an end. The Fighting Irish, playing at home, overcome an 11-point deficit in the last 3:30 to win 71-70.

Bill Walton wins three of the four outstanding player awards he had swept in '72 and '73 (namely: UPI, U.S. Basketball Writers' Association, and the Naismith Award). At the end of his time at UCLA, his total is 1370 rebounds. He has 398 in '73-74 and averages 19.3 points per game, but those marks aren't as high as the ones for his sophomore and junior years.

Instead of giving Walton the outstanding player award for a third time, the AP chooses David Thompson of NC State. Thompson averages 26.0 points per game this year with 245 rebounds (7.9 per game). He is also the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, with 51.4 FG%, 78.6 FT%, 17 rebounds, and 49 points in two games.

The consensus All-America team is as follows: Walton, Thompson, Keith (later Jamaal) Wilkes of UCLA, John Shumate of Notre Dame, Marvin Barnes of Providence.

Who is the Coach of the Year? The UPI says Digger Phelps of Notre Dame, the USBWA and the AP say Norm Sloan of NC State, and the National Association of Basketball Coaches says Al McGuire of Marquette. In '75, all of those awards will go to Bobby Knight.

Larry Fogle of Canisius leads the NCAA with 33.4 PPG. Or, by another set of standards, it's William Averitt of Pepperdine with 33.9.

Barnes has 597 rebounds in 32 games, the top NCAA mark for that category. He had 571 in 30 games the year before, but finished second on the leaderboard.

The per-game rebound leader, for the second time in a row, is Kermit Washington of American. His average was 19.8 last season and an even 20.0 this season.

Lute Olson, future Iowa and Arizona coach, coaches this year at Long Beach State after a year at Long Beach City College. He takes over for Jerry Tarkanian, who will begin the first of many years at UNLV next season.

Speaking of Long Beach State, their home winning streak ends at 75 sometime in '74. Their 94-84 loss to San Francisco ends a run that began in 1968. Another home-court winning streak begins this calendar year: UNLV's 72 times defending their home.

Purdue wins the NIT with a 97-81 win over Utah in the final. The Utes' Mike Sojourner is the tournament MVP.

Morgan State wins the Division II title.

Alcorn State, a future NCAA Division I school, loses the NAIA final to West Georgia.

This is the first year freshmen are eligible for varsity teams.

Immaculata University wins the AIAW title for the third year in a row in the third edition of this women's tournament.

OUTSIDE THE COLLEGE GAME

Moses Malone leads Petersburg High to a second consecutive state championship in Virginia high school basketball. His 896 points in 25 games (for an average of 35.8) is a single-season total-points record that will stand for 19 years and still a record for a 12th-grader forty years later. His career scoring average is 27.2, which remains one of the best in state history.

The Soviet Union wins the FIBA championship in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Yugoslavia finishes second in this tournament, which is the last time a round-robin decides the champion instead of a single final game.

NC State's '74 team on ESPN.com
[8/13/2015: Site about UCLA's streak coming to an end expired.]
NCAA Tournament Review from CBSSports.com
Consensus All-Americans of the '70s from Sports-Reference.com
Who is Lute Olson? Find out on About.com
VHSL Records including Moses Malone's (PDF)
Official home of the '74 FIBA tournament

COMING IN MARCH: THE '74 BASEBALL SEASON

Pro Basketball: The '73-74 Season

[EDIT 6/22/2015: This is the apostrophe police]

[EDIT 11/30/2015: Adding "basketball" label and removing justification]

In a seven-game NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics defeat the Milwaukee Bucks in all the odd-numbered games to win their first title since 1969. John Havlicek is the MVP of the playoffs.

The New York Nets are ABA champions after a five-game final against the Utah Stars.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Bucks is the NBA's MVP for the third time. He averages 30.0 points per game and gets 14.5 rebounds per game.

Julius Erving, brought to the Nets from the Virginia Squires before the season, wins his first ABA MVP award and his second scoring title for the league.

The former Baltimore Bullets play their first season in Landover, Maryland. They are called the Capital Bullets for one season.

The 1973-74 season is the first one in which the NBA and ABA keep track of blocks and steals. The first official NBA leaders in those stats are, respectively, Elmore Smith of the Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Steele of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Smith's 17 blocks in a game Oct. 28 are still a record.

Bob McAdoo of the Buffalo Braves wins his first of three consecutive NBA scoring titles. He has 30.8 points per game in '73-74.

The Braves' Ernie DiGregorio, NBA Rookie of the Year, leads the league in assists with 8.2 per game. He also has a league-high 90.2 free-throw percentage.

The Bullets' Elvin Hayes leads the league in rebounding with 18.1 boards per game.

The West wins 134-123 at the NBA All-Star Game in Seattle. Bob Lanier of the Detroit Pistons is the MVP with 24 points and 10 rebounds. His scoring average for the regular season is 22.5, and his average next season will be 24.0. Also scoring big for the West is Spencer Haywood of the Seattle Supersonics, with 23 points and 11 boards.

The East wins 128-112 at the ABA All-Star Game in Norfolk. Artis Gilmore of the Kentucky Colonels is the MVP with 18 points and 13 rebounds. Sven Nater of the San Antonio Spurs scores 29 points and gets 22 boards. Gilmore leads the ABA in rebounds with 18.3 per game, and Nater is Rookie of the Year.

The NBA's Coach of the Year is the Pistons' Ray Scott, while the Executive of the Year is the Braves' Eddie Donovan.

Sharing the award for ABA Coach of the Year are the Colonels' Babe McCarthy and the Stars' Joe Mullaney.

The All-NBA First Team: Abdul-Jabbar, the Golden State Warriors' Rick Barry, the New York Knicks' Walt Frazier, the Lakers' Gail Goodrich, and Havlicek.

The All-ABA First Team: the Carolina Cougars' Mack Calvin, Erving, Gilmore, the Stars' Jimmy Jones, and the Indiana Pacers' George McGinnis.

In a game against Portland March 26, Barry scores 64 points on 30 field goals, both marks of which the NBA hasn't seen the likes since Wilt Chamberlain's best years.

Counting NBA and ABA games, the Cougars' Billy Cunningham reaches 15,000 points sometime this season.

Oscar Robertson of the Bucks retires after the season with 26,710 points and 9,887 assists.

Also among the players retiring after '73-74 is Jerry West of the Lakers, who has 25,192 points, including 1,213 free throws.

The Hall of Fame welcomes Bill Russell in the '74 offseason.

The ABA's first-ever leader in steals is the San Diego Conquistadors' Caldwell Jones, and the Cougars' Ted McClain is its first leader in blocks.

In addition to having traded Erving before the season and Nater early in it, the Squires sell George Gervin to the Spurs Jan. 31. They go from 42-42 to 28-56, and will have a league-worst record of 15-69 next season.

This is the struggling Memphis Tams' last year in green and gold and their last under Charlie O. Finley's ownership, as was the Seals' case in the WHA. They finish with the worst record in the league and will be known as the Sounds next year.

After retiring from the NBA, Chamberlain tries his hand at coaching with the Conquistadors. Though he originally intends to be a player as well, the Lakers sue to keep him on the bench. Despite Wilt not being on the court and sometimes not even on the sidelines, the Q's go 37-47 - a seven-game improvement over '72-73 - and defeat the Denver Rockets in a tiebreaker for a higher playoff seed. Just like the year before, though, Utah sweeps San Diego in the first round of the playoffs.

The ABA from Basketball-Reference
The NBA from Basketball-Reference
ABA teams on Remember the ABA - Check out stories from the Nets and Stars to the Q's, Tams, and Squires

NEXT TIME - College basketball (and some high-school and international) in '73-74