[Hall-of-Famer Dave Bing is the subject of two published books, the most recent being the 2020 title, Attacking the Rim. But there’s still plenty to remember about Bing’s stellar NBA career that didn’t make the book in fine detail, and this brief article is a good case in point. It comes from the March 1970 issue of the magazine Complete Sports. At the keyboard is the then-prolific Phil Berger, always a fun read. Berger captures well how Bing rose above injuries and the dysfunction in Detroit to excel. He also mentions the now mostly forgotten wrinkle of Bing’s early NBA career: he signed a contract to jump to the ABA Washington Caps, owned by local real-estate lawyer Earl Foreman.
Bing would never play in the ABA, mainly because Foreman didn’t force the issue with him. Foreman would soon invest a then-fortune in rookie guard Charlie Scott, meaning Bing was no longer needed to run the team. Bing, the D.C. native, also was no longer needed because Foreman had to move the franchise to Norfolk soon thereafter at the NBA’s request. In fact, when I spoke to Foreman several years ago, he couldn’t remember signing Bing. “I did?” he answered my question about signing Bing. And yet, he remembered quite a bit about inking Scott, Julius Erving, and Bob McAdoo.
Even though Bing’s ABA dream came to nothing, Berger’s piece gives you an up-close sense of why NBA stars like Bing were intrigued to try the ABA for the right price. Enjoy!]
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The year that he was the scoring leader of the National Basketball Association, Dave Bing got as much use from his Blue Cross card as he did from his jump shot. In that 1967-78 season, he accumulated the following battle wounds: a right hand with knuckles misplaced; a left hand with a fractured thumb; and an assortment of gashes that required a total of 34 stitches.
Every time the 6-feet-3, 180-pound Bing made a move toward the basket, it was the closest thing basketball had to guerrilla ambush. He rattled off defenders with pinball zing. It was not a method calculated for survival.
Pain has become a constant in Dave Bing’s basketball life. Even in the 1968-69 season—his third NBA campaign in which he went through multiple changes—bodily ache remained a verity of his working hours.
“First off,” the Detroit Pistons star said, “I developed a painful knee. It didn’t cause me to miss any games, but it took something away from my game. I couldn’t jump as well; it took me longer to warm up. It was an arthritic ache, like a dull toothache in your knee. It was really bad after the game. I had to have it packed with ice after every game.”
Despite the bad knee, Bing got off to a good start last year. “I was averaging about 32 points a game after the first 18 games or so,” he recalled. “Then I caught the flu.”
That started his decline. It coincided with Detroit’s—and it was not just the absence of his shooting touch that prompted it. The Pistons were a team in dissension, and their disenchantment was directed particularly against coach Donnis Butcher.
Butcher’s lack of rapport with his players created a grumbling monster of a team. His heavy-handed critiques of big Joe Strawder had caused the Pistons’ center to retire before the season, leaving the team to rely on thin Otto Moore at center. Moore tried, but at 6-feet-11, 210 pounds, he did not have the beef to do combat against the heftier NBA foes. It affected the entire Piston game.
“I’m not saying that Strawder wasn’t a little hypersensitive,” said one Piston, “but Butcher could have been more considerate of the way he was. He did things like question Joe’s courage in front of the team. That didn’t go down well with Strawder. Finally, I guess (Strawder) decided he didn’t need it anymore and quit.”
Strawder was not the only malcontent on the Detroit roster. Benchman or star, the Piston players lost confidence in Butcher. They felt he was not entirely straight in his dealings with them. “For instance,” said a Piston, “he’d tell one player that he was his boy and was going to play, and then he’d go to another guy going for the same job and tell him the same thing. Well, the players talk to each other and found out what was happening. He was playing us for fools.”
Eventually, Detroit morale was so undermined that Butcher was fired. Paul Seymour replaced him. For Bing, it was not necessarily a change for the better. Seymour’s feeling was that the Piston offense would pick up if Bing and the other guards shot the ball less. He created an offense that was directed at the forwards.
He also made so many personnel changes that the Pistons looked like the road company for the musical New Faces after a while. Walt Bellamy, Howie Komives, Dave Gambee, McCoy McLemore. Players came and went through revolving doors. It didn’t make for the kind of cohesion found on winning clubs.
”In a period of three weeks,” Bing remembered, “we had a coaching change and six new players. We started going bad, and then everything snowballed.”
It snowballed for Bing, too. Midseason, in a game against the Boston Celtics, the lithe Piston guard collided with Larry Siegfried and Bailey Howell, incurring a painful injury on the side of his right leg. “We thought I might have a cracked bone,” Bing said, “so I was sent to the hospital. At Detroit Hospital, they decided to give me heat packs and cortisone to deaden the pain. The Pistons had three games with the Knicks coming up, and nobody wanted me to miss them, including me.
“The trouble was that I couldn’t feel the heat because of the cortisone, and I got burned. That burn was just about as painful as the original injury. It happened right at the time of the All-Star Game. I played a little in the game, but I couldn’t do anything.”
Pointing to the wound, Bing said, “You can see here what it looks like. It’s kind of a raised welt, about the size of a quarter. It’s healed now, but then it was raw. In that condition, there was always a pain. And there was nothing to do about it.
“It had to be covered every night I played. When the gauze pad would be taken off, (the wound) would be even more raw than it had been. It affected the way I could move.”
Aching knee. Raw pain. It made it difficult for Bing to drive the way he had in previous seasons. It made it easier to defense him. “The threat of the drive loosens a defender for the jump shot and vice versa,” Bing explained. “But when I curbed the driving game, the defense was able to play my jump shot tougher. My scoring was bound to fall off. My whole game got worse.”
Still, he managed some fairly credible statistics. In 77 games, he averaged 23.4 points per game and seven assists and showed an improved defensive game. But he knew he could do better.
With that in mind, he set about to ready himself for the season. He never had a chance. He went through nothing but changes. “At the end of the season,” Bing recalled, “I had x-rays taken on my knee. They couldn’t find anything wrong with it. But the pain was getting worse and worse for me. So bad that I couldn’t work out on my own to be set for the season.
“So I went for another checkup in June, a few months later. I was x-rayed again, and this time they told me that there was some kind of jagged bone in there. They figured that if they shot it with cortisone, it’d break the bone up. The doctor called it ‘adhesions.’
“The diagnosis wasn’t right. It was a really bad summer. I worked with weights to try to improve the knee. It didn’t do anything for it. I was in too much pain to touch a ball, so I just sat around and waited, hoping it would get better.”
It didn’t get better. So, Bing contacted a Port Huron orthopedic surgeon. “He found a bone chip in the knee,” he said, “and said it should be removed.”
The only trouble with that was the Pistons were in the midst of their training camp. But the operation was a must, and Bing registered at a hospital. “The surgeon made an incision below the knee cap,” Bing said. “The bone was sticking through the tendon. He split the tendon and removed the bone chip.”
So much for the knee.
Meanwhile, there were other changes. Bing was contacted by representatives of the new American Basketball Association when he was in Washington D.C. visiting his parents there. What the ABA wanted was Bing to play for the Washington franchise that had just shifted to the nation’s capital from Oakland. “My reaction was, ‘Great!’ First of all, there was the money that the ABA was talking. Secondly, I’m from D.C. and thought it would be a great way to finish up my career. I had intended moving back here.”
The ABA offer fit nicely with Bing’s blueprint for his career. “I’m not the kind of guy,” he said, “who’s built for playing a dozen seasons in the pros. The game is wearing me down.” Accordingly, the ABA money would compensate him for the years he would lose as a top moneymaking pro.
The contract that Bing signed calls for an annual salary in the six figures (at Detroit, his salary is estimated at $50,000 per season). It is a multiyear deal with deferred payments that spread his earnings for many years.
It was another big change for Bing, but one that he likely won’t make it until the 1971-72 season. He still has another season remaining on a two-year contract with Detroit and then undoubtedly will sit or play out his option year.
Said Washington Caps owner Earl Foreman: “When I purchased the Oakland Oaks ballclub, I decided to go after a superstar. Whenever I asked anyone who could do more for Washington than anyone else, Dave Bing was the unanimous choice.”
For now, Bing has his mind on the NBA—and he doesn’t intend to let a fat contract in the future hinder his performance for Detroit. “I’m a pro,” he said, “and I think I’m one of the better ones. The fact that I will eventually leave the team won’t alter my style of play or dedication to the game. I think the Piston fans are intelligent enough to realize basketball is a profession, just like anything else, and that I have to take advantage of any opportunity to improve myself.
“My loyalties are first to my family and then second to myself. I believe both the Pistons and the NBA have profited by my play the past three years.”
And if Dave Bing has his way, the pro game will continue to profit from his skills, no matter what changes he hast to go through.
From Way Downtown 