[Memories can be funny, but I recall as a kid flipping through basketball magazines and reading many a feature story about the Van Arsdale brothers, Dick and Tom. They were identical twins who dittoed through the NBA from 1965 to 1977. And yet, in my fairly substantial collection of old basketball magazines, what follows is the first Van Arsdale twin story that I’ve come across. This one, which starts with a bar story, ran in the April 1971 issue of the magazine Sports Today. At the keyboard is Associated Press reporter Mike Recht, who would later work briefly for the ABA Spirits of St. Louis.]
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Dick Van Arsdale had just had a particularly poor shooting night on the basketball court, and he needed a drink. As he walked into a San Francisco saloon, the bartender noticed that his customer was downcast and, seeking to improve his spirits, said, “You must have a double.”
“Thanks,” Dick agreed. “Make it Scotch.”
After Van Arsdale downed the drink, the bartender came over to collect his money, but Dick protested. “You offered me this drink. I don’t have to pay for it,” he argued. Following a brief flareup, Dick was ushered out of the establishment and told never to return.
A few nights later, however, brother Tom Van Arsdale, coming off the same kind of evening on the court, strolled into the same bar. The bartender took one look and got ready to throw him out. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here,” he screamed. “I thought I told you to get out and stay out the other night.”
Tom, bewildered, answered that he had never been in the place before in his life.
“Then you must have a double,” shouted the bartender.
“Thanks, don’t mind if I do,” replied Tom.
That story, although untrue, is related often inside the National Basketball Association to emphasize how difficult it is to tell apart the Van Arsdale twins—Dick of the Phoenix Suns and Tom of the Cincinnati Royals. And the resemblance doesn’t end with their looks. In personality and ability, the brothers are also virtually identical. They are all-stars, on and off the court. They are so close that it took 2,000 miles, different uniforms, and the college draft to separate them.
Only a few people outside of their parents, wives, and teammates can tell the Van Arsdales apart. “There were several times in college, when opposing players would get mixed up, and one of us would have two men guarding him while the other twin was all alone,” Dick remembers.
He and Tom were the only identical twins ever to play basketball at the University of Indiana, a distinction they have maintained in the NBA. Playing on different teams in the pros ended the confusion, although they did consider a little twin play in the NBA All-Star Game in Baltimore two years ago. Dick made the team, Tom didn’t, so they devised a plan to get both into the game. “I was going to play the first half,” Dick says with a grin, “and then Tom would put on my uniform in secret and play the second half. But Tom chickened out.”
“It was Dick’s first all-star game, and I didn’t want to make a farce of it,” answered Tom.
Twin pranksters can have a basketball of laughs at the expense of other people, but the Van Arsdale’s seldom have taken advantage of their opportunity. “We never did enjoy tricking people,” claims Dick. “We’re both pretty serious and shy.”
However, there was one time back in their Little League baseball days when Tom was registered as a pitcher and Dick as an outfielder. “I wore a green cap, and Tom wore a red one,” Dick explained. “He just happened to like red. Well, Tom had a sore arm before one game, so we switched caps, and I pitched and won. Our mother didn’t even know until afterwards, but no one ever did anything about it.”
They also tried to switch on dates a few times during their freshman year at Indiana, until, as a sophomore, Dick met the girl he was to marry. Most of the other cases of mistaken identity were accidental.
One was painful to Dick. “When we were little, I got into a scrap and beat the stuffing out of one kid,” Tom relates. “Then the kid’s father came along, I was off to one side, and he grabbed Dick and chewed him out for clubbing his son.”
At Indiana, Coach Branch McCracken had a terrible time trying to tell the two apart, although he saw them almost every day. “McCracken couldn’t tell us apart to the day he died,” Dick says. “He would just yell, ‘Van,’ and we would know which one he was talking to.”
The Van Arsdales’ scoring statistics as boys, then college men, could hardly have been closer. In eighth grade in their native Greenwood, Indiana, they scored within nine career points of each other. In college, the spread rose—all the way to 12 points. “I was the gunner,” says Tom, who scored 1,252 points to Dick’s 1,240 tallies during their varsity years.
Dick has a little better of the statistics during their first years in the NBA. Tom got off to a slow start at Detroit before being traded to Cincinnati. But last season, Dick scored 1,643 points and Tom finished with 1,621 points. This year, they were just as close, averaging within one point of each other, at about 21 per game, through the first six weeks.
The only major difference between them on the court now is that Tom plays forward and Dick is a guard. That suits them both just fine. They don’t even like playing against each other, much less guarding one another. Their paths seldom cross now during the season, because Phoenix and Cincinnati are in different conferences and play each other only three times.
But their few confrontations are more than enough for the twins. “I was driving for the basket once last year, and Tom blocked my shot and slammed the ball out of bounds. It really made me angry,” Dick recalls.
Tom, too, felt bad about it. “It happened so fast I didn’t realize it was Dick. We normally have a rule: I don’t block his shots, and he doesn’t block mine,” said Tom, then chuckled.
“We really try to stay away from each other on the court,” Dick explains. “We’re very serious during a game and seldom talk to each other.”
Although the parting was rougher on Tom when Detroit chose him and New York selected Dick in the 1965 NBA draft, both agreed that it would have been a problem to have played on the same team. “We didn’t like competing against each other at Indiana,” Dick says. “Fortunately, we were the two best forwards there, so we had no big problem.
“But in the pros, we would have been fighting each other for the same job,” Tom adds. “There’s no room on the same team for two players with the same style.”
However, they also agreed that now that they are established at different positions, it might be nice to play on the same club. Once Dick thought it was a possibility.
“We might make a trade with Cincinnati for your brother,” Johnny Kerr told Dick while Kerr was coaching Phoenix two years ago.
“Great,” replied Dick. “Who do we have to give up?”
“You,” Kerr said.
That’s probably the only way the deal could be made – one twin for the other.
But both Van Arsdales are happy where they are and pleased with the way things have turned out. “It was a blessing being split up,” Dick says in retrospect. “Now we don’t feel we have to keep up with each other, although when Tom does better, I probably try harder to catch up. That’s why our statistics might have been similar in college.”
“We’ve been able to develop on our own since college,” adds Tom. “Now we’re known more for being good basketball players than for being twins.”
And some minor differences in looks have a risen, because Tom has had his hair cut differently and sports a flasher wardrobe. In their school days, the Van Arsdales would buy two of everything and wear them at the same time. Tom also has mysteriously grown one inch taller than Dick, who remains 6-feet-4. Of course, that might be explained by the fact that Tom is older—by 15 minutes.
“Dick’s a little meaner than I am, too,” Tom adds. “He’s a bit more thin-skinned, able to tell someone off. I’m more understanding.”
Despite these differences, no one could doubt that the blond, blue-eyed, 27-year-olds are identical twins. They have that special bond, a closeness, unique to identical twins. “It’s amazing,” says Tom. “We’re really one person. We order the same food, have the same tastes, think the same thoughts. If I buy a certain book or record, Dick has often bought the same thing, although we’re far away from each other.”
“Just being around each other so much, we think alike,” Dick says in agreement.
Jon McGlocklin, who roomed with Dick and Tom for three years at Indiana and is now with the Milwaukee Bucks, says, “They’re probably more alike than any human beings you’ll ever know. All through college, people would ask me, which was the better player. But their playing habits were so identical that I never could honestly say. It was almost impossible to differentiate them as players, although I had no trouble telling them apart off the court.”
As do all brothers, the Van Arsdales fought constantly with each other. “And Jon would egg us on,” Tom says. “It was always over something trivial. We shared one car and fought over who would use the car. A couple of times, we threw chairs at each other, and Jon had to get out of the room.”
But being so close, they never had trouble settling their differences. That closeness remains. “We couldn’t be closer as brothers, although we live in different cities,” Dicks says.
Tom says that if Dick was suddenly dropped out of the league, “I’d quit, too, even if I could still play.
“If he were injured and had to retire,” Tom adds, “I might continue, but I just wouldn’t feel right if it were for any other reason. We’ll probably retire at the same time. We worry about each other all the time. There never has been any jealousy.”
The Van Arsdales talk to each other on the telephone every week during the season and study the box scores to see how the other twin is doing. “We’re always pulling for each other,” Dick says, “and if one of us is having trouble, the other will make a special phone call to talk it over. For example, I remember when Tom was so depressed at Detroit, he wanted to quit. I talked him out of it. It was as if my own career was being threatened.”
“The whole thing was I missed Dick,” Tom explains. “We’d been together for 22 years, and all of a sudden he was gone.”
Tom was a second-round draft choice of the Pistons, and Dick was a second-round pick of the New York Knicks. Tom missed his brother so much that he went so far as to leave Detroit for one day to enroll in law school before Dick talked him into going back. “It wasn’t as bad for me, because I was going with my future wife Barbara at the time,” Dick explains. “I had someone to lean on.”
Dick and Barbara recently had her first child, a girl. Tom married his wife Jeanne two years later. Their wives, it should be noted, have different personalities.
Both Van Arsdales went to new teams in 1968. Tom was traded to Cincinnati in February, after two-and-a-half seasons with the Pistons, going to the Royals with John Tresvant for Jim Fox and Happy Hairston. Dick departed the Knicks three months later when he was selected by Phoenix in the expansion draft. Tom was happy about his move, but Dick was “shocked and bitter” about leaving New York. Now, however, he likes Phoenix, so well that he lives there during the offseason and has a radio sports show that keeps him busy year ‘round.
The only time the Van Arsdales see each other during the offseason is when Dick flies into Terre Haute, Indiana, one weekend a month for a National Guard meeting. But even those reunions are about to end for the twins as they fulfill their military obligations. However, all these separations are viewed as only temporary by both Van Arsdales.
Taking the long view, they both see much togetherness in their post-basketball lives. Though they are both licensed stockbrokers, the occupation didn’t appeal to either, so they are both looking for interesting careers once they retire. There’s only one ground rule in the search. “We know we want to be together,” Tom says.
Dick nods in agreement, then adds, “I just wouldn’t know what it’s like not to be a twin.”
[When the two retired in 1977, their career NBA statistical lines read:
Dick Van Arsdale: 16.4 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.3 assists per game. That totals 15,079 points over 921 games.
Tom Van Arsdale: 15.3 points, 4.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists per game. That comes to 14,232 points over 929 career games.
The two retired to the Phoenix area, where they’ve taken up art and support each other through the inevitable grind of aging. But you know what? They still look great as recently as 2023.]
From Way Downtown 