The money he makes is considerable salve for the aches and bruises that he absorbs working at his job. At a workout a while ago, a gash was opened on his left wrist.
Author Archives: bobkuska
Reggie Harding: The Original Detroit Bad Boy, 1972
By the end of the season, the Pistons had fined Reggie nearly $3,000 of his $15,000 a year salary and suspended him indefinitely. “After Reggie made the professional league,” his wife Nadine said, “he felt he was ‘The Man’ now, and no one had the right to tell him what to do.”
Reggie Harding: Jackson Prison Blues, 1970
[In January 1969, two Baltimore reporters got “locked up” in an airport waiting more than six hours to board their connecting flight to cover the NBA Bullets. To fight the boredom, the two embarked upon selecting their unconventional assortment of all-time NBA teams: All-Crybaby, All-Bald, All-Schoolyard, All-Hatchet, and All-Ugly (“the entire Seattle team”). Reggie Harding,Continue reading “Reggie Harding: Jackson Prison Blues, 1970”
Reggie Harding: A New Kind of Piston, 1964
Harding still retains some of his arrogance, but it’s not offensive. Sure, he said, he misses playing basketball. “It’s part of me,” he said. But he added: “I’ve still got the ability, and they can’t take that away from me.”
Penny for Your Thoughts on Cleo Hill
Cleo Hill had certain remarkable talents as a player. He had fast hands, a wonderful asset for a basketball player. He was quick. But his quickness and his hand speed were wasted when they weren’t harnessed with the team effort of everybody else. It is something a man might learn in a minor league but has to be taken for granted in the majors.
Stan Stutz: The 1940s King of the Running One-Hander
One of the things that impressed me was the wild, one-handed shooting of Stan Stutz, “who had that sallow complexion and would comb his light hair straight back and take one-handers from all over the court.”
Meet the Father of the Three-Point Shot, 1979
When the NBA Rules Committee adopted its three-point play this summer, it didn’t pick the dimensions casually. Hobson had written several letters to NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien urging the NBA to adopt shorter distances.
Oscar Robertson: Picture of Consistency
It is true. Robertson is a perfectionist. Whenever the subject is basketball, the Big O wants to be the best, the absolute best.
Secret Plot to Make NBA Champs of Milwaukee Bucks, 1971
The man making the offer was Wes Pavalon, owner of the Bucks, a 36-year-old multimillionaire. “There’s nothing mysterious about paying tremendous salaries to tremendous athletes,” Pavalon insists, “or in making them happy in other ways.”
Dave Cowens Doesn’t Play Hard . . . He Kills Himself, 1973
For Cowens, the future in basketball seems unclouded. Outside of basketball, the future is—so far—simply uninteresting. Money does not appear to be the most-important thing in his life.
From Way Downtown 