Dick Motta pretends not to count the years he will have Thurmond. He thinks instead of the years he didn’t have Thurmond. “I’ll tell you personally how I feel about it,” said Motta. “I’ve been in this league seven years, and I deserved the right to coach Nate Thurmond.”
Tag Archives: 1970s NBA
Pete Maravich: Shape of Things to Come, 1971
“You have to push yourself to play,” Maravich said. “Starting August 1, I ran three miles a day. When I got to camp, I was in the best shape of my life. Pros have to be in shape.”
Abracadabra, Kalamazoo: The Magic of Jerry Lucas, 1973
“My ambition,” says Luke the Great, “is to become the best-known magician in the country. I’ve made a thorough study of magic, I can do anything in magic.”
Irwin Weiner Does the NBA, 1978
Weiner also had some news: George McGinnis has been traded by Philadelphia to Denver for Bobby Jones. Back to the news after the commercial from Irwin Weiner.
“I’ve never been down to Portland,” Weiner said. “When I come to town, they’ll give me the red-carpet treatment. It will all be blood.”
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”
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.
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.
Dave Cowens: Farewell John Havlicek, 1978
People ask me who will replace John Havlicek this year. I tell them there will be another name on the roster, but that nobody will replace him—ever.
From Way Downtown 