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.”

Dismantling the Buffalo Braves, 1977

Speaking of rebuilding, it might be instructive to dwell briefly on how the Braves were razed and/or disassembled in such a short time. It is somewhat disconcerting to note that there are exactly two players—count ‘em, two—remaining from the team, which opened league play a season ago, in the autumn of 1975: Randy Smith and Ernie DiGregorio.