Welcome to the NBA, Haywood!

January 5, 2011

The wake-up calls came like rooster crows.  One by one and two by two, the Sonics’ players straggled jet-lagged, bleary-eyed, and in various states of dress and undress to the nearest coffee shop for a quick breakfast. “Quick” being the operative word.  According to NBA rules, all road teams must book the first flight out of town the morning after a game to ensure they reach their next destination. No exceptions. The Sonics had a flight to catch shortly to Baltimore’s Friendship Airport, today better known as BWI.

Over the usual fried-and-scrambled morning faire, several patrons scanned the Milwaukee Sentinel, the city’s morning newspaper. President Nixon vowed yet again to fight unemployment. Lieutenant William Calley reportedly was granted immunity for his role in the My Lai massacre. And what was Sadat up to in Egypt?

A flip to the sports section showed a photo of Lew Alcindor unfurling a left-handed hook shot over three flailing Sonics, and a sarcastic banner headline above that read, “Welcome to the NBA, Haywood!”

“Welcome to the NBA, Spencer Haywood. You didn’t knock ‘em dead, or even slow down the Milwaukee Bucks, but at least you’re out in the open with the senior league, and if the red tape doesn’t trip you up, you’re embarked on a great pro basketball journey.”

Most of the Sonics didn’t know Haywood well enough to rib or console him. They could only imagine what the kid was going through. He was now being belittled in the media, while the slow grind of the legal system held his life and public image in limbo. In three days, Haywood would appear in federal court in Los Angeles to learn his fate from Judge Warren J. Ferguson. If Ferguson made permanent his previously temporary restraining order, Haywood would remain in Seattle. The nightly protests would cease, the NBA would eat crow, and vindication would be his . . . and Sam Schulman’s. If not, Haywood would retreat to the ABA to face an owner, a long-term contract, and a future that he now openly mocked.

Per the advice of Schulman and agent Al Ross, Haywood would suit up tonight in Baltimore, and then fly to Los Angeles after the game to prepare for his date with Judge Ferguson. As the Sonics assembled in the hotel lobby before departing for the airport, Haywood tried to keep his head up. He had no choice.

Two hours later, the Sonics were cruising several thousand feet somewhere over Ohio. Yesterday, a dense fog had closed Friendship Airport and diverted flights from Baltimore. But the word was the fog had lifted, and Sonics coach Lennie Wilkens wouldn’t need to issue a second SOS to Seattle GM Bob Houbregs. That was good news for Wilkens. He needed time to whip up a gameplan for tonight’s opponent, the Baltimore Bullets (23-16, first place in the NBA’s Central Division).

Wilkens planned to give Haywood more minutes tonight, even though he still didn’t know the plays. But Haywood matched up well on paper against Bullets’ athletic all-star Gus Johnson. It was the other two Bullets all stars that worried Wilkens. Center Wes Unseld was built like a brick wall, and guard Earl Monroe was a modern-day magician with the basketball. When the latter was on a roll, it was good night and game over.

The other concern was the Haywood hype. Two weeks ago, the Sonics could have zipped into town under the radar and maybe stolen a victory. Nobody feared the middle-of-the-road Sonics. Now, with their “illegal player” in tow, Seattle had become the NBA equivalent of the bad-boy NFL Oakland Raiders. They were on everybody’s radar, and all NBA owners wanted dearly to thump Seattle to teach that blasted Sam Schulman a lesson.

By pre-game warmups, Haywood still looked as tight as a knot. Sensing Haywood’s unease was Gus Johnson. The Bullets star ambled to midcourt and waited for Haywood to cycle to the end of the Sonics’ warm-up line.

“I went right up to him, told the boy I was glad to have him here,” Johnson explained afterwards. “I told him I hope he would stay around. We need him in the league . . . But I feel that I can speak for the rest of our club in saying they welcome him to the NBA.”

Johnson’s welcome-to-the-neighborhood moment was anything but routine for Haywood. Until now, opposing players had given him the silent treatment. Better not consort with trouble, or so the thinking seemed to be. But, as Johnson had shown, the sentiment certainly was not unanimous.

Haywood, per usual, began the game on the bench. With three minutes left in the first quarter, Sonics forward Tom Meschery took a shot to his left knee and gimped to the sideline. Haywood rose and shed his green warmups.

The crowd of 4,631 murmured. It was as though a dastardly deed was unfolding before their very eyes. But Haywood stepped onto the court and immediately receded into the background, fighting to catch his wind for a second straight night and swallowed up by the physical play of Johnson and Unseld.

The bigger story was the fleet-footed Lennie Wilkens and his jump-shooting sidekick Dick Snyder. The tandem blew past the surprisingly flatfooted Bullets and ran the Sonics right into a double-digit lead.

“For the first three quarters at the Civic Center last night it, it appeared the only way the Bullets could beat the Seattle Supersonics was by protesting the presence of American Basketball Association dropout Spencer Haywood,” wrote the great Alan Goldstein of the Baltimore Sun. “But the sleep-walking Bullets came to life like Frankenstein’s monster in the last period . . .”

With 3:20 remaining in the game, the Sonics clung to a 98-95 lead. Two minutes later, Frankenstein had overpowered all in its path, stomping off a 10-0 run that was highlighted by four double-clutching, corkscrew, “how’d-he-do-that” baskets from Earl Monroe over Wilkens and his backcourt mate Lee Winfield.

“We let them off the hook,” Wilkens fumed after the 109-101 loss and the Bullets’ 42-point fourth quarter. “We have no one to blame but ourselves for losing this one. If we had played any kind of basketball in the last quarter, we’d have won.”

Haywood finished the night – and possibly his NBA career – with 14 points and seven rebounds in 33 minutes. Five of those baskets came in the fourth quarter when Wilkens isolated Haywood against Johnson and allowed him to go one on one. But for every shot that he rattled through the hoop, Haywood had at least one attempt sent back in his face. As Johnson had warned him before the game, “After the opening tap, it’s war.”

“Spencer still has to learn [how] his team and the opposition play,” Wilkens vented afterwards, still hot about the loss. “They were holding and bumping him pretty good out there tonight and getting away with it.”

“He [Haywood] was out of sight,” said Johnson, taking a more upbeat tone. “He didn’t make too many mistakes out there. When he faded back for that jumper, he was five yards back and 20 feet in the air. It was a real tough shot to block.”

Anyhow, the Sonics’ meltdown was academic anyway. As the Bullets made their move midway through the final stanza, Baltimore’s public-address man Ken Jackson announced the inevitable. The Bullets hereby protest tonight’s game for Seattle’s use of an illegal player. The Bullets already had a telegram ready to send to NBA headquarters after the game.

“We’re going to protest the game because the ghost of [former Bullet] Ray Scott jumped out and tripped me, causing me to injure myself,” Meschery joked afterwards, tending to his bruised left knee and referring to the earlier protest by the Chicago Bulls.

Nearby a crowd of reporters had gathered around the illegal player himself. “What if the courts rule against you on Friday?” asked one reporter, pen and notebook on the ready.

“I guess it would be agreeable,” Haywood answered. “But I thought this was America, where a man is supposed to have freedom of work and speech. I just don’t understand it.”

“I want to play basketball and make a living,” he continued, shaking his head. “I’m not in any kind of shape yet, and this whole thing is getting me down.”

Haywood finally got dressed. He had a flight to catch to Los Angeles. Haywood thanked Wilkens for everything, not sure whether this was goodbye or see you later.

January 4, 2011

“Travels with a pro basketball team can be fun,” wrote Jim Schottelkotte, who covered the NBA Royals in the 1960s and 1970s for the Cincinnati Enquirer. He then added tongue in cheek, “Provided you don’t mind bumpy airplane rides through electrical storms, travel snags, irregular eating hours, and dour cab drivers who never want to open their trunks.”

Scratch the electrical storm, insert a 1,000 mile-wide winter squall that howled over the Midwest and Great Plains, and you’ve got Spencer Haywood’s first taste of the NBA road. Nasty.

The Sonics departed Seattle-Tacoma Airport around noon on Sunday, January 3, 1971. The skies were relatively clear in the Pacific Northwest, and the plan was to arrive in Milwaukee by late afternoon, grab a good night’s sleep, and be well rested for tomorrow night’s game against the Bucks.

Not long into the flight, the captain’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. Bad news. The massive winter storm that everyone was talking about on television already had dumped over a foot of snow on Milwaukee. The airport was closed, and so were all of the airports in nearby Chicago. The pilot said an air-traffic controller had just diverted the flight to Cleveland’s Hopkins International Airport, where an estimated 7,000 travelers soon would be stranded. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Once safely on the ground in Cleveland, Sonics’ coach Lennie Wilkens issued an SOS to Seattle general manager Bob Houbregs. Four hours later, a chartered bus idled outside the airport in a choke of diesel. An intrepid bus driver had agreed on a wing and a prayer to make the 440-mile run to Milwaukee.

“I had been in the league for a while, so I was used to traveling in buses and trains under all kinds of conditions,” recalled veteran Tom Meschery of that night sitting aboard the charter bus, its oversized windshield wipers rhythmically flapping away the snowflakes. “But it was a terrible storm, and I just remember trying to read, probably some poetry, and hoping we didn’t end up off the road in a ditch somewhere.”

Eight (knock on wood) uneventful hours later and the sun already slowly rising on a Monday morning, the Sonics reached Milwaukee. The streets were relatively clear, but the sidewalks and green spaces were slathered in about sixteen glinting inches of snow. As the locals liked to joke, the Milwaukee skyline consisted of low-slung clusters of buildings and one tall high-rise in the middle. From a distance, it looked as though the city was flipping the bird. The panoramic one-fingered salute was a harbinger of things to come for the Sonics, starting with a Haywood-isn’t-welcome-here comment from Bucks’ president Ray Patterson in the Monday afternoon Milwaukee Journal.

“I’m in full support of the protests filed by Portland and Chicago,” said Patterson. “I abhor the unilateral action taken by the Supersonics, as I feel that actions such as this are detrimental to the NBA. There is no question that the sentiment of the owners in the league is very much against the move. The signing is deplored by everyone. However, I would prefer to make a judgment on filing a protest only after weighing the situation thoroughly.”

By game time, Bucks assistant coach Tom Nissalke had passed a note to Wilkens. It was from Patterson. Just for Wilkens’ information, because Haywood was on the court in uniform warming up with the other Sonics, the Bucks indeed planned to file a protest with the league office.

Wilkens had to laugh at the absurdity of Patterson’s note. The Bucks, led by superstars Lew Alcindor [Kareem Abdul Jabbar] and Oscar Robertson, were 18-1 at home and sported a 30-7 record for the season, the best record in the NBA. In essence, Patterson planned to protest an almost certain Bucks’ blowout victory over his road-weary team. Go figure.

By halftime, Haywood had yet to play, and Milwaukee, as expected, had trotted out to an easy 62-49 advantage. The Sonics had no answer for Alcindor. No NBA team did. With little chance of a Sonics victory and the league office later stepping in to order the win forfeited for playing Haywood, Wilkens threw caution to the wind. He told his six-foot-nine secret weapon to report to the scorer’s table. Haywood would start the second half.

When number 24 strode with his teammates to center court, the crowd of 8,835 sat riveted. So, too, was the Bucks’ bench. It was as though a million-dollar skunk had arrived at the picnic.

“I almost went the wrong way the first time I went in the game,” Haywood smiled afterwards of mixing up which basket was which.

But Haywood, still out of shape, bundled his nerves to score fourteen points in a second half that largely belonged to Alcindor and the Bucks.  The Sonics’ future connected on five of 13 field-goal attempts, four of five free throws, grabbed nine rebounds, and even goaltended one of Alcindor’s soft hook shots.

Haywood also had to bear 24 minutes of unrelenting wrath from the crowd. Case in point. After whiffing on a free throw in the third quarter, Haywood gathered his own miss and soared in for a dunk. He instead rammed the ball off of the back iron, and it bounded 10-feet into the air. As the ball descended, a chorus of boos and howls rained down with it.

“Spencer, they ain’t paying you for that kind of stuff!”

“How are you living up to your salary?”

When the final buzzer sounded on the Bucks’ 124-110 win, the reporters pounced on Haywood at a post-game press briefing. He was flanked by veterans Wilkens and Meschery, who were there to run interference if things got out of hand.

First question: Why should Haywood be allowed to play when it is against NBA rules for a man to play before his original college class is graduated?

Wilkens grabbed the microphone. “We’re not the ones who made him a pro. The ABA made him a pro, and there’s no way he’s going back to college now. We’re not the ones who are violating the rules. The ABA already has.”

Meschery, the team’s starting forward and assistant coach, chimed in, “The important thing here is how we treat Spencer Haywood, not the image of the NBA or anything like that. The NBA has to do the right thing by Spencer Haywood. He is a professional basketball player and should be treated as such.”

How much Meschery really believed the words flowing from his mouth was an open question. After 10 NBA seasons, Meschery doubted behind closed doors that a 21-year-old rookie from the newfangled ABA could possibly be the Sonics’ savior, as advertised, in the second half of the season. In fact, Meschery said it took him about two practices to realize that Haywood had a lot to learn to play in the NBA, especially on defense. In his view, Haywood didn’t play much of it. Now, under the category of other-duties-as-assigned, Meschery had Haywood’s back until the court’s spoke and, hopefully, one way or the other, made the distractions all go away.

Next question: Jerry Colangelo, the general manager of the Phoenix Suns of the NBA, was quoted as saying this may bring on wholesale raids on college talent. What about that?

Wilkens: “I don’t know about that. Maybe it will. Maybe that’s why we have to get together with the other league so there aren’t two sets of rules.”

Meschery: “Maybe so, but I’d doubt it. Maybe it’s time this thing was brought out in the open. There is a lot of hypocrisy over whether someone has to finish college before turning pro. There are many avenues opening up. Maybe there should be more.”

Haywood was left to sop up the mostly softball questions directed at him. What about the validity of his ABA contract? How was it to finally play in an NBA game after such a long lay off?

“You better believe I was tired,” he answered the latter question. “All I’ve had was two days of practice with this team. I’ve been going to court all of the time.”

Haywood then tried to level with the reporters. “I know I haven’t proven myself yet, but I know I can. I love the competition in this league. They’ll push me harder in the NBA than they did in the ABA, and I’ll become a better player because of it.”

Soon thereafter, the reporters put away their notebooks. Wilkens, Meschery, and Haywood needed to travel back to the hotel with their teammates. The Sonics had to catch an early-morning flight to Baltimore. It had been one helluva long snowy day.

January 3, 2011

Still no public statement from Sam Schulman about the Chicago and Portland protests. Mum was not the word for Schulman. In early December, after the NBA fined him $500 for belittling Commissioner Walter Kennedy in the press for a lack of leadership during the failed pro basketball merger talks, Schulman merely sniffed.

“Yes, I intend to pay the fine. But I don’t think they’ll like the way I intend to pay it. I’m going to deduct several expenses which I have incurred personally in the conduct of league business.”

And what were those expenses?

“I have never received any compensation for such items as the use of my New York apartment by the league and personal travel expenses in conducting league matters. My bill for those things will more than offset the amount of the fine.”

Schulman’s extreme stubbornness, underhandedness, and Beverly Hills sense of entitlement remained lost on the national media. Reporters on the East Coast and Midwest had no reason to believe that the still obscure owner of an NBA expansion team would dig in his heels and lawyers to fight city hall. NBA owners eating NBA owners?  That would be crazy, right?

At first, journalists outside of Seattle and Denver viewed the Haywood affair as a here-we-go-again curiosity.  Another food fight among the NBA millionaires. The expectation was this embarrassing caviar-on-the-lampshade moment wouldn’t last long. Walter Kennedy would somehow restore order, slap Schulman’s wrist, and tidy up around the NBA boardroom as though nothing had happened.

On Sunday morning, January 3, 1971, Frank Dolson of the Philadelphia Inquirer became the first East Coast sports pundit to weigh in on the food fight. Here is his take on the situation, starting with an impromptu press conference that Kennedy held on December 30 to address the Haywood signing:

Walter Kennedy held a press conference between halves of the Holiday Festival championship game at Madison Square Garden [involving Cornell and St. John’s]. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he called it to tell the press what was happening or to ask somebody to tell him what was happening.

The commissioner of the National Basketball Association had learned earlier in the day that the Seattle Supersonics, a member previously in good standing, had signed Spencer Haywood. That, said Kennedy, was a no-no. Haywood’s class wasn’t scheduled to graduate until June of 1971 and, under NBA rules, no man can be tarnished with pro dollars until he had been given four years to accumulate college sense.

“Under our constitution Haywood is not eligible to play,” Kennedy kept saying, and he talked about a mid-November meeting of NBA owners when the rule was reaffirmed – or, to put it another way, when Seattle’s bid to junk the rule was defeated. “By a rather substantial vote,” the commissioner reported.

Beautiful. On Nov. 18 the NBA owners told Sam Schulman, the owner of the Supersonics, that he could not sign Spencer Haywood. On Dec. 30 Schulman signed him.

All of which indicates that NBA owners have decided to spend less time fighting with the ABA owners and more time fighting among themselves. [Dolson is correct. Or so, I believe. See my December 28, 2010 post titled Chaos and Control]

Dolson later addressed the issue of the four-year rule with Philadelphia 76ers owner Irv Kosloff, a.k.a., Kos:

To some the rule that prohibits the pros to sign a college boy until his class had graduated is a wonderful thing. Kos calls it “a great rule,” explaining, “It’s my belief college athletes should be allowed to finish school.” And he presents a strong argument.

To others, however, the rule is worse than bad. It is un-American. Allowing the athlete to finish school is one thing. Making him finish school is another. What right does anybody have to tell a 19-year-old basketball star that he must wait two or three years before he can make a living?

None at all, probably, although the NCAA doesn’t see it that way. Like Kos, the men who control big-time, big-money college athletics talk about protecting a boy’s education. Like Kos, their sincerity is open to question. Their only real interest – as they have so often demonstrated – is to protect themselves.

No matter. Whether the NBA rule is good or bad, it has been broken. Willfully and maliciously and defiantly broken.
Dolson wraps up by asking what Kennedy should do to restore order. Irv Kosloff already has offered his answer. “If I were the commissioner I would fine them heavily and consider forfeit of any game Haywood plays (for Seattle),” said Kos. “I feel strongly about this. We’re not going to drop our standards because of competition from the ABA.”

Meanwhile, 3,000 miles and three time zones to the west, Spencer Haywood and his new teammates were gathering at the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The team was headed to Milwaukee to face Lew Alcindor and the mighty Bucks on Monday night. The game would be the first of a whirlwind, five-games-in-six nights roadtrip that would give Walter Kennedy plenty to ponder on his evening commute home to Stamford, Connecticut.

January 2, 2011

Chicago Bulls’ coach Dick Motta may have let Seattle slide on the Haywood matter. Not Elmer Rich, the Bulls’ bespectacled, 45-year-old president. Rich brought in the New Year pouring over a copy of the NBA by-laws and fuming about Sam Schulman.

On Saturday, January 2, 1971, Rich fired off a letter to NBA headquarters in New York. The letter read:

Chicago protests the game of Dec. 30 with Seattle under the NBA by-laws and requests that the game be forfeited by Seattle for violation of sections 2.05, 4.02, and 5.01 of said by-laws.

Mr. Haywood warmed up with Seattle before the game and at halftime. He was further present on the Seattle bench for the entire game in Seattle uniform and ready to play had he been called upon.

Section 5.01 requires, “Only players whose names appear on the playing rosters shall be permitted to dress and be able to participate in each championship game.”

Section 4.02 requires, “All contracts entered into during the season shall be filed at the association office within 48 hours after execution thereof and the member entering into such contract shall not be able to participate in a championship game until such time, unless the executors of the contract have notified the commissioner immediately by telegram.”

It is our understanding that as of Dec. 30, 1970, the commissioner had not been notified of the execution of such contract between Mr. Haywood and Seattle.

Section 2.05 requires, “A person who has entered college, but is no longer enrolled, shall not be eligible to be a player until the time when he would have first become eligible had he remained in college.”

It is our understanding that Mr. Haywood would not have been eligible to be a player pursuant to the foregoing until June 1, 1971.

Rich, the former president of the Simonize Company, the maker of car-cleaning products, then polished off a truly remarkable fib.

Chicago asks for damages in the amount of $600,000 from Seattle as a result of Seattle’s violation of the Association’s by-laws resulting from the detractive and disruptive atmosphere which was a direct cause of the injury to our player, Chet Walker.

Walker will be unable to play for an unknown number of games, thereby seriously affecting our opportunity to qualify for the playoffs and the $300,000 in damages to our players for loss of income suffered by them from diminution of opportunity to participate in playoffs for the championship.

We ask that the matter be placed on the agenda for the next meeting of the board of governors [January 12 at the NBA All-Star Game].

What was Walker’s playoff-imperiling injury? Rich didn’t elaborate. But many assumed the injury occurred on the last play of the third quarter when Walker tumbled and bruised his knee. Just for the record, Chet the Jet bounced back in early February to torch Cincinnati for 56 points.

The plot thickened a few hours later when Herman Sarkowsky, president of the Portland Trailblazers, seconded Rich’s emotion. Sarkowsky sent a telegram to league headquarters to formally protest Portland’s loss under Section 2.05 of the NBA by-laws. The telegram read in part:

This is also to inform you that under NBA rules, Haywood first becomes available for [the NBA] draft in the 1971 draft. If Portland rates him the best available player when our turn for selection comes, we will draft him.

According to Harry Glickman, Blazer executive vice president, the telegram was less about the ire of Sarkowsky (ironically, a Seattle resident) than it was a product of peer pressure. Glickman had fielded telephone calls all morning from various NBA executives urging him to protest last night’s game. In the end, Glickman caved. He called Sarkowsky.

Sam Schulman was surprisingly – or ominously – quiet at the sudden turn of events. That left the damage control to Sonics player-coach Lennie Wilkens.

“It’s ridiculous,” Wilkens dutifully responded to the protests. “They’re just grasping at straws now.”

But, behind closed doors, Wilkens was the one who was feeling ridiculous. Schulman had neither consulted him about signing Haywood, nor did he seem to care about its disruptive effects on the team. Haywood literally had arrived unannounced on the Sonics’ doorstep four days ago, and it now was up to Wilkens to navigate the rest of the season while flying blind to the obstacles that lie ahead.

“None of my old coaches ever had to face the prospect of players jumping to a team at midseason, or a star coming to a team in the middle of a year – assuming a judge said it was OK,” he later recalled the then uniqueness of his situation in NBA history.

“This was disturbing to the players, who didn’t know when Haywood would come, or if he’d fit in with the team. They also knew he would be paid more money than any of them, and that caused another problem – jealousy. Who was this new guy who had never played a minute in the NBA and was going to be the highest-paid player on the team?”

Into this simmering pot Haywood had been dropped. And over the next few days, the water would slowly but surely reach a boil, although not in the Sonics locker room. His troubles were with public perception and a league that was now hell-bent on banishing him for the remainder of the season.

January 1, 2011

New Year’s Day evening, 1971. Bob Devaney and the Nebraska Cornhuskers had just tamed the LSU Tigers, 17-12, on Seattle’s Channel 5 to win the Orange Bowl and claim the NCAA’s national football championship. As spectacular as the Orange Bowl had been, it couldn’t have ended soon enough. Tonight’s Sonics game would tip off at 8 p.m. KOMO-AM, Radio 1000, would broadcast the Friday night game live, and Bob Blackburn, the voice of the Sonics, would offer the latest on a question that had popped up like a Gallup poll in living rooms across Seattle: Would Spencer Haywood make his debut tonight against the first-year Portland Trailblazers?

If Sonics player-coach Lennie Wilkens had his way, the answer would be no. He told Gil Lyons of the Seattle Daily Times, “I wouldn’t want to embarrass him [Haywood] or the team,” Wilkens said. “It’s obvious he has tremendous ability. But he’s not in shape and he doesn’t know the patterns.”

“He can learn a lot sitting on the bench tonight,” he continued. “After tonight, he’ll know a little bit more about the team. Then, he’ll have a chance to practice again Saturday. We definitely will play him on the road.”

Wilkens had more pragmatic reasons for keeping Haywood on the bench another night. One, Seattle likely would beat Portland (12-28, fifth place in the NBA Pacific Division). Wilkens didn’t want to risk forfeiting a sure victory, if Commissioner Kennedy later ruled Haywood couldn’t play in the NBA this season.

Two, the Sonics (18-22, fourth place in the Pacific Division) were on a roll. They had won three in a row and were 4-4 on their current homestand. The team also remained in contention for a first-ever playoff appearance, despite losing star center Bob Rule and forward Don Smith (Zaid Abdul Aziz) early in the season to injuries.

“We spent too much time and effort putting this ballclub together,” Sonics general manager Bob Houbregs said about a month ago, bemoaning the injuries. “I don’t think we could afford to tear it down now. I’m convinced that we’ve put together a very fine club.”

With nearly 30 years hindsight, Wilkens would state in his 2000 autobiography Unguarded that the 1970-1971 Sonics “just weren’t a very good team.” But on New Year’s Day 1971, he still had to hope for the best.

While Wilkens and his players huddled in the locker room, the staff at KOMO queued up the familiar Sonics’ radio jingle at 7:45 on the button. “Sonics. Basketball. From the opening tip up to the final call . . .” Bob Blackburn welcomed his listeners to another evening of Sonics basketball, ran through the latest news on Haywood, and segued into tonight’s starting lineups. For Seattle, Lennie Wilkens and Dick Snyder were the guards, rookie Pete Cross was at center, and veterans Don Kojis and Tom Meschery were at the forwards. For Portland, star rookie Geoff Petrie and veteran Rick Adelman were the guards, lanky LeRoy Ellis was in the post, and Jim Barnett and Shaler Halimon held down the forward spots. The Portland coach was Roland Todd.

And then the chant began. Nine thousand and twelve voices strong. “We want Haywood. We want Haywood.”

Wilkens ignored them. Portland came out flat to open the game, and the Sonics jumped out to a comfortable double-digit lead that they carried all the way into the fourth quarter. Still no Haywood. With three minutes to play and the Sonics ahead 116-104, Portland finally found its rhythm. Petrie, who would finish with a career-high 40 points, couldn’t miss, and the Sonics couldn’t find the basket. With only 27 seconds on the clock, the Blazers grabbed the lead, 118-117.

But expansion Portland still knew nothing about closing out games. They fouled Sonics guard Dick Snyder on the next possession, and he knocked down both free throws to give Seattle the lead. A Portland miss and two more made Sonics free throws later, and Seattle escaped with a 121-118 win.

After the game, reporters huddled around Wilkens and asked the same question. Why didn’t he play Haywood tonight?

“First, I said he would not play against Portland because why risk anything against a team we should beat?” he answered. “Later, I thought I might play him. Why didn’t I? I’d rather not comment. I hope to use him on the road trip.”

But first, Sonics owner Sam Schulman would need to call his lawyers. Chicago – The Windy City – was suddenly blowing $900,000 worth of hot air.

December 31, 2010

When life doesn’t cooperate, I sometimes regain my inner child by clicking on the online Sports Illustrated Vault. I’m not sure how Dr. Phil would feel about this. But if you’re a middle-aged sports history buff like me, I’m sure you get my drift. Nothing is better than to revisit those grainy, cheap-color days of the 1960s and 1970s when SI reporter Frank Deford dazzled with his good-natured but wickedly perceptive outing of the wacky world of American professional sports.

In the fall of 1967, Deford wrote a classic feature story titled “The Sonic Boom in Seattle.” The subhead read, “First major league franchise in the Northwest, the Supersonics are a big hit in town so far, but then the season hasn’t opened yet.”

Deford then dissected the Sonic hysteria in a way that only he could. “Seattle represents the final frontier for expansion, so it is witnessing one of the last of those wonderful, childish times of innocence and pride that have touched so many U. S. cities in the last 15 years – when our city finally got in the major leagues, when our ball club first came to town . . . The parade ends at last, now, under the Space Needle in Seattle. The time is over. All the country has majors now. There are no more wide-open spaces left.”

Fast forward to the morning of December 31, 1970. Seattle awoke to today’s equivalent of breaking news from last night’s 128-109 Sonics victory over Chicago. The rumors were true. Former ABA star Spencer Haywood had temporarily joined the Sonics. Although Haywood was a DNP, Seattle owner Sam Schulman vowed to get him into action soon.

At a press conference immediately after the Bulls game, Schulman stared into the Klieg lights and a bank of television cameras to offer his thoughts on the day’s events.

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s [Haywood] ready to play anytime Lennie wants him,” said Schulman, referring to head coach Lennie Wilkens. “As far as I’m concerned, Spencer is now our player and will play for us.”

A reporter asked Schulman if he had any indication that NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy had changed his mind about the Haywood case following the court’s ruling?

“No, I have no indication at all,” said Schulman. “We’ve won the first battle, and we’re going to go all the way on this. Our legal strategy has been all mapped out. I hope we can do this in a friendly fashion. But if we’re forced to, we’ll go to the courts to decide who is right.”

A voice called out another question. The reporter wanted to know more about Schulman’s rationale for signing Haywood.

“I did nothing more than the ABA did originally,” he shot back. “I considered him [Haywood] a free agent and signed him, and we won the first round. I think the NBA Board of Governors will settle it in our favor. The NBA draft rule doesn’t apply in Haywood’s case because he was already a professional when I signed him. I just hope the Board of Governors doesn’t push me to the wall where I would have to take the matter to the courts.”

Schulman bobbed and weaved for a few more minutes before finally dropping his guard and admitting to the reporters, “Right now, I feel like I’m fighting the world.”

The NBA world wasn’t fighting back just yet. League opinion fell overnight into two camps. There was the anger of the old guard, which now rued the day that it voted Schulman into the league, and there was the shock of the new guard, trying to fathom why one of their own would go for the jugular of the NBA establishment.

“I have mixed emotions,” said Harry Glickman, general manager of the new-guard Portland Trailblazers. “One, I’m naturally delighted to see Haywood in the NBA. Two, I don’t think the NBA should sign a player before his class graduates and Haywood’s class doesn’t graduate until next June . . . I don’t feel the NBA should do anything to jeopardize its relationship with the colleges. It is insane to ruin a ready-made farm system.”

Did Glickman plan to protest Portland’s upcoming game against Seattle if Haywood appeared at the scorer’s table? “No, I don’t think I’d protest the game if Haywood played against us Friday night in Seattle.”

The same apparently went for Dick Motta, Chicago’s outspoken head coach. ““Haywood didn’t play, so as far as I’m concerned he wasn’t even there. That’s all I’d like to say on the forfeit angle,” which Motta had broached briefly before the game started.

Nevertheless, Motta wasn’t amused. “It could only happen in the NBA,” he had muttered under his breath when Haywood trotted onto the floor for pregame warmups. “I’m not surprised by anything anymore. But it’s not fair.”

Motta explained his dismay.  ”I know Haywood is a hell of a player, but my first question is, why isn’t he in Chicago instead of Seattle? We were told by the NBA to keep hands off, and I know I asked my general manager at least 25 times to go after him and was told we couldn’t.”

“If this goes through then we might as well act like the colleges, recruit by ourselves by signing our own players,” he continued.  ”I like to coach talent, too.  If this is how you get Haywood, why wasn’t there open bidding for his services?  Chicago would pay as much as Seattle for him.  And, if he plays against us, I’ll protest the game.”

Back in the pressroom last night, his six-foot-nine frame dwarfing Schulman and Sonics head coach Lennie Wilkens, Seattle’s 21-year-old first professional superstar fielded a few questions from the local media like an old pro.

“I’m really happy to be in Seattle,” Haywood smiled, though clearly exhausted from the day. “There is no comparison between the two leagues. The NBA is 10 or 11 steps ahead of the ABA.”

“I’ve been doing some running but I’m not in very good shape. I could give 75 or 80 percent right now.”

“They are a beautiful team, and I would like to play for them,” he said, referring to the Sonics.

After the morning’s images of Haywood and the Sonics had been played and replayed to everyone’s satisfaction, the city moved on to the next item of business. New Year’s Eve. The temperature had hovered in the mid 40s all day, and the Seattle skyline was cloaked in a misty shroud of gray. On the downtown waterfront, the usual New Year’s Eve mob scene was well under way at Pike Place Market. At the nearby Victrola Tavern, next to the Rice Bowl Café in Post Alley, the beer was cheap, and a reporter with the Seattle Post- Intelligencer heard the jukebox doo-doo-doing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s latest hit, “Lookin’ Out My Backdoor.”

But another recent CCR single, “Bad Moon Rising,” would have been more fitting tonight for Seattle, the Sonics, and Haywood. A bad moon was indeed rising. Schulman’s fight against the NBA world was about to begin.

December 30, 2010

If you had gathered around the office water cooler 40 years ago today to talk sports, the buzz would have been about “The Battle of the Century.” Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier.   A press conference was scheduled that afternoon in New York to announce their first heavyweight championship showdown. The bout, largely financed by Los Angeles Lakers’ owner Jack Kent Cooke, was expected to gross a then jaw-dropping $20 and $30 million.

It’s also likely somebody would have chimed in about the college football bowl games. The usual New Year’s Day extravaganzas were two days away.  Nebraska and LSU in the Orange, Stanford and Ohio State in the Rose, and Notre Dame and Texas in the Cotton.

As odd as it may seem today, nobody around the water cooler would have mentioned the name Spencer Haywood. Haywood was sidelined over a contract dispute, and his lawsuit to jump the contract and the ABA was tied up in federal court in Los Angeles. Popular opinion had it that the case was a royal mess, knotted up in three legal parts that likely would take months to unravel.

The first knot was the validity of Haywood’s $1.9 million contract with the ABA Denver Rockets. Al Ross, the head of All-Pro Sports and Haywood’s new agent, had filed a suit on his client’s behalf claiming the agreement would never pass legal muster. Ross argued that the contract was predicated on a long-term investment strategy, known as the Dolgoff Plan, which failed to guarantee the lion’s share of the $1.9 million.

“The Dolgoff Plan that Spencer was put into by the Denver Rockets consisted of mutual fund investments that offered no guarantee whatsoever,” Ross explained. “All his [Haywood’s] money was tied up in this one plan, and if the economy went sour, too bad, Spencer.”

Ross also noted that Haywood was a minor when he signed his new pact with Denver. He petitioned the court to invalidate the contract because, as a minor, Haywood neither received proper legal counsel about the terms of the contract, nor should he have been allowed to sign without a lawyer or proper guardian present.

J. W. “Bill” Ringsby, a millionaire Denver trucking magnate and the owner of the Rockets, argued a deal’s a deal. “Ross wanted Spencer paid in cash so Ross could handle Spencer’s investments, thereby receiving the commissions himself,” countered Ringsby, explaining his take on Ross’ objection to the Dolgoff Plan.

“Ross said he wanted the $1.9 million estimated value of Haywood’s contract paid over five years in cash,” he continued. “Good Lord, what is that, almost $400,000 per year? What athlete is worth that? It’s ridiculous!”

Ringsby further knotted up the case with two countersuits. He sued to nix Haywood’s personal services contracts with (a) Ross and (b) All-Pro Sports. If he won, Ringsby figured Haywood would recognize the error of his ways, namely, listening to a fast-talking agent like Ross.

The three lawsuits, filed in United States District Court for the Central District of California, landed on the docket of Judge Warren J. Ferguson. He assigned the matter to noted lawyer and arbitrator Marvin Sears. Sears had built a reputation for sorting out several thorny celebrity contract disputes.

On Monday, December 28, Ringsby arrived in federal court with his lawyers in tow only to receive bad news. Ross had filed for a continuance. Ross argued that, because Ringsby’s countersuits no longer allowed him to represent Haywood in court, he’d been forced to hire a new team of lawyers. The lawyers needed at least another week to get up to speed on the case.

Sears granted the continuance until the following Tuesday, January 5, leaving Ringsby to speculate that NBA operatives must have been behind the delay. He vowed to forge on. A deal, after all, was a deal.

Then two days later, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier sneered at each other in New York, the case took a most unexpected turn. Sam Schulman, owner of the Seattle Supersonics, petitioned the Judge Ferguson for a temporary restraining order against the NBA and its four-year rule. In other words, Schulman had thrown the NBA old guard and their status quo under the bus to get his hands on Haywood.

To the complete and utter astonishment of nearly everyone affiliated with the NBA and professional sports in general, Judge Ferguson granted Schulman’s wish.

“I just issued a temporary restraining order preventing the NBA from taking action against the Sonics over the four-year rule,” Ferguson said afterwards. “I set a hearing on the temporary restraining order for January 8 . . . At this point, Mr. Haywood could wind up playing for Denver or for Seattle. There has been no final determination.”

Although NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy later said Haywood had signed with Seattle prior to Thanksgiving, Schulman received Ferguson’s ruling with a big smile and big news of his own. He had conveniently just signed Haywood to a $1.5 million contract.

Schulman and Haywood hurried through the afternoon traffic to the airport, where Schulman’s personal jet waited. At 8 p.m., the Sonics (17-22, fourth place in the five-team Pacific Division) had a game in the Seattle Coliseum against the Chicago Bulls. Tonight was Kid’s Night, but every Sonic fan was in for a special, six-foot-nine-inch treat.

Haywood, exhausted from his whirlwind day but running high on adrenaline, was led through the labyrinthine hallways of the Seattle Coliseum and into the Sonics locker room. Joining him was Lennie Wilkens, the Sonics veteran player-coach, and a medley of handshakes and names that likely didn’t ring a bell for the distracted Hayward. There was Tom Meschery, Rod Thorn, Garfield Heard, Don Kojis, Dick Snyder, and a mumble of other glad-to-meet-you’s.

Jack Curran, the Sonics’ affable trainer who a decade later would tape the ankles of Magic, Kareem, and the Showtime Lakers, had pulled out a uniform for Haywood earlier in the day just in case. Curran had dutifully hung the uniform in front of an empty locker, but he didn’t have time to affix Haywood’s name to the back of the jersey and warm-up jacket.

“I told Jack not to put the name on until he [Haywood] makes the team,” joked Sonics backup forward Barry Clemens.

Clad in the familiar green-and-gold warmups of the hometown Sonics, Haywood loped onto the floor of the Seattle Coliseum in tandem with his temporary teammates. A basketball bounced into Haywood’s hands. He turned, set himself to take his first practice shot, and fired. Nothing but net.

All 12,635 in attendance erupted. It was love at first sight.

December 29, 2010

Back in the 1970s, my father used to shake his head at me for watching virtually any NBA game that came on the tube. “I can understand watching the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers,” he muttered. “But you’ll even watch the last-place, nobody teams.”

As a young basketball nut, I had my reasons. I wanted to watch the best players in the world ply their trade. Nate Archibald, Dave Bing, Geoff Petrie. They all played on losing teams.

But my father had a valid point. Not all NBA teams were created equally. As the years have passed and more has bubbled out about the NBA and its history, my father’s point turns out to be much truer than even he knew.

How so?

In the fall of 1970, when Spencer Haywood contemplated his historic leap, the NBA functioned as a two-tiered system. The system ran on five flauntable factors: An owner’s wealth, a team’s market share, a franchise’s longevity, number of championship banners, and the star power of its top players.

At the top of the first tier were the NBA’s marquee franchises, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. Their concerns dominated league meetings, much like Germany, Britain, and France today dominate the European Union. Below them were their trusted colleagues in Philadelphia (Eddie Gottlieb and Irv Kosloff) and Detroit (Fred Zollner). Thereafter came the remaining NBA old guard – Atlanta (formerly St. Louis), Baltimore, Cincinnati, and San Francisco – plus expansion, major-market Chicago. Each struggled with attendance and/or infrastructure.  Each also was a known and valued commodity.

On the second tier were the Johnny-Come-Lately, smaller-market expansion franchises. There were seven of them: Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Phoenix.

The NBA old guard viewed the expansioneers as a mere appendage to its body politic, a necessary third arm to reach two objectives. One, expansion increased market share. By the mid 1960s, despite the word “national” in its name, the NBA remained largely an east-of-the-Mississippi phenomenon. The expansion teams bolstered the NBA’s west of-the-Mississippi market share, allowing league officials to build a stronger case for a lucrative network television contract, while also limiting the number of cities available to the rival ABA. Secondly, the expansion teams coughed up millions of dollars in league entry fees. The existing NBA teams divvied up the expansion lucre and increasingly depended on the extra cash to cushion their short-term bottom lines.

Within this organizational framework, the expansion teams were free to run the show in their home markets. But the old guard and its representative face, league commissioner J. Walter Kennedy, ran the NBA show and brand nationally. It was their intellectual property.

It also was a recipe for boardroom bedlam. Most expansion-team owners were respected captains of industry and finance who were used to doing things their way. Inevitable it was that one of them would resent their second-class treatment and rebel against the NBA old guard.

In 1970, the NBA got its Rebel With a Cause. His name was Sam Schulman. A native of Brooklyn and a product of the Roaring 1920s, Schulman earned an MBA from Harvard, rescued a bankrupt New York bookbinding business soon thereafter, wheeled-and-dealed his way out to California, settled into his dream home in Beverly Hills, and lucked into majority ownership of the expansion Seattle Supersonics.

The word “lucked” in the last sentence is worth a brief digression. In June 1966, Schulman and his corporate business partner Gene Klein headed a group that purchased the American Football League’s San Diego Chargers for a then record $10 million. For Klein, a self-described football fanatic, the Chargers were a dream come true. They also made him the unwitting target of would-be sports entrepreneurs with outstretched hands. The thinking seemed to be that if Klein was crazy enough to purchase the struggling AFL Chargers, he might just be crazy enough to invest in another team.

Shortly after the Chargers deal, Klein was approached by Don Richman, a Southern California public relations man turned TV scriptwriter, and a Los Angeles stockbroker named Dick Vertlieb. The two were former University of Southern California fraternity brothers who were eager to take their stab at professional basketball.

Richman and Vertlieb explained to Klein that they had become friendly with NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy. Kennedy promised them an expansion franchise in Seattle, but they needed some financial backing to win league approval. They looked Klein in the eyes and said they wanted to give him first dibs on the Seattle franchise.

The happy-go-lucky Klein agreed in principle to purchase a large stake in a pro basketball team and talked Schulman into joining him. There was just one problem. None of the story was true.

But the frat brothers were off and running. As Vertlieb later recounted to reporter Dan Raley, they headed to Seattle armed with their fiction about Kennedy and, just as importantly, their prominent Southern California financiers (who had yet to give them a dime). Richman and Vertlieb finessed the story to negotiate a local radio and television contract and to entice the Atlantic Richfield Company to sponsor the broadcasts. With these corporate agreements as their collateral, Richman and Vertlieb took out a million-dollar bank loan to cover their still phantom team’s first-year expenses. The two then took the franchise public with a successful stock offering and, now rolling in cash, forked over several million dollars to Klein and Schulman for going along with their ruse.

In December 1966, when the NBA expanded from 10 to 12 teams, Klein and Schulman became the no-money-down majority owners of the Seattle Supersonics. Richman and Vertlieb moved into the team’s front office. In the Seattle newspapers, Klein and Schulman were reported to have kicked in $1.75 million to purchase the team. The total was correct. But the money came from the proceeds of the stock offering.

“I didn’t know as much about basketball as I did about football,” wrote Klein, “but it did not seem to be a very complicated game. The first person to touch the ball shoots it. Either that or the coach carefully diagrams a ‘set play,’ and then the first person to touch the ball shoots it. Sam was the basketball fan, and he took control of the Sonics.”

Control, however, was a relative term. Vertlieb and crew handled the team’s day-to-day operations, while Schulman lounged in Beverly Hills and earned a well-deserved reputation as an absentee owner. Among his players, Schulman was known as a cheapskate.

A contented Schulman was good for the mental health of the NBA’s old guard. According to many, when Schulman was in business mode, he could be a real SOB. Like legendary Los Angeles Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke, Schulman was a megalomaniac, strategically brilliant, and utterly amoral to achieve his ends.

Three things soon happened that changed Schulman’s absentee outlook. One, the Sonics stumbled badly out of the gate, finishing 23-59 and 30-52 in its first two seasons. For Schulman, that wasn’t good enough.

Two, the NBA old guard told him no. According to Schulman, he had been “a prime negotiator” in helping ABA star Connie Hawkins jump to the NBA in 1969. What really irked Schulman is rather than allow the Sonics to sign Hawkins, an undrafted free agent, the league office pulled a father-knows-best. It handed Hawkins to expansion Phoenix.

“We [Seattle] were the have-nots whose turn it was to land a player of this level and the fact that the other owners fought me on this seemed then and still seems now to me to be dreadfully unfair and hypocritical,” Schulman later complained in the book Stand Up For Something.

Three, a now-miffed Schulman took a greater interest in the NBA’s internal affairs. He served on the NBA merger committee and fought to find middle ground with the rival ABA. When Schulman proposed a way forward, Kennedy and the old guard ignored his recommendations. They were never interested in a merger. That’s why they fobbed him off on the ABA as a committee member.

Now doubly miffed, Schulman went rogue. He sided publicly with the NBA’s red, white, and blue enemy and blasted Kennedy.

“There isn’t any question that the ABA hasn’t fulfilled certain promises,” he told a reporter. “On the other hand, I feel our commissioner has . . . used poor diplomacy in keeping negotiations going and implementing. It takes a tremendous amount of diplomacy, desire, tact to keep it in movement and accomplish it. I think Walter Kennedy mismanaged his role in this whole matter.”

In late November 1970, Schulman heard through the grapevine that Spencer Haywood was looking for a new team. “I was immediately interested because I knew by his reputation he was the sort of superstar who is not often available and my operation in Seattle needed help,” said Schulman.

According to Al Ross, Haywood’s new agent, Schulman and a dozen other NBA teams contacted him about the status of his client and young superstar in the making.

“Sam Schulman was willing to talk turkey, to put it in writing, and to move right away,” said Ross, who was fighting doggedly in court to extricate Haywood from his ABA contract with Denver. “He was willing to pay all court costs and agreed to indemnify Spencer and me against all lawsuits that might be imposed on us. He swore that he would fight to the finish with us, with all his resources, and he is the sort of man you believe.”

“I did seek to obtain rights to Haywood through normal channels,” Schulman described his initial attempt to sign the ABA’s reigning MVP. “I asked Commissioner Walter Kennedy for permission to sign him along the lines of the Hawkins case, but was denied. Later, I asked for and got a league vote, and was again denied. All this time I knew the other owners of the league were seeking to sign him for their teams, and I knew owners of the other league [ABA] with whom we were still in competition were seeking to sign him for their teams, and I could not understand the denials of my partners.”

“What was right for one seemed not to be right for another,” he continued. “I got angrier and angrier and more determined than ever to fight this to the finish.”

In November 1970, throwing all caution and NBA rules to the wind, Schulman secretly signed Haywood to a six-year, $1.5 million no-cut contract. The numbers boiled down to a salary of $100,000 per season over 15 years, plus incentives, which then amounted to a pretty darn good contract.

“Others offered more,” said Haywood, “but Sam was the only one who offered to go all the way to court for me and pay all costs and take all the risks, so that settled it.”

The next big hurdle was for Ross to beat the Denver Rockets in court and extricate Haywood from his ABA contract. The case had been droning on for several weeks.

And now, the judge was ready to speak.

Tomorrow: Spencer Haywood joins the NBA.

December 28, 2010

Over the last 40-plus years, a tremendous amount of ink and thought has been spilled to explain the NBA-ABA War. Justifiably so. To understand the modern NBA and its rise to cultural prominence, one must begin by diving into the welter that was professional basketball during these war years, 1967-1976.

The problem is the “war” metaphor that has been bandied about from day one is hopelessly vague. Wars, after all, come in many varieties, and the tactics employed in disagreements between neighbors and disagreements among nations obviously differ. So do the terms of victory.

I’ve always thought that the quickest way to cut through the NBA-ABA war metaphor is to reframe the conflict as a battle between control and chaos. Yes, just like the old TV program Get Smart. The NBA, as the established league, fought to control and thus maintain its monopoly over professional basketball in America. The ABA, as the challenger, sought to create immediate chaos within the NBA. If the ABA could succeed in making its rival’s life uncontrollably miserable, the NBA would have no choice but to make peace to protect its larger business interests. According to the ABA, peace meant a merger with the NBA.

That brings us to Spencer Haywood. And chaos. In the fall of 1969, the ABA Denver Rockets rocked the world of professional basketball when it announced the signing of Haywood, then a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Detroit. Although Haywood was not a household name at the time, his signing nevertheless was a major coup for the ABA on two levels.

First, Haywood had star written all over him. He had been the leading scorer on the 1968 U. S. Olympic men’s basketball team and, at 6’9” and 225 very athletic pounds, held the same beyond-his-years, I-can’t-believe-what-I-just-saw mystique as Lebron James coming out of Akron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. From a pure marketing sense, the ABA now had a gold-medal American hero and a world-class athlete in the fold. Haywood had the sizzle that the ABA could sell.

Secondly, the ABA had discovered an underhanded way to beat the NBA to the top college players. They would sign the best underclassmen. Until now, NBA teams had secretly thrown money into a joint league fund and colluded to keep college basketball’s biggest names out of the ABA. With a few exceptions, the collusion had worked like a charm.

But in 1969, Steve Arnold, the ABA’s newly hired agent who travelled the country to sign college players for the new league, came up with the idea of college hardship cases.

“One day, I said to the league [ABA], ‘What about going after guys who aren’t college seniors?’”

“They said, ‘How can you sign a kid if he’s still in college?’”

Arnold scoffed. He argued that if an MIT undergrad receives a six-figure offer from a Fortune 500 company, he or she is not legally bound to graduate from college before accepting the offer. Why should promising young basketball players?

“Are the NCAA rules legal?” Arnold remembered telling his ABA colleagues in the book Loose Balls. “Will they hold up in a court of law? What we are talking about here is equal opportunity. A kid plays basketball and wants to make some money and support himself and his family. That’s illegal? We’re not talking about wholesale signings, just the select few we know can come into the league and make it at a younger age.”

Haywood was the first of the select few hardship cases to enter the ABA. “Spence,” as the fans in Denver called him, averaged 30 points and 19.5 rebounds per game, while also taking home the league’s MVP honors.

Arnold had stumbled onto a tactic that would stock the ABA with the best young talent and which the NBA couldn’t control.

“We’ve got a built-in farm system in the colleges,” said another Arnold, Boston Celtics GM Red Auerbach, “and most of the guys we bring in are already heroes because of the Olympics or the national recognition they’ve received.” In short: The NBA had a good thing going with the NCAA. It didn’t want to be forced by the ABA and the courts to break up its free farm system and media mill.

In the fall of 1970, Arnold the Agent’s experiment blew up in the ABA’s face when Haywood grew disenchanted with his contract after his rookie season and signed with the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics.

From the simple win-lose dynamic of the standard NBA-ABA War metaphor, Haywood’s defection marked a huge NBA victory and a stunning ABA defeat.  The popular verdict in the New York-based national media was NBA Commissioner Walter Kennedy still had some sticky legal issues to sort out. Haywood’s college class, after all, had yet to graduate. But in another six months or a year, Haywood would be in the NBA, where he and America’s best pro players belonged.

But from the perspective of the NBA-ABA War as a battle between control and chaos, the verdict was a split decision. The ABA would have preferred to keep Haywood in Denver. There is no doubt about it. Haywood’s loss stung.

Haywood’s gain, however, also stung in the NBA. In the ABA’s typically zany, half-baked way, Arnold and his colleagues unintentionally had created in Haywood a Trojan horse that, when whisked into Seattle, served their interests to a tee.

Let me explain. The ABA, like all new pro sports leagues, had three main objectives to force a merger. One, increase the NBA’s costs of doing business to an unsustainably high level. Two, poke holes in the NBA’s business model that would weaken its ability to turn a profit. Three, turn the NBA’s owners against themselves.

When Haywood jumped to Seattle, the ABA hit all three targets for the first time. First hit, Haywood signed with Seattle for a $1.5 million over 15 years, which came to $100,000 per season, then the gold standard for athletic wealth. The bar had been set for future ABA defectors. And Seattle set the bar high.

Second hit, the NBA’s cozy relationship with the NCAA had been compromised. Seattle and Haywood had opened a Pandora’s box that, if legally validated, would lead to a flood of underclassmen into the NBA.

Third hit, Seattle was at war with its NBA brethren. It threatened the established power structure within the league and, once order is gone, additional food fights would be forthcoming.

Arnold couldn’t have designed his experiment any better, if he had tried. Chaos reigned.

Tomorrow: We’ll talk about the dynamics within the NBA.

December 27, 2010

Welcome. My name is Bob Kuska, and I’ve been a member of the Association for Professional Basketball Research (APBR) for many years. I believe strongly in the APBR’s mission, especially the “R” for research.  As researchers, our challenge is captured in the old story about Eddie Gottlieb, the late-great owner of the Philadelphia Warriors, who “ran his entire operation out of his hat.” How do you get into somebody’s hat and head more than 30 years after his death? It sure ain’t easy. But APBR, like SABR and major league baseball, can help. It provides a forum for people of like mind to hang out, ask questions, share resources, and suggest solutions to all research matters large and small. If you love pro basketball and want to document its history, consider joining APBR. It’s as good as it gets.

That brings us to Spencer Haywood. Why a blog about Haywood? Let me start with a brief story and go from there.

Last April, while looking for sales at the local shopping mall, I bumped into a friend named Jeff, a thirtyish fan of the contemporary NBA. We exchanged hellos and, per usual, dove right into the latest NBA scuttlebutt.

“What about Oklahoma City?” I gasped, referring to the Thunder’s surprising back-to-back victories to even their first-round playoff series with the defending-champion Lakers. “They might just upset Los Angeles.”

“Nah, not this year,” he answered, and rattled off several reasons to explain why the Lakers would escape and move on to the second round of the playoffs. All turned out to be absolutely correct.

But that day as we sliced and diced Oklahoma City’s prospects, our conversation took a sudden turn to NBA seasons past. Jeff is a huge Magic Johnson fan, and he’s quick to wax nostalgic about the 1980s Lakers, partly as a means to compare, contrast, and slam Kobe Bryant, whom he loathes.

Having roughly 20 years on Jeff, I harkened back to the great Lakers teams of my youth. Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Gail Goodrich. Jeff nodded right along with me. He knew of all four names, no problem.

Then, for a reason that now totally escapes me, I mentioned Spencer Haywood. I noticed Jeff’s eyes go completely blank. I may as well have just asked him to name the president of Kyrgyzstan.

I explained that the six-foot-nine Haywood was a huge name back in the 1970s. He had been the hero of the American men’s basketball team in the 1968 Olympics, shocked the world by signing with the now defunct American Basketball Association (ABA) after his sophomore year in college, then scandalously jumped to the NBA Seattle Supersonics in late 1970, or before his college class had graduated.

I said, “Haywood and his supporters went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to dump the NBA’s four-year college rule, which prohibited underclassmen from playing in the league. True, others eventually would have challenged the rule because it was, after all, patently illegal. But the fact is Haywood was the first with the guts to take on the system and run the NBA’s gauntlet.”

Jeff seemed to be taking it all in, so I joked, “Without Haywood, your man Kobe might have played four less seasons with the Lakers.”

He laughed and said, “I’ll have to check Haywood out on the internet,” then returned to his Kobe bashing.

Later that day, I decided to check out Haywood on the internet myself. Up came thousands of hits, some obviously better than others. What I found was none of the bloggers/journalists had travelled back in time and captured, blow by blow, the sheer drama of Haywood’s saga. They settled for quick-and-dirty synopses that would be akin to today distilling the complexity of last summer’s Lebron James sweepstakes into three or four paragraphs. It can’t be done. Likewise, Haywood’s three-month odyssey must be fully laid out and felt. The seething arenas, the four-letter-spewing fans, the poison-pen reporters, the cold stares of his fellow players, the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hyperbole.

I checked Youtube. There’s nothing uploaded from Haywood’s historic 1970-1971 season. Documentaries? Nope. Books? There are two good ones. The late, great author Bill Libby published Stand Up For Something: The Spencer Haywood Story in the early 1970s. It offers a timely telling of Haywood’s rise from poverty and offers invaluable perspective from people who were involved firsthand in his tug-of-war with the NBA. But, as important as Libby’s book truly is, it also lacks a vivid retelling of the daily drama, on court and in court.

The other book is his autobiography Spencer Haywood’s Rise, Fall, and Recovery, published in 2000. Haywood offers an honest, soup-to-nuts account of his NBA career and all that befell him off the court. Great stuff. But, for the usual, keep-it-moving editorial reasons, Haywood lacked the space to stop, take a breath, and retell in painful detail that fateful 1971-1972 season.

That’s when the idea first came to me. I have a roughly 16-inch stack of newspaper and magazines clips of Haywood’s ordeal in my files at home. In this age of blogging, with its wide-open, fill-up-the-space format, why not assemble these clips into a daily retrospective diary of Haywood’s saga? For lack of a better name, I could call it a history blog. The blog would provide a first-pass, in-depth record of Haywood’s jump to the NBA for current and future basketball historians. It also would give hundreds, if not thousands, of young NBA fans a better sense of an important figure in creating today’s multi-billion-dollar entertainment juggernaut called the NBA.

I ran the idea past Ray Lebov, APBR president. He gave me the thumbs up (thanks, Ray), and the APBR’s Dean LaVerne set me up with the blogging software (thanks, Dean). As luck also would have it, the blog turns out to be timely. The current NBA season marks the 40th anniversary of Haywood’s famous leap.

What do I call this blog? With no focus groups or lifelines to assist me, I’m going with “Welcome to the NBA, Haywood!” I lifted it from a headline in the Milwaukee Sentinel during Haywood’s mostly lackluster first week in the NBA. The headline’s bite captures well the rage that greeted Haywood at every turn and the venom to come in this blog.

So, pull up a bookmark, and make this site a daily stop for the next three months. You won’t be disappointed.

Tomorrow: We’ll take a look at the NBA-ABA War and parse out why Haywood’s leap, ironically, was mostly a victory for the ABA.