Business

Dr.’s slam dunk story

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Julius Erving, one of the greatest players in the history of professional basketball, who became known as Dr. J for the way he operated above the rim, has signed to write his autobiography.

It is believed to be a $1 million deal.

The book, tentatively titled “Dr. J,” will be co-written by Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Phil Taylor and is scheduled for publication in May 2013.

HarperCollins Executive Editor David Hirshey acquired worldwide rights to the book from Erving’s business manager, Alan Rubin, and his literary agent, Matthew Guma. (HarperCollins is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post.)

Erving retired in 1987, and is one of the few players to have numbers retired by two different teams — No. 32 from his days when he led the then Long Island-based New York Nets to two championships while earning two MVP awards in the old American Basketball Association and the No. 6 worn with the Philadelphia 76ers, where he earned MVP honors en route to an NBA championship.

Erving was the master of the slam dunk and was the third-highest scoring player in professional basketball history, with 30,026 points when he retired.

Even now, 25 years later, he’s still No. 5 on the all-time list.

Since he hung up his sneakers, Erving has all but disappeared from the limelight.

As high as he soared on the court, outside the arena Erving suffered a couple of well-publicized personal setbacks.

“I haven’t really tried to stay in the spotlight since I stopped playing, but it’s found me a couple of times,” Erving told Media Ink. “I’m ready to talk about all those stories. People may have read some things, but they haven’t really heard about them in my voice. I want this to be Julius Erving, the good and the bad, flaws and all.”

In 1999, it was revealed that he had an affair and fathered a child out of wedlock — a then 19-year-old tennis player named Alexandra Stevenson, who had advanced to the semi-finals of Wimbledon on her first appearance in the tournament.

Then, a year later, Erving’s son, Cory, was found dead from apparent drowning after driving his car into a pond near the family home.

Erving and his wife, Turquoise, dissolved their 29-year marriage in 2003, after it was disclosed he had had another affair, with Dorys Madden, whom he ended up marrying five years later.

A lot of his exploits in the NBA were well-documented, but many of his experiences in the ABA — where he was the most dominant player in the league by a wide margin — went unrecorded because the struggling league never had a national TV contract and many of its games were not televised.

He said he was given the nickname, “The Doctor,” by a high school friend at Roosevelt High, where he played schoolboy hoops. It finally stuck for good when he started playing in the famous Rucker League in Harlem.

Time calls

Todd Larsen, the former Dow Jones president, was formally announced as the new executive vice president of news and sports at Time Inc. The news group includes Time magazine and the sports group includes Sports Illustrated.

In something of a p.r. embarrassment, the news began leaking out just before Labor Day weekend, but wasn’t officially confirmed by Time Inc. until Sept. 5.

Insiders say that the person immediately on the hot seat is Executive Vice President Mark Ford. He is currently charged with running the sports group and now has Larsen as his new boss. The make or break on that may still be a few months down the road.

One of Larsen’s first jobs will be to fill the Time magazine publisher’s job, the vacancy created when Kim Kelleher left for the dot-com world. And insiders say that Larsen is going to be much more active on international strategy.

It’s an area that seems ripe for expansion, but Time Inc. has traditionally preferred to own most of its international brands outright. As a result, it has lagged far behind Condé Nast and Hearst in terms of international licensing muscle.

Glam life

Glam Media, the fashion-centric blogging site, has named two new members to its board — reviving industry talk that the 8-year-old dot-com may be getting ready to test the financial waters with an initial public offering.

The new directors are David Saltzman, executive director and founder of The Robin Hood Foundation, and Gary R. Effren, former Knight Ridder vice president and chief financial officer.

Saltzman is seen as the ultimate door opener through his well-endowed philanthropy that attracts top names in finance and media to its fund-raising ventures, while Effren is seen as a hard-nosed deal maker and numbers-cruncher.

Glam says it has 244 million unique monthly visitors, more than AOL.

The company is backed by venture-capital firms and Burda, a big European publisher with virtually no profile in the US.

It is believed to have revenue of around $100 million and an operating bottom line that is around breakeven or slightly profitable. Recently, it reportedly retained Goldman Sachs, Allen & Co. and Bank of America to size up the equity markets.

Glam Media officials confirmed the new board members, but declined further comment.

TV Guider

TV Guide Editor-in-Chief Debra Birnbaum is adding the title of president, a job that had not been filled for years at the once-dominant weekly.

The magazine has been forced to cut staff and outsource much of its backshop operations in recent years.

The acting CEO, Jack Kliger, a senior adviser to Open Gate Capital, the weekly’s owner, said that TV Guide is now “cash flow positive.”

The magazine’s circulation was stable at 2,010,879 in the first half of 2012, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The so-called “verified” or free copies, amounted to 97,712, according to ABC. A large number of free copies is not considered a strength.

“I’ll be looking at ways to build the business, from digital to sponsorships to brand extensions,” said Birnbaum, who will still be charged with running the magazine’s day-to-day operations as its editor-in-chief.