If you think Thanksgiving with your family is a laugh riot, how’d you like to be carving the carcass that is the New Jersey Nyets?
Oh-and-a-Vin(yard)-baker’s dozen to start the season, they now embark on their traditional, week-long Pilgrim-age out west.
Tonight at Denver, Portland next, then Sacramento and lastly the Lakers.
The Nets began the week with an offense ranked most deficient (84.9 PPG), most selfish (league-low 15.38 assists/game) and fourth-sloppiest (16.46 turnovers/game) in the association.
I hate to evoke those 9-73 Sixers (1972-73), especially with so many bad teams around these days, but you have to respect the Nyets’ modern-day quest for single-digit wins and single-digit witnesses.
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NBATV paraded the Pistons Sunday . . . without parental warning.
Detroit lost its fifth game in a row, wrapping up a four-game roadie with a 26-point debacle in the desert. Phoenix shot nearly 58 percent, 61 from Flagstaff.
It’s become so bad for the Pistons their only hope is a bailout from GM.
How come Paper Clips’ TV broadcasters Ralph Lawler and Michael Smith get suspended by Fox for one game for making nontoxic comments (in my opinion, and I heard them live) during the Grizzlies game about Iranian Haddadi Hamed, yet TNT allows Charles Barkley to get away with racial garbage a whole lot worse?
Might there be a higher standard for team announcers, or a lower standard for TNT’s African-Americans? To Barkley’s credit, he claims Lawler and Smith were misquoted.
In the span of five days, Jim O’Brien‘s Pacers lost to both the Knicks and Bobcats, wretched refuses who had come in losing six and seven games in a row, respectively.
In terms of coaches from Indiana, I’m guessing Charlie Weis has a better chance of survival.
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A few months ago, I was informed by an exceptionally ardent ABA monitor (is there any smaller degree?) the unofficial number of living players owning three or more years of fertile red, white and blue experience was 122.
In no time flat last Wednesday, word circulated (Skeeter) swiftly throughout that mightily attached community one of its earliest adventurers had passed away in Metairie, La., after a prolonged bout with cancer.
Red Robbins was 65, disturbingly young in that I’m 14 months older than him. In the half-dozen years pounding the pavement of my pet league, not a single soul ever called him by his given first name. In fact, I was unaware it was Austin until reading his obituary.
How could a guy with a last name like that and colorful hair not be labeled Red? It would’ve been as thoughtless as not tagging William Rodney Averitt, another one who belonged to that special species, “Bird.”
Thankfully, a teammate or a member of the media, or a golf partner, proved slightly more original, and branded the 6-foot-8, 190-pound life-force a “Walking One Iron.”
In eight ABA seasons, beginning in 1967 with the New Orleans Buccaneers, Robbins averaged a double-double: 13.1 points and 10.5 rebounds. In 67 playoff games with New Orleans, Utah, San Diego and Kentucky, he averaged 12.9 points and 10.9 rebounds.
A Helms All-America and first-team All-Southeastern Conference player under renowned Tennessee coach Ray Mears, Robbins once inhaled 23 rebounds vs. Mississippi State. Yet it’s safe to say, his finest 40 minutes was an 11-for-12 field goal outburst in Game 7 of the Stars ’71 championship victory over the Colonels.
Center Zelmo Beaty, also battling cancer the last few years and one of several NBA leading men — Rick (Have Jump Shot, Will Travel) Barry, Billy Cunningham and Joe Caldwell — to swap leagues, averaged 23.3 points and 14.6 rebounds during the playoffs.
Playing opposite Robbins was “Wondrous” Willie Wise, the ABA’s answer to Dave DeBusschere in terms of defending turf and one of the league’s preeminent players. In his spare time, the 6-5 small forward, who has lived outside Seattle since retiring a Sonic after the ’77-78 season, found the energy to average 21.1 points, 12.9 boards and 4.8 assists.
“I’m greatly saddened by the news of Red’s passing,” Wise e-mailed yesterday. “He was a very good teammate, especially in our era of unrest and racism. He was from the South and, our team having five or six African-Americans, presented no problem on or off the court playing or socializing.”
Robbins’ outstanding virtues, according to Wise, were his steadiness and cool under pressure. Teammates knew, game in and game out, he’d contribute 10-12 points, 8-10 rebounds, and “sound defense, not great, but sound.” After all, he was almost always overpowered at his position by much bigger macho men. “But he battled.”
Wise reveled in Robbins’ spirit and recollected his sense of humor.
The Stars were about to take on the Bucks in a Salt Lake City exhibition. As good as they were, their locker room was uptight. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in his second or third season, The Big O, Oscar Robertson, was running the show, and “this was an NBA team we were playing.”
Utah’s coach LaDell Anderson couldn’t help but see his players were nervous: “Don’t be that concerned about Kareem, he puts his pants on the same way as we do!”
“Yeah, but about five inches higher, that’s all,” Robbins retorted.