The Pinnacle of
Basketball
The 70s were a time when just about no one cared about
basketball for any number of reasons. It
was a time with a number of strange characters in the league but no real
legendary teams or players, at least for the most part. This is, however, due to most people
overlooking what was the greatest collection of basketball players to ever
exist. I am talking, of course, about
the 1977-78 Philadelphia 76ers[1].
To understand the beauty of the 76ers, one must start at the
top: Julius Erving. The founder of
Orange Julius and the first medical doctor to play in the NBA, Erving could do
just about anything he wanted on the court.
Famously, Erving was able to hold the ball out of bounds as he leapt
along the baseline and still twist it around for a layup. This was an amazing feat, especially
considering that he would leap along one baseline before blinking out of
existence and reappearing in mid-air beneath the opposite basket. His physical gifts were so that it still
boggles the mind to see what he was able to accomplish. He also had a significant afro, even in an
era of afros. Even Darnell Hillman
admitted that yes, that is a pretty good afro.
Alongside Erving in the frontcourt were George McGinnis and
Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins. McGinnis
broke the ABA in 1974, when he averaged 29.8 PPG, 14.3 RPG, 6.3 APG, 2.6 SPG,
and 0.7 BPG just for good measure. The
league was unable to comprehend this stat line and promptly shut down several
years later. Once McGinnis made the NBA,
he was kind enough to put up stat lines actually reachable by mere humans. It was a kind act for a man who really was
crazy as hell. McGinnis’ interest in the
cowboy lifestyle while in the ABA had led him to bringing his revolvers to
games, leaving them in his holster in the locker room during games because
that’s ever so slightly less crazy than bringing them on the court. An accidental firing after a game led to
McGinnis being banned from bringing these to the stadium but did not stop him
from dolling out vigilante justice to any horse thieves in Indiana.
 |
| The Indiana Pacers, essentially. |
Rounding out the starting lineup for the 76ers were two of
their least interesting players in Doug Collins and Henry Bibby. Collins was famous at the time for his missed
free throw in the 1972 Gold Medal game against the Soviet Union. The miss gave the Russian team a chance to
win the game, and win they did, with a final margin of 51-50. It was a heartbreaking defeat that could be
blamed on no one but Collins and had nothing to do with the referees awarding
extra timeouts to the Soviet Union and repeatedly putting more time on the
clock to allow a comeback. Nope, that
didn’t have anything to do with it at all.
Collins had a short NBA career thanks to a series of
injuries in his late 20s. He played 79
games in 1977-78, one of just three times in his eight seasons that he managed
over 70. It was also arguably his best
statistical season, with Collins setting career highs in FG% and steals, as
well as averaging 19.7 PPG and 4.1 APG.
Collins would later become famous as a broadcaster and for his rapping
career, performing under the moniker Clipse.
Henry Bibby, the team’s point guard, was a pretty good
passer who rarely did much else, though he did score 20 points in back-to-back
games early in the season. Bibby also
had a glorious moustache that naturally curled up at the ends, hinting back to
his family’s outlaw history in the wilds of 1930s Canada. There is little else of note about Henry
Bibby except that his son, Mike Bibby, was a hilarious player for quite a few
years. Mike Bibby would somehow play 14
seasons in the NBA and (laughably) start almost every one of them. Not once during any of those starts did Mike
Bibby contribute to the winning of a basketball game for either side. Even worse, Bibby kept his hair short and
regularly shaved, depriving the world of another curled moustache/balding afro
combo. Most of this starts were on
accident, with his coaches confusing him with Doug Christie. Why anyone wanted to start Doug Christie
remains a mystery.
 |
| Mike could have looked like this too but chose to be bald. |
While the 76ers starting backcourt wasn’t quite up to the
level of excitement set by its frontcourt, there was more than enough coming
off the bench to make up for that. I’m
speaking, of course, of World B. Free.
World B. Free had yet to legally change his name at this
point, instead playing as Lloyd B. Free[2]. Free was still in his larval stage at this
point, yet to burst out of the cocoon as the beautiful butterfly he would
become. He was learning his place in the
world, making his way downtown, unable yet to dominate on the court in such a
way that the entirety of popular culture rewrote itself to his whims. In his future iterations, after he had
sprouted wings and begun to feast only upon the sweet nectars hidden within the
ghost orchid, Free would be credited with the creation of hip-hop music, as his
45-point game in 1979 against the Phoenix Suns was so audacious as to be the
first instance of an individual bragging about themselves set to music[3]. Before this, there had been no such thing as
a braggadocio musician or, for that matter, bragging. That’s right: World B. Free scored so many
points so well that he invented the concept of bragging. Free also invented self-confidence and the
cotton gin.
But no, the 76ers were not graced with the full power that
was World B. Free, instead subsisting on the earliest whispers of that champion
of men. Even without his full
powers, Free managed to average 15.7 PPG
and also some other stats probably. The
important thing when talking about World B. Free is the points, because points
are what win basketball games. Also:
teamwork, rebounding, communication, passing, and a whole bunch of other things
that really weren’t Free’s concern. Throughout
his career, Free was blessed with the single-minded mission to score points,
whether or not his coaches asked him to do so.
Why a coach would ask a player to do anything else is a ridiculous
contemplation. Take this hypothetical,
for instance: let’s say that the
Cleveland Cavaliers are down by three points with 30 seconds left in the
game. Reggie Theus has the ball. Would you, the hypothetical defensive player[4],
try to stop Theus? Of course not. If you did so, you would still be down by
three points. The Cavaliers would lose,
and you would be booed by the ten fans in attendance at any early-80s Cavaliers
game. What a fool you were, for merely
trying to play defense and get the ball back.
No, you would try to score.
You would have to score to win in such a situation. Remember how I said you were down by three
points? Well you should be trying to
score those three, rather than stopping Theus from scoring more points. Besides, what kind of a loser assumes that
their team isn’t good enough to stop Theus without their help? Don’t you trust your teammates? Obviously, you should only be worried about
scoring points here. What a big stupid
dumdum you are.
 |
| No time for a picture, need to score points. |
World B. Free understood basketball. Free understood you had to spend points to
make points, or something. He would go
on to average over 20 PPG the next eight years in a row through a combination
of dunks, irresponsible drives to the hoop, and even-more-irresponsible jump
shots. There has never been a team in
NBA history which would not have been improved by World B. Free’s presence,
which explains why he played for five.
Free is survived spiritually today by J.R. Smith, who once
shot 22 three-pointers in one game on purpose.
The previous record held by Free of 25 three-point attempts in a game
was technically invalid, as it had been accomplished in 1979, when there was no
three-point arc in the NBA. Instead, the
referees that day had been so impressed by Frees insistence on shooting from
half court every possession that they declared that each shot he made should be
worth an extra point. He would take this
lesson to heart and, once the NBA added the three-pointer, would go on to make
213 in his career, shooting 33% from beyond the arc, which is a terrible
percentage that should be ignored entirely as World B. Free cannot be judged by
any statistics understandable by mere peasants.
He excelled in the most importance advanced statistics of points, points
scored, and scoring: points.
Steve Mix was also on the 76ers. Mix enjoyed a stellar career outside of
basketball as the best-named Steve this side of McQueen. If you are thinking that there must be more
interesting things about Steve Mix and plan to research him, don’t. Let the beautiful creation of your
imagination remain.
A team filled with ABA style was helped along by Caldwell
Jones, who joined McGinnis and Erving as the former ABA stars on the team. Jones was an excellent shot blocker thanks to
a youth spent slapping wolves away from his family’s farm animals. Jones was the second-leading shot blocker in
ABA history, finishing juuuuuuust 650
blocks behind the A-Train. While that
may seem like a lot, it’s worth mentioning that Jones blocked three to four
hundred shots each game in his heyday.
The three-point arc’s introduction into the ABA was actually done as an
attempt to lessen Jones’ impact on the game.
The league was dumbfounded, then, to find that Jones actually blocked
more shots after this rule change, relying on his leaping ability and the
series of hidden pistons and accordion-like springs installed inside each of
his arms to reach out to shooters. Before the three-point arc, Jones had been
unable to fully extend his arms, as their length meant most of his block
attempts ended with him punching through the offensive player’s skull.
By the time Jones made it to the 76ers, he had become almost
exclusively a defensive presence, scoring under 10 PPG every season of his
14-year NBA career. 76ers coach Gene
Shue was fired just six games into the season after being unable to find a way
to combine Dawkins’ and Jones’ skillsets into one dominant center. It took Billy Cunningham, himself an
excellent NBA player for the 76ers from 1965 to 1976, to find that magical
sweet spot for the two players.
Cunningham did this by bringing the two to the Swann Memorial Fountain
and having them each throw a penny in while saying, simultaneously, “I wish I
was [their opposite].” This was why
whenever one would leave the game and the other would enter, Dawkins would
simply change which uniform he was wearing and reenter the game, allowing
Jones’ latent consciousness to control his body. Jones has never escaped this horrible limbo.
The final exciting player on the 76ers roster[5]
was Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. Jellybean
would go on to have a famous son, much like his teammates Dunleavy and Bibby,
though his was just a teensy bit better than those two. Following family tradition, Jellybean named
his son “Kobe” after the pricey cut of meat.
 |
| Joe's favorite President. |
Of course, Jellybean’s accomplishments stretch beyond his
ability to cum dominant athletes out[6]. He was renowned for his longevity in basketball. In fact, Jellybean still plays
professionally. After a nine-year
international career following his NBA stints, Jellybean moved on to play in
the MBL, the only semi-professional basketball league on the Moon. He has won the MVP award twice, in 2001 and
2006, mostly due to his ability to breathe in a vacuum giving me a major
advantage over the other players.
Surprisingly enough, Jellybean also loved candy. He was known to gobble down all sorts of
candies during halftime and timeouts. He
would devour M&Ms, Skittles, Twix, Abba Zabba, M&Ps, TLCs,
YoodaCandiis, and Flipflopity Candopities.
The only thing Jellybean refused to eat was jellybeans. In his mind, this was akin to
cannibalism. He extended this aversion
to his teammates, to the point that in 1982 he beat Jerome Whitehead
unconscious after he mistook the center’s Mike and Ike box for jellybeans. They were not, but were instead Whitehead’s
favorite treat: shriveled human heads colored fancifully with ground roots and
berries.
The 76ers were unable to win a championship with this
colorful roster of wonderful people, sadly.
They were overtaken in the Eastern Conference Finals by the Washington
Bullets, who were what passed for a powerhouse in those days. Henry Bibby was so angry about their loss in
the contentious series that he put a curse on the Bullets franchise: so long as
Henry Bibby lived, the city of Washington would never again see an NBA
championship. Outside of the
championship a few weeks later[7],
this curse has held up and is the reason why Jeff Malone has been hunting down
and killing every Bibby he can find for the last 25 years.
[1]
This should not be a revelation, as it is the name of this section.
[2]
Which was a statement about his hope for all the Lloyds of the world to be
freed from incarceration.
[3] As
we all know, Free would provide the stadium DJ with a soundtrack to be played
whenever he touched the ball.
[4]
The only kind of defensive player Reggie Theus ever was, also.
[5]
Unless you count Mike Dunleavy, Sr., in which case put this book down and get
the fuck away from me.
[6]
His daughters, Sharia and Shanya, have yet to make waves. Get it together, slackers.
[7]
Bibby was a notoriously slow-working warlock.
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