It is disappointing and sad that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is struggling to figure out how to coerce NBA owners, coaches, and players to at least pretend to care about the regular season (he might as well give up trying to figure out how to coerce the league's biggest stars to care about the All-Star Game, because that ship appears to have sailed quite some time ago). Silver has suggested that eligibility for individual regular season awards may be linked to participating in a minimum number of regular season games. A more radical proposal at the team level is to switch the seven game playoff format from 2-2-1-1-1 to 2-2-3, meaning that the team with home court advantage would potentially have five out of seven games at home, including the last three games; I believe that this was first mentioned by former NBA coach/current TNT commentator Stan Van Gundy, but I am not sure if he originated the idea or if he borrowed it from someone else. The point is to reward the best regular season teams with such a massive playoff advantage that load management would become much less attractive.
A review of the historical archives demonstrates that pro basketball teams, coaches, and players used to not only take the regular season seriously but they often took the preseason seriously. Today is Julius Erving's 73rd birthday, so in honor of that occasion we will take a trip in the time machine back to 1973, when Erving was a 23 year old who had just won his first scoring title after averaging a career-high 31.9 ppg for the ABA's Virginia Squires. The Squires traded Erving to the New York Nets in the summer of 1973. Erving spent the summer of 1973 playing in a variety of leagues and charity games while also appearing at several basketball camps. Erving's summer exploits included scoring 34 points in the Rubicon All-Star Benefit game, playing in the L.A. Pro Summer League, scoring 31 points in the second annual benefit game for the Ralph Bunche Memorial Scholarship Fund, scoring 14 points in the 15th annual Maurice Stokes Memorial basketball game, scoring 33 points (including the game-winning dunk) in the Harambee Festival ABA-NBA game, and playing in the Hempstead High School benefit game. Erving and all of the other pro players who participated in the Hempstead game not only donated their time but they paid their own travel expenses to participate so that all funds raised would support the school's athletic teams. Erving capped off his busy summer by leading the Westsiders--coached by Pete Vecsey, who would later achieve fame as a sportswriter--to the Rucker League title.
Imagine arguably the biggest star in pro basketball spending his summer traveling the country playing the game and teaching at basketball camps for the love of the game!
Surely Erving must have rested or load managed during the 1973 preseason, right?
Not exactly.
The Nets posted a 6-3 record in their nine preseason games. Erving played in all nine games, scoring 235 points (26.1 ppg). Only twice did he score less than 20 points, and in one of those performances he dropped 19 first quarter points before not playing in the rest of the game (Coach Kevin Loughery wanted to look at other players to decide who his final cuts would be).
In the first of two matchups versus the defending NBA champion New York Knicks, Erving scored a game-high 27 points in front of a Madison Square Garden crowd of 17,226 as his young, upstart Nets won, 97-87. After the game, Erving said, "We've won six out of seven games so far, including the Knicks and the Bullets. I think we've got as good a team as there is in basketball." Erving provided this explanation for his seemingly endless repertoire of acrobatic shots: "Ninety nine percent of what I do in a game, I've worked on in practice or on the playground...but, there's always that one percent when I even surprise myself."
Knicks forward Dave DeBusschere, the premier defensive forward in pro basketball for most of his career--he made the All-Defensive First Team from 1969-74, each of the first six seasons that the NBA bestowed that honor--said of Erving, "It was a great opportunity to prepare for the regular season. He's got more ways to beat you than anyone in pro basketball. If you can stop 'J' you can stop anyone. Not that you can really stop him...it's more a case of forcing him to take a more difficult shot and hoping it misses."
DeBusschere did not play in the second half of the game after injuring his hip, but he was very impressed with Erving after playing against him for the first time: "He's everything I heard about him. Also, he's stronger than I thought he would be, but I would just as soon talk about their whole team. But you can't get around him can you? And let me say there's no comparing him with anyone in the NBA...he's just himself. He's fast and quick and can really pass the ball. Wow, he really gave one off to (Brian) Taylor and I still don't know how he got the ball through three guys." Erving finished with a game-high six assists while playing a team-high 39 minutes (and I trust DeBusschere's assessment of Erving's passing skills more than I trust assessments made by people who demonstrably lack knowledge of pro basketball history).
Walt Frazier played all 48 minutes for the Knicks! Nowadays, it is rare to see a player play 48 minutes in a regular season game.
Loughery declared, "We were very serious about it. After all, we're fighting for the same metropolitan audience." He concluded, "This game was not just an exhibition. We wanted to win it, just like a regular season game. We wanted to prove that we had a good club." Imagine that--a team, a coach, and a star player wanting to win a preseason game. Now, fans have to beg teams, coaches, and star players to care about winning regular season games! To cite just the most recent and most egregious example, after LeBron James broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's regular season scoring record while scoring 38 points versus the Oklahoma City Thunder, he let his friends in the media know that he has a foot injury that may limit him for the rest of the season. It is fascinating that James showed no signs of having an injured foot during his scoring barrage to set the record, but as soon as the record was within his grasp he checked out of the game and watched his Lakers lose to the Thunder in a game that could have major playoff seeding implications.
Back to 1973. Two nights after the Nets beat the Knicks, the teams played the rematch at Nassau Coliseum in front of a standing room only crowd of 15,802 fans. This time, the Knicks prevailed, 105-87. Erving scored a game-high 28 points, while Bill Bradley paced the Knicks with 27 points.
In the ensuing 1973-74 regular season, the Nets posted a 55-29 record en route to winning the first of their two ABA titles, while the Knicks reached the Eastern Conference Finals before bowing to the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics. Erving did not do any load management during the 1973-74 regular season, either: he played in all 84 regular season games while averaging 40.5 mpg (third in the league), 27.4 ppg (first), 10.7 rpg (seventh), 5.2 apg (sixth), 2.3 spg (third), and 2.4 bpg (third). He ranked ninth in field goal percentage (.512). Erving then played in all 14 of the Nets' playoff games as the team stormed to a 12-2 postseason record. Erving was the easy choice for Playoff MVP after leading the league in playoff scoring (27.9 ppg) while ranking 12th in rebounding (9.6 rpg), fifth in assists (4.8 apg), ninth in steals (1.6 spg), and third in blocked shots (1.4 bpg). He also ranked fifth in playoff field goal percentage (.528).
The Nets' playoff winning percentage (.857) tied the pro basketball record set by the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks, and that mark was not broken until the Moses Malone-Julius Erving 76ers went 12-1 in the 1983 playoffs. Thanks in part to an expanded playoff format, the 2001 L.A. Lakers broke that record by going 15-1, and then after further expansion to the playoff format the 2017 Golden State Warriors are the current record holders (16-1).
By the way, in the 1974 ABA All-Star Game the teams combined to attempt 11 three pointers and 30 free throws as the East beat the West, 128-112. From a season in which the average ABA team scored 106.4 ppg, those numbers suggest a style of play different--and more serious--than anything we have seen in the NBA All-Star Game for at least the past 15 years.
The 2022-23 NBA regular season resumes action tomorrow night. How many teams will take those games as seriously as Erving and his Nets took the 1973 preseason?