Over and Back: How did Julius Erving go from cool to square?

We look at how Julius Erving’s game and persona evolved during the late 1970s and early 1980s years with the Philadelphia 76ers, where they reached the NBA Finals three times before finally winning a championship in 1983 with Moses Malone. We are joined by frequent guest and pro-basketball historian Curtis Harris (@ProHoopsHistory) of ProHoopsHistory.com.

We discuss how Erving personified ‘70s cool from his personal style to his flare on the court, how he saw himself as an artist on the court and how he tried to blend the playground game with team basketball, how the Nets were unable to afford his contract after the NBA-ABA merger and ended up trading him to the Sixers just before the 1977 season, how the Sixers were “the team that won’t shut up” and how they were seen as a group of playground players.

We also talk about how Erving tried to fit himself into a star-laden Sixers team (with George McGinnis, World B. Free, Doug Collins, Darryl Dawkins Joe Bryant, Henry Bibby and Caldwell Jones), how Erving had to prove himself all over again in a skeptical NBA, how his stardom and flare influenced the NBA, how the NBA began to incorporate aspects of Erving and the ABA into its marketing through the early 1980s, whether Erving changed the NBA or whether the NBA changed Erving and how the Sixers dethroned the 1976 NBA stalwart Boston Celtics with John Havlicek and Dave Cowens before their more famous Finals loss to the Bill Walton-led Portland Trail Blazers.

Among other topics: How the Sixers fell to the Washington Bullets and San Antonio Spurs in heartbreakers in 1978 and 1979, how trading George McGinnis for Bobby Jones signaled a shift in fitting the team around Erving, Billy Cunningham taking over as coach from Gene Shue, adding young talent like Maurice Cheeks and Andrew Toney, acquiring Lionel Hollins in 1980 instead of Pete Maravich and smashing Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics before falling to Magic Johnson’s brilliance and the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals and the anguish of blowing a 3-1 lead to the Celtics in 1981 and nearly doing the same in 1982 before coming through in Boston in Game 7.

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Music:

Aurea Carmina Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) & Stringed Disco Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

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