How Sweet It Was: And How the Nba Can Return to Greatness

By Joe Delmore

The National Basketball Association used to be a unifi ed league featuring
high powered teams with great players who put on explosive shows
night after night to the delight of their admiring fans.
The league featured great stars like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Elgin
Baylor, and Jerry West who consistently displayed offensive versatility
as well as defensive prowess. The NBA of some 50 years ago had no
more than six or eight teams, but all of them were highly skilled
and explosive.
But today the NBA has fallen on hard timesat least in the artistic sense.
In his new book How Sweet It Was: And How the NBA Can Return to
Greatness, writer Joe Delmore outlines what made the league great and
how it has fallen from those graces. He pays particular attention to the
overpaid athletes, coaches with no authority, and selfi sh players with
poorly developed basketball skills. The media, particularly cable television,
shines a constant spotlight on these overcompensated athletes.
In his new book, the author outlines several concrete steps that should
return professional basketball to a semblance of its former glory. Players
will receive better training and more classroom exposure, and contracts
will be limited by their very nature. The author also outlines steps on how
to improve the coaching profession.
If these measures are undertaken, a revitalized NBA will take shape, and
fans will gain a new appreciation of the game.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462877645

Joe Delmore

Joe Delmore has been a writer and journalist for nearly 40 years. He has been an award-winning newspaper reporter and sports columnist, and has served as a technical writer at The Boeing Company. He has degrees in history and journalism from the University of Washington. He is a freelance writer living in Seattle.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Joe Delmore.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011908461

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4628-7763-8

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4628-7762-1

ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4628-7764-5

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1—The LeBron James Celebration

PART 1

THE LEAGUE ASCENDANCY

Chapter 2—The Right Time for the 24-Second Clock

Chapter 3—Wilt and the 76ers: Best of the Best

Chapter 4—Eight Great Players

Chapter 5—What made Auerbach and Holzman so Great?

Chapter 6—Do the Fans get their Money’s Worth?

PART 2

THE LEAGUE DECLINES

Chapter 7—The Three-Point Shot Does Not Add Up

Chapter 8—The Spencer Haywood Legacy

Chapter 9—Business Behind the Ball

Chapter 10—A League on the Brink

PART 3

HOW TO REVITALIZE THE LEAGUE

Chapter 11—A Case for ‘Getting Back to Basics’

Chapter 12—What Would a New and Improved NBA look like?

Acknowledgements

I would like to offer special thanks to my brother, Ned Delmore, who was the inspiration for this book, both emotionally and financially. I could never have undertaken this book without his help. I would also like to thank my friend Jack Clarke who read an early version of this book, and provided important insights. And I would also like to thank Russ Jackson and Sibyl Lundy for reading through and editing my manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my two children, Jim and Laurel, who gave guidance and inspiration to me on this project.

Introduction

The quality of the game in professional basketball has slipped rather dramatically in the past 15 years, and that’s a concern to me. The play on the court is not what it used to be and I want to find the reasons for this. So I took some time to research this problem, and this book is the result of that research. My tools involved interviews, observations and readings involving newspapers, magazines and books. This is not an inclusive history of the National Basketball Association, the NBA. It is, in fact, a comparative study of how the NBA was around 1960 when I first started to follow the game and how it is today. The story really begins when Elgin Baylor, my hero at the time, dropped out of Seattle University in his junior year to go play for the Minneapolis Lakers. I did not intend writing a book at that time, but the professional level of basketball has fallen so far in the intervening years, that I felt compelled to say something.

Baylor himself was the personification of basketball greatness. At 6-5, 220 pounds, he was strong, coordinated and cat-quick. He could rise above the rim, snare the rebound, and stuff it through. He could pass with precision, and had the ability to elevate the play of his teammates. But what he alone could do was hang in the air for the longest time while he cradled the ball in his huge hands and then had the ability to score before his feet ever touched the ground.

I was convinced he was the greatest basketball player ever—and he became my lifetime hero. All this and he was just a collegian. He would be even more brilliant in his long professional career with the Lakers. When he got to the pro level, he supplanted Bob Pettit as the best forward in the league. In Baylor’s greatest season in 1962, a season cut short by military service, he averaged 38.3 points a game. And he established a single game playoff record of 61 points against the Celtics that year. That playoff record lasted until 1986 when it was broken by Michael Jordan, who scored 63 points. Baylor with his stellar play thus set the stage for players like Julius Erving and Jordan.

He also set the stage for Jerry West, who joined the Lakers two years after Baylor. Very quickly, the two of them became my heroes.

They were simply everything that a basketball player should be. They should never be forgotten, though they are pushed into the shadows by a culture that glorifies the current and disregards the past. Unlike many of today’s one-dimensional players, Baylor could score, rebound, pass and dribble, as could West. These two played on the same team for better than a decade starting in 1960. Few teams in any era could match that, except perhaps Sam Jones and Bill Russell on the Celtics. Baylor and West could score 50 points each on any given night. Once Baylor played a month with a steel plate on the middle finger of his shooting right hand and averaged 30 points a game.

Baylor personified basketball greatness. An All-American at Seattle University where he averaged 30 points a contest and nearly 20 rebounds a game, he led the Chieftains to the 1958 NCAA title game. Eligible for the NBA draft after his junior year, he turned professional with the Minneapolis Lakers. He took this moribund team all the way to the championship in his first year in the league where they fell to Russell and Celtics. To my great regret, Baylor never won a title, but came close several times.

Baylor was not the biggest man up front, but he was strong, coordinated and cat-quick. In addition to his rebounding, he could pass with precision, and had the ability to elevate the play of teammates, though probably not West. They formed the most spectacular tandem in the history of basketball. I would go out of my way to see them play.

West’s story is just as interesting as Baylor’s. After completing an outstanding career at West Virginia, West joined Los Angeles as the second player taken in the 1960 draft after Oscar Robertson. When West moved to the Lakers, he quickly adapted to the professional level of play and combined with Baylor to form the best one-two scoring punch in the history of pro basketball. I now had two heroes on the same team, and even though they were in Southern California and I was in Seattle, I could listen to Lakers games at night conveyed by the voice of Chick Hearn over radio station KFI Los Angeles. And when the Seattle Sonics were born in 1967, my brother Ned[1] and I made of point of attending every Lakers-Sonics’ game. It was hard for us to conceal that we were not for the home team.

The 6-foot-3 West had to move from his forward position that he played at West Virginia to the guard spot with the Lakers. His LA coach, Fred Schaus, limited West’s playing time that first season so he could acclimate himself to the pro game. By his second season, West had taken off as a shooting guard and averaged 30.8 points per game. Along with Baylor’s 38.2 average, the two combined for nearly 70 points a game—an unheard of figure today.

West and Baylor quickly established themselves as Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside on the Lakers and their scoring numbers remained high night after night. One February night in 1970, my brother and I attended a Lakers-Warriors game at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Baylor and West each scored 43 points, a scoring feat rarely accomplished by two players on the same team. For their careers, they each averaged over 27 points per game, among the highest in league history.

West put every ounce of talent and drive he could into the game of basketball. If there was some element of the game out of his control he would study it and practice it relentlessly until he mastered it. He would then employ it in the game. He pushed every limit that he could identify, accepted every challenge, and asked every question. His perfectionism wouldn’t allow him to approach it in any other way. Yet not one bit of it could ever be described as simple. Not for Jerry West.¹

West took perfection even to the warm-up drills before a game. I watched him once miss several outside jump shots prior to a Lakers-Sonics’ game at Seattle Center Arena. West was visibly upset, jumping up and down, grimacing and mad at himself. He would not settle for anything less than clearing the net with his picture-perfect jumper—and being in rhythm when the game began.

In fact, West is the face of the NBA, with his silhouette captured on basketballs, jerseys, socks, and anything the NBA licenses today. That might be the highest complement that a player can receive: that he puts his stamp of approval on everything the NBA markets. And this from a player who negotiated his first contract with the Lakers for the princely sum of $15,000. A few year’s earlier, Baylor’s uncle helped him negotiate his first contract.² Players in the league today who sign contracts worth $20 million with the help of their agents would have difficulty comprehending the greatness of West and Baylor.

At the time, of course, I felt basketball was the greatest game with Baylor and West leading the way. I did not, of course, have historical perspective on my side. I certainly do now with the inevitable passage of time as well as my studied interest in the game. What that research taught me is that today’s version is a pale imitation of what the game used to be, and that true fans of the game should take the time to find out why the game has gone downhill. This book is an attempt to help them understand the ways in which today’s game can be improved.

This entire episode started, as so many do, at one of those standard family get togethers on Labor Day a few years ago. Hamburgers, French fries, watermelon, apple pie, beer and plenty of small talk. I was attending a family gathering at my brother Ned’s and his wife Janet’s house in the Wedgewood area of Seattle. I was recently retired from Boeing at the time in search of something meaningful to do. I have a background in writing and a keen interest in sports. My use of these skills to take a close look at the NBA seemed the right thing to do. Naturally, the discussion with my brother turned to professional basketball and how far the game has fallen since we first started to follow it. The Seattle Sonics are a prime case in point, reaching a pinnacle of success by winning the NBA title in 1979, then forced to vacate Seattle in 2007. What led to the descent of the team were repeated coaching changes, a rapid turnover of players, failure on the court, and a drop in attendance.

All too often, the NBA discards teams like Seattle, and then showcases ball clubs that barely measure up to professional standards. The Oklahoma City Thunder, as the club is now called, seems to be bucking the trend somewhat. The team has improved its play on the court, the fans show their support, and voters recently approved a tax measure to build a new arena for the team. One city’s curse may be another city’s cure.

But this book has a much broader scope than the Supersonics or the Thunder. In fact, it encompasses the entire NBA past and present, and most of its glorious history. So what did happen to the NBA over the course of these many seasons? This once all-powerful league has unfortunately become a playground of mediocrity, overpriced talent, and teams producing meager results. This is not the same league I grew up with. Back then the NBA was a high-powered, and high-scoring league with plenty of super-stars to go around. Hero worship was a common behavior at our house, especially with my brother and me. But not today, at least in my case. No, the NBA today is but a shadow of its former self, and the league and its players are receiving much undeserved adulation.

Of course, there are good teams today like San Antonio, Los Angeles and Boston, but they are few and far between in a 30-team league. Memories are still clear of when the NBA had only eight teams, and the league produced competitive teams from top to bottom. They weren’t able to beat Boston in the playoffs, but then what other team had Bill Russell at center and such a high-powered fast-break offense that would bring fans screaming out of their seats?

My brother Ned and I used to attend Sonics’ games on a fairly regular basis. Games were not very expensive in those days—even for a starving college student. We could attend a Sonics’ game in their first season (1967-68) for $2 apiece—that, of course, was with a student discount card. We watched teams like the Cincinnati Royals with Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas battle the initial Supersonics’ team featuring such players as Walt Hazzard, also known as Mahdi Abdul-Rahmad, and Tom Meschery, who once threatened to fight Wilt Chamberlain. This expansion Sonics’ team, made up of castoff players from other clubs, was not very good, but it could score and it was worth the price of a reduced ticket. In addition, we could get close to the action by sneaking down to center court at halftime due to the fact that the Coliseum (now called the Key Arena) was only half filled for most games.

It became crystal clear to me that as we delved into the subject certain issues dominated: today’s players really are celebrities, team play has changed, and style of play has moved from one of control to chaos. While today’s teams regularly score in the 70s and 80s, it was common in the Glory Days of the NBA for a team to average upwards of 120 points a game. Individual play has always been the performance standard in the NBA, but today it has reached epidemic proportions. Team play has become a thing of the past except for the three or four teams that have a legitimate chance of winning the championship. For the remaining teams, it’s about what can the NBA do for me? On the court that translates into selfish play, passing as a forgotten weapon, and mediocre shooting, with much of it beyond the three-point line. In fact, the passing game in the NBA today is so poor that a high school coach viewing the action would be ashamed.

And there no longer seems to be any coaching strategy, especially in the final minutes of a tight contest when a team controls the ball in the half-court offense. The coach, who does not have a clue, lets a player like Carmelo Anthony or Dwayne Wade go one-on-one and find the tiniest opening in which to score. Whatever happened to setting screens or using the give-and-go to set up an easy basket? These plays used to be an essential part of practice, but appear to have gone by the boards. Strategy, never a major part of the game, is sadly lacking in crucial moments today. Anthony and Wade, because of their individual skills, will always play a key role on their teams. But individual play never measures up to a well-coached team.

The NBA has not always been a league with so many under-performing teams. I can remember in the Sonics’ first season—when the NBA had just expanded to 12 teams—virtually all those teams played at a highly-proficient level. All of these clubs played with a semblance of team ball including passing, setting picks, rebounding, running the fast break, and really entertaining the fans. The league, even with expansion, was able to pick from a steady pool of players exposed to four years of college basketball. Baylor and his sidekick Jerry West consistently made sweet music on the court, and the game unquestionably was getting better. So good in fact that a rival league was born, the American Basketball Association (ABA), grabbing some NBA players like Rick Barry and enticing a player like Julius Erving to leave college early and join the league. But the NBA and the sport of basketball remained strong—and the fans knew it. And that’s really who I’m trying to talk to in this book, the long-suffering loyal fans who realize the game could be better.

This book might also pique the curiosity of those fans—mostly young and affluent—who have a short-term memory when it comes to basketball. These fans pay premium price for good seats, view the game in star-struck fashion, and can’t imagine the game ever being different from today’s. They leap out of their seats when a player dunks the ball. They give high-fives to the person next to them when their favorite player hits a three. They appreciate good ball movement, good team play, even good defense. But these things are incidental to the exploits of their star players. They have an unquestioning love affair with these players, reinforced by the media which focuses on their individual exploits and lavish lifestyles. But they are really too young to remember when the NBA was a league full of players wearing tight shorts, who with their passing and shooting skills could run up the score. Fans my age (and I am part of the class of ’65) recognize the difference. But young fans need to be aware of how the game has changed. With the current media-driven spotlight on threes and dunks, the game close to the basket has virtually disappeared in the NBA. That, along with a drop in rebounding has hurt team play and scoring. The league is completely undercharged offensively as a result.

Some of the 30 clubs in the league do have efficiently run offenses, but not many. The defensive mind-set dominates league thinking. But the game of basketball, when played effectively, is designed for offense—in the half-court and on the fast break. That must not become a relic of the past.

The list of deficits does not end with the lack of offense. The league allows too many unschooled young players to compete in the most prestigious professional basketball league in the world. Lack of fundamentals is a common complaint of fans, coaches and former players. Passing is a lost art, rebounding is non-existent, and shooting often consists of three-point shots or slam dunks. Whatever happened to the bounce pass or the bank shot, or those body-thumping screens of a Wes Unseld or a Paul Silas that would get anybody free for an easy 12-foot shot? Even defensive skills in today’s game could be improved.

Indeed the game has changed but all is not lost. There are some positive signs. Many players, with the help of their agents, have become philanthropists who donate time and money to charities. Even teams get involved. Look at how the NBA’s Hornets helped New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Magic Johnson has done much to educate us about the AIDs epidemic. Elton Brand of the 76ers has set up foundations that help young at risk children stay in school.

Players who once struggled financially have become economic powerhouses.

Aggressive bargaining from the NBA Players’ Association has ensured that. The NBA has more exposure than ever before with lucrative television contracts, NBA web sites, sports magazines, and a growing international exposure. Players like LeBron James and Michael Jordan are an advertiser’s dream.

Communities that have NBA teams generally prosper because those teams provide a steady stream of taxes to city coffers and a steady stream of customers to nearby restaurants and bars. Increasing numbers of basketball fans—especially those with discretionary incomes—have the opportunity to watch games at center court or at home on high-definition television. Owners continue to prosper as the value of NBA teams always seems to climb, although that may have slowed in the current economic downturn. The money side of the game has never been better. It’s an agent’s and a player’s dreams come true.

But this economic success has been purchased at a price. Many of the league’s current teams are marginally professional. One does not have to be a Red Auerbach to realize this. Although the league now actively recruits players from Europe, Asia and South America, and players only have to wait one-year past their high school graduation, the talent level is thin and uneven throughout the league. Even players of the caliber of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James take years of nurturing when they enter the NBA right out of high school. The league has a significant shortage of skilled players and effective coaches who are well trained