![]() ![]() ![]() Late that season, Erving decided he was underpaid and signed a $2 million contract with the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. As a rookie he averaged 27.3 points and 15.7 rebounds. For the previous four years, Erving had been able to dunk only on the playground and in practice, victimized by the no-dunking rule of the NCAA and high schools. When the Virginia Squires offered him a $500,000, four-year contract after his junior year in 1971, he jumped. He averaged 26.3 points and 20.2 rebounds, one of only five players in NCAA history to average 20-20 for a career. As a sophomore and junior (freshmen were ineligible then), he was a model of consistency, recording 51 double-doubles in his 52 games. Starring as a senior, he earned a scholarship to the University of Massachusetts. Though Erving was the best player on his Roosevelt High team as a junior, the coach started five seniors. "As a kid, I played a lot of one-on-none," Erving said. A year later, he was able to palm the ball. By the time he was in the sixth grade, he was refining his dunks on an eight-foot-high basket. When he was 13, his mother remarried, to a sanitation worker, and the new family moved to Roosevelt, also on Long Island. J - he was born Julius Winfield Erving Jr. J - a high-school teammate gave him the nickname Doctor and an ABA teammate added the initial, making it Dr. His 16-year pro averages were 24.2 points, 8.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists. In his 11 seasons with the 76ers, he averaged 22 points and 6.7 rebounds, and was first-team all-NBA five times and second-team twice in his first eight seasons. Erving averaged 28.7 points and 12.1 rebounds in his five ABA seasons, winning three scoring titles and being named first-team all-league four times (he was a second-team selection as a rookie). He is one of only four players to crack 30,000 career points (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Karl Malone are the others). The 6-foot-6½, 200-pound forward put his stamp on the New York Nets' two American Basketball Association titles, and he was instrumental in the Philadelphia 76ers winning an NBA championship.Įrving won four MVP awards, three with the Nets and one with Philadelphia. J exhibited the flash and style of playground basketball, he displayed the intelligence to direct his skills toward winning, a goal that seems to have been lost on many of today's players. "There have been some better people off the court - like a few mothers and the Pope," said Pat Riley, one of the game's top coaches. He was articulate, friendly and uncommonly modest. Unlike many athletes, he never got a big head. While Erving was in the air so often on the court, his feet were planted firmly on the ground off it. "In other words, I may be committed to the air, but I still have some control over it." "When I get a chance to power jump off both legs, I can lean, twist, change directions and decide whether to dunk the ball or pass it to an open man," Erving said. His predecessors in gravity defying were Connie Hawkins and Elgin Baylor, his successor was Michael Jordan. Erving is a member of an extremely small basketball family. Sure, there have been many outstanding leapers in basketball, but only a select few brought the art to a new level in the pros. "The Doctor not only leaps and stays aloft longer than most players dream possible, but he uses his air time to transform his sport into graceful ballet, breath-taking drama or science-fiction fantasy depending upon his mood of the moment and the needs of his team." "No one has ever controlled and conquered the air above pro basketball like Julius Erving, the incomparable Dr. While he scored 30,026 points as a pro, he probably drew at least double that number in oohs and ahs for his in-flight sessions. He pushed the envelope of physical probability, soaring to unprecedented heights with a basketball in his size 11 hands. ![]() When he went up in the air, he stayed there for long periods of time, seemingly an irresistible force of nature as he improvised some acrobatic maneuver. While others played the game of basketball on the ground, Julius Erving performed above it. CLASSIC - SportsCentury biography of Julius Erving ![]()
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