BOSTON, Mass. (June 3, 2026) — This column concerns Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics, but bear with me while I use George Horton as a framing device: My very first-ever sports-writing job allowed me to cover Horton’s Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School boys basketball team. That winter of 1986-87, the genial, middle-aged coach had trained up a talented collection of 7-8 kids, none of whom were taller than 6 feet — but all of whom could run, gun and handle the ball.
The mighty L-S Warriors didn’t bother with many plays. Their non-stop press resulted in absolute chaos, great masses of layups off turnovers, a league title, and more tournament glory than anyone could have expected.
The next season, just two kids remained from that squad — the slowest two. I went and saw them play early in December and was stunned to watch them meticulously run a half-dozen offensive sets I’d not seen the year before. This new scheme created great shots in the half court for a team short on athleticism. The Warriors never pressed; Horton arrayed them in an air-tight match-up zone. The team went 14-4 and went to another state tournament.
Having watched his team the year before, I had assumed that Horton was one of those coaches who just rolled the balls out and let things happened. But he recognized what he had and leveraged squad skills. Same same the following winter, only Horton devised a completely different scheme for an entirely different roster.
That’s great coaching. Still convinced I could be the next Bob Ryan, I traded up to a daily newspaper job the following spring/ George Horton died of a heart attack six years later. His wife found him slumped over in his recliner, a Celtics playoff game still playing on the TV.
Joe Mazzulla: Worthy COY winner, but…
I thought of George again when Joe Mazzulla was named NBA Coach of the Year early in May. The Celtics had a great regular season before crashing out in the first playoff round to Philly. Honestly, no one had expected the Sixers to challenge Boston, which had rounded into something approaching championship form after Jason Tatum’s return from a 10-month Achilles tendon rehab. The Celts led the series 3-1 but still managed to lose it. Shit happens.
Before he won it, Joe had deemed the Coach of the Year award “stupid.” I love Mazzulla. He’s candid in a way only someone on the spectrum can be. Earlier in the season, Coach Joe had been interviewed about the team’s new, gold-on-white uniforms. He said he liked them. The reporter asked why. “Because they say Boston on the front,” he deadpanned.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Jan. 5, 2024) — It’s never too late to mark and quantify the impact of Ernie DiGregorio. Not in New England. Not when the subject is college basketball. Yet here’s the immediate news peg, the reason to contemplate Ernie D and his attendant rabbit hole early in 2024: It was 50 years ago this week that DiGregorio set the NBA rookie record for assists in a game: 25, for the old Buffalo Braves, during a 120-119 win over the hapless Trailblazers, in Portland on New Year’s Day 1974.
This particular moment in NBA history, in and of itself, packs enough meaningful hoops serendipity to justify an entire 30 for 30 documentary: • Ernie D led the Association in assists that 1973-74 season, his first. He led the league in free throw percentage, too. • The Trailblazers were indeed terrible enough to earn the no. 1 pick in the June 1974 draft. They took a guy named Bill Walton. • The Braves coach that record-setting January night? Dr. Jack Ramsey, who left for Portland the summer of 1976, whereupon he and Walton immediately led the Blazers to their only NBA championship. • After acquiring Nate Archibald in September 1977, Buffalo let DiGregorio go — to the Lakers, who waived him halfway through the season. Boston signed him but didn’t offer a new deal. Just like that, Ernie D’s NBA run was over. • That same summer of ’78, Buffalo owner John Y. Brown Jr. swapped franchises with Celtics owner Irv Levin, who promptly moved the Braves to San Diego. • A year later, the newly christened Clippers signed Walton, meaning Ernie D missed playing with The Big Redhead by only a couple Degrees of NBA Separation.
To sum up on Ernie D: Consensus NCAA Player of the Year in 1973, at Providence College. NBA Rookie of the Year in 1974. Out of the league by the summer of 1978.
Today, that sounds like an epic tale of crash and burn. Yet the mid-1970s did represent the most turbulent period in NBA history. The league had battled the ABA for talent and eyeballs the previous 10 years, before absorbing its competitor prior to the 1976-77 season. Free agency was instituted at roughly the same time. Upshot: Many on-court careers were cut short or otherwise doomed by the ensuing roster consolidations, by franchise-swapping owners, by drugs, by a decidedly incoherent league promotional strategy.
In the pre-cable age, television networks never convinced the NBA would ever prove marketable as a major sporting enterprise. Aside from not being football or baseball, the newly merged NBA was uncomfortably Black. (The pre-merger NBA was so lily white, there was meaningful playing time for not one but two Van Arsdales!) Would Middle America ever watch something so “urban”?
Ultimately, yes it would. But as late as June 1980, two full seasons after Magic and Larry showed up, CBS was still showing NBA Finals games at 11:30 p.m. EST, on tape delay.
It’s no coincidence that college basketball first planted its own flag during the Seventies, this period of such marked NBA chaos and weakness. In this sliver of broadcasting daylight, especially, college hoops created a viable toehold in the culture. And it was the college game where Ernie D would prove a far more influential figure.
In hailing the all-world talents of Nikola Jokic, now an NBA champion and the most influential Serb since Gavrilo Princip, let’s also recognize that this cornerstone figure was taken #41 in the 2014 NBA Draft. He was chosen after Doug McDermott, whom the Nuggets took that year at #11. They are two of 20 Nugget draftees who remain active in this league, and that’s the organizational lesson delivered by Monday’s clincher: Draft Kings Rule.
Observers spent considerable time discussing team-building during these 2023 playoffs. First, it was the Heat’s predilection for making serviceable NBA squad players of undrafted castoffs. Then, when Denver started to look inevitable, the conversation moved to canny roster-development via the draft, wherein Joker remains Exhibit A.
Yet the larger takeaways for NBA clubs and fans alike are simpler and self-evident: Denver is the league’s best talent evaluator, full stop, thanks to Vice President of Scouting Jim Clibanoff (pictured above) and his crack staff. The Nuggets not only draft more effectively, they also better assess the potential value of European, players discarded by competing NBA franchises and prospects outside the Lottery. They’ve exhibited these traits for a decade or more, as I will detail below, and theirs is the best, most practical example of how to develop championship-ready rosters in 2023.
Free agency remains vitally important, of course. I read somewhere during these playoffs that Denver’s title is the first from a Western Conference team not located in California or Texas since the 1979 Seattle Supersonics! Big markets/money will always give “coastal elites” a leg up in luring/landing established stars.
Yet Denver has shown league peers how to nullify these advantages in the 21st century. Once the new collective bargain agreement takes effect, and teams cannot afford three max stars going forward (thereby more evenly distributing plus-players around the league), the primacy of talent assessment is only enhanced.
Draft Kings Don’t Need No Lottery
By contrast, it’s time to get real on the most overhyped aspect of any NBA team-building discussion, the Draft Lottery. Based on the amount of media attention paid to these first half-dozen picks, one might reasonably assume this approach to be a proven strategy. It’s not.
The Golden State dynasty was not built via reliance on lottery picks, nor maneuvers to enable them. LeBron James was a lottery pick 20 years ago; his fellow Laker, Anthony Davis, ran out on the team that picked him no. 1. Kawhi Leonard went 14th and somehow managed to be the best player on two NBA Champions, just north of two separate borders (San Antonio and Toronto).
What’s more, it seems clear to me the Lottery affects championship fortunes and overall roster strength less and less. Lottery picks are, of course, getting younger and younger. It’s no coincidence they are less and less able to produce at the NBA level, especially within the 3-year rookie contract window. Joel Embiid and Zion Williamson are great players, when healthy, but they’ve delivered nothing in terms of playoff success to the teams that contorted their long-term fortunes to acquire them.
The demonstrable abilities of these younger and younger men, imbued with evermore AAU-enabled, one-and-done skill sets, makes them less and less NBA ready with every passing year. Why tank any season, much less two or three, to acquire them?
Another bout of March Madness has come and gone. And now the money-grubbing power conferences are looking to further sully its pristine symmetry. From the moment the play-in gambit was instituted, in 2001, the slope got very slippery indeed. At first, just two small-conference champions squared off for the right to get boned, on 36-48 hours’ rest, by a top regional seed. Today it’s four, plus four more power conference also-rans. Let’s skip over mere half measures, or further regression, and proceed straight to the ultimate solution: Universal NCAA Bids. That’s right, tournament berths for every last Division 1 program, all 361 of them.
Don’t freak out: Here’s how quickly, seamlessly and magically it would work:
1) The regular season ends when February does. All 361 teams retire briefly to their ever-more plushly appointed training facilities, where they wait on the tabulation of a final computer ranking — 1 through 361. In essence, the period now devoted to “Championship Week” is given over to a 292-game, three-round, six-day tournament that produces the familiar, final bracket of 64.
2) The opening round — comprising 100 games and held the first Tuesday & Wednesday in March — pits the team seeded 361st (cue the “Team Irrelevant” stories) against the school seeded 156th. In between, #157 takes on #360, and so on. You like Cinderella? I’ll give you Cinderella: Imagine the crazy shit that will inevitably stem from a 200-team first round — contested over two nights, at on-campus venues all across these United States. Elegant in its mayhem, Round I rewards the top 155 with byes (thus lending meaning toour otherwise meaningless regular season) and quickly reduces the field to 256, a bracket-friendly multiplier of 64.
3) Round II takes place Thursday & Friday, whereupon those 256 remaining teams — the bye teams and the Tuesday/Wednesday winners — contest 128 games and symmetrically reduce the field to 128. Traditionally, the Thursday/Friday segment of NCAA Tournaments delivers 32 games and a dependably crazed bacchanal of buzzer-beaters, nail-biters, upsets and blowouts, all in the space of 36 hours. A universal-bid Thursday/Friday takes that spectacle and quadruples it.
4) The 64 games comprising Round lll, on Saturday & Sunday, would approximate a mere doubling of the traditional Thursday/Friday pandemonium, while neatly and cleanly winnowing the field to the recognizable 64. Sunday night the remaining teams — retaining their original seeds — are assigned opponents and regions in the traditional manner we’ve come to expect.
Universal NCAA Bids: Elegant & Logical
Rounds I, II and III would essentially form a massive, universal play-in bracket unto itself — producing more money in less time, using a more competitively honest framework than the current play-in scheme. The odious, so-called Championship Week would do the respectable thing and disappear.
All 287 games are necessarily played on campus, at the higher-seeded school. This mechanism is critical because, in rewarding higher seeds, it assigns another, much needed element of meaning to the college basketball regular season. It also guarantees kick-ass atmosphere and avoids potential short-notice scheduling conflicts at neutral sites, while reducing site-rental and travel costs. There is no reseeding between rounds. The bracket holds its shape and schedule all week, meaning teams are locked into either a Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday schedule, or a Wednesday/Friday/Sunday schedule.
What’s more, there is no good reason why a 361-team women’s tournament could not, or should not, be administered in exactly the same way, during the exact same time frame.
One of the great attractions of March Madness, perhaps the greatest of all, is the meting out of champions based purely on game performance. Polls don’t matter. Bowl traditions don’t muck up the works. Ultimately, seeds don’t either. By winning six games in a row, a deserving champion is invariably crowned.
The universal-bid system underlines, preserves and enhances this dynamic. As an added bonus, we dispense completely with any and all “bubble” and “snub” talk. Crucially, the regular season is dramatically transformed, for the better, in myriad ways I detail below. The bloated frippery of conference tournaments is eliminated. Bracketology? That irksome construct, along with the tiresome, flatulent conjecture that wafts about it, are similarly put out to pasture.
No More Perks for Major-Conference Also-Rans
The original play-in scheme, instituted at the turn of the millennium, was shameful enough. The 8-team “First Four” we’ve endured since 2011? Whatever. I wish I could report that each of these “expansions” was undertaken in the name of inclusiveness and fairness. But let’s not kid ourselves: This peculiar arrangement was first advanced and expanded entirely in service of annually preserving tourney revenue and exposure for no more than a dozen would-be, at-large, major-conference also-rans — at the expense small-conference champions.
Today, the Atlantic Sun Conference title-winner is obliged to play-in against its Summit Conference counterpart because, if they did not, there would be no room in the field of 64 for some eighth- or ninth-place team from the Big Ten — a conference that now has 18 basketball members.
This is shameful. If you think about it, the entire bubble/Bracketology thing — as a media construct — is built around whether and which second-tier, major-conference teams make the tournament, at whose mid-major expense. It defies logic that such expansive hoo-hah fixates on a group of teams ranked 55-75 in the country, teams that will not win the title, almost certainly won’t make the Elite 8, and may not even win a tournament game. Accordingly and appallingly, play-in games have eventuated so these demonstrable haves might make more money — at the direct expense of have-nots.
But here’s the good news: From the moment this play-in component was introduced, we began the inexorable move toward the final, most competitive, most equitable, most evolutionarily mature, most lucrative solution: a pair of all-in, 351-team NCAA basketball tournaments. This format is nothing less than our national hoop destiny. It will generate way more money and fan interest. There’s no practical reason why all-in men’s and women’s tournaments cannot run concurrently.
When I sat down in late August to write this essay — about neutral courts and how they’ve made the 2020 NBA Bubble Playoffs the most wide-open, unpredictable tournament the league has ever conducted — turns out I didnot know the half of it. Less than 48 hours later, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back. NBA players competing in the Disney Bubble would soon go out on a 72-hour wildcat strike.
Don’t believe the right-wing naysaying. Without NBA players and their new post-Blake resolve, arenas in NBA cities would not have been made available for voting on Nov. 3, 2020 — in exactly those urban areas where creeping fascism had closed so many polling places. Neither would the league, its owners and players association have pledged to “immediately establish a social justice coalition, with representatives from players, coaches and governors.”
I don’t want to diminish those efforts. Indeed, I would like to see that coalition formally funded. But events the last week in August only confirmed my original premise. We are in fact witnessing the most mercurial, fascinating NBA post season in history — and perhaps the most competitively compelling.
There are two surprisingly concrete explanations for what makes these playoff games so damned watchable. First, the Bubble’s quarantine construct necessarily does away with home court, as all the games are played on either of two fan-less facilities located on Disney’s Orlando, Fla. campus. No NBA playoff tournament had previously been held on neutral courts. Ever.
The effect has been monumental and fascinating Sporting events are interesting because their results cannot be predicted ahead of time. The less predictable the result, the greater the interest. Traditional NBA playoff games are claimed by the home team 65 percent of the time. Winners are not predestined, of course, but this makes NBA playoff games less interesting from a competitive standpoint. Home teams win NHL and MLB playoff games only 54 percent of the time, according to 538.com. This is why we love the NCAA basketball tournament: 63 one-off games played entirely on neutral courts. Any team can win pretty much any one of those games. That’s compelling.
NBA Bubble brought NCAA-style Unpredictability
The impact of neutral courts inside the NBA Playoff Bubble has been striking. Only four times in 73 NBA seasons had a team fallen behind 3 games to 1 and come back to win that playoff series. The Denver Nuggets did it twice this summer, in consecutive series. We saw the top overall seed, the Milwaukee Bucks, eliminated in Round 2. That’s happened only twice in 20 years. The Clippers, a 2 seed in the West (and odds-on co-favorite to win the NBA title, according to Vegas oddsmakers), also lost in Round 2.
Let’s be clear: Home court protects favorites, the higher-seeded teams. And neutral courts weaken that paradigm almost to the point of shredding. They replace it not with random results but less predictable results. And that’s more fun, full-stop.
Dozens of assumptions and conventions normally attached to the playoff crucible also fell away this summer. For example, the recently completed Miami-Boston Eastern Conference Final. When the Heat won the first two games, it conveyed a different brand of superiority — because they had won neither game with the benefit of home court. And yet, when the Celtics fell behind 3-1, it never felt insurmountable — because, if they were to come back, never would the Celts have to win on Miami’s home court. Denver demonstrated that, on neutral courts, a team can find something, make an adjustment and win three in a row. Sadly, for me, the Celtics could not make that happen. But lo and behold, we do have an NBA finalist, fifth-seeded Miami, that no one would have predicted when these playoffs started.
Much of my COVID-19 replacement sports-viewing has concentrated on vintage soccer films via YouTube (those Dutch teams of the ’70s were really something). But I did indulge earlier this month in a replay of the Villanova-Georgetown 1985 NCAA Championship, on the CBS Sports Network. Wow. This game and performances, on both sides, really hold up.
I think it’s accurate to state that between 1974 and 2004, the period of my most fervid college basketball mania, this is the only final I failed to watch live — and only because I was backpacking through Europe at the time, behind the Iron Curtain. When I finally got a hold of an International Herald Tribune in Dubrovnik, Croatia (then part of the former Yugoslavia), I thought maybe Tito’s media censors were messing with me. In all the years since, I’ve seen highlights but never the entire game tape. Some thoughts:
Shotmaking: By now everyone knows that Villanova won this game (66-64) by shooting an extraordinary 22 of 28 from the floor: 78.6 percent. That’s plenty mindboggling. They went 22 of 27 or 81.5 percent from the line. All the John Thompson teams from this era were renowned for their swarming defense. They performed as advertised here, forcing the Wildcats into 17 turnovers (!) and just 28 field goal attempts. In a 40-minute basketball game, that’s not a lot, folks. Nova just made everything. It was nearly the case that on each possession in this game, Rollie Massimino’s team either scored the ball or threw it away. I’ve never seen an offensive performance quite like it.
Time of Possession: This was the last game of the “No Shot Clock” era. The NCAA went to a 35-second possession meter the following season. Villanova never went to a four corners against Georgetown but the ‘Cats were extremely deliberate on offense — in part because they were throwing it away or having it stolen with such frequency! At one point in the second half, CBS flashed a stat on the screen showing “Time of Possession,” the sort of thing you’d see today during a soccer match. I don’t remember this stat from the 1970s or ‘80s, at all. But it was damned relevant here. Villanova basically possessed the ball twice as long as Georgetown did.
Iron men: The Cats essentially contested this entire game with 5 guys. Massimino started a guard named Dwight Wilbur, who went the first 5 minutes, came out and never returned. (I thought maybe he’d been hurt, but he says otherwise.) Mark Plansky played 1 minute. There were three Plansky brothers from Wakefield, Mass.; I later covered state tournament games involving the younger two. The immortal Chuck Everson played 3 minutes — long enough to get punched in the face by Reggie Williams as the first half ended. This wasn’t some hidden rabbit punch. Everyone saw it, including the TV cameras. No call. Georgetown only played 8 guys. The fellow who got the most run off the bench? Versatile guard Horace Broadnax, rockin’ the classic mid-’80s porn stache for the final.
BOSTON, Mass. (April 26, 2018) — When Patrice Bergeron returned from injury during the Maple Leafs series, he made the Bruins better. But I wouldn’t say he was the difference. Too many hockey players (20 to 22 of them from any one team) participate in playoff games to connect the dots through any non-goaltender, unless that man’s name is Gretzky or Crosby. Basketball is different. The playoffs typically shorten any team’s bench to 7-9 guys. I don’t see the Celtics losing this series to the Bucks if Marcus Smart is able to play.
Smart tore a tendon in his thumb six weeks ago. Kyrie Irving went in for the first of two knee surgeries three weeks later. Irving is clearly the best player on this team. Without him, the Celtics aren’t good enough to make The Finals this season, much less win them.
But Smart’s return should win the Celtics this series and perhaps the next. He’s that good, that influential, and it’s sort of amazing how far under the radar he manages to fly.
When the playoffs started, national media and the talking heads on ESPN and TNT made a big deal about how Boston would contest these playoffs without two starters, Irving and Gordon Hayward. But the latter has been gone so long (having gruesomely wrecked his ankle in the season opener), it honestly doesn’t feel anymore like we’re playing without him. In theory, Hayward is a stud, exactly the sort of wing shooter the Celtics need. But he was a brand new free agent signing back in October. He might have taken Boston to the next level but we really don’t know for sure. [One thing is for sure: If he had played this season, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown would not have progressed as far as they have. The minutes and end-of-game possessions would not have been there for them.]
But too many folks missed the fact that Boston opened these playoffs without three starters, because Smart is one of the five best guys on this team and the best all-court defender in the NBA. He might not have started every game, but he finished every game (that mattered). Without Irving and Hayward, Boston will always struggle to score down the stretch. But with Smart guarding the other team’s best player (a role he relishes and routinely occupies), with Smart representing a massive upgrade over plucky-but-limited Shane Larkin in the guard rotation, the Celtics are a different team.
There’s no one like Mahcus
There is no one in basketball quite like Marcus Smart, and I’m not sure why the rest of the league fails to appreciate this fact. He is the best defender on the league’s top defensive team but garners no laurels. He wasn’t even named to the All-NBA Defensive Team last season, when he was healthy. See here that list of 10 honorees from 2016-17:
1st Team
Chris Paul
Patrick Beverly
Kawhi Leonard
Draymond Green
Rudy Gobert
2nd Team
Tony Allen
Danny Green
Anthony Davis
Andre Roberson
Giannis Antetokounmpo
This is a pretty fair representation of top NBA defenders for 2017-18, as well, but Chris Paul and Tony Allen are shadows of the defenders they were 5 years ago. Beverly and Kawhi have been hurt all this season. Roberson has been out since January and is a complete offensive liability. Danny Green? He blocks it well for a 3, but otherwise I don’t know what he’s doing on this list. Draymond, Gobert, Anthony Davis and the Freak are superb defenders — as big men. They are a particular type of defensive asset; they are not all-court defenders.
Once we remove those bigs, I would take Marcus Smart over any of the remaining six guys. Of those who are injured, only Kawhi compares. At 6’4” Smart can check your point guard, your shooting guard, your small forward and most of the league’s shrinking 4s. He routinely guards LeBron James and drives him crazy. He is perhaps the only guy in the league to get inside James Harden’s head.
There is no one quite like Marcus Smart playing in today’s NBA. I’ve been singing his praises for several hundred words now, but I haven’t even detailed his best qualities: He’s wicked smaht. In fact, he’s flat-out smahter and more competitive than anyone in the game today, with the possible exception of LeBron — who is so good, he allows his competitive nature to flag on occasion. Marcus never does.
He is not without fault. Marcus is not a good shooter — a reality underlined by the fact that he refuses to acknowledge it. Though he shot just 37 percent from the floor this year (30 percent from 3), Smart never hesitates; he shoots with the confidence of Bradley Beal — which, in a perverse sort of way, makes me love the guy even more.
Like I said, the Celts aren’t going to The Finals this year. Ultimately, while injuries have catalyzed the development of Brown, Tatum and Terry Rozier (which bodes well for next June), Boston doesn’t have the horses to play for a title this June. But with Smart back and Brad Stevens pulling the strings, they’ll beat the Bucks — probably tonight.
PHILADELPHIA (Feb . 18, 2018) — When we learned my daughter Clara would matriculate at the University of Pennsylvania, naturally her dad was thrilled. Ivy League pride? Nah. Here was my chance to make a proper pilgrimage to The Palestra, the most storied college basketball venue of the 20th Century.
As I’ve written here before, while my hoops allegiance today favors the overtly professional NBA. Yet there was a two-decade period starting in the mid-1970s, just as John Wooden’s run at UCLA came to end, when I was a far more fervent college basketball junkie. The Palestra was central to that emerging fandom, which just happened to coincide with the sport’s surge into the national sporting consciousness.
College basketball and the NCAA Tournament are so popular today, so ubiquitous on television, it’s easy to forget their dual ascension is relatively recent. For all intents and purposes, UCLA and its 10 NCAA titles from 1962-75 effectively stunted the sport’s broader popularity. When certain teams/programs utterly dominate an underexposed sport, big cultural awareness only comes when some ridiculous win streak is snapped. Think UConn, whose dominance has similarly stunted women’ college basketball. It took the rise of South Carolina, LSU and Caitlin Clark to get the sport out from under.
Men’s college basketball should have taken off in the 1960s, but it didn’t because the only time anyone paid attention was when UCLA got beaten: first by Houston (1968’s famous Astrodome game), then by Notre Dame in 1973. These losses proved to be mere blips; the Bruins eventually won national titles both years. But someone finally did beat them when it counted — NC State, in the 1974 national semifinal. Then Wooden retired with one last title, in 1975. Suddenly the field was open and seeded. Take it from someone who was there: The idea that some team other than UCLA could win it all each year was novel and beguiling (!). Only then did the sport truly take off.
The Palestra: TV Take Notice
The Palestra (bottom right) sits directly beside historic Franklin Field, home of the Penn Relays and where Santa got booed in 1968. It also hosted the Philadelphia Eagles’ last NFL championship (1960). We visited Feb. 3, 2018, one day before the Eagles did it again.
Growing up in New England at this time, our interest had already been piqued by a Providence College team led by Ernie D, Kevin Stacom and Marvin Barnes. The Friars went all the way to the Final Four in 1973 — that year WJAR Channel 10 out of Providence started televising a bunch of PC games. The following year, rival WPRI Channel 12 took the talented University of Rhode Island teams, led by Sly Williams, under its broadcasting wing.
Soon the national networks and their affiliates in Boston got wise and started televising big regional games every Saturday afternoon. Here is where I got to know The Palestra. Hoop-rich Philadelphia was home to The Big 5, a city series featuring local rivals Villanova, Penn, St. Joseph’s, Temple and LaSalle. Every Big 5 game was played at The Palestra and these were the games I watched with manic intensity each weekend, starting in the mid-1970s.
These were the memories dislodged to glorious effect earlier this month, when daughter Clara, wife Sharon and Philly-born, erstwhile golf freak Mike Sweeney watched the Quakers beat Yale, 58-50.
When the 10,000-seat Palestra opened in 1927, it was among the largest indoor sporting venues on Earth. The name is derived from the ancient Greek term palæstra, a rectangular space attached to a training facility, or gymnasium, where athletes would compete in public, before an audience. Today it’s a bandbox but still all I could have hoped for: seating stacked steeply with front rows right on the baselines/endlines; vaulted ceilings filled with banners; exposed brick everywhere. Pretty much exactly as I remember it from the mid to late ‘70s.
But there was more to our Feb. 3 visit. Quite a bit more.
The Cinderella Narrative
James Salters, point guard on Penn’s 1979 Final Four team, glides across The Palestra hardwood one more time.
One of college basketball’s enduring appeals is the Cinderella narrative, an unlikely NCAA run that propels some unlikely team deep into the tournament, perhaps all the way to the Final Four. Providence in ’73, for example. Larry Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores, who came within a game of going undefeated and winning it all in 1979. Later, any sort of unlikely tourney run qualified for Cinderella status. Starting in the 1980s, hoop junkies would go gaga every time Penn’s great rival, Princeton, would almost beat some highly-seeded team in the tournament’s opening round; Tiger coach Pete Carril became something of a folk legend based on this run of compelling near-misses.
Well, as a student of the game (and father of future Penn alum), I’m obliged to point out that back in 1979, an Ivy League team went all the way to the Final Four! Yeah, the Quakers were summarily bludgeoned there by Magic Johnson, Greg Kelser and Michigan State, 101-67. But still. This was a great team. The year before, it lost to national runner-up Duke in the regional final.
Guess who was honored at halftime of the Penn-Yale game earlier this month? That’s right, this very Quaker cohort. They were all there: James “Peanut” Salters, the silky, sinewy point guard; Ronnie Price, the 6’5” scoring machine who seemed way too good for the Ivy League; Matt White, whose awkward-but-effective 6’10” frame allowed Penn to truly play with (and beat) the big boys. To think that I would see them all again, 40 years later, at The Palestra, because my own daughter was a student there? Pretty fuckin’ cool.
The Palestra, I would learn, isn’t famous just for being old, à la the original Boston Garden, a rat-infested dump where I covered many games as a young sportswriter. The University has done a formidable job keeping the place up: squeaky clean and not a brick out of place. But the history is inescapable. For many years, the same outfit owned both The Palestra and Madison Square Garden; in order to play MSG in NYC, teams were often obliged to schedule games in Philadelphia, as well. Penn would acquire the facility in 1939, and Philly would soon develop a storied basketball tradition of its own. Even today, when there’s a big college or high school game to be played, The Palestra serves as host.
This long, diverse, illustrious history doesn’t merely waft about in the rafters. It is scrupulously catalogued by a series of pictorial exhibits located all around the concourse. There are life-sized images of all the great college stars who played here through the ages, from LaSalle’s Tom Gola and Michael Brooks to Princeton’s Bill Bradley; from Villanova’s Rory Sparrow and Easy Ed Pinckney to Temple’s immortal Mark Shakin’ Bakin’ Macon.
All the Penn greats get extra attention, of course — not just the cagers, but the wrestlers and volleyball players who starred here, too. The high school exhibit features a bunch of guys I’ve never heard of, but several anybody would (Wilt Chamberlain, Kobe Bryant). And lest we forget, a whole raft of famous coaches cut their teeth or made their bones at The Palestra: Dr. Jack Ramsey (at St. Joe’s), Chuck Daly (Penn), Jon Chaney (Temple) and Rollie Massamino (‘Nova) are but a few to earn oversized pictures on the concourse.
All Hail the Immortal Dick Weiss!
There was even a displaying honoring notable Philly sportswriters, the ink-stained wretches who labored here at courtside, including the immortal Dick Weis. He covered hoops for The Daily News but also, in the early 1980s, single-handedly produced Eastern Basketball magazine. Further warmed to the college basketball phenomenon by emergence of the Big East Conference in 1979, I subscribed to this publication in the early 1980s, at college. I recall that my housemates couldn’t believe anything so arcane even existed — frankly, neither could I. Accordingly, Dick Weiss would become one of my sportswriting heroes and role models. I never had a clue what he looked like until Feb. 3, 2018.
Ironically, The Big East — for all its successes — would eventually overshadow and ultimately diminish eastern basketball in general and The Palestra in particular. When the league hijacked St. John’s, Syracuse, Providence and UConn from the old ECAC and Yankee conferences, each of these lesser leagues splintered into even weaker sisterhood, or extinction. When The Big East plucked Villanova from the old Eastern 8 conference (which then became the perennially outgunned Atlantic 10), the Wildcats used their new riches to build a fancy, new, on-campus gym. In this diversified, enriched media/conference universe, the Big 5 would lose much of its cachet. Today, only a few rivalry games are played here. In many ways, The Palestra in 2018 is simply Penn’s home court.
It seems as though Penn is content with this evolution — eager to tout The Palestra’s broader history but just as happy the old barn still so ably serves the university’s many athletic programs. As the Big 5 has ebbed, Ivy League games have taken on more importance — they are one’s ticket to the NCAA tournament, after all. At this writing, the Quakers are 19-6 overall, 9-1 in conference, poised to earn yet another bid. After many years of holding out, the Ivy will conduct its first conference tournament in 2018, with the winner advancing to the Big Dance. More important perhaps: Penn swept archrival Princeton this year. The Tigers are 3-7 in the league and the Quakers are loving it.
Out on the concourse is yet another display, this one a simple tally board that tracks this long and bitter rivalry between the Ivy League’s two traditional powers. Following the Quakers’ win on Feb. 6, it reads, “Penn 126, Princeton 113”.
LeBron James can do basketball an honorable and valued service by entering the 2015 NBA dunk contest, not to win necessarily, but to eradicate the stigma of losing.
Today we can agree that All-Star dunk festivities — once the highlight of the NBA’s mid-season bacchanal — have lost nearly all their luster. The big names don’t participate because (and let’s be honest here) they have relatively little to gain, should they win, and much to lose if they cannot better the likes of young, live-legged, would-be journeymen such as Terrance Ross and Ben McLemore.
In an acknowledgement of this misplaced luster, the NBA has basically given an out even to those who will participate this year: Three players from each conference will team up, with the trio that wins being crowned joint champions. There will be a top prize awarded to the individual winner, but he will be dubbed “Dunker of the Night.”
Whatever. This is nearly as bad as Team Figure Skating.
It’s not clear why this dunk-risk-aversion dynamic persists. The league’s best shooters do not appear unwilling to participating in the 3-point competition. There is no loss of face for Stephan Curry should he lose out to some young gun like Damian Lillard, or any of the league’s noted long-distance marksmen (among them this years, Kevin Love, Bradley Beal, Marco Bellinelli and defending champ Kyrie Erving). When Larry Bird won it, he relished the chance to win it again.
The Dunk Contest is different. In the beginning, all the big names did indeed participate. The very first one, at the 1976 ABA All-Star Game, featured this luminary lineup: Julius Erving, David Thompson, Artis Gilmore, George Gervin and Larry Kenon. The NBA revived the circus in 1984 and thereafter Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins didn’t just win, they showed up to defend. The stars started begging off in the ‘90s, though a young Kobe Bryant won in 1997. As recently as 2008, Dwight Howard lent some star power, as did champ Blake Griffin 2011 — but the Clippers big man chose not to defend.
LeBron has for 10 years been notoriously cagey about the Dunk Contest, steadfastly refusing to enter, claiming that he’s an “in-game dunker”, but nevertheless strategically allowing media to see his chops once a year, normally just prior to the All-Star break.
LeBron is so clearly the game’s best player, and its most dominant personality, he can simultaneously restore the profile of Dunk Contest — without winning it. In fact, he should huddle with the judges beforehand and say, “Don’t let me win.” By taking part next year, thereby enhancing the showcase and honorably congratulating a worthy winner, he can show other stars that competing in the Dunk Contest is nothing of a gamble in terms of cred, brand or machismo.
I’ve got nothing against Paul George, Harrison Barnes, Ben McLemore, Terrance Ross and John Wall, all of whom are scheduled to do rim-rattling battle Saturday night. There are several legitimate up-and-coming stars in that field, an you gotta love anyone who attempts the rare 3-point/jam double (Lillard). But I would love to see LeBron compete against these guys, mano-a-mano, along with Josh Smith or maybe a healthy Russell Westbrook. If LeBron commits, other stars will follow — if only to compete against the King, and each other.
Interesting confluence of events both personal and national last week when embattled Rutgers University — struggling to salvage its basketball cred prior to moving from Big East to Big “10” in 2014 — hired NBA veteran Eddie Jordan to replace head coach Mike Rice, who was jettisoned after video surfaced early in April showing him crassly berating and physically abusing his “student athletes”.
[We’ll leave aside for the moment the fact that Rutgers knew about Rice’s antics long before the video was made public. That’s just more run-of-the-mill, big-time-college-athletics sleaze, and honestly, what more is there to add?]
What interested me more was the return of Jordan to his alma mater, where he played in the mid-1970s as a cog in one of college basketball’s most unheralded great teams — and the fact that I learned of his homecoming while kipping in the Marin County home of my boyhood friend Tom Wadlington.
That Scarlet Knight team, which went unbeaten in 1975-76 before falling to Michigan, Ricky Green and Phil Hubbard in the national semifinals, was even more visible to me, as a budding, 12-year-old college hoops freak, on account of Tom’s arrival in my hometown just two years prior. Tom had moved to Wellesley, Mass., from New Brunswick, N.J., where his parents, if I’m not mistaken, had both worked at Rutgers. He showed up in my 4th grade class, and on my various soccer teams, spewing all sorts of Rutgers propaganda. Much of it was dismissed for what it was — the meaningless parochialism of some pre-teen interloper.
But then, midway through the ‘75-76 season, it was clear that on the college basketball front, at least, Wad was not talking shit. These guys were really good and would eventually run the table, win the East Regional and go to the Final Four (not yet so branded, I don’t believe). They did so with Jordan at the point, Mike Dabney at shooting guard, super-smooth Phil Sellers at small forward, “Hoppin” Hollis Copeland at the 4, and Boston-bred freshman “Jumpin” James Bailey at center.
I think we all remember Larry Bird’s Indiana State team that went unbeaten before losing to Magic & Michigan State in the 1979 NCAA Final. But the long history of college basketball is not exactly littered with teams that go unbeaten over the course of a regular season, much less progress untarnished all the way to the Final Four. UCLA did it repeatedly in winning so many titles under John Wooden, and Indiana went unbeaten start to finish the same year Rutgers came so close, in 1975-76. Other teams that have won titles while going undefeated include Bill Russell and KC Jones’ USF teams in 1955 and 56, North Carolina a year later, UCLA four times, and Indiana.
But it gets thin when you search for teams that remained unbeaten all the way to the Final Four, only to lose there. Once we account for Rutgers and Indiana State, I recall these:
• Indiana went unbeaten the year before its golden campaign, only to lose in the Midwest Regional final to Kentucky, 92-90, largely because (Hoosiers will argue) star forward Scott May had broken his arm with 7 minutes to play.
• UNLV was 34-0 when it famously lost to Duke in the 1991 national semifinals.
I encourage anyone to set me straight, but I think that’s it: Seven teams went undefeated and won the title, only two more got to the Final Four unblemished.
Jordan has his work cut out for him in Jersey, to be sure. Maybe joining the Big “10” (I’m not sure how many teams are in that conference anymore, but it ain’t 10) will expand his recruiting territory, but Rice has seriously sullied Rutgers’ reputation and recruiting capability in the short term. And despite being located in the heart of a bountiful talent pool, Rutgers has never been that great or recruited many first-rate sons of Jersey (Roy Hinson tops a short list). The Scarlet Knights weren’t part of the original Big East, of course. They joined in 1995, and it could be argued, it didn’t benefit their basketball program a lick.
As for Tom Wadlington, he ultimately matriculated at Cal Berkeley and has since transferred all his propagandizing efforts (on behalf of collegiate athletics) to the Bears. But he did have this to say upon learning the news of Jordan’s hire: “He should bring Phil Sellers and Mike Dabney as assistants!”
PHILADELPHIA (Feb . 18, 2018) — When we learned my daughter Clara would matriculate at the University of Pennsylvania, naturally her dad was thrilled. Ivy League pride? Nah. Here was my chance to make a proper pilgrimage to The Palestra, the most storied college basketball venue of the 20th Century.
