Dr. J was bad. And so cool.
NBA TV’s new documentary The Doctor overflows with incredible adjectives, stories and highlights of the Hall-of-Fame basketball career of Julius ‘Dr. J’ Erving. The film, which follows up on the success of last year’s look at the famous 1992 Dream Team, explores how Erving became the legend he is known as today.
In an era without social media and instant YouTube highlight reels, Erving built his early reputation by word of mouth. He dazzled on New York’s playgrounds and the courts of the ABA without any of the fanfare that today greets players who haven’t even reached high school.
Here are 5 of the film’s most intriguing moments:
1) Family loss fueled Dr J’s competitive flare
Certain athletes just have an edge about them. Maybe it’s how they play or the dedication they show in their respective sport. Part of Erving’s ‘edge’ which led him to a wildly successful basketball career is rooted in his relationship with his younger brother Marvin.
Separated by just three years, the two brothers were a constant duo on and off the basketball court growing up. Erving reveals in the film that Marvin was often sick, suffering from asthma and occasionally breaking out with rashes.
“That made me more protective,” Erving says of his brother’s bouts with sickness. “Subbing in for the father’s role and being more than a big brother.”
The two were incredibly close and their bond remained strong even as Julius went off to the University of Massachusetts to play basketball. Marvin visited him on campus his freshman year and Julius remembers his brother complaining about joint pain.
Once Marvin’s visit ended and he returned home to Long Island, he was hospitalized and diagnosed with lupus. Erving also returned home some months later when his brother’s condition worsened. At the hospital, Erving remembers his brother’s last words:
“I’m really tired,” Erving recalls in one of the more poignant moments in the film. “[The angels] need to come and get me.”
Overwhelmed but not defeated, Erving used his brother’s death as momentum to push forward. He returned to UMass for his sophomore season and dominated.
“When I line up against an opponent who is only thinking of [facing me], now I got two spirits in there,” Erving said. “I got mine. I got my brother’s. I have a slight advantage.”
In two varsity seasons at UMass, Erving averaged 26 points and 20 rebounds. His next stop would be the American Basketball Association.
2) Respect from the basketball world
You knew Magic Johnson would be all over a documentary about Julius Erving. And sure enough, he serves up one of the film’s most memorable lines:
“When greatness meets class, that’s what God created in Dr. J.”
Following the Sixers’ loss to Portland in the 1977 NBA Finals, Erving instructed his teammates to enter the visitors’ locker room to congratulate the champs. His teammate World B. Free couldn’t believe it and would have preferred to start a fight instead. But Erving’s diplomacy prevailed and his team joined him.
He is just that cool.
When Erving announced that the 1986 season would be his last, the basketball world took note and paid homage. Charles Barkley, a teammate of Erving’s for three seasons in Philadelphia, said playing with Doc was like “being around royalty.”
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The Doctor shows retirement ‘celebrations’ opposing teams held for Erving during the regular season. All-time greats like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Larry Bird honoring Erving at center court is a testament to both his greatness and the way Erving carried himself on and off the court. The Nets franchise retired his #32.
In his first season in the NBA, Erving adjusted his game for the greater good of his team. He averaged a modest-by-his-standards 21.6 points per game, which was behind his ex-ABA mates David Thompson and George Gervin. When asked about Thompson and Gervin scoring more than him, Erving responded in classic form:
“Well scoring is an individual statistic and I think the objectives of the team are things that have to be paramount and have to come first,” Erving said.
How can you not respect that?
When the Sixers captured their first NBA Championship, Lakers coach Pat Riley came into their locker room to personally congratulate Erving.
“You give those who really deserve it their just due when it’s time,” Riley said. I couldn’t agree more.
A statue of Erving stood outside of The Spectrum, the Sixers’ former home before it was demolished in 2009. There’s a new entertainment complex there now but the statue remains.
3) Dr J’s dunk victims speak
The highlights looked painful. Not for Erving, of course – but all the players he put on posters during his career. Fortunately for viewers, The Doctor tells the victims’ side of the story.
My father always talked about that dunk in ’83 where Erving grabbed a loose ball, drove the length of the court and cuff cradled a monster slam over the Lakers’ Michael Cooper:
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It didn’t look fair and you couldn’t help but feel for Cooper as he ducked his head as Doc soared seemingly to the heavens.
“When Doctor J broke down the sideline, I was like ‘Ok this is my chance to make a great play against a great player,’” Cooper recalls colorfully. “But that didn’t happen so I just said, ‘You know what? Let me just duck my head and get out of the way.’ The greatest dunk of all-time. You know what? If you’re going to get dunked on by anyone, why not let it be the best in the game?”
Another staple highlight in Erving’s storied career is his monster dunk on Portland center Bill Walton in Game 6 of the 1977 NBA Finals. Walton remembers a relentless Erving who finished the contest with a game-high 40 points.
“He never stopped coming at ya,” Walton said. “And there was this one moment where…I thought I had him.”
He certainly did not:
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What’s also great about the film is that we learn about the basketball stories before Erving’s ABA and NBA days. Enter New York City’s famous Rucker Park.
Erving began playing there as a teenager and his array of moves and dunks brought record-breaking crowds in the summer. One game, he had an up close and personal encounter with Tom Hoover, who played forward for teams in both the ABA and NBA.
“He came down one time, I had the angle on him,” Hoover describes. “He dunked the ball so bad, the ball hit me on top of the head. My teeth fell down on the ground. The crowd roared. I had scrambled to grab [my teeth] off the ground to put them back in my mouth. That helped build his reputation.”
We can neither confirm nor deny Hoover’s version of the events. But with all of Erving’s Rucker Park feats, we tend to believe a lost tooth or two isn’t out of the question.
4) Erving inspired one of Jordan’s most famous moments
The video of Michael Jordan taking off from the free throw line during the 1988 Slam Dunk Contest in Chicago is one of his career’s signature moments. It’s a dunk that he had attempted and made twice before in the ’85 and ’87 contests.
But the ’88 contest was special. It was on Jordan’s home court and the originator of the free throw line jam was in the audience. Erving looked on as Jordan wondered what dunk he would attempt, trailing his dunk nemesis Dominique Wilkins 145-97 in the final round. The dunk had to be special.
It had to show what made ‘Air’ Jordan. And then MJ took flight.
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“I didn’t know what to do, then all of a sudden, I found the guy who started it all,” Jordan says in a television interview following his free throw line dunk. “He was looking at me and he pointed [to the backcourt].”
The judges awarded Jordan a perfect ’50,’ which propelled him to a victory over Wilkins. There’s no doubt that parts of Dr. J’s aerial wizardry had found its way to number 23.
“When he left the game, he left with a lot of class and a lot of dignity,” Jordan says of Erving in an interview that same year. “That’s something that, if I don’t even win a world championship or MVP award ever, that is something I would love to walk away from the game and have.”
And we all know what happened next.
5) Don’t forget Erving’s ABA days
Sure, it wasn’t the NBA. But there are reasons the NBA plucked the best that league had to offer and incorporated them into their league. In five seasons, Erving won two titles, scored more than 4,500 points, won three scoring titles and collected three MVPs.
Simply put, he was the league.
When the league folded/merged in 1976, so did the achievements of many of its future NBA stars. The statistical dilemma will remind some of the achievements of NFL quarterback Warren Moon. Moon spent six seasons in the Canadian Football League before making his NFL debut in 1984.
“I think that’s a little unfair,” Erving told CBS Sports’ Ken Berger when asked why NBA record books don’t honor ABA stats. “There are guys who played professional basketball for five years, seven years, eight years, and it’s like they never existed. So I feel more for them.”
Leave it to Erving to again put his fellow superstars before himself. That’s why he is revered. That’s why he is ‘The Doctor.’
‘The Doctor’ premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET on NBA TV.
Follow theGrio’s Todd Johnson on Twitter @rantoddj