![]() I'm not sure I miss the red-white-and-blue ball, though. Much of what the ABA pioneered has been adopted by today's NBA. Teams like the Celtics and the Lakers were known for pushing the ball, but all the teams in the ABA played up-tempo-it was a very exciting kind of game. During his two seasons, Erving averaged 26.3 points and 20.2 rebounds per contest. J,' played basketball for two seasons under legendary head coach and fellow UMass Hall of Famer Jack Leaman from 1969-71. The three-point line gave the little guys more of an opportunity because the floor was spread. Unquestionably the greatest known athlete in UMass history, Julius Erving, known simply to the world as 'Dr. I think the ABA was definitely the forerunner for today's game. Like what, they didn't happen?Ī lot of people know me for my scoring, but those other top stats are defensive. It happened to a lot of guys: five years of your statistics get kicked to the curb. Too often, when people talk about lifetime stats, they don't add in the ABA years. I was number one in steals-and there were two years when I was playing in which steals weren't kept as a statistic. When I retired from basketball, I was third-leading scorer behind Wilt Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But it took about 2 years for my palms to stop sweating when I would watch a game. Sometimes it's an accident waiting to happen. But I feel very, very comfortable with people calling me the Doctor or Dr. My parents are both deceased, so I honor them by introducing myself as Julius, because that's the name they gave me. ![]() So one day the trainer said to me: "Hey listen, you've got to be Dr. ![]() But when I got to the pros, there were already several people in the organization who were referred to as Doc or the Doctor-there was the physician, the trainer, and so forth. Saunders and I went to college together at UMass, so our nicknames followed. I was called that by my high school teammate, Leon Saunders, after I called him The Professor. Known as one of the greatest NBA players of all time-and the man who popularized the "slam" dunk-Julius Erving shares what he learned from 16 seasons of pro ball, and 30 years of post-basketball life.
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