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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2594733, member: 289"] THE PLAYERS New faces on the scene, (mostly form the ABA, although the faces weren’t all that new), included MEL DANIELS, the best center the ABA ever had. I always thought of him as the closest thing to Bill Russell in the ABA except Mel could score better than Bill. Mel had virtually the same dimensions: 6-9 220, (some sources list Bill as 6-9, others as 6-10). He was an All-American at New Mexico and was the star of the team that beat the first SU basketball team I ever followed wire-to-wire, the 1966-67 post-Dave Bing team. He went to the Minnesota Muskies of the ABA and led the league in rebounds his first year with 15.6 while scoring 22.2ppg. The Muskies had the second best record in the league at 50-28 and Mel was easily the biggest reason why: he had 5 points and 6 rebounds a game more than anybody else on the team. The Muskies were bleeding red financially and they both moved to Miami and sold Daniels’ contract to the Indiana Pacers, his home for the next 6 seasons. He led the league in rebounding three times with a high of 18.0 and scored as high as 24.0, averaging 18.4/14.9 for his career, (rebounds started getting harder to come by as shooting percentages were going up). With Mel the Pacers won three ABA titles. Mel was Rookie of the Year in 1968 and MVP in 1969 and 1971. Injuries curtailed Mel’s career and he played only one year in the NBA, the first season after the merger in 1976-77. He played 11 games as a reserve for a former ABA team, the New York Nets. The ABA lasted 9 seasons and several of its stars played out the prime of their careers in that league, leaving the question of how good they actually were unanswered. But that works both ways. They may have been over-rated in their time by ABA fans but they tend to be under-rated by current fans. Mel’s record was sterling enough to get him elected to the Hall of Fame in 2012. He holds the record for the fewest single-digit scoring games in his career for a HOFer with 12. Michael Jordan had 13. [URL="http://www.nba.com/2012/news/features/steve_aschburner/08/30/mel-daniels-hall-of-fame/"]Hall of Fame inductee Mel Daniels a titan of the ABA[/URL] Video tribute: [MEDIA=youtube]QlPkdbReX28[/MEDIA] Nobody knows who JOHN BEASLEY was now. Well, he does, I’m sure and so do his family and friends. If you type his name into Wikipedia, you’ll get a list of John Beasleys and he’s #5 on the list behind a musician, an actor, a cyclist, an Egyptologist and a football player. John played for Texas A&M, hardly a basketball powerhouse back in the 60’s. But he was a 6-9 225 power forward for the Dallas Chaparrals of the ABA. His first three years he averaged between 18.3 and 19.7ppg and was MVP of the 1969 all-star game. He was still productive at 15.9/9.2 in 1971-72 as the “Texas Chaparrals”, (they eventually became the San Antonio Spurs), but his production was nothing but single digits after that. I haven’t been able to find the reason but I assume it was injuries. He played a couple of years as a back-up for the Utah Stars and then retried. He never played in the NBA. I found no clips of John in action but he was named the #7 player in Spurs history, (even though he never played as a Spur): [URL="https://hoopshabit.com/2016/08/29/san-antonio-spurs-25-best-players/"]San Antonio Spurs: 25 Best Players To Play For The Spurs[/URL] RED ROBBINS is another forgotten name. He was a smaller than Daniels and Beasley at 6-8 190 but, per Wikipedia, he was “nicknamed for his red hair, as well as his fiery personality, and he gained a reputation as one of the toughest players in the league, grabbing over 6,000 rebounds in his career. Robbins was also a solid offensive contributor with above-average shooting range.” He played for five different ABA teams from 1967-75. He never reached quite the statistical heights of Daniels and Beasley (his best year was 1969-70 when he averaged 16.4/16.2) but he was able to maintain his production, averaging 14.1/7.6 in his final season. He was never quite a star, just a respected player who did the dirty work for some good teams. He often played as an under-sized center but gave as good as he got. “In Game 7 of the 1971 ABA Finals, he made eleven out of twelve field goals to lead the Utah Stars to a league title.” I also found no clips of Red in action. [URL="http://www.remembertheaba.com/abaarticles/pattisonarticlerobbins.html"]Remember the ABA: Red Robbins: "The Big Easy" (by Dan Pattison)[/URL] The JONES boys, JIMMY and LARRY weren’t really related but they often seemed to be next to each other in the stats. Larry was the older man by 3 years and came out of the University of Toledo. He’d been drafted by the Philadelphia 76ers but were assigned by them to play minor league ball, (yes they could do that back then, too). He did manage to play in 23 games for the Sixers, averaging 5.7ppg. “When the American Basketball Association was created in 1967, Jones called and wrote to every team in the league, the Denver Rockets were the only one to answer.” (Wikipedia). Larry took off for the wild blue yonder in Denver, scoring 22.9 his first year, leading the league with 28.4 in his second year and 24.9 his third year. That second year he scored 30 points in 23 consecutive games with a high of 52. He was a good rebounder for his size, (7.9 that first year and learned to get his teammates involved, too, (5.7assists his third year). He was only making $23,000 per year and rebelled when rookie Spencer Haywood signed a contract for $1.9 million after his Olympic stardom. Jones demanded a trade and got it- to Miami where he had one more really good season before his decline began. His scoring average went from 24.3 to 17.6 to 8.7. The team folded and he was picked by the Utah Stars in the dispersal draft. He then got traded to the Chaparrals. He wound up back with the Sixers the year after they bottomed out at 9-73 and scored 10.0ppg for them, then played in Europe for a while. “He was said to be weak on defense and team play” but “It was speculated that his tenure of the head of the Players' Association discouraged clubs from signing the former all-time ABA scoring leader”. I found no video on Larry, either. [URL="https://www.denverpost.com/2011/01/24/larry-jones-former-denver-rocket-guard/"]Larry Jones, former Denver Rocket guard – The Denver Post[/URL] Jimmy, like Willis Reed below, was a Grambling graduate, (they were teammates in 1963-64). Reed: “You never had to worry about Jimmy. There were never any problems with him at all. He was a good teammate.” Jones “Willis encouraged me to be a leader as a guard, that it wasn’t all about the big men on the team.” Jones was a classic “big guard” at 6-4 188 and averaged 20.1p and 8.2r during his collegiate career as the Tigers won the SWAC title every year. He was drafted by the NBA Baltimore Bullets and the ABA New Orleans Buccaneers but opted for the Bucs, despite a lower offer. “I took less money from the ABA, but felt I could have a better chance of contributing and playing a lot.” And he did play a lot. He averaged 18.8p 5.7r 2.3a as a rookie them upped that to 26.6/5.7/5.7 his second year, finishing second in scoring to Larry Jones. His scoring then leveled off to 20.7, 19.6, 15.5, 16.7 and 16.8 the next five years but his assists kept going up, reaching a peak of 6.2 in in 1971-72. By that time he was with the Utah Stars, (it seems everyone wound up there at some point). He was even better in the playoffs, scoring 30.2ppg in 1969 and over 20ppg three other times. He jumped to the NBA at age 30 to play for what were now the Washington Bullets. He was reserve for them behind Kevin porter and Phil Chenier, (both 24 years old) and only averaged 7.1ppg. He played in that year’s NBA finals, losing to the Warriors. He played two more years for the Bullets in the same role and then retired. Here’s Jimmy playing in a game between the NBA and ABA all-stars in 1972: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMICKx16690"]Jimmy Jones (7pts/5asts) vs. NBA All-Stars (1972)[/URL] These games were played in 1971 and 1972, over the objections of the NBA, (the player’s associations organized the games). The NBA won both but the margins were so close, (125-120 and 106-104) that the ABA was the real winner, having proved that they could compete with the more established circuit. [URL="http://20secondtimeout.blogspot.com/2009/02/abas-unsung-heroes.html"]20 Second Timeout: Supergames I & II: The 1971 and 1972 NBA-ABA All-Star Games[/URL] Like his former college teammate, WILLIS REED was one of an increasing number of players from what we now call the “Historically Black Schools”. He was a two-time NAIA All-American and averaged 18.7p/15.2r for his career there, 26.6/21.3 as a senior. Reed was drafted by the New York Knicks, the only team he would ever play for, in 1964. At 6-9 235 he was a bit undersized for an NBA center but he made up for that with tough, aggressive play on both ends. He averaged 19.5 points and 14.7 rebounds in 1964-65 and won the NBA Rookie of the year award. He had no sooner establish himself as the Knicks’ center when, in his second year, the team obtained Walt Bellamy from a trade with the Bullets. “Bells”, at 6-11 240, was more the normal size of an NBA center and had already established himself as one of the league’s elite centers, so Willis became a power forward. That first year, Bellamy averaged 23.2/16.0, Reed 15.5/11.6 and the team went 30-50. The next year Bellamy went 19.0/13.5 to Reed’s 20.9/14.6 and the team improved to 36-45. In 1967-68, Bellamy scored 16.7/11.7 and reed 20.8/13.2 as the Knicks went 43-39. In 1968-69, the Knicks started 18-17 and traded Bellamy, moving Reed back to center. They went 36-11 the rest of the regular season with Willis having his best statistical season with 21.1/14.6. They upset the division champion Bullets 4-0 in the playoffs before the Celtic’s Old Men figured out how to beat them. But the Knicks had become a championship-level team and Willis Reed was a big reason why. It all came together in 1969-70. Willis had another productive year at 21.7/13.9 and was also anchored the team’s strong defense, plugging up the lane and blocking shots. He was named MVP of the league. The Knicks went 60-22, beat the Bullets again, (this time in a tough 7 game series with Willis battling Wes Unseld underneath). Then they beat the league’s new power- the Milwaukee Bucks with Lew Alcindor, (who had not yet changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), in 5 games. Then they won classic seven game series with the Lakers for the title, (Jerry West must have thought fate was water-boarding him). The game for which Willis Reed will always be remembered was a game in which he scored 4 points. He had torn his right thigh muscle in game 5 and missed game 6 entirely. It was assumed he would be unavailable for game 7 at MSG. 19,500 spectators waited to see if he would come out of the Knick’s dressing room with the rest of the team. [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84v5cazK8lc"]The "Willis Reed Game" - Sportscentury[/URL] That’s what he’ll always be remembered for. It was the first of a series of injuries that would curtail his career. He had another strong season the next year, (20.9/13.7) but his knees had started to bother him. He played only 11 games in 1971-72 due to tendinitis in his left knee. He played 69 games the next year but Willis only averaged 27 minutes a game and scored 13.4/8.7. He was on the Knick’s second title team in 1973 but shared time with the newly acquired Jerry Lucas and produced 11.0/8.6. He played only 19 games the next year and then retired. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1982. A video tribute: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzzFkpBMGOQ"]Basketballography: Willis Reed[/URL] [/QUOTE]

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