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Expansion has led to more weaker teams added to the league which pads the win totals for the better teams.
I'll never believe it. Bristow hit the shot.
Expansion has led to more weaker teams added to the league which pads the win totals for the better teams.
You missed the most exciting spurs teams ever. When they were out to prove they belonged in the nba. San Antonio was known as the loudest arena in the league back then, and the spurs were a high scoring fun to watch, run and gun team. I also liked Doug Moe.
Do any of you guys remember the 'power failure' in this game as well?
The Spurs made a run and were up by several points in the third quarter I believe and they clearly had the momentum. Then the lights literally went out in the Capitol Centre and they stopped the game for a few minutes to 'fix' the problem.
I just recall Terry Stembridge being very skeptical about the sudden timing of the problem.
I remember that game. In later days, I remember the Jazz using the same trick against SA in their gym.
Just to make it official that some of us are old, Henry Bibby (father of Mike) and Joe Bryant (father of Kobe) were on that roster.
We just started young.
That means we just have more Spurs historical references and highlights to educate you youngsters on the board.
In a few years, you too will be harking back to the good ol' days when a guy named Duncan was playing for the team....and newbies will be calling you old too - even though you may not be.
The loudest arena was Memorial Coliseum in Portland back then.
Gotta disagree with you bro.
The old Hemisfair Arena, the one that seated around 10,500...before they raised the roof on it and added 6,000 seats......that place would shake.
I was a ballboy from 1974-1981...there were many, many nights after a game, I could hear the ringing in my ears on the drive home with my dad.
Loud, rowdy people to begin with...they only got moreso after consuming mass quan ies of Lone Star beer on dime beer nites.
Good point. I was not aware of it happening at the time, because I was listening to the game from a rooftop in Boston (because we could get a DC AM radio signal), and it kept fading in and out.
I know they have shown that game on NBA's Greatest Games with commentary from Ice and Bobby Dandridge. Ice specifically stated that he though the power outage was rigged. Dandrige wouldn't comment.
Sitting on the steps after buying SRO tickets. Those were the days.
No - moreso the fact that Doug Collins was even on the team. That's usually an automatic 50-loss season, but they were able to win 47 because he was injured that year and didn't pull out another silver medal performance.
Can some of you old school Spurs tell me what came down with that traiter owner and on the take coach who let Michael Thompson go to the Lakers in '87 for a cup of coffee in return? Right at the trade deadline so the Flamers could get the PF they desperately needed. I think that coach lost like 25 straight to the Fakers in an era when that just didn't happen. Or was that Phoenix who rolled up and bent over every game vs those Lakers? Cotton Fitzsimmons? Bob Weiss?
1. The power outage was in Game 6, I believe, and not Game 7. Danny Ferry (whose dad was the Bullets GM at the time) still claims that he pulled the switch. There was also a screwup in Game 6 where some of the Spurs jerseys didn't arrive/got lost and part of the team had to wear inside-out Bullets road jerseys. I remember Mike Gale on the cover of SI with that Bullets jersey on. Needless to say, the NBA has come a long way in the past 30 years or so.
That series broke my heart. The reason why the call by Vanak was so scrutinized was because there was a lot of bad blood between the old guard NBA and the influx of ABA teams, especially from assholes like Red Auerbach, and the conspiracy theories about the league not wanting an ABA team as champion so close to the merger were flying everywhere. Peter Vecsey wrote an awesome article about that call a couple of years ago.
2. The Michael Thompson trade netted the Spurs a first round draft pick (Greg "Cadillac" Anderson), Frank Brickowski and Petur Gudmundsson. It definitely gave the Lakers what they needed to win the championship that year, but the Spurs were rebuilding and needed all the help they could get. Cadillac actually turned out to be decent for a few years until somebody realized that he had the worst hands in the history of the nba. Fortunately, they didn't really figure that out before he and Alvin Robertson were traded for Terry mings.
EDIT: I found the Vecsey article:
Turn back the crock: Spurs got robbed in '79
Chicago Sun-Times, Jun 12, 2005 by Peter Vecsey
SAN ANTONIO -- While the rest of you focus on the Spurs' effort to dethrone the Pistons and win their third NBA le, I'll never get over how they got jobbed in Game 7 of the '79 Eastern Conference finals against the Bullets.
Accordingly, the Spurs were prevented from beating up on the Sonics for the championship that should've been theirs.
While ABC is unremittingly zeroing in on Eva Longoria, Tony Parker's trophy girlfriend, I can't get retired referee John Vanak out of my flat-bed mind.
With roughly 2:35 left in a series they once controlled three games to one, the Spurs had possession and led by seven points at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md. James Silas came off a screen set by Billy Paultz that floored Tom Henderson, and Vanak whistled The Whopper for a moving violation.
Bad call
While all eyes were trained Thursday night on the classic individual matchup between Rasheed Wallace and Tim Duncan, I'm picturing Henderson getting up in front of play-by-play voice Terry (There will be another night") Stembridge, doing his last game for the Spurs; the product of DeWitt Clinton High School laughed all the way downcourt, knowing he'd put one over big time on the veteran official.
At the other end, Bobby Dandridge quickly nailed a jumper over Larry Kenon, and the spread was down to five. Despite a 42-point leather rush by George Gervin, the Spurs never recovered Mo-Mentum (as Larry Merchant wrote back in the day before ditching us for HBO) or their wits and lost 107-105.
You'd think it was fixed," coach Doug Moe was quoted afterward completely in context, attests Kevin O'Keeffe, who covered the Spurs at the time for the San Antonio Express-News.
Twenty-six years later, Jeff Van Gundy unwisely broached the same taboo, questioning the integrity of the game and its whistle- blowers ... earning a 100G fine by the league and a reward (two- year extension) by the Rockets despite being outdistanced in the opening round by the Mavericks in Game 7.
Though Moe denied making such an inflammatory statement, he got fined 5G anyway. Radio station KTSA immediately set up a relief fund and collected 500,000 pennies to help out a vanquished antihero.
While the assembled media mob from throughout the world hangs on each word of every player and coach hoping to hear something distinctive, Motta's industrial-strength bluntness continues to reverberate in my cluttered attic.
The Spurs dropped the last three games by a total of 14 points (four, eight and two). The middle one was in San Antonio. Afterward the Bullets coach declared he'd detected the confidence of his opponent beginning to fold up along the dotted lines.
I saw that look in their eyes," Motta dared to say.
Fat lady
After Washington's previous victory, Dan Cook, a columnist for the Express-News and an on-air correspondent for CBS-KENS, either wrote or said (probably both), The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings."
Music to Motta's antennae; without delay he seized the unforgettable phrase and liberally used it as his own war chant from that moment on. Naturally, the rest of us picked it up and pulverized it as well. Bartlett's Quotations gives Cook full credit.
While everyone is rightfully enraptured by Duncan's dream weaving and the Spurs' success over the last seven seasons in spite of playing in a small market and being under-subsidized compared to the battalion of billionaires they're competing against, I'm in awe of what the franchise has been able to accomplish since the Spurs, Nets, Pacers and Nuggets united with the NBA in '76.
Great franchise
In all that time, the Spurs have only had two real down periods, the one preceding the drafting of David Robinson and the one (because of The Admiral's injury) preceding the drafting of Duncan. They were a playoff team with Moe, won three division les in the early '80s under Stan Albeck, were combative under Cotton Fitzsimmons, hard to extinguish with Larry Brown and a perennial championship contender when Gregg Popovich joined forces with Robinson and Duncan.
While USA Today and others deservedly are throwing bouquets at owner Peter Holt for hiring Popovich and his posse to run the front office and not meddling in personnel decisions, I'm reflecting on the expired spirit of Angelo Drossos (and wife Lillie), a former car salesman and boxing promoter who wouldn't settle for anything short of inclusion in a merger.
I'm also waxing wistfully about Red McCombs (and wife Charline), who bought out Drossos and recently sold the Vikings, and his way with words. He once accused O'Keeffe of asking an inappropriate question. If I answer it one way, you'll say I lied. And if I answer it the other way, I'll give you something you don't need to know."
While everyone is locked into the '05 Finals, I'm stuck on the notion that if Vanak hadn't made that call, the Spurs wouldn't have had to wait until 1999 to become the first ABA team to win an NBA le; it would've happened three years after the consolidation.
Couldn't have been. It was a 2-2-1-1-1 format, and game 6 was at the HemisFair.
Good article on the Ferry legend. I had forgotten about that.
The jersey screwup was in the 1978 ECSF series against the Bullets. Game 3, I believe.There was also a screwup in Game 6 where some of the Spurs jerseys didn't arrive/got lost and part of the team had to wear inside-out Bullets road jerseys. I remember Mike Gale on the cover of SI with that Bullets jersey on. Needless to say, the NBA has come a long way in the past 30 years or so.
Thanks for the Vecsey article.
Oh, and Terry Stembridge was the greatest announcer in Spurs history, and one of the greatest play-by-play guys of all time in any sport. It's too bad he decided not to stay with the Spurs, or he would easily have been in the Hall of Fame.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but I will rely on Vecsey as a source on the Vanak or Madden question.
Yeah, I know, I was thinking the same thing. But it would have been hard for him to go into that much detail and screw it up. Guess I was wrong on the Paultz vs. Olberding thing, too.
I know S.A has been in the NBA for a while,But I think Is the most underrated franchise in NBA(as far as elite teams)
BTW,Parker,Manu,bowen,Duncan,Robinson in 2002 was the best S.A lineup ever.(in my opinion).I know manu wasn´t starting, but they were together at some point on the floor.
Remember in 1976 when Dave Cowens and some Celtics went up into the stands to fight some fans at the HemisFair?
Strangely enough, nobody was calling for the abolishment of the NBA when Cowens did it . . .
I don't remember that. I do recall Cowens and Bird allegedly spit on and wacked a fan with a duffel bag after a game in 1980. Dude sued them and jury found them not guilty.
I've got a question for the older guys. My dad has always told me that the Baseline Bums were practically a 6th man back in those early days. The example that he often gives is that when this 76ers team would come to town, Darrell Dawkins would not get the warmest of welcomes. Did they really throw bananas at Dawkins or is my old man just exaggerating???
They threw them and had 'em hanging from a big bamboo pole that Big George would wave. You'd even see a gorilla suit or two up in that section.
Big George!!! He's told me about this guy too. A real nice guy from what I hear. Wow, my old man's stories are actually turning out to be true. This is a first!
I wish I could have experienced some of those old games. My first game was at Hemisfair in 1990 when I was 9 years old so those games were before my time.
Keep those stories coming guys. This is interesting stuff.
I used to date one of the original bunch of the bums, and have a lot of stories. I could't join or sit with them because even I, with my potty mouth, was embarrassed at the name calling and language they aimed at opponents. Not to mention projectiles like bananas at Dawkins or guacamole at Larry Brown.
The Bums were so active they used to charter a bus for the Houston games--not playoffs necessarily, just plain old games. I went on one of those and swore off. We drank tequila and a keg of beer all the way to Houston 'to get ready' as I recall. In the old Houston arena they had tails delivered to your seats. That was all we needed--more "readiness"
I remember one Bum had one of those long red plastic horns that sounded like a diesel truck horn when it went off. He kept blowing it and finally an exquisitely dressed Houston lady sitting in front of him turned around, almost in tears, and asked him to quit blowing it. Wrong move. He deliberately blew it next to her ears until she and her husband left the arena.
It was a victory of sorts I guess.Until the cops came.
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