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Ask a non-basketball fan about “The Iceman” and they might respond that it was a terrible sci-fi film from the 1980s about a prehistoric man who gets resuscitated. Ask a basketball fan and they will tell you that the real Iceman was George Gervin, who earlier this month was named 1 of the 75 greatest players in NBA history. His sensational scoring ability revealed itself during his sophomore year at Eastern Michigan when he scored 29.5 PPG in 1972. After joining the San Antonio Spurs he won the 1978 scoring title by scoring 63 points in the final game of the regular season (including a then-NBA record 33 points in the 2nd quarter) while sitting out the entire 4th quarter. He won 3 more scoring titles during a 4-year span from 1979-1982, finishing his career with the most scoring titles of any guard in NBA history prior to some guy named Michael Jordan. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with George about his famous “finger roll” and being a great scorer. Today marks the 25th anniversary of George being named 1 of the 50 greatest players in NBA history on October 29, 1996, so we take this time to celebrate his legacy.
As a kid you played basketball at a cousin’s house with a young neighbor named Ralph Simpson (who later was your teammate on the West squad in the 1975 ABA All-Star Game): who was the better player growing up, and what was it like to finally become his teammate a couple of decades later? Ralph was the better player back then: we all admired him when we were growing up. He does not get enough credit for his game in college. We played a lot during the summer and I am truly a fan.
Virginia Squires scout Johnny Kerr allegedly saw you score 52 PTS for the Pontiac Chaparrals in the Eastern Basketball Association and then signed you to a contract for $40,000/year, but another rumor is that you made 22-25 3-PT shots at a tryout for Virginia and they immediately signed you without ever having seen you play an actual game: which is the real story? Johnny saw me playing for a semi-pro team and I scored about 38 PPG: he happened to be at a game where I scored 52 and they flew me in for a tryout. I made a ton of threes and they signed me on the spot.
In the winter of 1974 Virginia owner Earl Foreman sold you to San Antonio and then changed his mind, followed by Spurs owner Angelo Drossos filing a lawsuit and a judge granting a permanent injunction allowing you to play for Spurs: what was it like to watch your career being decided in a court of law? You never want to end up in the court system. It was tough for me to go through that as a 20-year old but it showed me how the basketball business worked.
Your trademark move was the finger roll, which you could do from as far away as the FT line: how did you 1st develop the move, and what made it so effective? Wilt Chamberlain/Dr. J/Connie Hawkins each had their own version of the move: I studied how they did it and then created my own type to make it famous.
In Game 7 of the 1976 ABA Semifinals you scored a game-high 31 PTS in a 7-PT loss to eventual champion New York: how difficult was it for you to switch from forward to guard after teammate James Silas got hurt? It was pretty easy for me because I was only 185 pounds at the time: it helped change my entire career when I became a 2-guard. I fought it at 1st but it became real easy for me.
Take me through the final day of the 1978 NBA season:
You needed to score 59 PTS to edge out David Thompson for the scoring title after Thompson had scored 73 PTS only hours earlier: did you think you still had a chance to overtake him? I did not really think about it at the time but Coach Doug Moe found out and told me what I had to do.
You started off your own game at New Orleans by missing 6 six straight shots/calling timeout/asking your teammates to give up the chase, but they ignored your request and you ended up scoring a career-high 63 PTS in only 33 minutes while sitting out the entire 4th quarter in a loss to win the scoring title: how on earth did you score a then-NBA-record 33 PTS in the 2nd quarter, and what did it mean to you to win the scoring title? It was my 1st scoring title: the beauty of having a good relationship with my team is that they set picks for me and gave me the ball. They kept edging me on and I ended up with 53 PTS in the 1st half. I technically scored 59…but made sure to score a few more in case they miscalculated!
You led the NBA in scoring each year from 1978-1980 (including a high of 33.1 PPG in 1980) and again in 1982, and your career 25.1 PPG remains #10 all-time: what is your secret for being a great scorer? I was fundamentally sound and knew how to score. I could drive to the basket or shoot off the dribble and I made a lot of in-between shots so scoring was easy for me: it all came from preparation.
Take me through the 1979 playoffs:
You had 33 PTS/12 REB and made 2 FT with 11 seconds left to clinch a 3-PT win over Philly in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals: how big a deal was it to finally win a 7-game playoff series victory after the Spurs had lost each of their 9 previous 7-game series? Philly had Dr. J. at the time and I had a lot of respect for him so it was a big win for our franchise.
You scored 42 PTS in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals but Bob Dandridge made a 16-footer over 3 defenders with 8 seconds left in a 2-PT win by Washington to win the series after coming back from 3-1 deficit: did you agree with Coach Doug Moe that the refs were to blame after calling 7 fouls against your team in the final 4 minutes? We could have become the 1st ABA franchise to get to the NBA Finals. I do not blame the refs…but the lights went out in the building for 12 minutes which totally ruined our momentum, and once they came back on the Bullets got their own momentum.
In the 1984 NBA All-Star game you scored 13 PTS in a 9-PT OT loss: how on earth did your West team lose despite fielding a Hall of Fame starting lineup of you/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Magic Johnson/Alex English/Adrian Dantley? I still do not believe that we lost while having such an amazing team: I guess you have to give the East a lot of credit. I thought we had that 1 in the bag but it just goes to show that anything can happen in the All-Star Game.
In 1996 you were inducted into the Hall of Fame and named 1 of the NBA’s 50 Greatest of all-time: where do these honors rank among the highlights of your career? I want to be remembered as 1 of the greats who had a tremendous impact on the game of basketball. I loved the game and played it the way that it was supposed to be played.
Puppet Ramblings: A Statement Regarding Next Month’s NCAA Special Convention
If the Power Five creates their own division within the NCAA, or leaves the NCAA entirely, I seriously doubt I’ll even care about college basketball anymore.
That’s not a threat. I wish it were, but the reality is I’m not in a position of any real power or influence, so I couldn’t make it a threat even if I wanted to. It’s just a statement as to what my feelings are. I just won’t care anymore. I probably won’t watch it nearly as often, and I probably won’t be interested in doing all that much with Hoops HD anymore. I suspect that I am far from the only person that feels this way. I believe that millions of other people (maybe even tens of millions) feel the same way. But, I don’t know that for a fact. I only know how I feel about it, and that’s pretty much how I feel.
To bring you up to speed, the NCAA released a statement today, which was really just bunch of words that said nothing more than that they had met and they had a plan. Geez, THAT’S GREAT!!! (CLICK HERE TO READ THE STATEMENT). What we know at this point is that a new “Transformation Committee” has been created, and that there is a Special Convention next month, and that the topic at hand is possibly creating a new division within the NCAA. That’s really all we know. What we don’t know for certain, but that may be of high concern, is that the changes being discussed will consist of the Power Five/Autonomy Five (ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12) becoming their own division, and threatening to leave the NCAA altogether if that doesn’t happen.
We’ve heard these rumblings for close to 30 years now, and perhaps even longer than that. We’ve heard them for so long that it has become very easy to ignore them. It’s a fire alarm in a college dorm. It always goes off, but the building is never on fire, so you just start ignoring it. I don’t think we should ignore it this time. The building may actually be on fire. The moans and groans from the P5 as to how unhappy they are with the NCAA seem to have grown in both size and sound. It’s now louder, and bigger, and coming from more people. In some cases, I can kind of understand the gripes. They don’t feel that some of the NCAA rules, and policies, and governance that has been put in place for low performing Under the Radar schools is in the best interests of the P5 schools and they don’t want to be bound by it. But my response to that is that they already have a great deal of autonomy, so I don’t quite understand why they would need to form their own division to get the governance that they want.
Another, perhaps bigger, issue is the revenue sharing. They feel they should get more of it. Okay, I can understand that. That’s only natural. But, my response to this is that they already get more of it. A LOT more of it!! So one of the questions I have for them is how much more they think they can actually get by creating their own division and/or leaving the NCAA altogether?? And…from where would more money come from??
Do they think it will come from TV?? Every conference has its own independent media deal. The Big Ten, Pac 12, ACC, and SEC even have their own networks. Their membership with the NCAA does not require them to share any of that. So, how would leaving the NCAA result in them getting any more money from TV??
Do they think it will come from football?? The College Football Playoff (CFP) does share revenue with all ten conferences (meaning both the P5 and the G5), but the lions share of it goes to the P5, and the access to the playoff itself is so slanted toward the P5 that it practically an exclusively a P5 event. It TECHNICALLY isn’t, but it PRACTICALLY is. No non-P5 team has ever been selected for the CFP, and while Cincinnati may be selected this year, they will also become a P5 program next year. The NCAA has no control at all over the CFP. It is not an NCAA Championship Event. No NCAA trophy is awarded. There is no required shared revenue throughout the NCAA membership. So with that in mind, when it comes to FBS football, the P5 has practically pretty much already left the NCAA. They have their own championship that is pretty much exclusively for their own teams and while not all the revenue goes to them, it might as well because the share that the G5 gets is so much less.
And now for the big question…Do they think it will come from having their own basketball tournament?? If that’s what they think, then I STRONGLY believe they are wrong! It is my understanding that the current NCAA Tournament basically generates $1.1 billion a year in revenue just from the TV deal with CBS/Turner. And yes, unlike football, that revenue is shared throughout the entire NCAA D1 membership, and it also goes to fund other championships for other sports throughout all three NCAA divisions. If the P5 is looking at that and thinking “Why do we have to share that $1.1 billion with the rest of the NCAA?? Why can’t we keep that all for ourselves??” then I think they are hugely underestimating the appeal that the non-p5 teams have on the NCAA Tournament. People like to watch the good teams from the Under the Radar conferences play against the P5 caliber teams in the early rounds. They’d much rather watch Abilene Christian, or North Texas, or New Mexico State, or Loyola Chicago, or any number of good Under the Radar teams play against good P5 teams than watch bad P5 teams with .300 records play against good P5 teams. We get games like that all season long, and they are objectively not compelling to watch.
If the P5 formed their own division and staged their own tournament with just the 69 teams that are members of those conferences, I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any interest in it at all. But,I do not think there’d be an annual $1.1 billion dollars worth of interest in it. Not even close. And that tournament would not feel at all like what the NCAA Tournament currently feels like to the fans. Not even close. And, yeah while there may be way less money than the over a billion it makes now, I get that they’d only be splitting it 69 ways instead of 358 ways, but here’s the thing…not all 358 schools get the same amount under the current structure. It’s the total number of games that the members of a conference play that determines the payouts. If your conference has a lot of teams qualify and wins a lot of games, then they’ll get higher dollar amount. So, in a typical year, the P5 schools get a larger share of the money than most other conferences. How much more can they really make by just having their own tournament?? I’d venture to say that it wouldn’t be a substantial amount. It may even come out to less. But…okay, let’s just say for the sake of argument that they can make a little bit more per school by going it on their own. I am not conceding that point, but am merely supposing it. My question is would it really be worth it?? Because, you know what would NOT increase?? The brightness of the spotlight that would be on the event. I think it would be significantly dimmer, ESPECIALLY for the 48ish games that make up the first couple of rounds of their tournament. When it comes to branding, and marketing, and all of those so-called “intangibles” that the NCAA Tournament can provide for an institution, is making a little more money worth performing on a smaller stage?? My feelings are that it is definitely not.
So my final thought is this….
We’ve all heard this statement many times. “There’s nothing like March Madness! There’s nothing like the NCAA Tournament!” And you know what…there really isn’t! But let’s look at one of the major things that makes it unlike anything else. It really is tangible to just about everyone!! The NFL Playoffs are great, but not everyone lives in an NFL city, and many of those people who don’t probably don’t care about the playoffs nearly as much. Same with the NBA. Same with the MLB. When it comes to the FBS College Football Playoff and Bowl Games, I would argue that those actually aren’t that great at all. Anyone who is not a member of a select group of conferences is practically shut out no matter how good they are. But the NCAA Basketball Tournament?? that IS great!! It truly is a great event!! You don’t need to live in a pro sports town. You don’t need to have some sort of exclusive tie-in to a particular conference or group of conferences the way you do with college football. Teams have to be good to make it to the NCAA Tournament, but all 358 D1 schools have a path to it. If you live in a small town and went to a Southland school, or an OVC school, or an MVC school, you can still be a part of it. Your school has a path to it. That’s why it’s great. That’s what will be ruined if the P5 opts for their own division. And…if that happens…you know what you’ll never hear anyone say anymore?? “There is nothing like March Madness!!” You know WHY you won’t hear that anymore?? Because it will no longer be true.
So even if they do think they can make more money (which, again, may not even be the case) the question has to be at what cost?? Getting back to those “intangibles” that I mentioned previously, they’d probably be trading in some really good ones for some really bad ones. Would it be worth it?? Bad intangibles can sometimes end up being bad for the finances.