Yeah: has passed. It’s a question that probably not many people have asked, but just in case, the answer is Yeah. It has happened: a player has scored points for both teams in an NBA game. Baskets, attacking actions, not those loose balls that no one catches in the fight for a rebound and end up in the rim, between caroms, after touching a defender’s hand. No, the other: has passed. In the 1978-79 season (another time: only three years after the merger NBA-ABA and still a year before the arrival of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird), three players had minutes for both teams in a Philadelphia 76ers-New Jersey Nets and a fourth saw it all from both benches. Of them, one scored with both shirts: Eric Money.
It’s an anecdote, but the result is the boxscore strangest in NBA history. And it happened like this: the original game was played on November 8, 1978, at the legendary Spectrum in Philadelphia. It was not a high-flying duel. The Nets were (along with the Pacers, Spurs and Nuggets) one of the four teams that had been saved from the shipwreck of the ABA. His integration into the NBA ended with the departure of Julius Erving, sent to the Sixers to get out alivealthough barely, of a demand of almost five million from the Knicks for “invade their commercial territory”. The Nets, in fact, offered their neighbor to settle the matter with the transfer of Doctor Jbut the Knicks, in a mistake that proved calamitous, rejected this solution. So Ervng ended up in Philadelphia, where he became champion in 1983.
Those Nets in search of a new personality visited some Sixers who were still a couple of steps away from their version golden in the first part of the eighties (one ring, two lost Finals, the historic rivalry with Bird’s Celtics from which the ‘Beat L.A.’..). The Nets already had Bernard King, who was still 21 years old and had just arrived in the NBA (number 7 in the 1977 draft). would end up being hall of famera voracious scorer and a Knicks great, but at that time he was a worthy player who had already averaged 21.6 points. The Sixers, like almost all the teams that faced those sad Nets, focused their defensive attention on King, who was whistled for an offensive foul for colliding in a penetration against the umpteenth double guard; That one in particular from Steve Mix, a giant whose career was based solely on be a giant
Enraged, King lunged at referee Roger McCann. He already had one technique, so he received the second and was expelled. On the way to the locker room, he kicked a chair at the foot of the court and received a third technical (something theoretically impossible) from the other referee (then there were only two), the very famous Richie Powers who I will return to later. The Nets coach was the unforgettable Kevin Loughery, who had made the franchise champion (with Erving), in New York and in the ABA. And moaner manual, jumped to ride his show and received three other techniques: again, something technically impossible. With Loughery and King sent off, the game continued (the mess had occurred midway through the third quarter). The Nets were coached in that final quarter by Phil Jackson, then an assistant/player. who thus made his debut as head coach, the work that would make him a myth. Without King, Eric Money led the way and scored 37 points for the Nets, who still lost after two overtimes (137-133).
There was an official protest from the Nets and a firm reaction from commissioner Larry O’Brien, who had not liked Richie Powers’ show of techniques. This received five games of fridge and, furthermore, It was decided to repeat the game from the moment of the commotion (5:50 to the end of the third quarter). Due to a date problem, it was adjusted to the Nets’ next visit to Philadelphia, on March 23. It would be day of match and a halffirst the repetition and then the one that they had to play in its entirety.
To complete the mess, on February 7, 1979, a month and a half before that reunion, Nets and Sixers agreed to a transfer: Harvey Catchings, Ralph Simpson and a good sum of money went to the Nets; Money and Al Skinner, to the Sixers. with another scrub related to that happy never ending matchO’Brien decided that those who had changed sides would play the replay with their new team. Three stepped on the court in both games, only Money scored for both and Skinner watched both sets from the bench four months apart. The Sixers won again (123-117) that game, which resumed with 5:50 left in the third quarter. And then they won the other one, the one that had been fully scheduled. Money lost points along the way: his original 37 were 23 for the Nets, which he scored until the technical trance. After the restart, he added 4 for the Sixers. IN THIS LINK you can consult the boxscore definitive, with all its rarities.
“Referees are people and they make mistakes”
“Many years have passed and I still don’t believe that. But it happened, and I know it because I was there,” a Simpson later said, remembering that everyone ended up seeing the funny part of it: “It’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened to us. I started laughing, Erving started laughing… we all found it quite funny.”. Loughery, also with some perspective, acknowledged that he would have liked to do some things differently: “I liked Richie, but he whistled a lot of techniques. And I… they always whistled at me a lot. And it’s something I now regret. Referees are people and they make mistakes, and my reactions often only turned situations into personal conflicts.”
It was, in addition to its endless and truly eccentric resolution, a game in which many personalities came together: of course Julius Erving, Phil Jackson, Bernard King and Sixers historical figures such as Bobby Jones, Caldwell Jones, Doug Collins, Darryl Dawkins and Maurice Cheeks . Besides, Harvey Catchings ended up being the father of a much more famous player than him, Tamika (four-time Olympic champion). Ralph Simpson’s daughter India Arie won four fours Grammys sold more than 10 million records in the world of R&B and Soul. Joe Bryant, Kobe’s father, also played for the Sixers.and Henry Bibby, Mike’s father and champion with the Knicks in 1973.
And there were also, as main protagonists, Eric Money and Richie Powers. The first was a guard little worse electric, number 33 in the draft who had averaged more than 18 points a night a year earlier for the Pistons in his native Michigan. In 1978 he was traded to the Nets, then he was part of the famous trade to the Sixers and was cut by Pennsylvania Franchise at the beginning of the next season, 1979-80, for which he returned to the Pistons in what ended up being his last season in the NBA.
The influence of Bad News Barnes
Money, they say, could have had a longer, better career. But the influence of Marvin Barnes, his teammate on the 1976-77 Pistons, weighed on him. Bad news Barnes. Pistons legend Bob Lanier explained it this way: “Marvin Barnes was a great player in the ABA, but he had problems. The Pistons tried with him, but I was still involved in street thingsand that also affected Eric Money, who could have been another of the best. A few years ago, I ran into Marvin in Houston and he said ‘Bob, he got high on me all the time and Eric started getting high on me.’. When someone tells you that more than twenty years later… you want to put your fist through their skull. And look, I adored Marvin, I really liked him and he was a guy with all the charm you could imagine. But as for being part of a championship team… come on man”.
Barnes, of course, was a very special player, who everyone who saw him said could have been one of the greats. really. But, instead, he left a terrible, tremendous story, which can be read (I think it’s worth it) AT THIS LINK. AND IN THIS OTHER LINK you can recover one of the most famous moments (and not for the better) of the inclined Richie Powers, the referee who became one of the protagonists (again, not for the better) of one of the most iconic and crazy games in NBA historyhe game 5 of the 1976 Finals in which the Celtics ended up defeating (4-2) the Phoenix Suns.
An outcome for the history of the Finals
That fifth game was reached at 2-2, with the Celtics forced not to lose on their court so as not to be forced to play the sixth in Arizona with match ball against. The fight, with three overtimes, lasted 60 minutes. The Celtics won 128-126 against the Suns who played desperately… and that they would surely have won if one of the most controversial actions in the history of the Finals had not occurred.: With 95-95 and time running out, Paul Silas called a timeout when the Celtics had none left. Richie Powers did not signal an infraction that would have been considered a technical foul and would have given a free throw and, possibly, 2-3 to the Suns who had the next game, the sixth, on their court. Years later, Powers acknowledged that he had seen Silas’s gesture perfectly but that he did not want “a Finals match to be decided by an action like that.”
Tom Heinsohn called Powers his “favorite referee,” something he was able to change at the legendary end of the second overtime. With 20 seconds left, the Celtics led 109-106. There was still no line of three (it would arrive in the 1979-80 season). Van Arsdale scored a quick basket (109-108) after the Suns’ final timeout. Westpahl stole the ball and Curtis Perry missed a six-meter shot that Havlicek failed to rebound: Perry himself collected the ball and scored. The Suns were, suddenly, ahead (109-110) with six seconds left. After his mistakes, Havlicek retaliated with a penetrating shot on the board in what seemed like the last second: 111-110, ecstasy and invasion of the court in the Garden. But the game was not over. Without the manual review options that exist now, the referees decided there was one second left when Havlicek’s shot went in. In the midst of hysteria, with the public on the court and an attack on Powers by a fan who was arrested, it was decided that the match had to continue.
The Suns had a second and kickoff from under their rim. So Westphal forced the action that the referees had not signaled to Silas minutes before: He ostensibly called a timeout when his team had none left. He did it on purpose, of course. The Celtics would thus have a free throw, which White scored (112-110), but his team could then take it from the center of the court and not from under his basket. Perry found Gar Heard, who tied it with a reverse from the head of the zone and forced the third overtime. The public did not leave the court, the tension was unbearable and the general manager of the Suns, none other than Jerry Colangelo, threatened not to present the team in Boston if there was a seventh game. There was none: his team could not take advantage of that momentum in the third overtime and the Celtics sealed the title in the sixth game, just two days later.
Powers, who refereed for almost a quarter of a century in the NBA, never forgot (he died in 1998, aged 67) that June 4, 1976.: “As normal, the public believed they had won after Havlicek’s shot and madness broke out. But unfortunately for them, the person at the table who was keeping the clock had gotten carried away with that excitement and forgot to stop the clock when the shot went in. I was in the middle of the court when I saw a fan jump at me from a side. He hit me in the chest and I tried to defend myself with a couple of punches. We fell to the ground, and two Suns players held on to the guy until security arrived. That almost ruined a game that was the biggest ever played.”
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