Back in the Day
March 05, 2008 02:15 PM | General
March 5, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Bad reviews aside, Will Ferrell’s ‘Semi-Pro’ has rekindled memories of the high-flying American Basketball Association – those red-white-and-blue basketballs, the 3-point shots, the dunk contests and of course those big afros.
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| All-America guard Wil Robinson spent one year in the ABA with the Memphis Tams in 1974.
Submitted photo |
The ABA in the early 1970s was the alternative to the NBA for hundreds of ex-college players looking for an opportunity to showcase their talents and get a chance at playing in a more stable situation. The league did have some exciting young players like Julius Erving, George Gervin, David Thompson, Artis Gilmore and Moses Malone, but it was dominated by the big city franchises and their marquee players.
The ABA unsuccessfully tried to provide a presence in less traditional basketball cities like Pittsburgh, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, and Norfolk, Va., before the league folded in 1976 with the NBA taking in the Nuggets, Nets, Pacers and Spurs.
West Virginia’s Wil Robinson played half of one season with the Memphis Tams in 1974, becoming the only Mountaineer to ever play in the ABA.
Robinson was like the majority of the players in the league at the time simply looking for a place to play. Robinson was a prolific scorer at West Virginia averaging 29.4 points per game his senior year in 1972. But he was barely 6 feet tall and was more of a scorer than a playmaker.
“I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Condors and then the Houston Rockets. The Condors franchise folded and so I went to Houston. After Houston let me go the day before the first game – I was the last guy to go – there was nowhere for me to go so I went back to Cincinnati and worked out all year with my agent.”
Robinson eventually got a tryout with the new Utah franchise in 1973.
“I went to Utah and was living in Salt Lake City working out with guys like (ABA all-star) Willie Wise, Ron Boone and Jimmy Jones - who was a good friend of mine. Those guys were good and I was playing well with them,” Robinson recalled.
“The last exhibition game I played at Utah was against the Boston Celtics with John Havlicek and Jo Jo White. I got into the game and I played against those guys so that was one of the highlights for me.”
Robinson didn’t make the Stars roster and was living in Salt Lake City when his agent got him another opportunity down in Memphis.
The Memphis organization was one of the most unsettling in the league. Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley bought the franchise in 1973, held a contest to change the team’s name (fans eventually picked Tams) and promised the city that he would keep them in Memphis and provide them with the financial support needed to make it a viable franchise.
But Finley rarely came around and the organization was soon in deep financial trouble once again. Finley unsuccessfully tried to unload the Tams in the summer of 1973 and had very little communication with anyone associated with the team in Memphis. By the time training camp rolled around before the 1973-74 season, the only person still on payroll was trainer Don Sparks who actually ran the first couple of practices before Bill van Breda Kolff was hired to coach the team two days before the first preseason game.
“He was an old-school coach but he was a fair guy,” Robinson remembered. “He didn’t care about how much money you were making or what type of contract you had. He played the best players.”
There was no front office, no season tickets were sold and Finley ordered cost-cutting measures that included no game programs. Fans were simply given free mimeographed lineup sheets as they walked into the arena.
That was the organization Wil Robinson came to midway through the season.
“I remember going down there and staying in a rinky-dink hotel and they wanted to try me out,” Robinson said. “I went down there and made the team.”
Memphis was desperate for players. Early on van Breda Kolff realized his team couldn’t play the up-and-down style that was popular in the ABA so Memphis became one of the few teams in the league that held onto the ball. This approach didn’t help as the losses continued to mount.
“They really weren’t happy with the people that they had down there,” Robinson recalled. “When van Breda Kolff got down there he started making changes. I ended up beating Larry Finch out. He had three-year, no-cut contract and they didn’t even care about that. They wound up sitting him on the bench and I ended starting with Randy Denton, Ronnie Robinson, Wil Jones and George Thompson.”
Robinson says he got a $75,000 contract and after a good performance coming off the bench against San Diego, he made the starting lineup for the remainder of the year.
“We played San Diego and Wilt Chamberlain was the coach that year and I wasn’t starting at the time and I wound up scoring 22 coming off the bench,” Robinson said. “There was a very good article in the paper the next day and Chamberlain said he wished he would have let the sleeping dogs lie.”
Robinson wound up averaging 8.6 points per game on a team that finished with an ABA-worst 21-63 record. Memphis usually played before the smallest crowds in the league at 10,000-seat Mid-South Coliseum.
“It was always empty. I remember playing games in there and there was nobody there,” Robinson said. “It was never full but I enjoyed being down there playing and I was happy to make a team because I was thrown around a lot and when I finally hooked up with a team I was like, ‘Wow, somebody finally noticed that I can play.’”
A specific game Robinson remembers was against the Virginia Squires in one of the few home wins Memphis had that season.
“They had a guard on that team that undercut me and took me out of the game,” Robinson laughed. “Most of the time when you get hurt your own teammates come over and get you but Doctor J came over and picked me up and helped carry me to the bench. I’ll never forget that.”
Robinson said he also made friendships with George Gervin, Artis Gilmore and some of the other great players in the league. Robinson said there was camaraderie in the ABA that didn’t exist in the NBA.
“A lot of the players knew each other,” Robinson said.
As the season concluded and despite admitting that he usually rushed right to the bank to cash his paychecks, Robinson was caught off guard when the franchise folded.
“That was the peak of my career. When the season ended I wasn’t aware of all of the stuff that was happening,” Robinson said. “I was working out during the summertime and I was ready for the next season and they said that the team had been sold and was being dispersed. I had to go to Buffalo so I went back to West Virginia.”
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| Actor Will Ferrell has revived the American Basketball Association with the movie Semi-Pro.
AP photo |
Tired of the empty promises, Robinson chose to go back to school and finish his education.
“I said to myself, this is it. I’m done with basketball. I started my last professional basketball game and I was ready for the next season to do my thing and that was it,” Robinson said. “I wasn’t going to go to Buffalo.”
Robinson had grown weary of the traveling and the uncertain life of a journeyman professional basketball player.
“If I go to Buffalo the same thing could happen there that happened in Memphis. I’m better off doing something else with my life because I hadn’t done anything else with my life but basketball,” Robinson said. “I look back at it now and I’m so glad I did it because I’ve been in the business world for a long time now it’s paid off.”
Robinson today lives and works in Grand Isle, N.Y. He says he still watches West Virginia games on television and manages to make it back for a game or two every year.
“I really enjoyed my time down at WVU,” Robinson said.
More information on the history of the American Basketball Assocation can be found at the web site Remember the ABA
