Posted on 05/27/2024 10:43:54 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Oh boy! I was in the rock band-—and you know how hard it was to catch some live events if you were working-—but with our hours I saw it. Amazing game. Two things: Our perhaps second best shooter, Keith Erickson, who had been on a real hot streak against Golden State, went down with an ankle and wasn’t available for that game. I’m convinced we would have won the series if he had been able to play.
The other was the obvious cheat by Ritchie Powers. The Celts were out of TOs. To call another TO=tech foul. One of the Celts (Havlicek, I think) called a TO right in front of him looking straight at him and Powers wouldn’t give it to him, thus giving the Celts a gift point the Suns would have had.
As a lifelong Suns fan, I thought that front line of two rebounders (Perry and Heard) and Adams at the high post, combined with Westphal and Sobers, was the best lineup we ever fielded including the Barkley, Nash, and Booker lineups because of the incredible chemistry of having those two low-post rebounders with Adams drawing the centers away from the middle. Perry got a back injury the next year, and even when he came back we were never the same.
I don’t know if I ever told anyone here, but I was hired to write a history of the Suns circa 1990-91, before Barkley. I told Tom Ambrose, the media guy, that it would be “warts and all” because I was such a fan that for it to be believable and inspiring you had to show some bad with the good (i.e., Walter Davis’s coke problem). He agreed. Well, I began researching & writing and sent perhaps 5 chapters to Ambrose for approval. He approved all and I thought he had been showing them to Jerry Colangelo, the owner. Nope. He didn’t show them to him til a trip to Portland-—a bad loss-—and the chapters had just gotten up to Davis, and Colangelo was furious. He paid me off, fired me, and buried the history.
Meanwhile, I got to meet and interview Kevin Johnson (OK), Tom Chambers (an a-hole), James Edwards (OK), Rick Barry (an a-hole), Alvan Adams (good), Connie Hawkins (awesome guy), Neal Walk (who was in a wheelchair then with MS-—so sad, wonderful guy-—Lamar Green, but didn’t get Majerle, Perry, or Eddie Johnson.
Neal Walk (who was in a wheelchair then with MS-—so sad, wonderful guy-
He was the first Florida Gator to play in the NBA.
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