3/18/2023 0 Comments Julius erving stats![]() Isn't it just coincidence that the last two times Turquoise was expecting, as she is now, Julius' team-the ABA New York Nets-won championships? If Erving, playing the best basketball of his career at age 31, is, as expected, voted the NBA's Most Valuable Player, so be it. If the 76ers, far and away the best regular-season team in the NBA during Erving's five years with the club, finally win the NBA championship this season after twice losing in the final round, so be it. Jeez, if Doc gets a pimple, he wants to know why it's there and the fastest way to get rid of it." Of course, pimples are beyond The Doctor's control, just as The Legend is beyond his control. "He cares very much what people think-of how he plays, how he speaks, how he acts, how his children act. And the vanity? "It's part of what makes him great," says 76er Trainer Al Domenico. He is protective of an ego as big as the Ritz. Stay with this now, for the real Julius Erving isn't as difficult to pin down as he is to believe. J-is, he believes, all part of God's master plan. "I believe in predestination," he says, and everything that has occurred to him in his legendary life-"legendary" being the word most often associated with Dr. Not that his life has been left to chance. Yet Erving insists he has no control over any of this. Chap-Stick!) the devoted Christian and family man-all seems too wonderful, like the high school senior whose yearbook entry is six times as long as anyone else's. The image-be it the revolutionary aerial daredevil artist the articulate best friend of the press the man in the mink coat and the Mercedes the national chairman of the Hemophilia Foundation the coach of the Special Olympics basketball program the adviser to The March of Dimes the spokesman for the Lupus Foundation, American Dental Association and Philadelphia Police Athletic League the endorser of the American Red Cross, Population Institute, Pennsylvania Adult Education and dozens of other charities the ubiquitous television pitchman (Hey, Dr. J: he has a patent on the name in all forms. The key word is "control," for the good Doctor insists that nothing is within his control, a claim which sounds a trifle too modest to be true. With all this in the palms of what must be among the world's largest hands-11 inches from pinky to thumb with fingers only slightly stretched, a little longer than this page-is it too much to believe that Erving is in complete control of his world? Furthermore, he controls a fledgling business empire worth a small-say, $10 million-but growing fortune. He carries himself with uncommon dignity and class, he handles his superstardom more graciously than any of his peers. His life is ordered, he has a wife as lovely as her name, Turquoise, and three beautiful and well-behaved children, with a fourth expected in May. Certainly he can control his body and a basketball in ways no one before him ever thought possible. If we didn't know any better, we would think that Julius Winfield Erving II is in control of things to a degree matched by few athletes. "Thank goodness," he said, "for small favors." Of course, that result, a happy one, was outside of Erving's control as well. That meant that the 76ers would get tamer Indiana in their mini-series, leaving the Bulls for the New York Knicks. In Indianapolis the Chicago Bulls, the most feared of the playoff dark horses, had beaten the Pacers. And to Erving, what is, is.īut all did not go afoul for the Sixers. Of course, this game would have been meaningless, the title and time off locked up, if the Sixers hadn't folded in four of their previous eight games. The loser would finish second and get just one day's rest before negotiating the potential booby trap known as the best-of-three mini-series. The winner would be champion of the NBA's Atlantic Division and receive a cherished bye in the opening round of this week's playoffs. Nor was there any reason for him to consider why this game was as big as it was. There were no predictions of victory from him, but neither was there any sign of uncertainty on his face or in his voice about what might happen in the big game. He sat silently in front of his locker at the Boston Garden last Sunday before the 82nd and final game of his 10th professional season, a pair of hot towels warming the springs in his knees. Take, for example, Julius Erving, the Philadelphia 76ers' incomparable Dr.
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