“BAD NEWS FOR THE DOCTOR” and “THE SWEATER GAME”
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726. NEW JERSEY NETS VS ST. LOUIS SPIRITS
ABA EASTERN DIVISION SEMIFINALS
GAME FIVE
APRIL 15, 1975
NASSAU COLISEUM
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.23
DRAMA—8.67
STAR POWER—7.19
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.15
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.17
LOCAL IMPACT—6.88
TOTAL: 44.49
“BAD NEWS FOR THE DOCTOR”
In all the annals of team sports, there has perhaps never been a squad quite like the St. Louis Spirits of the old American Basketball Association. The league itself was a seat-of-the-pants assemblage that featured incredible talent and a highly entertaining style that presaged modern hoops, but took place in the considerable shadow of the NBA. As a result many of its players and teams have been granted legend status, for few of their mythical doings were actually seen by any but a fortunate few.
And that’s just on the court. The Spirits were, aptly, the essence of the ABA—bursting with fun and brilliant players but epically out of control, both in the front office and in the locker room. The centerpiece of the wildness was a 22-year old, immensely gifted but colossally immature forward named Marvin “Bad News” Barnes. The tall tales and totally true chaos that surrounded Barnes while he was in the ABA were truly Ruthian, and would require an entirely separate Substack to give them justice.
He called himself simply “News,” often in the third person. His teammates knew him as “BB” for the tiny head that sat upon his enormous shoulders. Barnes was capable of dropping 40 points and 20 rebounds on anyone, on any night, but was also fully capable of missing the game entirely, whereabouts unknown. He would regularly scream up to the gym in his Rolls-Royce and blow into the locker room about ten minutes before tipoff, wearing a full-length mink coat over his game uniform, sack of McDonalds burgers in hand, and pronounce, “Game time is on time, baby.”
He claimed to have 13 telephones in his condo, and a different woman for every night of the week. His most famous incident stems from missing a flight that was due to arrive the same time it left, due to a time zone change. “Man, I ain’t getting on no damn time machine,” was News’ immortal statement. He missed literally dozens of other team flights, sans the memorable tag line.
The 1975 Spirits also featured a small but savvy vet guard named Freddie Lewis, a young and strong Maurice Lucas, stylish scorer Steve “Snapper” Jones, who would become a national NBA color analyst for decades, and a couple of off-court notables. The assistant GM was Rudy Martzke, who would go on to fame as USA Today’s powerful sports media columnist. And on the KMOX radio play-by-play microphone was a 22-year old Long Island kid fresh out of Syracuse named Bobby Costas.
In one of his first broadcasts, the Spirits had a late lead, a few days after choking away a game in a similar situation. Costas turned to his color analyst and said of St. Louis coach Bob MacKinnon, “You can bet the last thing MacKinnon wants to see is a repeat of Friday night’s blow job.”
Fortunately, the Spirits didn’t have many listeners, or Bob’s Hall of Fame broadcasting career might have been stillborn.
In 1975 they didn’t have many wins, either. They were terrible for most of the ABA campaign, with Loony Tales of Bad News outnumbering victories by a factor of five. The mayhem that consistently surrounded the club had won out over any sort of cohesive team play. Late in the year, the Spirits were 24-48 and hopelessly out of the race, but suddenly, surprisingly, they went on a tear to close the season.
The unlikely key to the St. Louis turnaround was a balding, nebbishy forward named Don Adams. Cut by the NBA Pistons, the Spirits took him on for the princely sum of $200 a game, and he proceeded to alter the team’s downward spiral in one of his first games, when he cold-cocked San Antonio’s monstrous center, 6’11” Swen Nater. Nater was a beast even Barnes was scared of, but Adams just plain knocked him the F out. The team coalesced around him after that, with the mercurial Lewis scoring in bunches, Marvin being Marvin up front, and Adams providing the skewer in the shish kebab, holding it all together.
The Spirits won 8 of their final 12 games to sneak into the postseason. Come the opening round, the Spirits drew the defending champions, the New York Nets, led of course by the great Doctor J, Julius Erving. The Nets were 58-26 in the regular season and heavy favorites to repeat. Practically no one gave the Spirits any shot. The Nets had won all 11 games they played against St. Louis that year, by an average of 19 points. It was a presumed walkover, but they had to go out and play the games nonetheless.
Sure enough, New York won the first game, but they didn’t break the Spirits’, uh, spirit. Barnes had 41 points in a narrow loss, and St. Louis shocked the ABA world by crushing the Nets in Game Two, 115-97. Adams completely bamboozled Erving with his (very) hands-on defensive play, holding him to six points until garbage time. The Doctor was famished; not ‘famished,’ though he was surely starving for points, but the Yiddish word, pronounced ‘fa-MISHED,’ meaning confused and stressed out. With Erving taken out of the offense by his bald white nemesis, the Nets came undone.
“Adams worked Doctor J over so badly they had to take him out of the game a few times to let him cool down,” recalled Martzke.
Back in St. Louis, before crowds of 7,000 or so, more than double the usual turnout at the St. Louis Arena, the Spirits kept the mojo going, winning both games, even with Erving at last breaking out with a 35-point performance in Game Four. “I had to do a lot of talking to Barnes and Lucas,” Lewis said, “explain to them that you can't get hyper in the playoffs. No matter what happens, you've got to remain even‐tempered.” It worked, and the Spirits were in control of the series.
Shockingly, the Nets were down 3-1 in the best-of-seven, and returned home to the Nassau Coliseum to prevent disaster in Game Five, held on Tuesday night, April 15, 1975, in front of nearly 10,000 fans. It was a roughhouse affair, as usual for the ABA, with both teams hammering away at each other. New York scored the first 7 points and led 13-2, then 30-20 after one, with Erving and silky forward Larry Kenon doing their thing. Barnes was scoreless in the first period, and got his third foul just 30 seconds into the second, sitting him down until halftime, at which point New York led 60-46. It seemed the Spirits had capitulated, and were hoping to get the job done back home.
The lead was still 13 in the fourth quarter when at last the Spirits got into the uh, spirit of things (sorry!). The potent front court of Barnes and Lucas at last hit some shots, and the Nets went cold, missing 13 of 14 shots at one point. St. Louis chopped the lead to 8, then 5. It was 103-98 with two minutes left.
Then, a key moment. Nets reserve Willie Sojourner, in for Billy Paultz, who had fouled out, drove the lane and went for a classic ABA windmill slam. Alas, the ball flew off the back iron and caromed nearly to midcourt, where Lewis grabbed it and drilled a pull-up three pointer (as mentioned, the league was way ahead of its time) to make it 103-101, Nets.
“From there on, they began to play very cautiously,” Lewis said.
Erving missed a jumper, and Lewis, playing in his 105th ABA playoff game (mostly with Indiana) drove the lane for an old-fashioned three-point play that gave him six points in 20 seconds, and the Spirits their first lead, 104-103. Some wild and sloppy play on both sides went the Nets way over the next minute, and they took a 107-106 lead with 18 seconds left.
The Nets had the ball, and inbounded to the Doctor, who had 34 points in the game. But here came his tormentor, Adams, who harassed the great Julius From New York into dribbling off his own leg for a turnover that gave St. Louis a shot. The Spirits got the ball to Lewis, who drained the clock, then rose for a 20-footer. It was the same shot he used to hustle his teammates in H-O-R-S-E on the regular, so this one was candy for the cagey vet. “It never occurred to him that he might miss,” wrote Larry Fox in the Daily News.
The buzzer sounded as the ball swished through the net. Ballgame, and series.
The Spirits had done it! The all-time upset was complete, 108-107 and 4-1 in the series. They had won four straight games, a feat the Spirits didn’t manage in the entire regular season, over the team that bested them a dozen straight times prior.
AFTERMATH:
The Spirits were positive they were on a roll and could handle their next opponent, the Kentucky Colonels, a great team led by big man Artis Gilmore and sweet shooters Dan Issel and Louis Dampier, though also known for forever choking in the postseason. The Colonels won two very close games at home, but the Spirits took Game Three, and were up by 10 late in the first half of Game Four. Then Freddie Lewis went down with a badly sprained ankle, and didn’t play again in the series. Without their backcourt star, the Spirits fell in five games. The Colonels at last won the ABA title, in the league’s penultimate season.
The Spirits, despite being rife with young, talented players, many of whom went on to good NBA careers, were not absorbed into the established league in 1977. But they remain the embodiment of the wild days of the ABA. Likewise, Bad News Barnes proved too crazy for the NBA but fit in perfectly with the wild outlaw league he personified.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Freddie’s shot remains one of the most dramatic things I’ve seen in my life.”
—Bob Costas
FURTHER READING:
Loose Balls by Terry Pluto
VIDEO:
725. ST. JOHNS REDMEN VS GEORGETOWN HOYAS
FEBRUARY 27, 1985
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.42
DRAMA—7.02
STAR POWER—7.95
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.15
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.38
LOCAL IMPACT—8.08
TOTAL: 44.50
“THE SWEATER GAME”
On a cold, Pittsburgh January night in 1985, Lou Carnesecca, the head basketball coach at St. John’s, had the remnants of the flu. His wife Mary insisted he wear a sweater to the game that night to protect him from the drafty arena chill. It was a hideous brown sweater with red and blue chevrons he was given by an Italian national coach, but Looie, ever the dutiful husband, wore it on the sidelines, and the Redmen crushed Pitt by 31 points.
The game went so well, despite Carnesecca feeling cruddy, that he wore it the next game, at Boston College, and then when #11 Syracuse came to NYC. The Redmen won all three, including a thrilling two-point overtime game against Pearl Washington and the Orangemen.
Now ranked #2 in the country, and with the top-ranked and defending champion Georgetown Hoyas the next game up, Carnesecca felt obliged to continue wearing the sweater, ugly as it was. “Nobody could describe it’” Carnesecca said. “It didn’t have any composition. It was just a wild one.” By this point, Mary hated the thing. She found it “so malodorous she washed, then hid it,” according to Sports Illustrated. “Her superstitious husband despaired, yelling, ‘I'm three-and-oh in that sweater!’ at which point Mary brought it out from hiding.”
St. John’s was led by the great shooting swingman Chris Mullin, an All-American straight out of Brooklyn, where he was a prep superstar at Xaverian High in Bay Ridge. The Redmen were a true NYC squad; beyond Mullin, there was JUCO transfer Walter Berry, from the Bronx, point guard Mike Moses from Manhattan, freshman Shelton “The Horror” Jones from Amityville, Long Island, and Willie Glass, who was from Jersey (ok, Atlantic City, but we will count that as NYC-ish for the sake of this Substack). The main outlander was 7’2” center Bill Wennington, from the wilds of Canada.
The local kids turned the Johnnies into the best team in school history. Ranked third in the country entering the season, they were coming off a disappointing loss in the opening round of the 1984 NCAA Tournament. Determined to have a better result in ‘85, Carnesecca rode his team hard, belying his cuddly, grandfather image. So when the team traveled to the Cap Center to play big bad Georgetown and superstar center Patrick Ewing, Louie was confident of victory.
Sure enough, the Redmen went out to big lead and held off the Hoyas in a thrilling Sunday afternoon encounter, 66-65. At last, G-town had lost, and the Johnnies were now #1. It was an upset that remains treasured by longtime SJU fans.
There was little doubt Carnesecca would keep wearing the sweater courtside. "I thought I was a great tactician, great strategist,” he said. “The media just think the sweater won all the games."
He did, and St. John’s kept winning, 19 in a row, in fact (13 since Lou donned the sweater), as they held on to the top spot in the rankings. “We haven’t won anything yet—Georgetown is still champions until someone dethrones them,” Carnesecca insisted. But the good feelings were riding high in Queens as the team piled up the victories. They were 24-1 and unbeaten in the Big East Conference when Georgetown came to Madison Square Garden, looking for revenge. The game, held on “Big Monday” night, February 27, 1985, at the Garden, would be the highest-rated telecast of a college basketball game in ESPN history.
It was the height of “Hoya Paranoia,” a period when Georgetown coach John Thompson felt obliged to close his team off from the media, when Ewing was subject to vicious racial attacks from crowds across the Big East, and when his all-black team was sharply contrasted with the Mullin and Carnesecca’s “white team.” A worker charged with filling the MSG water coolers confessed to an enterprising sleuth that Georgetown wouldn't permit him near its cooler. "Guess they're worried someone might contaminate it," he said.
“We just hated Georgetown. I don’t think I spoke a word to Patrick in four years,” Mullin said. “And if I did, I couldn’t say what they were.”
Thompson, who at 6’10” used his bulk and withering glare to intimidate fools he didn’t suffer gladly, mounted a wily campaign in the press, drawing as much heat from his players as he could even as he was portrayed as controlling and uppity.
So it was a true shock when, just before the game against St. John’s, he met Carnesecca for a pre-game handshake and opened his blazer to reveal a replica sweater of the one the St. John’s coach wore. Holy cow, the master of evil has a sense of humor! In truth it was more of a painted T-shirt than an actual sweater. Thompson said he had sent an ex-player to Queens to find the real thing, but it was impossible—especially in size XXXL. Still, the one he sported was close enough. He smiled and turned to the throng to show off his “lucky sweater.” A huge wave of laughter and applause rippled through the sellout Garden crowd, and the aura of a gladiatorial rematch dissipated.
Thompson recalled of the moment, “I’m saying to myself, ‘That sweater ain’t lucky. Look, I got one, too.’” The comedy was enhanced by the enormous former center for the Celtics goofing around with the five-foot nuthin’ coach of the Redmen.
From there, it was all Hoyas.
Ewing was especially unstoppable in 1985, his senior season. Nowadays he would have turned pro after just one year in college, of course, and even then it was a bit of surprise that he stayed in school. But Ewing felt devoted to Thompson, who had allowed him to grow so much after transforming the program by signing with G-town in the first place. “His very presence in the gym alters the other team,” Thompson said of Patrick, and it was on display at MSG. Even though he was double- and triple-teamed, Ewing hit 10-13 from the floor, dominated on defense, and was the center of gravity all night. “The big guy was awesome,” Carnesecca said.
Ewing finished with 20 points and six blocked shots, while Reggie Williams, who was dominated by Mullin in the first game, reversed matters, taking advantage of the Johnnies packing things in to burn the Redmen for 25 points to lead all scorers. The trademark unrelenting Georgetown full-court press broke St. John’s early. The Hoyas scored the first seven points of the game and never looked back, leading by 11 at the half and stretching it from there.
The final was 85-69. Mullin finished with 21 but couldn’t lead a comeback. The Johnnies were replaced atop the national rankings by the Hoyas, and after Syracuse bested St. John’s a few days later, atop the Big East standings as well. Georgetown was back to its snarling, angry self, and woe be to the rest of the country.
As William Rhoden wrote in the Times, “The Hoyas had played down the revenge factor during the week, but it was clear from their intensity and from the glee with which they finished off the Redmen that the victory was extra special.”
AFTERMATH:
St. John’s and Georgetown met twice more in 1985. The Hoyas won both, first in the Big East Tournament final, 92-80, and then in the famous Final Four that saw three Big East teams make the quartet, along with eventual champs Villanova. The Hoyas made it three out of four over the Redmen with a 77-59 beatdown in the semifinals in Lexington. So the ‘85 Johnnies went 30-1 against the rest of college basketball and 1-3 against Georgetown. The Hoyas lost just three games by a combined five points all season, including the shocking loss to ‘Nova and their superstitious Italian coach, Rollie Massimino, in the championship game.
Perhaps Thompson should have worn the sweater on the night of the final…
WHAT THEY SAID:
“I didn’t mind John upstaging me with the sweater but when he beat me that really hurt.”
—Lou Carnesecca
FURTHER READING:
Louie: In Season by Lou Carnesecca and Phil Pepe
VIDEO: