Pittsburgh used to be a basketball town, kind of. Hard to believe.
I know. I was there. Even harder to believe.
Amazon Prime is premiering a new documentary called, “Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association.” The iconic “Dr. J,” Julius Erving, appeared on satellite radio to mark the occasion and, when stumbling upon the interview while driving, I listened in rapt attention.
Erving is a legit basketball legend, Michael Jordan before there was Jordan, the first truly aerial superstar, surpassed by almost none at that aspect. He invented the dunk contest.
I attended ABA games as a kid. The league popularized the 3-pointer and used a red, white and blue basketball. It had great players, not least Erving.
But what I remember most about the ABA is that it was all over the place.
The Pittsburgh team was the Condors when I saw them, but was previously the Pipers. The Pipers won the ABA championship in the league’s first season, 1967-68, then immediately moved to Minneapolis. They returned after a year, changed their name to the Pioneers in 1970, but that was already Point Park College’s nickname, so they became the Condors and folded in 1972.
See what I mean? All over the place. Will Ferrell’s nutty ABA movie “Semi-Pro” was closer to a documentary than was likely intended.
The Condors’ last home game drew 689 to the Civic Arena. (I attended.) Tickets were cheap, often free.
I saw the Condors’ Stew Johnson score an ABA-record 62 points. That mark lasted almost a year till Utah’s Zelmo Beaty scored 63. Against the Condors, of course.
One of the Condors’ best players was John Brisker, whom I remember getting in a fight every time I saw him play. Not just pushing and shoving, but throwing bombs. Fights were a trademark of the ABA: “Somebody hit somebody!” Brisker was called “the heavyweight champion of the ABA.”
Brisker retired in 1975 and was reportedly killed fighting as a mercenary in Uganda in 1978. At the time, the state department said, “We don’t consider him dead.”
There’s no shortage of zany ABA stories, and they can be found in Terry Pluto’s book “Loose Balls,” a definitive oral history of the ABA’s nine seasons.
Typical is the tale of Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, who famously refused to board a flight that was crossing time zones: “I ain’t getting on no time machine.”
The Pipers/Condors were far from being the pinnacle of Pittsburgh basketball.
Pitt used to be great. Duquesne, too.
But Duquesne is small-time now, their Atlantic 10 championship in 2024 duly noted.
Pitt basketball has lost the plot, part of that university’s accidental transition to being a small-sports school. Like women’s volleyball, which people care about for a week or two every year.
There used to be that WPIAL/City League connection: Players like Billy Knight, Sam Clancy, DeJuan Blair and Sean Miller at Pitt. Chuck Cooper, B.B. Flenory, Tom Pipkins and Micah Mason at Duquesne.
But now the top WPIAL/City players don’t pick Pitt or Duquesne. Heck, the latter ran off T.J. McConnell to Arizona.
Pitt plays in the ACC, which makes no sense. There’s nothing “Atlantic Coast” about Pittsburgh. The Big East was legendary. It was basketball for football fans. It was fun. The ACC is sterile by comparison.
Pitt won’t play Duquesne, hasn’t since 2018, and for no good reason.
The “City Game” started in 1932 and was mostly played yearly since, including a non-stop run from 1966-2018. The “City Game” felt like a unifying night for Pittsburgh basketball, even more so once basketball started to fade locally. But Pitt doesn’t see the value in that, even as Pitt fans hypocritically yelp like scalded dogs over Penn State’s refusal to play Pitt in football.
Pittsburgh used to have great summer leagues like Ozanam and the Connie Hawkins League. If anything like that still exists, it’s not widely known. AAU’s money-making machine has taken over.
The Dapper Dan Roundball Classic, played at the Civic Arena from 1965-92, was the best high school all-star game in the country. It was the brainchild of sneaker impresario Sonny Vaccaro and promoter Pat DiCesare. MVPs included Moses Malone, Dominique Wilkins, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, LeBron James and Kevin Love. But the Roundball moved to Detroit in 1993.
Local basketball’s aura has thus faded.
There’s occasionally talk about bringing an NBA team to Pittsburgh.
It would be better to restore what Pittsburgh had on the college basketball scene.
Much easier said than done.
