When Julius Erving was at UMass, his game was seriously limited by the rules of the day. His number one frustration was that he could not dunk.

It took him a while to sort out who he would play for professionally, largely because of some contractual issues, which we’re not going to get into here, but consider this: he nearly ended up playing with Milwaukee, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson were still Bucks. That would have been incredible. He also nearly joined the Atlanta Hawks, where he would have teamed up with Pete Maravich, which would have sold tickets across the league.

When the issues were hammered out, he had to play in the ABA, first with the Virginia Squires, and then with the New York Nets.

And while there was no TV contract for the ABA, Erving’s play was so off the charts that everyone around the country understood something extraordinary was happening.

Everyone knew. The highlights occasionally made it onto sports news, but there was no cable or anything like that. It was strictly word of mouth.

However, the awareness of greatness in New York was so insistent that it crept into pop culture and ultimately drove the ABA-NBA merger.

Here is some video of young Erving, just killing it.

He’s been somewhat pushed down the list of greats, which is not right, because the guy was clearly special. He built on what Connie Hawkins did, but took it further: Erving was a basketball visionary, and we see the fruits of his vision every night when a game is played. Every exultant dunk is a tribute.

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