In a deeply personal and almost shockingly honest memoir, “Dr. J,” basketball legend Julius Erving comes clean about his moves on and off the court.
There were those glorious moments in the air, as when he glided past Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1980 finals and, with a slight twist, impossibly reached back to drop the ball in the hoop. It took several stunned moments for the crowd to believe what they had just seen.
On the ground, there was his complicated relationship with his illegitimate daughter, pro tennis player Alexandra Stevenson, his volatile marriage to his first wife, Turquoise, and the tragic death of their teenage son, Cory.
In the memoir, written with Karl Taro Greenfeld, Erving can be brutally frank.
“I’ve hit her (Turquoise), but only in self-defense,” Erving confesses, writing throughout in the present tense. “. . . I don’t ever touch her unless I’m being attacked.”
He married Turquoise in the flush of early stardom just after a messy contract dispute had been resolved, bringing him to the Nets in 1973. The boy who had been raised in the Parkside Gardens projects in Hempstead, L.I., until he was 13 was now in his full 6-foot-7 glory. He was “young, fine and rich” and had found his woman.
“We are the Bonnie and Clyde of black and sexy, the JFK and Jackie of African-American and cool.
“Dr. J and Turq.”
The boy who became that man grew up the son of a single mother with absolutely no reason to dream big. The family still struggled after they moved to Roosevelt, L.I. Erving’s beloved brother Marky died at 16 of an undiagnosed, untreated autoimmune disorder after a life of pain.
Erving’s incredible talent was always evident, but playing first on a Salvation Army team, then for Roosevelt High School, followed by the University of Massachusetts, there was no one around from the big leagues to witness it. It wasn’t until he was brought into the 1970 Olympic Development Program at the last minute as a lowly alternate that Erving even realized going pro was a possibility.
It was there he heard the other players, guys he could outscore and outrebound, talking about what they were going to demand as signing bonuses. If they can, I can, he thought. Soon he was signed to the ABA’s Virginia Squires in a low-money deal that he claims was compromised by his agent’s ties to the team.
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Having turned pro, Erving hit the courts offseason at Harlem’s Rucker Park, where playground legends mixed it up with All-Stars. Joining the Rucker Pro League, he was on the team headed by then-Daily News writer Peter Vecsey, known as the Westsiders or Daily News All-Stars.
Free of the restrictions of college basketball, Dr. J pulled out what would become his signature move, taking the game higher, above the rim. The move would become universally known as the slam dunk.
“Man,” he writes, “it’s great to be playing in a league where I can dunk the ball.”
With the Squires, Erving learned about the sexual perks of being a pro baller. At 21, he was more than ready to “experiment,” challenging himself to sleep with eight different women on eight different nights. But it got to his conscience.
“There is something wrong about how I treat women,” he writes. “When I went on that run of eight women in eight days, it left me feeling like I had failed at something, was in some ways a disappointment to my mother.”
While marriage to Turquoise, after she revealed she was pregnant, seemingly resolved that issue, success presented another challenge. Old friends in need lined up with their hands out.
He tried to establish some ground rules.
“Still, over the years, I probably give away $6 (million) to $10 million to various friends and acquaintances, sometimes for business ventures or loans, sometimes just to help a brother out,” he writes.
Springboarding to the Nets, after first signing a more-money contract with the Atlanta Hawks that resulted in arbitration, Erving came to town with a $2 million contract and star power.
“From the start of camp, it’s clear that I’m the spiritual and psychological leader of this team,” he notes.
There were great locker room moments, as when rookie John Williamson announced to the team, “Look, if you want to win get the ball to Super John.”
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“And that’s you?” Erving deadpanned after the room erupted in laughter. “Let me get this straight: Super John and you are the same person.”
Wendell Ladner, who later died in the 1975 crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 66 in New York City, was a special character. Erving claims a doctor once told Ladner he was having too much sex, after the player admitted to at least three or four encounters a day. “It’s never with the same girl,” he said to excuse himself.
At least Ladner was a single man. Erving writes that while he was faithful at the outset of his marriage, by 1978, when he met sportswriter Samantha Stevenson in the Philadelphia 76ers’ locker room, he had long been straying.
His life had become so very good. His spectacular play with the Nets brought them a title and into the big leagues, but he was traded to the Sixers for the money to cover the Nets’ expansion fees into the NBA. In Philadelphia, he renewed his friendship with Bill Cosby, whom he’d met while staying at the Hotel du Cap on the French Riviera. He and Turq became part of an elite circle that included Patti LaBelle and Teddy Pendergrass.
Stevenson was a “pretty white girl, a bit of a hippie giving off a vibe of availability” — and a class above the “easy women” he met on the road. Their arrangement, he writes, was oral sex — until she got orthodontia to straighten her teeth. That night, and that night only, they had intercourse.
He and Turq were still celebrating the birth of their son, Cory, in 1981, when a letter arrived informing him that Stevenson had a baby girl, named Alexandra, and Erving was the father. A paternity test proved her out.
Turq didn’t take it well.
“‘You f---ing pig,’ and she is pounding me, hurling punches that I’m trying to parry with my arms crossed over my chest, I’m backing up, until finally I’m against the cabinet. . . .
“Turquoise and I have some violent fights. A man can’t win these fights. If I hit back, then that only enrages Turq more and she’s going to start swinging harder.”
Turq’s terms were that Erving would support the child according to a lawyer’s agreement. Alexandra was not to be told who her father was, and Erving was never to contact mother or child. Samantha received $4,000 a month until Alexandra turned 18, with a promise of private school tuition.
Personal strife aside, those were the glory years with the Sixers as Erving seemed able to hang in the air while jamming with new moves.
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His feud with Larry Bird was heated and turned physical one night on the court in 1984, a confrontation that Erving describes in almost delicate terms. He thought Bird was taking a swing at him, “so I reach out, just wanting to make sure Larry can’t clock me. I end up with my right hand on his chest, and my fingers around his neck.”
Oops.
The ensuing brawl resulted in a $7,500 fine for both Bird and Erving. But the two went on to earn big promotional dollars together. “I don’t hate Larry. I never hated Larry. I hated Boston. I hated the Celtics.”
It was the 1982 loss to the “juggernaut” of the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA playoffs that brought Erving to tears in the locker room afterward. “I am thirty-two years old. How many more shots at this am I going to get,” he wondered.
The next shot came next year, after the formidable Moses Malone joined the team. The 76ers finally defeated the Lakers to win the NBA title.
But by then Erving’s problems at home were escalating. His stepson Cheo was into drugs and has been in and out of jail since. Drugs were also a problem for the youngest of their four children, Cory. One night in 2000, after the family had moved to Orlando, the 19-year-old went out to buy bread for a dinner party and didn’t come back.
After an intensive five-week manhunt, his body was found trapped in a car at the bottom of a retention pond near the Ervings’ home. The death was ruled accidental.
While Erving attributes the end of his marriage to the stress following Cory’s death, he also reveals that while married he fathered a child with another woman in Orlando.
He has since married Dorys Madden, and they have had two more children. Meanwhile, his relationships to his first illegitimate child sprang into the open in 1999 when Alexandra made the semis at Wimbledon.
Erving supported her tennis ambitions, up to a point.
“I want us to be father and daughter,” he told her, “and that means more than you calling me and asking for checks.”
Erving retired from basketball in 1987 with $9 million, but a business deal gone very wrong has him starting over again. This memoir is obviously part of that effort. Written with the excellent Greenfeld, “Dr. J” shows humility and class, which augurs well for a new beginning.
I reach out,
to make sure Larry can’t
clock me.
I end up with
my fingers
around his neck.
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