Talking ABA with ‘Soul Power’ contributor Jason Levin

I got some terrific insight on the ABA and some of its great players with Soul Power contributor Jason Levin, and the next basketball documentary he would like to see made.

Question: What initially drew you to the ABA?

Answer: I was a 12-year-old kid who loved basketball, grew up on the champion Knicks, then moved to LA and watched the UCLA dynasty and the Lakers, so I had seen phenomenal basketball as a young kid. Loved it. But all those teams played an extremely fundamental kind of basketball. They were kind of three of the greatest franchises of all time, so I really thought I knew what basketball looks like.

Then I saw an ABA playoff game on a weekend on CBS, probably like a 10 o’clock start in the morning California time. It was Doctor J as a rookie for the Virginia Squires against Rick Barry of the Nets. And I remember first kind of being mesmerized by the ball. I hadn’t seen a game with a red, white and blue ball.

Then it took me maybe five minutes, and Julius Erving — the one thing I remember — he grabbed a rebound maybe two feet over the rim with one hand and just snatched it over a couple of guys. Then he took it the length of the court, dribbled around two or three guys, I think he went behind his back, and then he kind of dunked it sideways on almost somebody not looking.

I’d never seen anything like that. It was a lightning bolt moment for me. I was just blown away and super excited. So I got the ball the next day. I made my mom go out and get the red, white and blue ball, and then I started learning about the ABA. I started reading The Sporting News and finding out wherever the news was about it. So it was really one kind of lightning bolt moment for me.

Q: When I think of Julius Erving, what also comes to mind is a similar player who preceded him that a lot of people are not familiar with these days, and it’s Connie Hawkins. How would you describe his game, and how do you think he compares to Doc as a player?

A: Wow, well it’s kind of unfair because he lost six years of his prime, so we never saw prime Connie Hawkins. I think they’re very similar players in a lot of ways, but mostly because of the size of their hands and the way they manipulated the ball. And Connie actually did more with it than Doc, which is kind of hard to imagine.

But he learned a lot when he was on the Globetrotters. He played for the Globetrotters off and on for four-plus years and learned a lot of tricks with the ball — behind-the-head no-look passes, and he would fake with the ball and bring it back.

Connie was a swooper. He would swoop to the hoop with the ball in one hand and wave it around guys. Doc was a little more violent with the ball. He got up a little higher. He threw it down a little harder. But I think that’s because we didn’t see Connie when he was 22, 23, 24. By the time he got in the ABA and then the NBA, his knees were really hurting and he wasn’t the high flyer he had been.

But they have very similar games. He was a completely dominant player. He could do it all. Shoot the jumper. Unstoppable inside. Great passer. Great rebounder. And had a lot of flair.

So I think people need to respect Connie Hawkins because there was so much pressure on him when he went into the ABA because of this reputation. But he never played a serious basketball game for six years, so that’s a lot of rust. And for him to come into the league and win it all and the MVP, I think it’s one of the greatest seasons anybody’s ever had.

There was so much pressure and so much mystery and questions around him, and he answered every question. So kudos to him.

Q: I wanted to talk about another player from the ABA that is a favorite of mine that I know you’re a big fan of too, and that’s Willie Wise. Describe him as a player, and is there any player comp of him from today or previous eras?

A: Yeah, for fans of basketball today, Willie Wise was Kawhi Leonard. They have very similar skill sets. He was a defense-first wing who came to play every night with the goal of shutting down the opposition’s best player/scorer.

If they had a big guard, he would guard him. Most ABA teams had a phenomenal small forward, and he would guard them — and guard them for 48 minutes. He would fight through every screen. You have to remember, in that era there was no switching. So you guarded your guy.

So when he guarded Doc, that was Doc for 48 minutes. When he got Rick Barry, same thing. He was a phenomenal defensive player, incredible rebounder, and for a guy 6-7, he just had a nose for the ball.

Offensively, he wanted the ball, and he raised his game in the playoffs every year. His team was always in the playoffs, either in the conference finals or Finals — five consecutive years — and he was either the best or second-best player on the team.

In the playoffs, he scored three, four, five points more than he did in the regular season every year. This is a big-game player who dominated playoff games and Finals games on both ends.

I can’t say enough good things about Willie Wise. He was as good as anybody in the game at forward from 1970 to ’74. That’s five years. We’re talking Dr. J, John Havlicek, Rick Barry. Willie was that good, and anybody that played against him will tell you that — and that includes Dr. J and Rick Barry.

So he’s a name people need to know.

Q: What’s something you want to highlight about the ABA that’s important for people to know?

A: These guys played really hard — as hard as anybody can play — under incredibly difficult conditions. The infrastructure around them was poor, ownership was questionable, and the arenas they played in were often subpar.

The travel was insane. They were required to take the first flight out after a road game, which meant seven or eight in the morning. That was the requirement, and they often had connecting flights.

And they were as good as the NBA players. They played as hard, and they deserve tremendous respect for pushing the game forward. The ABA really created the modern NBA, and they accelerated the progress of the game tenfold because of the way they played — the three-point shot, dunking, showmanship, bringing flair to the game, encouraging having fun.

So they deserve all that respect, and I’m glad the documentary is out there and people have a chance to understand that.

Q: As a basketball historian, what’s the next documentary you’d like to see produced?

A: I would say a great one would be Wilt Chamberlain in the 1972 West Finals against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in the playoff series with all the pressure that was on Wilt — who had only won one championship in his incredible career and was definitely older and coming off injuries.

And the Lakers, who I believe had lost eight consecutive Finals in a 10- or 11-year period. Beating young, prime, defending champion Kareem and Oscar Robertson — that playoff series deserves its own documentary.

It would be absolutely incredible with all the names that were involved, all the pressure that was involved. The games were crazy, and Wilt played out of his mind. He was challenged, which I think was what was needed.

Wilt was so good. He needed to be challenged. He was bored, and he wasn’t bored facing the guy that was supposed to be better than him. Wilt didn’t believe that, and he proved that was not the case at that time.

So I think that would be a great one.

You can follow Jason Levin on X at @jasonlevin18. 

Andy Roth has covered the NBA for various outlets since 1979. Follow him @arhooptalk.