"The Doctor': Julius Erving, beyond the hype

After months of what seemed like incessant hype, on June 10 the National Basketball Association's TV channel aired The Doctor, its 90-minute documentary on Julius Erving, aka the much beloved dignitary Dr. J, the most royal of the NBA's family of cool brothers.

The Good Doctor not only inspired a generation of high-flying dunk artists but also brought the dignity that the NBA needed in the 1970s, a decade through which the league strove for the full legitimacy and popularity that it gained with the advent of Larry Bird and Earvin Johnson (was he known as Magic in order to evade the ambiguities inherent in his first name's being so like the Doctor's surname?) and the adoption of the defunct American Basketball Association's three-point shot.

But even more than the three-point shot and its circus-like appropriately tri-colored basketball, the ABA was about Doctor J. That new league— the whole ABA endeavor— was about achieving equality, parity, with the NBA.

Like Jimi Hendrix

The ABA sought to compete with the NBA, but gradually lost money, seeing entire franchises fold seemingly overnight. The eventual merger with the NBA was almost entirely a result of the older league's need for Julius.

Not only was Erving arguably the world's greatest basketball player in the early 1970s, but the Doctor's great dignity guaranteed legitimacy, just as he epitomized cool. He was Jimi Hendrix married to the Boeing 707, headed for the rack. The NBA needed him desperately, and willingly paid the price of expansion and merger to get him under its wider tent.

So Julius Erving has his special seminal place in sports history. But where does he rank among the all-time greats as a basketball player?

Hard to answer, because of all the emotion gathered up with his life story, which is surprisingly well presented in this essentially hagiographic endeavor.

LeBron James falters

In the ABA, Erving could carry his teams to championships, and he won one in the NBA soon enough when the Philadelphia 76ers finally provided him with a companion great player: Moses Malone. But like LeBron James in his first year with Miami, Erving deferred to other players with bigger egos but lesser talent when he first joined the Philadelphia 76ers from the ABA.

Sports reputations (like all reputations) fluctuate and depend on many serendipitous factors. LeBron James of the Miami Heat is the best example possible.

Although James may well be the greatest athlete of all time, not to mention possessing the highest basketball IQ imaginable, James's ability to assert control of a game remains a variable and thoroughly unpredictable commodity.

Marriage unravels

Erving's reputation also got an added ironic boost from the tragic unjustified banning of Connie Hawkins from pro basketball until Hawkins successfully sued the NBA. Had his best years not been spent swooping and jamming in minor leagues and on knee-eroding playground surfaces, Hawkins would deservedly get equal or greater credit than Erving for pioneering the dunk as an offensive weapon from the forward position.

After Erving's retirement in 1987, it was revealed that he had fathered and for many years spurned an out-of-wedlock daughter. In the wake of those revelations, his seemingly solid marriage unraveled. Certainly Erving's longtime image as role model on and off the court took a massive hit.

But as the documentary points out, tragedy had already stalked Julius not once but twice: Both a brother and a son suffered early deaths. In evaluating the man's history, those tragedies weigh more heavily than marital infidelity.

In any case to whom must Erving answer for failing to live up to his idealized media image? Yes, back in the day he benefitted from the contrast between his relatively clean self and the coke-snorting brothers who were despoiling the NBA's image before he came along. But does he owe his adoring fans a lifetime of impeccable morally approved behavior?

Alpert forgiven

After all, Charles Barkley can proclaim that he's not a role model, deck a hectoring fan in a barroom brawl, shoot his mouth off at will and still emerge as a beloved public figure and TV commentator— in some weird sense, actually, a post-modern version of a public intellectual.

We even forgave the sportscaster Marv Alpert, who was ousted from NBC and then reinstated. His mellifluous cadences apparently outweighed his history of sexual assaults. So too do we cherish the memory of the Doctor's flights and swoops. We should thank the NBA— and Julius himself— for displaying him in his best light.

Hagiography in the service of aesthetics? Why not? I'm eager to watch the film a second time.