Only if! But it got me thinking, what if we could direct dial the past and listen in on a story. Today’s the day to give it a try. Dad got honored at the Cleveland All-Star Game as one of the top 75 NBA players.

And we’ve got at least 75 stories hoarded in the basement: newspaper articles, programs, trophies, all kinds of things to prove that Dad was more than a pioneering basketball legend. He was very much involved with the game, from playing to coaching to being a color analyst to starting and owning a team. But where to begin?

I’m starting this occasional series by dialing number 68. It’s fun to start with this because it’s black history month, and it brings us back to 1968 when Dad was a 76er alongside two other Top 75 players (Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer.)

Dad started playing before I was born, so I missed him playing on the winning 76ers Championship team and the part of his career when he got to play with Wilt. My best memory of his playing days was his injury when I was six years old.

Sometimes it’s hard to relate to that younger part of him.

In the second season of his playing career, he was more than the number 32; he cared deeply about the intensifying Civil Rights Movement.

So much so that Reverend Paul Abernathy, who took over the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after Martin Luther King, Jr. died, recognized Dad in 1968 for his “participation in the cause for human dignity.”

Dad never cared for awards and honors, but this one matters to him. He’s kept it prominently displayed in his office. It’s not surprising. Dad never stood for prejudice of any kind; even in the height of all the discrimination in 1968.

He considered his teammates his brothers and they considered him a brother, too.

This brotherly love, seems to be romanticized when you look at those black and white photos from back in the day and even the colored photos that were so pale they almost looked sepia-toned.

But there are photos in our basement which show an entirely different game than the one I envision. It’s as if the aggression raging in society in 1968 was mirrored on the court.

One sportswriter, Larry Merchant, wrote an article entitled “The War.” It’s a cutout, so there’s no telling what paper it came from or when it was published. He said, “They’re going to need 40-man squads and shoulder pads in the NBA to survive a season.”

And then the sportswriter went on to explain how Dad broke his wrist in a not-so-friendly playoff game against the NY Knicks.

“Bodies flew, Cunningham splitting the two Knicks like a bowling ball. He careened across the baseline–where a spectator had been removed earlier for tripping a referee–and he went down and stayed down.”

It was a violent world back then, beyond the fun and games of our imagination. But those guys played on, and stuck by one another, regardless of what the rest of society was doing, even while making it look effortless and admirable.

***

That was intense, even rough, too! There’s no way today’s players could get away with what those guys endured back then. Hopefully you’re hooked. You never know what number we might dial next so stay tuned. And, meanwhile, congratulations to the top 75 NBA players!