Dad was the sixth man to an all-black starting team when he won his 76ers Championship as a player. Mr. Erving started off as a kid playing on an all-white team.

The fate of these men came together when Dad became Mr. Erving’s coach and they led the 76ers to the World Championship. And so it’s come to pass on this day (or yesterday as the case may be) that you can’t celebrate one without the other. And so, we have today’s Air Dare/Birthday Special.

And with all that City Hall faces right now, we need to turn all the negativity that’s brewing into a positive, and real quick. Let’s take this back a notch to better days, June 2, 1983, with the 76ers World Championship parade in the city of brotherly love.

Funny. All these years, I had fantasized that the parade (and my 8th Grade graduation) fell on my Dad’s birthday. So imagine when the truth set in (uh, last week) when I saw that they were a day apart.

But it’s not the first time I switched things up, when Dad got into the NBA Hall of Fame for coaching, not playing, I thought they had made a mistake. I didn’t remember him as a player. The cheering hurt my ears, mostly I would cry, and once, for some reason, there’s an image of him waving to me in the stands. And maybe I made this up too, but I remember Mom saying, “Look your father’s waving to you. He never waved to me in all the years I’ve been coming to games.”

He won championships for both playing and coaching, but for me, the playing years didn’t count. You know that really bad question we used to ask ourselves: if a tree fell in the forest and no one saw it did it really fall?

I needed proof. And, luckily I just recently found the Western Union Telegram with Grandpa congratulating Dad to say that it was so.

I tell myself it was real, after all.

Since I didn’t give much thought to the past, it was before I was born, I mean really, I definitely never entertained the idea that Dad had played for the very team Mr. Erving played for.

But when Dad had his enshrinement dinner he told my sister and me, “I just have to go somewhere. It’s no big deal.” We had no idea what he was talking about. Mom was the one who said, “No. It’s a big honor. He’s just downplaying it.”

Only, to twist their lives together, Dad turned out to be Mr. Erving’s coach.

It explains a lot. Like why they are two basketballs in a pod. For example, Dad always said every player should be a coach first, it takes the selfishness out of them, but Mr. Erving had his own variation, “Not every player can be a coach.”

They were each other’s contemporaries and could “finish each other’s sandwiches” as Frozen would have it, but they were more alike than I ever understood. It has me exploring things in a new light.

Dad grew up playing in the schoolyards in Brooklyn, NY. He always said, “Just put kids on a basketball court. There will be no race. You’ll just know, you’ll either like the guy or you won’t.”

Seven years after Dad, Mr. Erving was born in Long Island, NY. He had a park and a basketball net right outside his bedroom window and he and his brother would go and play hoops. They’d shovel snow to play.

Back when I wrote Growing Into My Height, I quoted Dad explaining to me. “There weren’t a lot of schools with gyms.” It’s a fun read to see how I’ve grown into my height with my writing or if you just want some background on my Dad, which is hidden in the middle http://growing-into-your-height.

But one day, according to the documentary, The Doctor, it was too cold to play, so he and his childhood friend found an indoor court run by the Salvation Army. They joined the team as the only two black boys.

That experience never left Mr. Erving. He insisted at his enshrinement into the Basketball Hall of Fame that the Salvation Army banner was behind him just like they had stood by him when he was 10 years old.

There’s something Mr. Erving said last week that you need to know before we go on with this week’s Air Dare. “Basketball was a great escape. But it wasn’t remotely associated with life or death.”

Air Dare

Read last week’s muse if you have to. Today we’re exploring one of the 10 reasons why you’d rather call on Dr. J to be your boss (and today’s AirDare).

He’s the protector. But as you know, I’m making this stuff up on the fly. So with this week’s muse, I’m changing protector to guardian. That word fits Dr. J. better.

So here we have reason number one in Episode II. He’s the…

guardian who’ll take a stand when he needs to.

Or, in other words, he’ll stand by you. How can I not throw that song into the mix? The greatest pick-me-up song I can think of. It brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it.

https://youtu.be/hwZNL7QVJjE

So now for the tricky part because this Air Dare is not intended to tear down Michael Jordan’s documentary The Last Dance, however the idea of what makes Dr. J a great leader came to me because Michael Jordan couldn’t take a stand in the 1990 NC senatorial race. Obviously he got blasted for that decision, and there were those who spoke out.

Here’s the top two if you need to understand this better.

https://uproxx.com/dimemag/barack-obama-reaction-republicans-buy-sneakers-too-michael-jordan-the-last-dance/

https://deadspin.com/30-years-later-michael-jordan-still-cant-admit-he-was-1843247001

I’m just a mama here, and I’m all about brightening up your day, not making it lousier, so I’m not bashing Michael Jordan. You can’t make me!

I have to come out with it. In college, I got annoyed by people who were too into their causes. Why couldn’t they just do their thing?

But now speaking with Mr. Erving I get why I’ve been shy to pick up a cause. I didn’t have what my Dad and Mr. Erving had–events and society that forced me to take a stand.

Mr. Erving said in our phone conversation last week, “I grew up with the Civil Rights struggle and leaders who were being assassinated. JFK. Malcolm X. Robert Kennedy. The Vietnam War. I had friends go to fight and never came home. From a generational standpoint, this was real. I couldn’t deny it. The civil rights unrest.”

Dad lived through it while he was playing basketball. “Here I’m gonna go to Carolina. Big city. Street smart and there were things that were going on around the world I wasn’t aware of. Segregation.” He got off the plane, it was his first time in an airport in Raleigh Durham and he saw two men bathrooms: “Men Colored Room” and “Men White Room.” He’d never seen anything like that.

Or when he was playing and he went to a restaurant that wouldn’t serve his teammates. He wanted to say something and would have, but his friends stopped him. They said, “Let’s just go. It’s okay.”

Sometimes you want to take a stand but it’s not the time or place for it. That’s hard for someone like me to understand since I didn’t experience it.

But when the 1967 76ers team won the Championship, and they reunited for their 50th anniversary, all they talked about was the day after MLK got shot. Should they have played that game? They all wished that they hadn’t.

We discussed this topic in The Day After MLK and particularly saw it through the eyes of fellow teammate Wali Jones. http://the-day-after-mlk.

Even with history to back you, when you’re in the throws of the situation, you don’t know what’s the right thing to do: to take a stance or not to?

But Mr. Erving knew what he needed to do when he needed to do it. He waved the Salvation Army banner behind him when it mattered most. Every year he gives them money. It’s his way to take a stand and to give back to something good that happened to him.

And that’s what makes him a great leader: he’s the guardian who’ll take a stand. And now that he’s shown us the way, let’s rewrite the negative current events surrounding Philadelphia City Hall with something brighter.

Birthday Special

So let’s go to June 2, 1983. The day I thought was my Dad’s birthday, but it wasn’t, only today’s my Dad’s birthday so what’s it really matter?

It was the day of my 8th Grade graduation from Holy Child. We’d have just enough to go to the parade, go home, change into my white dress, and head over to the church. People were already lining up. We were the last to arrive.

But we had the celebration before the commencement. It’s why I’ve always been a big proponent of eating dessert first or read the last page before the beginning. You always have the celebration before the main event.

We stepped onto the float with makeshift stairs, just like we were going on a hayride. My sister and I lagged behind my Mom. We watched Dad and Mr. Katz, the owner of the team, take the front of the float with the trophy. Mom sat on the left side. I think she had the seat to herself so she could jump up and wave and scream. Sometimes she’d even go up to the front to be with Dad.

My sister and I sat behind her and we stayed glued to our seats. From what I remember, since we spent most of our time in them, they were folding chairs set up two by two on either side.

We were trying to be transparent. We both knew no one was there to see us. I feel like we had come to this conclusion on our own, independent of one another, but I could have just as easily gotten the silly idea in Heather’s head that this wasn’t about her either. (I was the older sister who loved to tell her younger sister what she needed to do and not do).

So there we were. We were happy, elated, don’t get me wrong, we just put on our stoic faces so no one would mistake us for having been in any way involved in the victory.

They lined the sides with plexiglass so we could see out like we were driving in a convertible with the windows up, only we were pecking along at a pace that you didn’t even take notice of. That day was not about speed.

In a crowd of thousands where one person blurred together into a crowd like a droplet to the ocean, there were my two eighth grade classmates. I hadn’t seen them yet, I just heard, “Stephanie, over here.”

It was impossible. I blinked. And had to blink again but it was April and Stacey.

I wanted to touch them. They were right there. They were taking a chance of missing graduation, too.

The excitement that I had been holding back spewed out of me. “How did you find me? Well, that was obvious, “We saw your Dad.” So then I had to know, “How were you allowed through?” They laughed, I wasn’t exactly thinking this conversation through, “We told the guards we were friends with you.”

And I wanted to keep talking. And then they said, “Where’s Maurice Cheeks float?” Of course, everyone had a crush on Maurice Cheeks and Andrew Toney (the two good looking single guys on the team). So they were off just like Mary Poppins–blown away with the wind.

I sat back in my seat. The time it felt like I was in detention. What I wouldn’t have given to be a fan and run away with them. We could go float hopping. To be able to see the world through their eyes and feel the excitement, joy, and love I kept pent up inside of me.

And then we were off. If that’s the right word for it.

William Penn stood on top of City Hall and loomed before us as Philly’s tallest building. Before 1987, no building could be taller. Yet, we didn’t even notice it until we had gotten up close.

It seemed so small amidst the blizzard. It’s as if the heavens had opened up and the angels were in on it, too, streaming joy to all of us.

The parade ended as magically as it had begun. You’re in that stupor kind of like when we were kids and we came off the boat of A Small World at Disney.

And to think I sat out of that parade. Talk about not wanting to take a stand! All because of a story I had in my head that I was too small for that day.

I think of Mr. Erving, the guardian of taking a stand, the man of little words who cautioned us at the beginning of the Air Dare that basketball isn’t life or death.

Maybe it’s life after all. Especially when we think back on the joy it brought City Hall on June 2, 1983. We need to work hard, fight for what we believe in, and know when to celebrate.

And in case you haven’t figured it out, the best gift I could have given my Dad today was to honor Mr. Erving the way I did. That’s what made this Air Dare/birthday special complete. No one stood alone. They fought, won, and celebrated together. And did they celebrate!

I would have left on that note, but I couldn’t resist the last photo in my scrapbook.