[In his 2016 book The Curse: The Colorful & Chaotic History of the LA Clippers, author Mick Minas chronicled the ups and mostly downs of this seemingly ill-fated NBA franchise over more than three decades. There’s plenty to tell, and Minas does so through more than 500 pages. Yet, the text makes no mention of Michael Brooks.  Michael who? In 1980, Brooks, the All-American forward from LaSalle, was the team’s top draft choice (ninth overall) and, from all indications, a major piece in the Clipper rebuild. Brooks, in NBA-speak, was “a warrior,” a versatile, high-energy stud who could ba ..read more

[When Street & Smith’s started publishing a separate pro basketball yearbook in the late 1980s, Houston Chronicle reporter Fran Blinebury joined the editorial team with his annual profiles of some of the NBA’s top players. I’ve already run several of them on the blog, mainly to credit to Blinebury. He’s a fantastic sportswriter with great tone, knowledge, and a keen eye for detail.  What follows is Blinebury at his 1,200 words-or-less best from the 1991-1992 Street & Smith’s Pro Basketball annual. Blinebury profiles the veteran Dominique Wilkins as his Human Highlight Film approac ..read more

[Memories can be funny, but I recall as a kid flipping through basketball magazines and reading many a feature story about the Van Arsdale brothers, Dick and Tom. They were identical twins who dittoed through the NBA from 1965 to 1977. And yet, in my fairly substantial collection of old basketball magazines, what follows is the first Van Arsdale twin story that I’ve come across. This one, which starts with a bar story, ran in the April 1971 issue of the magazine Sports Today. At the keyboard is Associated Press reporter Mike Recht, who would later work briefly for the ABA Spirits of St. Louis ..read more

[Open a copy of Bernard King’s 2017 autobiography Game Face, and the dust jacket informs you that King is a Hall of Famer, “one of the most dynamic scorers in basketball history,” a very private person, and somebody who overcame myriad personal and physical challenges. All true.  What about his younger brother Albert? No mention in the dust jacket, and Albert factors into just one of the book’s roughly 300 pages. However, had Game Face come out in the 1980s to celebrate Bernard in his high-scoring prime, Albert likely would have factored more prominently into the text. He might have even ..read more

[Our last post featured Norm Van Lier in the winter of 1978. While Van Lier reflected on his long tenure with the Chicago Bulls, neither he nor the reporter knew it all would come crashing to an end within months. In October 1978, right before the start of the next season, the Bulls cut loose the 31-year-old Van Lier, claiming it was time to rebuild around younger players.  The turn of events infuriated Van Lier. He later stated on the record about the Bulls, “I definitely hate the organization with a passion. I’ve given them all my life. You can’t count money for the sweat I’ve given the ..read more

[Norm Van Lier spent 10 action-packed seasons in the NBA (1969-1979), seven of them collecting floor burns for the Chicago Bulls. Because of Van Lier’s confident, hard-charging demeanor, he was booed and cheered lustily at home and away, somewhat akin today to Patrick Beverley on the loose in an NBA arena.  In this article, published in the May 1978 issue of Basketball Digest, Tom Fitzpatrick of the Chicago Sun-Times visits with the 30-year-old Van Lier during what would be his final season as a Chicago Bull. By October 1978, new Bulls’ coach Larry Costello surprisingly waived Van Lier, a ..read more

[By 1971, Mike Z. Lewin had relocated from his native Indianapolis to New York, with plans to  move to Somerset, England. He wanted to study chemistry at Cambridge University. But the 26-year-old Lewin, who’d taken up writing on the side while attending Harvard, would soon publish his first detective novel titled, Ask the Right. The 1972 novel would be the start of his long-lived detective series featuring Albert Samson, a fictional Indianapolis-based private eye. Samson, a low-key, Columbo-like sleuth, stumbles into crazy cases and bumbles his way forward to crack them. For lovers o ..read more

[Below is an article about Joe Proski, the Phoenix Suns’ trainer for 32 seasons (1968-2000). I’ll keep my intro brief, mainly because I don’t know a lot about those 32 seasons. What I do know is Proski was well-liked, possessed a wicked sense of humor, and looks real good these days as he’ prepares to turn 85 years young. This day-in-the-life piece, penned by the Phoenix -based freelancer Bob Wischnia, appeared in the January 1975 issue of HOOP Magazine.] **** The name of Joe Proski never will go in the record books with the legendary names of the National Basketball Association. But maybe it ..read more

[Whether answering to “The Whirling Dervish” or “The Touch” for his array of shots, Max Zaslofsky was one of modern pro basketball’s early oh-wows who, arguably, reigned as the game’s best player, circa 1949.  This newspaper clip from back then captures well the wow and the arguably: “Joe Lapchick, the gaunt, hollow-cheeked coach of the New York Knickerbockers, looked up from a plate of Mother Leone’s shrimp that were buried beneath a succulent pink Creole sauce and said to his next-door neighbor, Alvin (Doggie) Julian of Bostontown: “These Rochester people are not going to like my s ..read more

[After his pro basketball career, George Mikan took to the links and soon became a scratch golfer. As one of his close friends chuckled many years later, “Everybody wanted to play George for money.” Why? To brag that they beat the mighty Mikan. As the friend claimed, Mikan rarely, if ever, lost. “Sinking a putt,” Mikan told the friend, “is nothing when you’ve stood on the free-throw line at Madison Square Garden with 19,000 people going crazy for you to miss.” Or, when opposing centers jostled Mikan each and every night to nudge him out of position and get under his skin. The rough stuff was a ..read more