RIP, Chocolate Thunder

Sure. Why wouldn't Tebow count?

Have grown up in the New York area in the late '60s/early '70s, the first name that popped into my head was Ron Swoboda.

I'm sure there are a lot of guys out there who are beloved but really weren't all that good as players.

 

Kemper opened In 1974 but a wind storm in June 1979 destroyed the roof. The village People had played the night before.

Imagine the carnage.

Kings were coming off the Midwest Division and first time popularity in he market (Chiefs were awful then) but then had to move back downtown to a smaller building at municipal. Only good part was that it was really loud in the more compact venue.

The team had to scramble to fill home dates hence a tradition started of playing four home games in St Louis. They were long done with Omaha by 1979.

February 1980 the roof was fixed and they moved back in against the Sonics. Packed arena. One of the few times.

 

Loved Dawkins and the entertainment he provided. My favorite story was about his shoulder injury, caused by carrying around a 70-pound boombox!

 

RIP, Man of the Millennium.

 

That's right. Forgot about that roof collapse.

 

This is not the appropriate time to talk about Darryl Dawkins' death.

 

Though I do hold out hope the New York Daily News can get a photo of Dawkins' corpse strapped down to a gurney with the sternum split, the chest cavity gaping open and a doctor gripping some of his internal organs that might be oozing out of his abdomen, all under the hammer headline of "CHOCOLATE MELTS IN YOUR HAND."

 

For some reason, one of the things I remember about the Kansas City slam is a photograph of the late Bill Robinzine trying to avoid being showered by glass.

I was watching NBA-TV recently and saw both Nate Archibald and Scott Wedman playing for Boston. Sigh. Thanks, Joe Axelson.

 

Tim Salmon was never an All-Star, but certainly a really good player for the Angels.

 

WARNING: This post will likely only interest myself and Liut.

I'll stick up for Joe.

Through the miracle of the Interwebs, I became decent friends with the Kings' former GM over the last half dozen years of his life. We never met, face-to-face, but as I was researching a project, he would answer my detailed questions about the Kings in these long, single-spaced, typed-out letters that he would mail me. Starting out as a media/publicity guy, he seemed to have a soft spot for me.

It's easy to say "Thanks, Joe Axelson" but, largely, his hands were always tied. As great as Archibald was on the stats, the Kings couldn't win with him so he dealt him to try and get a better team. Axelson was constantly in the quest for a title and not merely being the last seed in the playoffs. He was always chasing a title. The first KC ownership group was comprised of 10 local guys and the only thing they agreed on was that they didn't like wasting money. The Kings would RE-USE JERSEYS for goodness sake. (Go on eBay -- you may find a Kings jersey where the name plate was switched from a Grunfeld to a Nealy and you'll still see the outlines.)

Axelson was held in very high regard by the NBA office in New York. In 1979, after Ford-Wedman-Birdsong Kings won the Midwest, the NBA office offered him an operations job and he was good at it -- devising officiating procedures, a streamlined marketing plan and he was also one of the early creators of the drug policy.

During the next three years - 1980/81/82 - the Kings' record went down each year. They made the '81 WCF largely because it was weak that year. They were 40-42, same as Houston. Yet, in June 1981, Cleveland owner Ted Stepien offered Birdsong and Wedman crazy money, something like 600k or 700k each. The Kings couldn't pay afford it and had to deal them (Wedman went to CLE, Birdsong to NJ). This happened while Axelson was in New York and not with the franchise.

The Kings were never the same.

In 1982, having bottomed out and on the edge of folding (yes, folding), the Kings begged Axelson to come back and he did (his wife hated NYC) but it was all different. The 10 owners had become 3 but were still unwilling to put any money into the Kings. Yet Axelson and Cotton Fitzsimmons molded a roster of Woodson/Eddie Johnson into a 45-37 team that lost the last tie-breaker in 1983 to miss the playoffs.

Two months later, the Sacramento owners came in. They didn't mind spending money on free agents but they only cared about moving to Sacramento. Axelson became the "bad guy" when, really, he was in the middle while the owners were back in California.

I asked about losing Wedman/Birdsong and Joe was direct to me.

"If I was there, I would have found a way to sign them all."

I believed him.

On top of this, indoor soccer took hold and the Comets were drawing 13,000 a game with $2 tickets. They bled so much money trying to get the Kings out of town. It worked.

 

Interesting read and thanks for the correction regarding Wedman.