Something to read: eticket revisits Chocolate Thunder

If you have a few minutes today ...


http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=100209/DarrylDawkins

Good story!

 

I didn't pay much attention to the NBA until I moved to Dallas, but for everyone else, Choc was the man.

 

Dawkins' shattered backboard is one of my first sports memories. Love the photo of the Kings with their last names under their uniform number. Ahh the 1970s.

That was good stuff. The pictures--particularly the last burst, the ones that include Dawkins hugging his daughter--were really powerful.

 

TNT video feature on Dawkins breaking backboards:

 

Good Story. I lived in Winnipeg and went to 3 games when he coached here.

Very nice guy, drove a limo around town as his personal vehicle. He came into the club I worked at once and was very low key but was super cool to me when I marked out.

 

The one characteristic I know Friend got was his unpretentiousness. When he was the coach of the USBL's ValleyDawgs, he was very accomodating to our USBL writer ... and this wasn't his team.

Might be the world's biggest Peter Pan. At one USBL draft, he took Jameer Nelson with his first-round pick. Caused the local USBL coach to deadpan that he should have taken Emeka Okafor. Fun days ...

 

Good story.
I followed the Sixers as they pestered my Hawks (on WTCG/TBS) in the postseason.
Another diaper dandy, Moses, played for Philly some of those years.
That roster was loaded and it's nice to read about what Dawkins was experiencing at the time.
Never knew a fight turned the Blazers finals series like that.
Good read.

 

Nice work, Tom, my Montgomery County, Md., homeboy.

 

Dawkins might've been the naturally strongest, quickest, most powerful 6'11" man to ever live. Now if he'd just taken the time and done the off court work to refine some actual basketball skills....