FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples Of Clyde NBA Podcast

For reasons best left unexplained, I was reading old Sports Illustrated articles today, and came across the following quote from a 1967 column by Frank Deford.  While in Lawrence, Kansas, Deford ends up talking to Phog Allen, who says this:

All through the land, no matter how small the town, a basketball gym became like a city hall, like a community meeting place. That’s part of it, and the game. It’s artistic, fast, and clever. It has action and scoring. That’s what people want. And then there’s the emotion. There’s so much that I don’t think people can ever appreciate it in the right way. There’s just so much emotion.

Phog Allen knew it in 1967 as much as we do today. It’s a great time to love basketball, and it always has been.

Have a safe, happy, and healthy New Year, everyone!

This is Alvin Robertson.

I hadn’t thought about Alvin Robertson at all in a long time, if I ever really did.  However, recently, Alvin Robertson’s name came up twice.

First was during All Star Weekend, when Kevin Arnovitz at TrueHoop did this great bunch of posts about “Your Nightmare Defender” asking former and current NBA players who they least liked to be defended by.  A bunch of the older guards named Alvin Robertson.

Then, on February 18, it was the anniversary of Alvin Robertson becoming the first player to record a quadruple-double, by getting 20 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, and 10 steals in a game against the Suns in 1986.  Only Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson have done it since (though they didn’t start counting blocks until the 70s, so Wilt probably had a bunch that aren’t ‘official’.)

I remember Alvin Robertson being a pretty decent player on the Bucks - his better years on the Spurs, say from 1984-1988, were a little before my time in terms of basketball fandom.

So I decided to look him up.

He had very decent career stats, especially in his prime, and especially when it came to steals.  He was defensive player of the year in 1985-1986 and was on the all-defensive every year from 1985-1986 through 1990-1991.  He finished his career 10th all time in steals.

He also scored the first ever basket by the Toronto Raptors franchise.

For more fun, here’s a video for “NBA SWAT Team” with Alvin Robertson, Charles Barkley, and others. (God bless YouTube.)

And here’s a Jack McCallum article about him from the SI Vault. It contains this nugget:

And he earns points away from the mainstream every Sunday afternoon when he hosts, gratis, a two-hour program of reggae music on radio station KAPE. Both the records and the rap, which he performs in a Jamaican patois, belong to Robertson, who grew up in Barberton, Ohio. Isn’t there something odd about an Ohio skinhead spinning tunes for the dreadlocks crowd? “It’s not how you look, mon,” says Robertson, flashing a heavy-metal grin, “it’s whether you feel the beat.”

(God bless the SI Vault, too.)

It’s kind of funny to start thinking about these players from the past who aren’t part of the canon, the mythology of the league.  No one is going to speak of Alvin Robertson in the reverential tones reserved for the legends.  But he can be remembered quite fondly.

It makes you wonder which of today’s players will be the Alvin Robertson of 15 years from now.  Will some young NBA fan start saying, “Oh, man, I totally remember Antonio McDyess, that guy was cool.”   Or maybe they’ll think to themselves “what was this Joe Johnson character all about?”

Regardless, spending some time reading about Alvin Robertson is a way to pass some time during the NBA dog days.  If you have any Alvin Robertson memories or thoughts, leave them in the comments.