“They Did It! Stars Are ABA Champs” proclaimed the Deseret News’ front page on May 19, 1971. In their first season in Salt Lake City, the Utah Stars won the ABA championship, which remains the only professional basketball title awarded to a team in Utah. So let’s take a quick look at how this amazing achievement was accomplished.
Everything begins and ends with Zelmo Beaty, seen here with the ABA championship trophy. (That trophy later had all the names of the players engraved on it. As far as I can tell, it remains in possession of Bill Daniels’ estate in Denver.) Beaty was forced to sit out the entire 1969-70 season due to a punitive NBA rule designed to prevent players from joining the ABA. This was bad news for the Los Angeles Stars, but it may have been exactly what Beaty and his aching knees needed. When he returned to the court for the 1970-71 season as a member of the Utah Stars, he played the best basketball of his life.
Beaty averaged 22.9 points and 15.7 rebounds per game, including a league-high 5.4 offensive rebounds per game. He also led the ABA with a .555 field goal percentage. Not only was he an All-Star, but he finished second in voting for MVP, falling to Indiana’s Mel Daniels. And after the championship was won, he was named the ABA’s Playoffs MVP. Talk about a Hall of Fame season!
Austin “Red” Robbins was traded to the Stars in September 1970 for BYU’s Craig Raymond. A lot of people were really excited to see the former Cougar play in Utah, especially since he was coming off a career year. But Stars general manager Vince Boryla decided to swap out the center for a power forward to play alongside Beaty. And I think he ended up finding a nice upgrade for Raymond in the process.
Robbins was a 6-8 forward from Florida, who played at Chipola College before transferring to Tennessee. In 1966, he was drafted in the sixth round by the Philadelphia 76ers, but he didn’t make the team, so he went to Italy for a year. In 1967, he joined the New Orleans Buccaneers, where he became a three-time All-Star and even received MVP votes in the 1969-70 season. In his first season with the Stars, he made his fourth consecutive All-Star Game behind averages of 12.6 points and 11.9 rebounds per game.
Donnie Freeman actually shares a lot in common with Red Robbins. He was a 6-3 guard from Illinois, who was also drafted by Philadelphia in 1966. Although he went in the third round, he still didn’t make the team. In 1967, he signed with the Minnesota Muskies, who became the Miami Floridians after just one season. Like Robbins, Freeman was an instant ABA All-Star, even receiving MVP votes in 1969 and 1970. Also like Robbins, Freeman joined the Utah Stars through a daring offseason trade. Despite Mack Calvin’s impressive rookie campaign, Vince Boryla went with a win-now mentality and swapped him for the more seasoned three-time All-Star.
Freeman played well for Utah, putting up a team-high 23.6 points per game, as well as 5.7 rebounds per game. But he only played in 24 games for the Stars before Boryla pulled off an even more daring trade. On January 8, 1971, (just two days after being named an All-Star) Freeman was packaged in a blockbuster trade to Texas for Glen Combs, Ron Boone, and the Chaparrals’ first-round draft pick.
Apparently Freeman had been locked in the middle of a nasty contract dispute with the Stars front office — they even fined him $1,000 for failing to suit up for a game. I’m assuming he enjoyed his situation with Chaparrals, as he finished the 1970-71 season strong, receiving MVP votes for the third time in his career. And he made the All-Star Game for the fifth and final time in the following season. He then fell into a supporting role with Indiana and San Antonio before concluding his professional basketball career with the Lakers in 1976.
Glen Combs was a 6-2 guard from Kentucky who played at Virginia Tech. In March 1968, he was drafted by the Dallas Chaparrals and signed with them before also being drafted by the San Diego Rockets in the fifth round. Combs became an All-Star in his second season and even received MVP votes. Just like Freeman, Combs was named to the 1971 All-Star Game two days before being traded. Combs didn’t have the same all-around game that Freeman had, but he was a much better 3-point shooter and he still averaged 20.1 points per game in his first season with the Stars.
Ron Boone is a name very familiar to Utah basketball fans. He was born in Oklahoma City, but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Standing just 5-foot-7 after graduating from high school, he initially enrolled at Clarinda Community College in Iowa. He suddenly had a growth spurt that brought him up to 6-foot-2, which helped him earn a scholarship at Idaho State. After making the All-Big Sky First Team twice, he was drafted by the Dallas Chaparrals in 1968 before being picked by the Phoenix Suns in the 11th round.
Despite leading the ABA in turnovers as a rookie, he still had a strong debut and earned a spot on the ABA All-Rookie First Team. But he didn’t become an All-Star until 1971. Like Combs, he was honored for his work in Dallas, but ended up representing Utah at the ABA’s mid-season break. However, Boone was relegated to the bench in his season as a Star, putting up 15.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game. He also prided himself on never missing a basketball game and ended up playing 86 regular season games this season because of the trade.
Now, before I can go on with the season, I need to talk about the 1971 ABA Draft. From the very beginning, the ABA had held their draft months ahead of the NBA Draft in an attempt to lock down their new rookies long before the NBA came calling. Of course, this didn’t work with the most elite prospects like Lew Alcindor, but that didn’t stop the ABA from trying. In fact, they just kept bumping up the date. Their first draft was in April, the next year March, then February. By 1971, the ABA Draft was in January, held one day before the All-Star Game.
This year, the ABA decided to get rid of the territorial pick system, which had allowed teams to acquire local college players before the draft officially began. The league also finally ordered its draft based on teams’ records — simply giving the top pick to the worst team. Of course, a mid-season draft meant they had to off whatever the records were at the time. This worked out marvelously for Utah, though, as the Chapparals’ first-round pick ended up being No. 1 overall. And there was only one player Vince Boryla had his eye on.
Jim McDaniels was a budding superstar from Western Kentucky. The 6-11 big man averaged 27.6 points and 13.8 rebounds over his three-year college career and was considered a can’t-miss game-changer. Some said he was as good a defender as Bill Russell. One of his coaches said he could score even if he was lying down on a stretcher. So Boryla didn’t hesitate to make McDaniels the first No. 1 pick in Utah Stars history. However, even before the draft, it was common knowledge that the Carolina Cougars were aggressively working to add McDaniels to their team. More on that later.
So one day after making the top selection in the draft, Utah sent four players to the All-Star Game in Greensboro, North Carolina. This strong roster guided the Stars to a 57-27 record, just one game behind the league-leading Indiana Pacers. In the first round of the playoffs, Utah was matched up against Texas. Although Don Freeman played well against his former team, the Stars still easily swept the Chaparrals.
Due to realignment, the rematch with the Pacers took place in the Western Division Finals. The two teams were evenly matched, ultimately ending up in a Game 7 in Indianapolis. Many years later, coach Dick Sharman said this game was his favorite memory of this season — gaining revenge on the Pacers’ home court, largely due to the inspired play of Red Robbins (25 points, 14 rebounds, and 11-for-13 shooting from the field).
The Stars met the Kentucky Colonels in the ABA Finals and we forced once again to play the full seven games. But this time, Utah had home court advantage and earned a 131-121 victory in front of a sold-out Salt Palace. Kentucky’s Dan Issel had a game-high 41 points, but the Stars got brilliant performances from each of their starters. Zelmo Beaty naturally led the way with 36 points and 16 rebounds, while Willie Wise added 22 points, 20 rebounds, and six assists. Red Robbins came up big again with 13 points, 15 rebounds, and five assists, while Glen Combs chipped in 20 points and five assists. And let’s not forget Merv Jackson’s 19 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists. This was a team with a lot of weapons, good ball movement, and even better rebounding. Although they lacked the raw power of superstar-led teams like Indiana and Kentucky, Utah had just enough of the right ingredients to pull off this most impressive feat.
The ABA rewarded the Stars with $48,000, which was split evenly between the players and coaches. Frankly, I find that prize money embarrassingly small — even by 1971 standards. Utah’s governor declared the month of May to be Stars Month, and they did unofficially rename the road in front of the Salt Palace as Stars Avenue. But Salt Lake City didn’t throw an official parade for them. At least the players did get from fairly decent-looking championship rings.
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last very long. The 1971 offseason proved to be little more than a series of misfortunes for the Stars. I’ll start with the least egregious one: the failed NBA merger. There had been serious talk of merging the ABA with the NBA since the formation of the ABA in 1967. By 1971, the NBA appeared to have been ready to welcome every ABA team into their fold with open arms (except for the Virginia Squires because they were too close to the Baltimore Bullets). But at the last minute, the courts put an indefinite hold on the merger due to a landmark lawsuit filed by Oscar Robertson against the NBA. That lawsuit would (eventually) overhaul free agency in the NBA and give the players more rights. It also illustrates the high level of uncertainty the courts had with professional basketball in the ‘70s. The sport had never had this much money flowing around and the complications caused by the rival league fighting for the same players’ rights left everyone scrambling. Teams were constantly suing other teams, and players frequently had to sue their team owners to reclaim their paychecks. Everything was quite dubious from a legality standpoint. And unfortunately for the Stars, the courts took a little too long to resolve everything. Had the 1971 merger been able to proceed, I think there’s a high probability the Stars would still be in Utah today.
The next big misfortunate was Jim McDaniels. The ABA’s No. 1 pick refused to play for the team that drafted him. That in itself wasn’t unusual, as all the ABA’s previous top picks also turned their team (Elvin Hayes, Lew Alcindor, and Pete Maravich). But McDaniels was unique in that he didn’t leave the ABA for the NBA — he simply wanted to play for a different ABA team, the Carolina Cougars to be specific.
McDaniels may have been the first basketball superstar to turn down Utah. He said that if he had to even dribble a basketball for Utah then he wouldn’t play in the ABA. So Carolina quickly signed him to what they boldly proclaimed the biggest basketball contract ever. The newspapers of the day knew how much Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was making, so they logically assumed that McDaniels’ contract was close to $3 million. Because all this happened before the NBA Draft, McDaniels fell to the second round, where he was picked up by the Seattle SuperSonics.
Vince Boryla was furious. He accused Carolina of stealing his property and sneered at their pitiful compensation offers. Boryla hyperbolically claimed that even an unlimited amount of No. 1 picks wouldn’t suffice because there’d be no guarantee any of them would be as good as McDaniels. I don’t think he fully believed that last bit, but I do think he was justified in his outrage. A fellow team just flat out stealing a draft pick completely undermines the integrity of the league. Unfortunately for Utah, no recourse was available. The ABA commissioner publicly downplayed the importance of the draft, saying all that mattered was a team’s ability to sign the player. And the Stars knew they wouldn’t be able to count on the courts to help them out. So in the end, they had no choice but to accept Carolina’s pitiful compensation: an inconsequential center named George Peeples, who the Stars quickly traded to the Chaparrals for a washed-up former All-Star named John Beasley.
McDaniels happily began his career with the Cougars and tried to smooth things over with Utah fans by diplomatically claiming that he only turned down the Stars because they had just won the championship and he preferred the challenge of bringing a title to Carolina. I don’t know if anyone actually bought this nonsensical reasoning, especially as it didn’t line up with the timing of any of this saga. I don’t know if it was ever proved, but many speculated that McDaniels actually signed his contract with Carolina as early as November 1970. But what we do know for sure is that his contract was nowhere near the speculated $3 million.
Turns out that Carolina had signed McDaniels to a six-year, $1.35 million contract. That wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the payment plan, which stretched out that $1.35 million over 25 years. McDaniels played brilliantly — putting up 26.8 points and 14.0 rebounds per game and making the All-Star Game — but that bad contract quickly began to weigh on him. He requested to shrink that 25-year plan to 15 years, but was denied. So, after just 58 games with Carolina, McDaniels made the shocking decision to join the Sonics.
It is my personal belief that the mental stress of this whole episode caused irreparable harm to McDaniels’ psyche. Once he arrived in Seattle, he was a shell of his former self, struggling to make any impact on the game he once so effortlessly dominated. I couldn’t find any reports of him suffering a major injury, so I think all his problems stemmed from the financial concerns and the feelings of both being betrayed and betraying others. Later in his life, McDaniels regretted his decision to leave Carolina, saying he should have given the ABA a few more years to sort things out. The rest of his basketball career was a bleak disappointment, bouncing back and forth between the NBA and ABA and overseas. He retired in 1978 and died in 2017 at age 69.
In hindsight, Artis Gilmore would have been the better pick, as he actually ended up having the type of career everyone thought McDaniels would have had. Even better would have been the greatest ABA player of all time, Julius Erving, but he hadn’t decided to leave college early at the time of the draft, so he wasn’t available. (This is why the NBA doesn’t hold the draft in January!)
And now for the final misfortune of the offseason. (This is starting to sound like a witch’s curse. “You will win the title, but then be betrayed thrice in the summer!”) Bill Sharman’s dream job of coaching the Lakers opened up. Just as he ditched the Warriors to coach the Los Angeles Stars, Sharman wasted no time in returning home.
This was a profound loss for Utah. He was a Coach of the Year and now an ABA champion. He brought credibility and stability to the club. And — more importantly from a legal perspective — he was still under contract with the Stars. This time Bill Daniels got involved and he filed a lawsuit against both Sharman and the owner of the Lakers. At first, the judge ruled in Utah’s favor. But after Sharman appealed, the Lakers emerged victorious and didn’t even have to pay Utah any damages.
Sharman promptly guided the Lakers to another championship, becoming the only coach to win titles in the ABL, ABA, and NBA. He then helped L.A. win five more titles as their general manager. He was elected to the Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach, ultimately collecting 17 championship rings. Even after he retired, the Lakers kept giving him rings up until 2010. He died in 2013 at age 87.
Anyway, back in 1971, the Stars had to scramble to find a new head coach. Wisely, they chose someone local. Not only so the fans would like him, but also so he wouldn’t pull a Sharman and seek to return home.
LaDell Andersen was born in Malad City, Idaho, and attended nearby Utah State University. He was just a good enough player to be invited to the Olympic tryouts, but not good enough to make the team. Or play professionally, for that matter. But he did discover he had a knack for coaching. He started as an assistant at the University of Utah in 1956 before taking the head coaching job at Utah State in 1961. He took the Aggies to the NCAA Tournament five times and the NIT once during his 10-year career there. So it seems like he was certainly ready and prepared to take the leap to the professional level. Next time we’ll explore how well Andersen adapted to the ABA and how the reigning champions overcame their summer of heartache.
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