Before Watchmen: An uninspired ending

The Ozymandias miniseries concludes with a gorgeous cover by Jae Lee. He’s still not — and never will be — my favorite artist. But man, when he nails it, he really nails it! Dave Gibbons was loathe to expose the infamous squid monster that was the centerpiece of Adrian Veidt’s masterplan. Seeing how DC decided to devote six whole issues to focus exclusively on Ozymandias, I was hopeful that the company would be brave enough to devote a little more time to this significant, yet enigmatic beast. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed. Oh well. At least we got one last incredible cover.

Our variant cover by Ryan Sook is anything but incredible. It’s busy and boring and kind of obnoxious — especially with the question marks on Rorschach’s mask. Why on Earth did he think that it was a good idea to draw something so silly and so contrary to everything Watchmen and Before Watchmen had ever produced?

Like so many of these miniseries reaching their conclusion, this issue reeks of a tone of resignation. It’s as if all the creators involved collectively said, “Well, let’s get this over with.” Why bother straining yourself to create something thoughtful and challenging when the whole project had already been written off as a failed cash grab? Of course, I did really like this miniseries when it seemed like Len Wein was mocking Alan Moore … but in this issue, I couldn’t find anything near as clever.

Adrian begins this issue by confessing that he was bothered by Dr. Manhattan’s knowing smiles he always gave to Adrian’s hidden cameras that were set up to investigate the teleportation process. Dr. Manhattan knew full well that Adrian was spying on him in this regard, but chose to play along with the charade. Nevertheless, Adrian proceeded with his carefully laid plan, counting on his ability to trick Dr. Manhattan with his big reveal at the end.

And that carefully laid plan naturally involved Adrian shoving his assistant under a bus — literally — because she knew too much about his secret island. Of course, he had to immediately replace her with a near-identical assistant, but whatever. When it came to recruiting the artists and scientists to work on that island, Adrian chose to make the invitations in person, relying on his celebrity and inexhaustible checkbook to persuade these people to abruptly abscond to this secret location for an extended period of time. Of course, they all thought they were merely working on a movie — a movie with production costs so outrageous that it could never hope to turn a profit. But they all believed Adrian was an eccentric billionaire who didn’t mind wasting his money.

There is a quick, almost throwaway line to the human brain that was used to create the squid monster. And I’m really sad by that because I think this was one of the biggest opportunities for exploration in this whole Before Watchmen project. I actually consider it a weakness on Moore’s part in that he carefully created this whole world where the only superpowered individual was Dr. Manhattan. But then when it came to Adrian’s squid, Moore contradictorily used the brain of an actual psychic in order to plague everyone caught in the squid’s blast radius with madness-inducing nightmares. I would have loved to see Wein (or someone) expand on that idea so it doesn’t seem to come from out of nowhere in the original story. Spend some time with the psychic child, show how he got his powers and how they worked. Make him an actual, tragic character as opposed to a confusing footnote buried in the supplementary material.

Anyway, Wein spends a few more pages showing us nothing we haven’t seen already, including Ozymandias’ recruitment of Moloch (which I still think was a bad idea because I thought Moloch’s story would have been stronger if he hadn’t realized he was working for Adrian). Then we finally get something new … ish: The Comedian’s discovery of the secret island. Remember, this whole miniseries is Adrian recording his autobiography (and I strongly suspected that Wein intentionally made him a slightly unreliable narrator). Adrian fully admits he doesn’t know exactly how Eddie Blake discovered the island, but he suspects he was flying back from some secret government mission and he just happened to glance out the window at the right time to notice freighters dropping off supplies at an island that isn’t on any maps.

Adrian supposed that Eddie later returned to the island alone and snuck ashore in the dead of night, and gathered all the intel to learn the entire, horrifying truth of Adrian’s masterplan. Instead of trying to sabotage the whole thing then and there, Eddie ran away as fast as he could and refused to tell anyone about it, except for Moloch. At least that’s what Adrian surmised based on his limited understanding of this situation. Obnoxiously, Wein chose to reveal that Adrian had wired Jacobi’s apartment, so he could listen to Eddie’s entire drunken rant, thus completely negating the point of Jacobi telling Adrian all about it in the Moloch miniseries. But hey, we have to show that Adrian was involved in and in control of every single little detail of the story, right? I’m actually a little surprised that Wein didn’t show that Adrian allowed the Comedian full access to the island’s secrets just to torment his old rival.

And we conclude with Adrian going to kill Eddie. In his autobiography, Adrian concedes that he never liked Blake, but he had no choice but to murder him to protect the secret of this masterplan. Of course, I think Adrian is protesting too much, as the overtly violent nature of this assassination indicates a crime of passion in my book. I mean, Adrian could have simply shot Eddie in the head and walked away. But instead he insisted on pummeling him with his bare hands before dramatically throwing him out the window. I would have liked Wein to point out the unnecessary tactics Adrian employed here to contrast with the careful quietness that pervaded all other aspects of the plan, but Wein wasn’t interested in that.

Wein did, however, close fittingly on the Ozymandias poem by Horace Smith. Although, it think it was a missed opportunity to go straight from Eddie Blake’s death to this poem. Smith was writing about the concept of lost and forgotten empires — a more fitting companion to the final image we see of Ozymandias in the original Watchmen series, where he asks Dr. Manhattan in a panicked voice if his masterplan paid off in the end. Oh well. For a miniseries full of missed opportunities, it is only fitting that we end on one more.

1977: Not feeling particularly good or rich

When I said last time that the front office of the New Orleans Jazz had solidified, I wasn’t being entirely honest. That post was running long and I wanted to make sure I devoted the proper attention to Barry Mendelson, the man who did more damage to the Jazz than perhaps anyone else.

Mendelson was an Army Communications Specialist from New York, who got his start calling radio games for the Giants and Jets. In 1969, he created a radio show for Boston Celtic legend Red Auerbach, who almost immediately helped Mendelson join the Celtics front office as a vice president. In 1971, Mendelson moved out to Los Angeles, where he continued his radio work and his practice of building relationships in the NBA. In 1972, he became the personal manager for Laker legend Jerry West, and also may have represented Gail Goodrich (I wasn’t able to find enough corroborating information on that last bit, but I still think it was highly likely).

In 1974, when the New Orleans Jazz were scooping up everyone and anyone who was ever associated with the Lakers, Mendelson was brought on board as a vice president. In 1976, Bill Bertka stepped down as general manager and became an assistant coach. I’m not sure if he was forcibly demoted or if he willingly chose to return to the bench, but I do know that his vacancy was filled by Mendelson. And Mendelson immediately sought to make a couple of big, splashy moves to bolster the supporting cast around Pistol Pete.

Mendelson’s first move was to offer a massive three-year, $1.4 million contract to five-time All-Star Gail Goodrich. Now, this was in the days shortly after the landmark Oscar Robertson lawsuit that expanded the concept of free agency. The NBA only begrudgingly allowed the practice, but still sought to discourage it as much as possible through punitive compensatory mandates. In this case, New Orleans’ compensation to the Lakers came in the form of a complex trade. The Jazz gave up their first-round picks for 1977, 1978, and 1979, plus their 1980 second-round pick, in exchange for Los Angeles’ 1977 second-round pick and 1978 first-round pick. I don’t know how much of this trade was a mandate from the league and how much was Mendelson’s idea to appease all parties involved, but I do know that Mendelson later took full responsibility for the trade.

We’ll analyze the acquisition of Goodrich in just a little bit. But first, let’s talk about Mendelson’s second major transaction. Or rather, attempted transaction. Mendelson arranged with the Portland Trail Blazers to purchase the contract of four-time All-Star Sidney Wicks. The former Rookie of the Year would have filled a gaping hole at power forward for the Jazz, and Mendelson excitedly proclaimed this deal to the world. But Wicks refused to play in New Orleans (see, it’s not just Utah!) and the deal was called off. I wasn’t able to find a definitive reason why Wicks turned down the Jazz, other than the fact that he wanted to play for a winning organization like the Celtics instead. In any case, Wicks made Mendelson look like a fool, and he did not take it well. Mendelson reportedly accused Wicks of having a bigger ego than Pete Maravich despite being a worse player than him and a worse human being than any other player on the Jazz roster. Yikes!

Mendelson’s third big (and controversial) move was to fire Butch van Breda Kolff in December 1976. This was a major shock as the Jazz, just barely into their third season, actually had a winning record at the time (14-12). Plus, van Breda Kolff was reportedly popular among the players and the fans. But for whatever reason, he did not get along with the New Orleans front office. I wasn’t able to find any concrete examples of their disagreements beyond a few vague references to managing certain players’ minutes.

Not only was van Breda Kolff loved by New Orleans, but he loved New Orleans back. After being fired by the Jazz, he took up the head coaching job at the University of New Orleans for two seasons. He then took over the New Orleans Pride of the Women’s Professional Basketball League for two more years. After three years of coaching high school ball in Mississippi, he returned to Lafayette, where he had begun his coaching career way back in 1951. After four seasons, he continued to retrace his steps by returning to Hofstra for five seasons. In 1996, he finally had his last coaching job with the Tampa Bay Windjammers of the United States Basketball League. He died in 2007 in Spokane, Washington, at the age of 84.

Elgin Baylor, who had coached one game as an interim in New Orleans’ inaugural season, was now officially promoted to head coach. Unfortunately, he was unable to maintain the momentum van Breda Kolff had been building. Baylor went 21-35 the rest of the way, giving the Jazz a 35-47 record at the end of the season. Of course, not all of this was entirely Baylor’s fault. There was a fairly significant injury that I will discuss very soon, I promise. But first I need to wrap up the Mendelson saga.

In March 1977, Mendelson was abruptly fired. To his credit, he actually did sit down with a reporter to discuss some of his controversial moves. As I said earlier, he did take full responsibility for the Goodrich trade, even going so far to say that he would do it again. I find that a bit odd, considering that in the same breath, he also acknowledged that the trade really hurt his credibility and the credibility of the franchise. As for the Wicks debacle, he didn’t have anything to say, but he was surprisingly defensive about the van Breda Kolff firing. Mendelson seemed particularly irked that he got all the blame for that, even though the decision made by the entire front office. Of course, Mendelson was quick to add that he fully supported that decision, but he just didn’t want to be the only one criticized. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Mendelson never ran another NBA team after this. And I think you would be hard-pressed to find another general manager who caused this much damage in such a short amount of time.

So with all that drama out of the way, let’s take a look at the five most interesting players for the Jazz this season, beginning with their big off-season acquisition.

Gail Goodrich was born and raised in Los Angeles, where he was named Mr. California Basketball in high school. He initially wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps by attending USC, but coach John Wooden persuaded him to join UCLA, where he ended up winning two national championships. In 1965, he was drafted by the Lakers as a territorial pick, but he really didn’t do much for them in his first three seasons. So in 1968, the Lakers left Goodrich exposed to the Phoenix Suns’ expansion draft.

Goodrich exploded in Phoenix and became an All-Star right away. In 1970, the Lakers traded Mel Counts for Goodrich, and were pleased to discover that he could be the perfect shooting guard alongside Jerry West, despite his 6-foot-1 height. Goodrich made four more All-Star appearances with the Lakers and helped them win the 1972 title. But a contract dispute in 1975 soured his relationship with the organization. He was a holdout during the start of the 1975-76 season and he eventually ended up suing the Lakers.

Between Goodrich and Wicks, it’s clear to see that Mendelson was laser-focused on disgruntled All-Stars. But in Goodrich’s case, Mendelson clearly overpaid. Giving a large, three-year contract to an 11-year vet past his prime is bad enough. But having to give up two unprotected first-round picks and a pick-swap on top of that is inexcusable. And it certainly did have a lot of people scratching their heads back in 1976. But to his credit, Butch van Breda Kolff gave a glowing endorsement of the trade, explaining that the Jazz offense always sputtered whenever Maravich was out, and the team lacked a strong second option to draw defenses away from Pistol Pete. I think it was van Breda Kolff’s kind words that led to the prevailing narrative that he had engineered the Goodrich acquisition. But in all the newspapers I read from this time, Mendelson claimed sole responsibility.

Now, I know you’re dying to know just how bad Goodrich was. Well, he was second in scoring, just as expected, but he only put 12.6 points per game — the lowest he had averaged since his second season in the league. But the worst part was how he tore his Achilles after just 27 games and needed to take the rest of the year off to recover from surgery. But don’t worry — in just a couple of years, this trade will look monumentally worse!

Pete Maravich responded to Goodrich’s injury by playing the best basketball of his life. He threw down 31.1 points, 5.4 assists, 5.1 rebounds, and 1.2 steals per game. He lead the NBA in scoring (both total points and ppg), free throws made, field goals attempted, and minutes per game. He became the first All-Star in Jazz history, made his second-straight All-NBA First Team, and finished third in MVP voting behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. He also played in 73 games, which is notable because he sadly would never play more than 50 games in a season for the rest of his career. (Look at me with all my ominous foreshadowing!)

E.C. Coleman was born and raised in Mississippi, and played at Houston Baptist College. In 1973, he was drafted in the third round by the Houston Rockets, but had a fairly quiet rookie season. In 1974, he was picked up by New Orleans in the expansion draft and saw his playing time increase substantially. Coleman never put up big numbers, but he gained a reputation of being one of the toughest defenders in the league. And that all came together in the 1976-77 season.

Behind averages of 8.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game — and a mere 0.8 steals and 0.4 blocks each contest — Coleman became the first Jazz player to be named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team. I imagine he was someone like former Spurs player Bruce Bowen, who was a tremendous lockdown defender despite not getting many steals or blocks. Anecdotally, Coleman has some terrific credentials. Stars such as Rick Barry and Rudy Tomjanovich declared him the best defender they ever went against. Sadly, Coleman’s career did not last long.

Coleman’s younger brother, Mack, played with him at Houston Baptist and almost became his teammate in the NBA. Mack was drafted by the Jazz in the fourth round of the 1975 draft, but he didn’t make the team. In June 1977, Mack had a medical episode and threatened to jump off a building. Police assumed he was drunk and booked him jail. Two hours later, he died of a hereditary heart disease.

This tragedy deeply upset E.C., who decided to sign with the Golden State Warriors in the offseason (the Jazz received a 1978 first-round pick as compensation). Coleman admitted that he lost his focus, in addition to a lot of weight — weight that he didn’t have to lose. Things only got worse when his other brother also died in 1977 and his mom died in 1978. Coleman still made the All-Defensive Second Team with the Warriors, but he showed up for the 1978-79 season a shell of his former self.

Golden State waived Coleman in November 1978, so he rejoined the Rockets. Sadly, he could only play in six games before they gently transitioned him into an assistant coach/scouting role — a job he only had for one year. He later found work as a doorman at a hotel and a limo driver. I know there were rumors of drug use — an all-too common malady for this era of basketball — but I think depression alone could have accounted for his decline.

Nate Williams once again was second in total points for the Jazz with 12.3 ppg and 1.0 spg. Sadly, this is the final full season the former Utah State Aggie spent with New Orleans. Turns out he didn’t have much of a role in Elgin Baylor’s rotation, as his minutes went to Aaron James in the 1977-78 season. After 27 games, Williams was traded to Golden State for a 1978 second-round pick. He stayed with the Warriors until 1979, then his contract expired and he was out of the league.

Otto Moore was born and raised in Miami and became a star at UT Rio Grande Valley. He was drafted sixth overall by the Detroit Pistons in 1968 and had a strong sophomore season, averaging 11 and 11 and even inexplicably earning one MVP vote. That high didn’t last, though, and he spent the rest of his career bouncing around between Phoenix, Houston, and Kansas City before making his way back to Detroit in 1974. But this second stint only lasted two games before he was waived.

Just when it seemed like Moore’s career was over, the New Orleans Jazz were desperate enough for a center to give him a chance. He had a bit of a revival in 1975-76 with 9.0 ppg, 9.8 rpg, and 1.7 bpg, but he took a step back in 1976-77 with 5.9 ppg, 7.9 rpg, and 1.4 bpg. His contract expired after this season, but he spent a few more years playing overseas and in the minor leagues. I’m not certain, but it seems like one of the Jazz management’s complaints with Butch van Breda Kolff was that he gave too many minutes to Nate Williams and Otto Moore over youngsters Aaron James and Rich Kelley.

And speaking of young players, the Jazz were once again unable to add any good rookies through the draft. New Orleans earned the sixth pick in the first round, but it belonged to Los Angeles because of the Gail Goodrich acquisition. The Lakers took Kenny Carr, who had a decent career, but nowhere near as good as the two Hall of Famers who were taken immediately after him — Bernard King and Jack Sikma. New Orleans also didn’t have its own second-round pick, as it had traded it to Portland last year. The Trail Blazers used the 28th overall pick on Kim Anderson, who only ended up playing 21 NBA games total.

None of the Jazz’s other picks made much of a difference, and most of them never even played in the NBA. However, New Orleans did actually draft a Hall of Famer in the seventh round … sort of.

Lusia Harris was born and raised in Mississippi and became one of the most dominant women’s basketball in the history of the game at Delta State University. She won three national championships and was named the MVP for each of those tournaments, averaging 25.9 points and 14.5 rebounds. In 1975, she won a gold medal at the Pan American Games in Mexico City, and in 1976, she helped Team USA take silver at the Montreal Olympics.

Naturally, it was a bit unorthodox for the Jazz to draft Harris. Technically, she was the second woman ever drafted by the NBA, but the first woman, Denise Long in 1969, was forfeited by the league because she didn’t play in college. So Harris became the first woman officially accepted by the NBA. However, it’s hard to tell how serious the Jazz were about her. The later rounds of the draft were often used on novelty picks — local celebrities, guys with funny names, etc. For example, just two picks after the Jazz drafted Harris, the Kings took Olympian Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner).

Regardless, Harris was invited to the Jazz training camp. It certainly would have been intriguing to see how this 6-foot-3 center adapted her game for the NBA level. But the world never got to know, as Harris respectfully declined the invite — mainly because she was pregnant at the time. Harris later played a little bit for the Houston Angels of the Women’s Professional Basketball League, then became an assistant coach at Delta State. After serving as the head coach at Texas Southern University for two years, she returned to Mississippi to teach and coach at the high school level. In 1992, she was elected into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. She then passed away in 2022 at the age of 66.

So yeah, that wraps up another kooky season of the New Orleans Jazz. Meanwhile, back in Utah … absolutely nothing happened. It seemed as if everyone had resigned to their fate. The ABA was gone and dead, and the NBA had no interest in coming to Salt Lake. There were no more last-ditch efforts or goofy gimmicks to return professional basketball to Utah. But that would change very soon.

Before Watchmen: Wait, I only had four issues for this?!

Well, here it is, the conclusion of Brian Azzarello’s beautiful, yet dull Rorschach miniseries. And I’d use that exact phrase to describe Lee Bermejo’s final cover. It matches his usual impeccable standards, but it’s not terribly exciting. It really would have helped had Rorschach actually been fighting the main bad guy of this series, not a random goon.

The variant cover by Ivan Reis really bugs me. Not that I’m against the blood-spattered wall — I just don’t like Rorschach’s reflection in it. You shouldn’t be able to see that reflection based on where Rorschach is standing. That’s not how light works!

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it one last time: I really appreciate how Bermejo followed Dave Gibbons’ practice of using the cover image as the first image in the story. Which means we open on Rorschach fighting Rawhead’s goons. Oddly, it seems like Azzarello forgot how he was writing Rawhead. Or maybe he failed to clearly indicate that the mob boss was now high on cocaine or something. Because the Rawhead we get in this issue is completely different from the cold, calculating villain we saw previously. Here, he’s dancing and singing and acting completely irrationally.

Rawhead has Rorschach tied to a bed, leaving him to be tortured by one of his goons. Rawhead, meanwhile, randomly dons Rorschach’s mask and decides to go beat up some looters taking advantage of the blackout. But Rawhead proves remarkably bad at this task and is killed by the criminals he was trying to stop. Rorschach, meanwhile, is miraculously saved by Rawhead’s pet tiger, who decided to kill and eat the man who wanted to torture Rorschach.

And if that wasn’t random enough for you, we then skip ahead five years. Rorschach’s diary — now handwritten instead of typed — informs us that the Bard (remember him?) also made a fatal mistake on the night of the blackout. He failed to kill his final victim, the kind woman from the diner, who managed to turn him in to the police. Three years later, even though she testified against him in trial, the jury decided to let the man go free. So now, two years after that, Rorschach has finally tracked down the Bard and killed him.

What a mess of an issue. It really feels like Azzarello panicked when he got to this issue, realizing he had to hastily tie up all his loose ends. He really did have enough material here for six issues. But since he was only given four, then he should have adjusted his story accordingly. I would have recommended dropping the Bard entirely, as that subplot didn’t have nearly enough room to be developed properly. Rawhead could have been more than enough for four fun issues of Rorschach — especially if you dove a little deeper into his fascination of faces and masks. Heck, spend a whole issue of Rawhead disguised as Rorschach and see where that takes you. But what we got was just plain sloppy. Which is a great insult not just to Bermejo’s stellar art, but also the classic source material by Moore and Gibbons.

1976: The rise and fall of the Utah Rockies

Who wants pro basketball back in SLC? Well, I suppose there were quite a few people in early 1976 who would have loved to replace the recently folded Utah Stars. But Earl D. Walters was the only one trying to do something about it. Walters, the former president of the United States Ski Association, didn’t get involved in any of Bill Daniels’ attempts to sell the Stars in 1974 or 1975. But as soon as the merger between the Stars and the Spirits of St. Louis fell through, Walters began working to bring a different ABA team to Salt Lake City.

Walters first approached the financially struggling Virginia Squires. He helped cover their payroll one week and even arranged for Zelmo Beaty to become their new head coach. But he ultimately failed to convince the Squires to relocate to Salt Lake. So he turned his attention to the Spirits and their owners, brothers Daniel and Ozzie Silna.

One of the reasons why the Silnas refused to merge with the Stars was because the mayor of St. Louis had vowed to do everything in his power to keep the Spirits in Missouri. But it only took a few months for them to realize that the mayor’s promises were little more than empty words. Claiming to have lost $4 million during their tenure as the Spirits’ owners, the Silnas were now ready to do just about anything to try to recoup their losses. But they still weren’t entirely sold on the idea of actually running their team in Salt Lake.

Walters didn’t have enough money to purchase the Spirits outright, but he was able to put together a group of investors who cobbled together $600,000 to buy a sizable chunk of the franchise. Curiously, Walters never revealed the names of any of these investors. I would normally call that a pretty big red flag, but I know that it ultimately didn’t matter in the long run. I also find it somewhat amusing that none of the previous would-be buyers of the Stars were involved in this. James A. Collier, Snellen Johnson, and even the West Am corporation all completely disappeared from our story. In hindsight, had all these separate forces combined powers from the start, the Stars might have survived.

Anyway, the Silnas eventually agreed to move the Spirits to Salt Lake on the condition that this group of local investors would quickly assume full control of the team. Walters announced the good news at the end of March and the newspapers immediately praised him as the hero who would bring Ron Boone, Moses Malone, and all the fun of the ABA back to the Salt Palace. By May, the ABA officially approved the relocation and team president Harry Weltman held a joyous press conference in Salt Lake with his wife.

Weltman immediately announced a contest to pick a new name and logo for the Spirits. I guess he thought that Spirits was a name that only made sense in St. Louis, and the sting of the Stars’ demise was too fresh in everyone’s minds to consider reviving that name. Unfortunately, Utah’s joy was short-lived. 

In June, the long-awaited NBA-ABA merger was finally announced. Of course, “merger” isn’t quite the most accurate word here, as the NBA actually absorbed the ABA. But despite all the ABA’s efforts to carefully present a six-team package to the larger league, the NBA decided to only admit four teams. And the St. Louis/Utah franchise did not make the cut. Weltman hastily settled on the name Utah Rockies, but he never had a chance to design a logo. And most news outlets didn’t catch on to the name change, confusingly alternating between the Spirits of St. Louis and the Utah Rockies in all the stories that came out during this period.

There were quite a few people who tried to fight against the NBA’s exclusion of two ABA teams. The Silnas even proposed a complicated deal at the last minute wherein they would sell off the Rockies to local investors, then buy the Kentucky Colonels (the other excluded team), and move the Colonels to Buffalo to replace the Braves, who were threatening to move to Florida at this time. This desperate deal fell apart for three reasons: One, there weren’t any local investors who could actually afford the Rockies; Two, the Braves’ proposed move to Florida fell through; and Three, the NBA made it abundantly clear that they only wanted Indiana, San Antonio, Denver, and New York.

So the wonderfully named Utah Rockies folded just as quickly as they were formed. Ron Boone ended up in Kansas City, Moses Malone (eventually) landed in Houston, and the Silnas surprisingly came out as the ultimate winners in all this. Rather than accepting the initial $3.3 million buyout offer, the Silnas negotiated for $2.2 million up front plus a share of the four remaining ABA teams’ broadcast revenue in perpetuity. Apparently the Silna brothers had envisioned this deal initially as a way to fairly compensate the Virginia Squires when it looked like they’d be the only ABA team left out of the merger. But when the Squires folded in May, they became ineligible for any type of buyout from the NBA. So the Silnas used this unusual deal for themselves, which initially appeared to be a rather modest stipend that the NBA was willing to pay.

But then the NBA’s popularity exploded in the ‘80s and ‘90s, resulting in some massive broadcasting deals. And the Silnas’ contract was written broadly enough to ensure those checks kept coming in, even as the amount on them rose exponentially. The NBA tried to get out of the deal in the 1980s by offering a $6 million buyout, but the Silnas wisely refused. In 2012, the NBA tossed around another complex deal that would involving buying out the Silnas in exchange for the Spirits name to be used by the New Orleans Hornets (this happened around the same time that New Orleans had asked Utah for the Jazz name back). I don’t know how much money was on the table for this offer, but the Silnas again shot down the NBA.

By 2014, Ozzie and Daniel Silna had earned over $300 million for doing absolutely nothing. If it’s any consolation, they did lose a fair amount of that in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. And that fact may have been what enabled the NBA to finally work out a deal to end this ruinous contract. Granted, it cost the league over $500 million, but at least they didn’t have to keep sending checks to those Latvian-descended textile merchants. Ozzie passed away in 2016 at the age of 83, but his younger brother, Daniel, is still alive, presumably living very comfortably off his fortune.

And as for Earl D. Walters, the man who started this post? He retreated into obscurity, never again to enter the picture of professional basketball in Utah — just like James A. Collier, Snellen Johnson, and even Bill Daniels. And the poor people of Utah, who just had their hopes raised only to be dashed so quickly, had to keep waiting for a pro team to return.

Meanwhile, down in New Orleans …

Pete Maravich shaved off his goofy goatee and switched his number from 44 to 7, which may have brought him some good luck. Despite missing 20 games to injury, he brought his numbers back up to 25.9 points, 5.4 assists, and 1.4 steals per game. Although he missed the All-Star Game, he did earn a spot on the All-NBA First Team for the first time in his career and he finished 15th in MVP voting. He helped the Jazz improve to a 38-44 record, which was substantially better than Atlanta’s 29-53 mark. So yeah, I think we really need to squash that false narrative that the Hawks fleeced New Orleans in the Pistol Pete trade.

Nate Williams, the former Utah State Aggie, was second on the Jazz with 12.8 ppg and 1.3 spg. I’m a bit surprised that he didn’t step up more during Maravich’s extend absence — but then again, all these games were played long before I was born, so I don’t know exactly what went on.

Mel Counts joins the long list of people from the 1969 Laker team who ended up in New Orleans. Counts was a true 7-footer from Coos Bay, Oregon, who put together a solid career at Oregon State. In 1964, he helped Team USA take gold at the Tokyo Olympics before joining the Boston Celtics, who had drafted him with the No. 7 pick. Counts won two championships as Bill Russell’s backup, but then he was traded to Baltimore, who quickly sent him to the Lakers. Counts played the best basketball of his life behind Wilt Chamberlain. Remember that controversial Game 7 in 1969? Butch van Breda Kolff sat Chamberlain after he picked up his fifth foul and refused to put him back in the game. Partly because he didn’t like Chamberlain, but also partly because Counts was playing well enough to stay on the court. Of course, the Lakers lost by two points and van Breda Kolff resigned in disgrace, and Counts was traded to Phoenix for Gail Goodrich (remember that name).

Counts was later traded to Philadelphia, who promptly sent him back to L.A. In the 1974 expansion draft, the Jazz probably could have taken Counts, but instead opted for a Laker guard named Nate Hawthorne. He never played for New Orleans, as he was packaged in a disastrous trade that also sent the Jazz’s 1976 first-round pick to Phoenix for a big man named Neal Walk. Walk had averaged 20 and 12 in 1972-73, so it stands to reason that the Jazz had envisioned him as their starting center. And to acquire a solid backup for Walk, New Orleans simply purchased Counts’ contract from the Lakers.

Well, that purchase may have been considered another bit of the reckless spending that forced team president Fred Rosenfeld out of the organization. Counts put up 6.9 points and 5.9 rebounds per game in his first season with the Jazz, then saw those numbers drop to just 3.0 ppg and 3.3 rpg in 1975-76. New Orleans waived him in February, after he had played in only 30 games. Counts retired and returned to his home in Oregon, where he became a real estate agent.

Louie Nelson was one of the few expansion draft picks that the Jazz kept for more than one season. Nelson was a 6-3 guard from Los Angeles, who attended the University of Washington. In 1973, he was drafted by the Bullets in the second round. After a quiet rookie season, he had a very solid debut for the Jazz with 11.2 points per game. In 1975-76, he became the team’s third-leading scorer with 12.5 ppg and 1.2 spg.

Sadly, that ended up being the highlight of his career. After this season, the Jazz waived Nelson to make room for Goodrich (more on him next time, I promise!) and Nelson failed to land a solid home in the NBA after that. He played sparingly for the Spurs, Kings, and Nets before falling out of the league in 1978. He later became a high school girls basketball coach, apparently.

Henry Bibby didn’t have much of an impact for the Jazz this season, but he is an interesting character in this story. The 6-1 point guard was born and raised in North Carolina, but chose to play college ball under legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA. After helping the Bruins win three NCAA titles, Bibby was drafted in the second round of the 1972 ABA draft by the Carolina Cougars. But he chose to play for the Knicks, who picked him in the fourth round. Bibby didn’t play much in New York, but he did pick up a shiny 1973 championship ring.

Now let’s briefly return to that disastrous Neal Walk trade. Despite being a well-rounded double-double machine in Phoenix, Walk struggled in New Orleans, putting up 9.9 ppg and 7.1 rpg. After just 37 games, the Jazz became so frustrated with Walk that they packaged him in a trade to New York for Bibby and a 1975 first-round pick. (Of course, New Orleans didn’t keep that pick, as they packaged it another trade to the Kings. I mean, why should this organization suddenly start caring about draft picks?)

Bibby only appeared in 28 games for the Jazz in 1974-75. In his first full season with New Orleans, he averaged 9.3 points per game, which was a career high for him at the time. And he did even better the next season after the Jazz sold his contract to the 76ers. Bibby played four years in Philadelphia and one in San Diego before he headed to the CBA, where he helped the Lancaster Lightning win the 1982 title. He was also an assistant coach for the Lightning, which helped him seamlessly transition into his new career.

Bibby spent three seasons as an assistant at Arizona State, then became head coach of the Baltimore Lightning and then the USBL’s, where he was named Coach of the Year. He kept bouncing around between various minor league teams — the New Jersey Jammers, the Savannah Spirits, the Tulsa Fast Breakers (where he won the 1989 CBA title), the Oklahoma City Cavalry, and the Winnipeg Thunder. He returned to college basketball in 1995, becoming first an assistant and then the head coach at USC.

Unfortunately, Bibby’s frequent moving was not easy on his family. He divorced his wife and became estranged from his son, Mike. This became rather awkward when Mike grew into a high school star and committed to one of USC’s rivals, Arizona. In 1997, Henry led the Trojans to a first-round exit from the NCAA Tournament, while Mike guided the Wildcats to win the championship. Mike went on to have a very solid NBA career, and he apparently reconciled with his dad in 2002.

Henry spent nine years as USC’s head coach, but only took them to the Big Dance three times, and he was fired in 2004. In 2005, he became the head coach of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, but was fired after just 28 games. From 2006 to 2014, he worked as an NBA assistant for Philadelphia, Memphis, and Detroit. After a six-year break, Bibby randomly became the head coach for the Tijuana Zonkeys in Mexico just for the 2020 season.

Anyway, it’s time for me to keep ranting about that Neal Walk trade. New Orleans’ big improvement earned them the No. 6 pick in the 1976 draft, which they had sent to Phoenix, who later moved it to Buffalo. The Braves used that pick on future Hall of Famer (and Jazz legend) Adrian Dantley. New Orleans’ second-round pick (No. 23 overall) belonged to Atlanta because of the Maravich trade. The Hawks later sent this pick to Milwaukee, who used it to draft another future Hall of Famer, Alex English.

Desperate to have at least one pick before the third round, the Jazz sent Portland their 1977 second-round pick for the 26th pick of this draft. And they used it on a 6-7 forward from Georgia.

Jacky Dorsey was born and raised in Atlanta and became a star player at the University of Georgia, averaging 23.7 points and 10.6 rebounds across his two seasons with the Bulldogs. However, he failed to make the Jazz roster and was relegated to the Hartford Downtowners of the Eastern Basketball Association. From 1977 to 1981, he bounced back and forth between the NBA and various minor leagues, ultimately finishing with 60 NBA games between the Nuggets, Blazers, Rockets, and Sonics. Dorsey died in Houston in 2022 at age 71.

So … it was another disappointing draft for the young Jazz. But things were looking up with the Superdome solidified as their home court, Pistol Pete playing up to his full potential, and the front office/ownership situation stabilized. Sadly, it will all start to go down next season. Of course, we should always keep in mind that any misery experienced in New Orleans only made future happiness in Utah possible.

Before Watchmen: Hey … did we just stick the landing?

Adams Hughes’ final cover for this Dr. Manhattan miniseries is well done, but it doesn’t really do anything for me. It dramatizes a climatic moment from Watchmen that actually wasn’t that climatic in the grand scheme of things, nor was it even a part of this issue. I kind of wish it had been, but this series only went four issues when it should have been six (and the Comedian went six when it should have been four).

Bill Sienkiewicz gave us the variant cover and it’s disappointingly bland and generic. I just feel like everyone gave up trying to make this Before Watchmen project work by this point. I mean, how excited could you really be to work on something that had already worn out its welcome to such an embarrassing degree?

That’s why I was shocked to see that I actually enjoyed this issue. It begins with Dr. Manhattan completing his work of destroying all the alternate realities he inadvertently created. Everything is back just as he remembered it … with one major exception. His future is obscured by static. So he decides to seek out the only person in the world he believes is capable of comprehending his plight: Ozymandias.

Dr. Manhattan visits Ozymandias shortly after he apprehended some burglars at a museum. Seeking a more private meeting place, Dr. Manhattan teleports the two of them to Adrian’s office, which brings up an interesting discussion on how his teleportation powers work. Naturally, Adrians is fishing for clues so he can unlock this unfathomable ability for himself, but he also learns something about Dr. Manhattan’s overall philosophy. Adrian asks if the teleportation involves disassembling molecules and reassembling them somewhere else, but Dr. Manhattan says he actually keeps the “teleportee” in one piece while warping space around them. Adrian suggests this means that it’s easier for Dr. Manhattan to move the universe than himself, but Dr. Manhattan counters that his method is simply less destructive to people like Adrian.

Dr. Manhattan then tells his story about the alternate realities to Adrian, who does his best to keep his face completely neutral. He only slips up for half a second, allowing a twitch that Dr. Manhattan interprets as fear. He takes pleasure in being able to catch the self-proclaimed world’s smartest man with his guard down, even for so brief a moment. Dr. Manhattan then concludes his story by revealing the only things he can glimpse through the static of his future are death, destruction, and the feeling of being responsible for it. He concedes that it’s likely this static was (or will be) caused by nuclear war, but he worries about causing even more damage by trying to prevent this unknown future. So Dr. Manhattan has decided that Adrian should make those choices for him.

As Adrian accepts this offer, the comic book turns upside down and he becomes the narrator. We learn that Adrian’s little slip of emotion wasn’t that of fear, but excitement, which he hopes Dr. Manhattan didn’t notice. He works extra hard to control his pulse and facial expressions as he launches into his plan, believing (and praying) that the world’s most powerful man lacks the ability to recognize a lie. Adrian proposes that Dr. Manhattan’s staticky future may have been caused merely by an expansion of Dr. Manhattan’s own powers. He says that if they’re able to unlock the secrets of these abilities and spread them across Earth through various forms of technology, then that amount of energy at the same frequency could confuse Dr. Manhattan’s senses.

Dr. Manhattan agrees to help Adrian with whatever he requires, and we’re treated to a quick collage of Adrian’s master plan from Watchmen. Adrian believes he must destroy the village to save the village, and it all depends on him being able to maintain his lie to Dr. Manhattan. He acknowledges that there’s a high likelihood he’ll end up being killed by his manipulated collaborator, so he decides to take every precaution to preserve his own life — even while believing that it would be an honor to die for such a noble cause.

We then cut to my favorite part of the Watchmen story, where Adrian asks Dr. Manhattan if he did the right thing and it all worked out in the end. Dr. Manhattan only offers the vague answer that nothing ever ends as he teleports away, off to create his own world. Dr. Manhattan tells himself that death, life, and the universe itself are all just a matter of perspective. He travels to a strange, purplish world with two moons and he injects a little energy into some pond scum to get it to start combining proteins and accelerate evolution. He hopes this new life — and he, himself — will grow into something amazing together.

I really enjoyed this issue when I first read it. The upside down twist really surprised me, and it showcased the fun storytelling methods that are only possible in comic books — storytelling methods that this series should have been taking more advantage of from the beginning. I know Alan Moore’s Watchmen was devoted to the rigid nine-panel grid, but that doesn’t mean that this miniseries couldn’t have experimented with sideways, spiral, or backwards panels. Regardless, this tiny realization of this comic’s potential thrilled me. As well as the conversations about Dr. Manhattan’s teleporting and the idea that both he and Adrian were trying to manipulate each other.

Well … was Dr. Manhattan actually manipulating Adrian? It seemed like the comic implied that before the flip, but by the time it flipped back to his perspective, there wasn’t enough space left to explore his thoughts on how that whole relationship went down. And the more I think about it, the more I realize how much more I wanted out of this story. Yeah, it’s fine to portray Dr. Manhattan as a centipede frozen by the indecision of trying to figure out which leg it should move first. But that doesn’t really line up with the source material.

In Watchmen, Adrian’s plan hinged on the incredibly deep, yet buried emotional feelings that plagued Jon Osterman. To the world, Dr. Manhattan was a robotic, unfeeling creature devoid of all humanity. But Adrian’s careful study of his microexpressions revealed a world of profound love and pain. It was this buried emotion that caused Dr. Manhattan’s exile to Mars. And it was his genuine love for Laurie that convinced him to return. And it can be argued that the only reason Dr. Manhattan left to create a new world at the end was because he realized Laurie loved Dan more than him.

Unfortunately, J. Michael Straczynski completely ignored that aspect of Dr. Manhattan’s personality in this miniseries. I know he only had four issues to work with, but I felt like he wasted about half the pages he was given. Even in this one. Yeah, it’s always fun to dip into Ozymandias’ head to see what he’s thinking, but he was given his own miniseries for that — and that one had six issues! This is the Dr. Manhattan series, and I want to know what he is feeling. I also would have liked at least a little bit about his relationship with Laurie. I mean, it was kind of a big deal, right? Even the cover of this issue presented it as a big deal, making her front and center. But then Straczynski didn’t so much as mention her in the conclusion of this miniseries.

What a weird project this turned out to be.

1975 Part Two: Trading it all for a Pistol

I still find it eerily cosmic how the collapse of the Utah Stars perfectly coincided with the rise of the New Orleans Jazz. But we’re still quite a way from the Jazz coming to Salt Lake. First, we need to talk about the five most interesting players who shaped this franchise’s inaugural season.

Our story starts in the spring of 1974, before the New Orleans expansion team even had a name. Team president Fred Rosenfeld was bound and determined to build this franchise around a local superstar. And he was willing to pay any price to bring in the only player who fit that bill.

Pete Maravich was born in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania (a small town just outside of Pittsburgh), while his father was wrapping up his playing career with the Pittsburgh Ironmen of the Basketball Association of America. Pete was named after his dad, but everyone called him Press because of his boyhood job of selling the Pittsburgh Press newspapers on the street. Press wasn’t a particularly impressive player, but he had a deep love for the game and got into coaching right away, first as an assistant at Davis & Elkins College in West Virginia (where he had originally played in the 1930s).

Press got his first head coaching job in 1949 at West Virginia Wesleyan College. A year later, he took over Davis & Elkins, but only lasted two years before moving back to Aliquippa to coach high school. He only stayed there for two years before moving on to a different high school in Pittsburgh. Finally, in 1956, Press caught his big break and became the head coach at Clemson University in South Carolina. By this point, young Pete had demonstrated enough skills to begin playing for the high school team even though he was still in junior high.

In 1962, Press moved his family to Raleigh, so he could be an assistant at North Carolina State University. It was here that young Pete gained the nickname Pistol because he shot the ball from his hip, which made it look like he was drawing a pistol from a holder. Press became the head coach at North Carolina State in 1964, all while obsessively molding his son into a star. Some say that Press’ relationship with Pistol was borderline abusive. I don’t know much about that, but I do think it says something that Press never could seem to hold onto a job for more than a couple of years.

In 1966, Press became the head coach at Louisiana State University. Pistol was now finally eligible for college ball and he apparently had his heart set on West Virginia. But Press allegedly threatened to disown his son and/or bribed him with a new car to move down to Baton Rouge with him. 

Pistol Pete was an instant success at LSU, averaging an unthinkable 44.2 points per game over his three-year career and being named national player of the year in 1970. Wikipedia goes to great lengths to describe how difficult this feat was, considering Maravich was playing without a 3-point shot or a shot clock. But Wikipedia fails to mention one fact that made this feat a bit easier: Louisiana State played in a segregated conference at the time. This meant that Pistol Pete was going up against all-white teams on a night-to-night basis — not against the best available competition. It’s also worth pointing out that the LSU Tigers didn’t win very many games during Pistol’s record-setting tenure. The highest they ever got was a fourth-place finish in the NIT during Pistol’s senior year. But at least the coach’s son got to score as many points as possible.

In January 1970, Maravich was drafted by ABA’s Carolina Cougars with the No. 1 pick in the draft (although it was technically the second overall pick, as the New York Nets were awarded a territorial pick for Bob Lanier). But rather than signing with Carolina, Maravich decided to wait until the NBA draft in March and see who would make a better offer. This was quite common during the ABA era, especially in this draft, as Lanier did the same to the Nets and future NBA MVP Dave Cowens did with the Los Angeles Stars.

In the NBA draft, the Detroit Pistons took Lanier at No. 1, which was the sure thing to do. The big man went on to have a Hall of Fame career and was one of Detroit’s best players in franchise history. With the second pick, the San Diego Rockets surprisingly took Rudy Tomjanovich over Maravich. Rudy T also became a Hall of Famer — but as a coach, not a player. I can’t confirm this, but I suspect that San Diego passed on Maravich because they dreaded the inevitable bidding war with Carolina. The cash-strapped franchise was just one year away from being sold and relocated to Houston.

So Maravich fell to No. 3, where the Atlanta Hawks gladly picked him up. And they only had the third pick because of a trade they had made just a month before the draft that sent Zelmo Beaty’s contract to San Francisco (everything’s connected!). Anyway, the Hawks managed to secure their prize with a staggering $1.9 million contract. Carolina was furious, but had no way to retaliate. Maravich was thrilled to be able to stay in the South. But basketball fans from then to today mourned the lost opportunity of seeing Maravich play with a 3-point line.

Anyway, Maravich’s first four seasons with Atlanta were a little bit underwhelming. He did finish third for Rookie of the Year, then received some MVP votes in each of the next three years. He lost a little bit of time to an injury in his sophomore season, but managed to become an All-Star in his third and fourth years. He also made the All-NBA Second Team in his third year and led the league in field goals attempted in his fourth. But most frustratingly for Hawks fans was the lack of wins. Atlanta made the playoffs in Maravich’s first three years, but couldn’t get out of the first round. Then they missed the postseason entirely in Pistol’s fourth year.

So I don’t think the Hawks were too upset to part with Maravich when the unnamed New Orleans franchise came calling. But they still managed to extract a high price from the expansion team. In exchange for the two-time All-Star, the Jazz gave up two first-round picks (1974 and 1975), two second-round picks (1975 and 1976), a third-round pick (1980), the first two picks of the expansion draft, and a slightly underhanded agreement that Atlanta would choose which of their players New Orleans would take in the expansion draft. On paper, it kind of looks like Atlanta fleeced New Orleans. But at the end of the day, I think both teams ended up even.

Maravich actually struggled in his first year with the Jazz. His scoring fell from 27.7 points per game to 21.5. But he did also average 6.2 assists, 5.3 rebounds, and 1.5 steals, while leading the league with seven triple-doubles. There’s a chance he may have been injured, although he still appeared in 79 games. But I think it’s more likely that the very nature of this expansion team prevented him from getting into a good rhythm. The Jazz had 22 players suit up in the 1974-75 season, three head coaches, two team presidents, and two home arenas, including one with a raised court that required a net around the edges for player safety. Tumultuous, to say the least. So let’s take a look at some of Maravich’s less-than stellar supporting cast.

Walt Bellamy was the player the Atlanta Hawks demanded the Jazz take in their expansion draft. Which is really sad, because Bellamy had put together a Hall of Fame career up until this point. He was born and raised in North Carolina, but chose to play at Indiana University because his high school coach had played there and he felt Indiana was “the closest school to the South that would accept African-Americans.”

Bellamy dominated in college and helped lead Team USA to a gold medal in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. In 1961, was the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA draft, taken by the expansion team Chicago Packers. His team only won 18 games that season, but Bellamy did put up monster numbers — 31.6 points and 19.0 rebounds per game — which earned him a trip to the All-Star Game and the Rookie of the Year award. He ended up spending four seasons with that franchise (which became the Zephyrs then the Baltimore Bullets), making the All-Star Game each year.

In 1965, the Bullets got new owners who decided to reduce Bellamy’s salary because they believe he wasn’t trying as hard as he could be. So Bellamy held out of training camp until he got a new contract with a small raise and was traded to the New York Knicks as quickly as possible. Bellamy still played well for the Knicks, but saw a decline in his production as he had to share the frontcourt with another future Hall of Famer, Willis Reed. Bellamy unfortunately never was an All-Star again, and was later traded to Detroit and then Atlanta in 1970. 

Combing a slow, aging center with a quick, young guard was not a winning recipe (as I already pointed out above). By 1974, Bellamy had become a bit of a liability for Atlanta. His number had fallen to 13.1 points and 9.6 rebounds per game, younger players were running circles around him, and worst of all, he still had one more year on his contract. So Atlanta dumped him off on New Orleans, ironically bookending his professional career with two expansion teams.

Bellamy naturally felt betrayed by this whole situation and initially refused to report to New Orleans, complaining the “con men” in Atlanta had put him into a “forced retirement.” I don’t know when that team photo at the top of this post was taken, but you will note that Bellamy is not in the picture. But then, for some reason, Bellamy did agree to play in the Jazz’s first game. My limited research failed to turn up a reason for why this happened, but I suspect it may have had something to do with a clause in Bellamy’s contract.

In his only game for the New Orleans Jazz, Bellamy scored six points and pulled down five rebounds in 14 minutes of action. He didn’t miss a shot from the field or the free throw line, which sort of makes him the all-time franchise leader in field goal and free throw percentage. I did find a newspaper article about this game that was quick to point out how old and slow Bellamy was compared to his competition. The Jazz waived him shortly after, saying they wanted to give him the chance to sign with another team. Bellamy did try out with the Milwaukee Bucks, but they didn’t sign him, thus ending his once legendary career.

Bellamy settled down in Atlanta, which may be one reason why he felt so betrayed by the trade. He became active in the NAACP and local politics. In 1993, he was elected to the Hall of Fame as a player, and he was elected again in 2010 as a member of the 1960 Olympic team. He died in College Park, Georgia, in 2013 at age 74.

Aaron James became the first player officially drafted by the New Orleans Jazz when he was selected in the second round of the 1974 NBA Draft, which was held just a week after the expansion draft. Unlike the 1961 draft, where the NBA awarded the top pick to the expansion team, in this year, the league arbitrarily decided the Jazz should pick at No. 10. Of course, the Maravich trade meant that the No. 10 pick belonged to Atlanta, who used it on former Ute Mike Sojourner. He may have been an All-WAC player at Utah, but his professional career was nothing special and he was out of the NBA after just three years.

James seemed destined to join the Jazz. He was born and raised in New Orleans, but went to college at Grambling State in northern Louisiana. In 1974, he was also drafted by the Utah Stars, but wisely avoided that chaotic situation to play in his hometown. The 6-foot-8 small forward averaged 11.7 points per game in his rookie season.

Rick Adelma, like Walt Bellamy, was interesting not because of what he did for the Jazz, but for everything else in his career. Born and raised in Southern California, Adelman was a star at Loyola University at Los Angeles, but he wasn’t drafted until the seventh round of the 1968 NBA Draft, where the San Diego Rockets picked him up. The 6-1 point guard surprisingly made the roster, but was scooped up by the Portland Trail Blazers in their expansion draft of 1970.

Adelman enjoyed the best years of his career in Portland, putting up 12 points and two steals per game. But he was traded to Chicago in 1973. In November 1974, he was sent to the Jazz for John Block, a past-his-prime one-time All-Star that New Orleans had picked up in their expansion draft. Adelman averaged 6.3 ppg and 1.7 spg for the Jazz, but he was traded away after just 28 games. He played in 18 more games for the Kansas City-Omaha Kings before retiring.

But Adelman wasn’t done with basketball. In 1977, he became the head coach at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. In 1983, he became an assistant for the Portland Trail Blazers and promoted to head coach in 1989. He took the Blazers to the Finals twice, but was never able to secure that elusive championship. He kept coaching in the NBA until 2014, bouncing around between Golden State, Sacramento, Houston, and Minnesota. In 2021, he was elected into the Hall of Fame as a coach. He recently passed away in June of 2026 in Portland at the age of 79.

Nate Williams was the guy the Jazz traded Adelman (and Ollie Johnson) for. Williams was born in Columbia, Louisiana (a small town in the north part of the state), but he grew up in Oakland, California. He didn’t really expect to go to college, so he jumped at the first offer given to him by Utah State when an assistant mistook the sophomore for a senior. Williams ended up having an excellent career for the Aggies, playing under LaDell Andersen for two seasons.

In 1971, not long after Andersen left to coach the Utah Stars, Williams accepted into the NBA’s Hardship Draft. This was a new experiment by the league to find a way to justifiably take underclassmen before the ABA snatched them up. There were certain financial requirements the players needed to meet, and Williams was allegedly living on just $15 a month. The 6-5 swingman was selected first in this draft by the Cincinnati Royals and he played fairly well for them over three seasons (and the odd move to both Kansas City and Omaha). Williams was traded to New Orleans in February, so he only played in 35 games for the Jazz this season, putting up 14.3 points and 1.3 steals per game.

So there you go. Five of the most interesting players on the 1974-75 New Orleans Jazz roster. And three of them ended up in the Hall of Fame. Of course, that didn’t help much back in 1975. The Jazz went 23-59, which was the worst record in the league. This meant that the Jazz earned the No. 1 pick in the 1975 draft. Unfortunately, that pick belonged to Atlanta because of the Maravich trade.

The Hawks chose future Hall of Famer David Thompson, but he surprisingly chose to sign with the ABA’s Denver Nuggets instead. The Hawks also had the third pick in the draft, which they used on Marvin Webster. But he also chose to play for Denver instead. So poor Atlanta came up with absolutely nothing from this draft. Suddenly, that Maravich trade didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Thanks to an October 1974 trade, the Jazz owned Milwaukee’s first-round pick, which ended up being No. 7. So New Orleans got to make its first-ever first-round pick.

Rich Kelley was born and raised in the Bay Area of California and enrolled at Stanford University, where he became a standout 7-foot center. In 1974, he was drafted by the ABA’s New York Nets, but he chose to stay with the Cardinal for another year. He also played for Team USA in the FIBA World Championship, earning a bronze medal in Puerto Rico. Kelley made the All-Pac-8 First Team in each of his three seasons at Stanford and graduated with career averages of 18.6 points and 12.4 rebounds per game.

All things considered, the Jazz actually had reason to be excited heading into the 1975-76 season. They had solidified the front office with Sam Battistone Jr. as team president. Butch van Breda Kolff had proven to be a better coach than Scotty Robertson. But the biggest news was the opening of the long-anticipated Louisiana Superdome.

The $134 million structure took four years to build and boasted a capacity of more than 73,000 seats. It was envisioned to be the home of NFL, NBA, and MLB teams, although New Orleans curiously was never able to land a major league baseball team. The NFL’s Saints were a natural fit from Day One, and they still call the place home (although it’s now called the Caesars Superdome). But the Jazz? Well … take a look at the setup their home games required.

That chunk of the football field creates a very awkward look. And the movable stands, while necessary, also appeared rather clunky. Worst of all, in my opinion, was the cavernous emptiness of the stadium. Basketball works best in compact arenas, where all the fans are stacked right on top of each other. And having too many seats can actually be a bad thing. Years later, the Jazz ownership would complain that nobody in New Orleans wanted to buy season tickets because they knew they could always show up on the day of the game and find a seat. I think the owners could have addressed this issue by blocking off sections of seating, but I will concede some truth to their complaint. But at the end of the day, I’m sure the Jazz players were quite happy to be in a more stable arrangement for their home games. And the fact that their facility was brand new and state-of-the-art certainly helped, too.

The Jazz also tweaked their uniforms for the 1975-76 season. They wisely dropped the boring, mismatched music note from the road jerseys, replacing it with all-white version of the inspired basketball music note. They also added that glorious J-note to their home shorts, but curiously omitted it from their road shorts. Regardless, I still absolutely love this look and I will never forgive this franchise for departing from it.

This is normally where I’d end this post, but something very unusual happened at the end of the year. With the ABA collapsing (partially intentionally to prepare for the merger), the NBA decided to try to poach some of the players they had missed out on. So in December 1975, they held a special draft just for the handful of players who had entered the ABA as underclassmen. Any team that chose to participate in this draft would have to forfeit their 1977 first-round pick. And since the Jazz had the worst record, they got to pick first. The ABA was absolutely furious about this, but completely powerless to prevent it. The only consolation they had was that these players were still under contract with their ABA teams, so all this draft could do was give these NBA teams the right to negotiate with the players.

Moses Malone was by far the best player available in this little draft, and the Jazz eagerly scooped him up. They readily admitted that his enormous contract would be a challenge, even going as far as to calculate that they’d need to sell an additional 3,000 season tickets to cover Malone’s salary. But New Orleans confidently believed that Malone would generate enough excitement in the team to cover that difference.

What happened next has become a bit of an NBA legend. Unfortunately, there has been some misinformation and misunderstandings that spread, while the complicated, boring truth gets buried. (Which I guess is the case for most things.) I was particularly disheartened to see a Wikipedia article citing Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball as a source. As much as I enjoyed that book, Simmons’ primary focus was to be funny — not factual. So when Simmons says that van Breda Kolff single-handedly nixed the acquisition of Malone because he believed Malone was unintelligent, you should take that with a grain of salt. It’s funny to pick on a scapegoat for making a bone-headed mistake, but the contemporary newspapers I read don’t support that version of events.

In reality, Malone was still under contract with the Spirits of St. Louis and he was still being paid handsomely thanks to the contract James A. Collier had offered to lure him to the Utah Stars. New Orleans  knew going into negotiations that it would be a legal nightmare to untangle all the layers of his contract, not to mention incredibly expensive to put him in a Jazz uniform. But from what I can tell, they genuinely tried to make it work. Months and months went by, but no deal could be reached. Ultimately, the Jazz decided to relinquish Malone’s rights so they could regain their 1977 first-round pick.

Malone was entered into the 1976 dispersal draft that was part of the big NBA-ABA merger. Once again, Malone’s massive contract became nearly insurmountable for most teams. The Portland Trail Blazers took him with the fifth pick of that draft with no intention to play him, seeing him only as a valuable trade asset. They sent him to the Buffalo Braves, who apparently had the same idea as the Blazers, but took a little longer to pull off their deal, which forced Malone to awkwardly play two games of limited minutes in Buffalo. He was then sent to the Houston Rockets, where his career took off, winning him the MVP award in 1979 and 1982.

But shortly after winning his second MVP, the Rockets got new owners who bristled at the idea of paying Malone his salary, which had climbed to approximately $2 million per year by this point. So Houston traded Malone to the Philadelphia 76ers, where he won his third and final MVP and his only championship. A few years later, he began to slow down and bounced around the league, playing for Washington, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and finally San Antonio. He retired in 1995, a full 20 years after he began his professional career with the Utah Stars.

Malone was elected into the Hall of Fame and was a member of the NBA’s 50th and 75th anniversary teams. His jersey was retired by both Houston and Philadelphia. He dipped his toe into coaching in 2006 by becoming an assistant for the 76ers, but that stint only lasted for three years. In 2015, he suddenly died of a heart attack at a hotel in Virginia where he was set to participate in a charity golf tournament. He was only 60 years old.

It really is remarkable at how close he came to becoming a permanent fixture in Utah’s professional basketball scene — either as a member of the Stars or the Jazz. In an alternate world, I’m sure there’s a statue of Moses Malone in front of the Delta Center instead of Karl Malone. But I just want the record to show that it was merely financial ineptitude that prevented this from happening — not a failure to recognize talent.