Dr. J Wants to Be “Fully Accountable”

Published by Interrobang Staff at November 25, 2013

Julius Erving, known worldwide as the great Dr. J, is one of the greatest players in the history of the NBA and before that, the ABA. He was named MVP four times, and won three championships, while playing with the Virginia Squires, the New York Nets and the Philadelphia 76ers. He stopped by the SiriusXM studios, to talk with Ron Bennington about his new book, “Dr. J: The Autobiography.” Excerpts from the interview appear below. You can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

* * *

Ron Bennington: How’s everything going with you? You’re running around doing all of this stuff, huh?

Julius Erving: This is a great time in life. It’s a great time in life. I don’t know if there has been a better time. Make your own schedule, got a great team around me, I’ve got a great family. What more can you ask for? My old high school coach used to always say, “Happiness will be found, when you have peace of mind.” There are a lot of things that might seemingly make you happy, but if you don’t have peace of mind then those things are just things.”

* * *

Julius Erving Talks About His Relationship With His Daughter

Ron Bennington: What brought it for you, Doc? Where did you find that thing where you got peace of mind?

Julius Erving: Believe it or not, I mean, I have an eight year old daughter and she always puts things in perspective. (laughing) It’s amazing, she has actually become a reincarnation of my mom, so I think she thinks I’m her boyfriend, and she thinks she’s my mom. So it’s like a little Oedipus Rex complex there, because I look at my phone and it’s her (laughing), three times a day when I travel. And when I hit the house she greets me before my wife greets me.

Ron Bennington: Do you think you do better, as you get older, being a father, rather than being the young father?

Julius Erving: Absolutely. You go somewhere and they say, “Is that your granddaughter?” – “No, no, it’s not my granddaughter, it’s my daughter.” Then she always gives them a funny look, too.

* * *

Julius Erving Talks About Writing A Memoir That’s So Personal

Ron Bennington: I was surprised by the book, Doc, the fact that you got so personal with it, because I’ve always seen you – I’ve been a Sixers fan my whole life, I’ve always seen you being up above that kind of talk. What made you want to discuss some of the personal stuff?

Julius Erving: Well, I think the…somebody used the term yesterday, “tell all,” I didn’t think about that once when I was writing this book, that this was a “tell all.” I thought this was an autobiography and I don’t read fiction, I read nonfiction, so when people have written autobiographies, they write about their life. I remember Natalie Cole’s autobiography, Marvin Gaye’s – the books that were written about him, because he didn’t pen it, he was working on a book, I think, when he was killed. And you read books, “The story of…” so, the idea of doing things first person was paramount for me.

Ron Bennington: You wanted to put this information in?

Julius Erving: Let’s make this first person, let’s make this a true account, let’s make it as good as it can possibly be, in terms of really telling the story of my life. And a legacy play in terms of generations – I don’t want my family members generations to come to look at me as something other than a real live human being who has lived a life and the stories depict the highs and lows, ups and downs, rights and wrongs of that life. I don’t want to distance myself from my family and my friends and the public, I want to endear myself by letting them know that I did the same things they did, and some turned out ok, some didn’t turn out ok, but I’m fully accountable. That’s probably “it” in terms of saying, “I’m fully accountable.” I’ve never ran away from responsibility, I’ve always met it head on and that’s what you should do. Life lessons, at the end of the day, at the end of a lot of chapters say, “Well, this is the way I chose to do it, it didn’t turn out that well, so maybe when you encounter it, you should do something a little different.” So, I think there is value in that.

Ron Bennington: To me, when I think of you I think of the man that changed basketball, and that, I think, should be the legacy. In terms of what you did on the floor is what always has interested me, the most. That you brought a new style of basketball that didn’t exist before, and now exists everywhere.

Julius Erving: But that alone, is not enough. Because, yeah, that probably could stand on it’s own, but for me personally, it’s not enough. I used to – even in high school, when somebody said, “Ok, all the jocks line up on that side of the room,” there was something derogatory about that. It was like, “Oh, we go to school here, we work just as hard as you, we get grades, but we’re the “jocks” so I’m not accepting that, don’t just look at me as a jock.” I think if I just allowed for the total legacy to be the sixteen years that I played professional basketball, well there are forty-seven other years of accountability, there are forty-seven other years in which, I think, I’ve made contributions to the world and there is a lot of give and take that has happened in those other forty-seven years. There was stuff that was happening during those sixteen years that were not basketball related, that I think are a part of my story. So, I don’t want to take away from my basketball legacy, I really don’t, and I don’t think having chinks in the armor necessarily takes away from it, but I’m willing to take that risk.

* * *

Julius Erving Talks About The Reaction To His Book

Ron Bennington: What bothers me, I think, is to see the headlines go toward a lot of the personal stuff. That doesn’t bother you at all though?

Julius Erving: Everything is relative. My preparation has been long and arduous in terms of deciding to pen the book and working with Karl [Taro Greenfeld] was great. So, I started this process and stopped it a lot of times in the last twenty years, and this time we got through it. So, when you ask me how I feel about it – did we have to do this, did we not have to do that? All of those questions have been asked and answered by the evidence, which is, the book being on the stands and being available and the story being out there. And there might be people out there who liked me before who are not going to like me now, but they don’t pay my bills, they don’t inspire the people who I’m inspired by – physically still getting up, getting out, doing a lot of things in public, being a ‘difference-maker.’

Ron Bennington: I think that you’ve always been a ‘difference-maker’ and in some ways on a subconscious level, like I said, I was a kid in the seventies, bussing was going on, so there was always neighborhood scraps going back and forth, but with people like you and I’ll go around: Cosby, Teddy Pendergrass, Marvin Gaye, people that were crossovers had to make kids think, “Well, wait, this is excellent, this is great.” What you did on the basketball court, I think, had a lot to do with bringing people together, in the city of Philadelphia.

Julius Erving: I would agree. Grover Washington, Jr. is on that list and Patti LaBelle, the entertainers, the other athletes, guys from the Eagles: Mike Quick, and the Phillies: Garry Maddox, and people I’m friendly with and whose company, with some of them, I still enjoy. I think by raising the bar, representing Philadelphia on the national and international level being ambassadors for the city, it brought a lot of people together, and inspired a lot of people. But, you still have to live, you still have to be a human being, you still have to cry sometimes, you have to bleed sometimes, and that makes you closer to the people who you are trying to inspire, because they want to be you. And there are a lot of times where you want to be them (laughing) where you can walk down the street and have anonymity, go to the park and sit out and nobody knows you’re there, so maybe it is that type of exchange. They want to be you and you want to be them.

* * *

Julius Erving Talks About Playing In Rucker Park In Harlem

Ron Bennington: But, the fact that you changed the game – in the documentary done on you, the Rucker Park Games are some of the most amazing footage I’ve ever seen. You don’t see that kind of electricity these days, I think more people are inside or on their computers, but what those games brought to Rucker Park was just amazing.

Julius Erving: Yeah, that was a fun time. I went to the park for five years, ages 21 to 26, and after the fifth year, I knew my knees were never going to hold up playing all year round. I needed to rest in the off seasons. And I started meeting people, who were significant people, who started letting me understand what it was like to go to the South of France, South America, and other countries and all the wonderful things to see in the United States, that in the off season, rather than just playing ball in the park, you need to go and do, go and learn how to do and enjoy. But, the experience and the confidence that it brought to my organized game, to where I was earning a living, the confidence that it brought by being out there in the park and being challenged by the fans to attack the basket from eighteen feet – it’s like I’d go in there and I’d jump sometimes and I’m twelve feet away from the basket and you float and turn and twist and whatever, and some guys were like, “Oh man, you can do better than that!” (laughing). It’s like, I’m giving what I think is my best and they’re like, “You can do better than that,” and I’m like, “Really?” So that challenge there, and then if you validate it in the park by doing better and doing some stuff that is creative and genius in terms of breaking through barriers, then when you bring it back to your team, it’s like… it’s good stuff.

Ron Bennington: That was like a lab for you, where you’re working on stuff and figuring it out.

Julius Erving: Hey, that’s a good way of looking at it. Yeah.

* * *

Ron Bennington: Dr. J, it was so great to have you come in here, man. You don’t always get to say this to people you admire, but I just want to say, thank you so much for so many great memories, and I’m glad to know that you are happier now than you have ever been at any other time in your life. That’s great to hear.

Julius Erving: I look forward to doing it again.

Ron Bennington: I’ll see you next time.

============================================================