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NBA: Milwaukee Bucks On Verge Of Rare Feat

By Phil Watson

Mar 30, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Milwaukee Bucks head coach Jason Kidd talks with forward Ersan Ilyasova (7) in the third quarter of their game against the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena. The Hawks won 101-88. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 30, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Milwaukee Bucks head coach Jason Kidd talks with forward Ersan Ilyasova (7) in the third quarter of their game against the Atlanta Hawks at Philips Arena. The Hawks won 101-88. Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports /
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Current Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan was the starting point guard for the 1978-79 New Jersey Nets … who played their home games in the Rutgers Athletic Center. Mandatory Credit: Jim O’Connor-USA TODAY Sports
Current Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan was the starting point guard for the 1978-79 New Jersey Nets … who played their home games in the Rutgers Athletic Center. Mandatory Credit: Jim O’Connor-USA TODAY Sports /

1978-79 New Jersey Nets

No team went from penthouse to outhouse faster in the ABA/NBA merger of 1976 than the Nets.

Winners of two of the last three titles in the rival league, the Nets immediately faced twin crises upon arriving in the NBA.

Because of their location, Nets owner Roy Boe owed the New York Knicks a payment of $4.8 million for encroaching on the Knicks’ territorial rights in the New York market. And the ABA’s best player, Julius Erving, wanted either a new contract or a trade.

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    • So Boe sold Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers for $3 million, paid off Ned Irish and the Knicks and watched his team plummet to the bottom of the NBA, finishing with the league’s worst record in both 1976-77 and, after moving from Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island to the tiny Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, N.J., again in 1977-78.

    Before the draft in June, the Nets traded their first-round pick at No. 4 overall and their 1979 first-rounder to the rival Knicks for the 13th overall selection and veteran forward Phil Jackson, who became a player/coach in New Jersey.

    But a combination of the Nets improving in the second year of Brooklyn native Bernard King, who averaged 21.6 points and 8.2 rebounds a game, and a breakout season by John Williamson, who scored 22.2 a night, along with the Cleveland Cavaliers’ collapse from playoff team to 30-52, New Jersey sneaked into the sixth and final playoff spot in the East by six games over the Knicks, despite finishing just 37-45.

    That earned the Nets a date in the first-round, best-of-3 series against … Erving and the 76ers.

    Williamson and King combined to average 55.5 points a game in the two games. The rest of the roster combined to average 52 points a game and the 76ers dispatched the Nets in two quick games, 122-114 in Philadelphia and 111-101 at the RAC, behind 47 points from Erving.

    It was not the start of something good in New Jersey, however. The Nets would trade King to the Utah Jazz during the preseason—a prescient move in light of King’s drug and legal woes in Salt Lake City—and missed the playoffs again in 1979-80.

    Next: Riding The A-Train Back To The Postseason