130. Swen Nater and the ABA/NBA Merger

130. Swen Nater and the ABA/NBA Merger

Bowie Kuhn landed on the cover of the June 28, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated because he had just done something nobody in baseball had done quite so boldly — voided three of the biggest player sales in the history of the sport. When Charlie Finley sold Vida Blue to the Yankees and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox all in a single afternoon, Kuhn stepped in and nullified every transaction, invoking his power to act in baseball's "best interests." Finley called him the village idiot, Billy Martin joked about pitching him, and the entire baseball world stopped to ask one question — just how much power does a commissioner actually have? That was enough to put Bowie Kuhn on the cover of Sports Illustrated. That same week two other seismic sports stories were playing out inside that June 28th issue. In boxing, George Foreman demolished Joe Frazier in five rounds, knocking him down twice before the referee stopped it — and Smokin' Joe announced his retirement on the spot with a perfect line: "It's time to put it on the wall and go boogie, boogie, boogie." And in basketball, after years of financial chaos and a 44-minute vote, the ABA officially ceased to exist — four franchises surviving into the NBA while the rest quietly disappeared, ending a nine-year experiment that gave the world Julius Erving, the three-point line, and a red, white and blue ball nobody took seriously until it was too late. Swen Nater's journey is one of the most unlikely in sports history. He grew up in the Netherlands, never played a high school game, and arrived at UCLA with almost no formal experience — spending two seasons as Bill Walton's practice player on back-to-back undefeated championship teams without ever starting. Yet the Milwaukee Bucks drafted him in the first round in 1973, making him the only player ever drafted that high without a college start. He chose the ABA instead, and after the Virginia Squires sold him off he landed with San Antonio and won ABA Rookie of the Year. When the merger came, Nater transitioned seamlessly, eventually becoming the only player in history to lead both the ABA and NBA in rebounding. Swen tells us what it was like to backup Walton, how Kareem kept him from signing with Milwaukee, and how Wilt Chamberlain taught him to become a ferocious rebounder. He tells us how John Wooden prepared him for the pros, how Don Nelson made him a better shooter, and the story of the time he and Lonnie Shelton got into it — and his wife's 80-year-old grandmother came onto the court to give him some assistance. It's the end of the ABA and the beginning of a great era in the NBA, and Swen Nater was in the center of it all. Listen and download the latest Past Our Prime wherever you get your podcasts. Have your grandkids show you how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

129. George Brett: Hall of Famer

George Brett spent 21 years with the Kansas City Royals and never played a single game for anyone else — which in today's era of free agency feels almost quaint. He's the only player in baseball history to win batting titles in three different decades ('76, '80, '90), hit .390 in 1980 — the closest anyone has come to .400 since Ted Williams — and finished with 3,154 career hits before a first-ballot Hall of Fame induction in 1999. Oh, and he led the Royals to their only World Series title in 1985. Not bad for a kid from Hermosa Beach, California. Of course, if you ask most casual fans what they remember, there's a decent chance they skip the batting titles and go straight to the Pine Tar Incident of 1983 — Brett homers off Goose Gossage, the umpire calls him out, and he comes flying out of the dugout in what remains one of the greatest displays of barely-contained human rage in sports history. Frank White had warned him it might be coming, and Brett told him "if they call me out, I'll kill one of those SOB's." Less than a second later he was being physically restrained from doing exactly that to 6'5 home plate umpire Tim McClelland. Back in June of 1976, though, Brett was just 23 years old on the cover of Sports Illustrated, already flashing the talent and competitiveness that would define his career — and Kansas City was clearly building something worth watching. On Past Our Prime, Brett takes us inside all of it — how his brother Ken made him believe a big league career was possible, how rivals like Schmidt, Reggie, and Goose became close friends after years of battles including a bench-clearing brawl with another pal, Graig Nettles of the Yankees, in the '77 ALCS, and why he's called Kansas City home ever since the Royals drafted him in 1971. A Hall of Famer in every sense — George Brett on the Past Our Prime podcast. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

128. Dwight Stones: The Greatest Show in Track and Field

Dwight Stones is on the cover of the June 14, 1976 issue of Sports Illustrated, and he joins Past Our Prime to take us back to one of the most electric moments of his remarkable career. That cover came on the heels of a world record in the high jump — a performance that announced to the world that Stones wasn't just a great athlete, he was an event. Being on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1976 wasn't just an honor, it was a cultural moment. In an era before social media, before highlight reels and YouTube, that cover was how America met its sports heroes, and Stones understood exactly what it meant. He had arrived — not just as a world-class jumper, but as a personality, a presence, and a star. What made Stones different from every other high jumper of his era was that he understood something most track and field athletes never figured out — the competition didn't start when the bar went up, it started the moment he walked into the stadium. He studied Muhammad Ali the way a film student studies Scorsese, borrowing Ali's gift for psychological warfare and applying it to the high jump pit. He talked, he taunted, he performed, and he made sure that every opponent in the building knew he was there and that beating him was going to cost them something mentally before it cost them anything physically. He even pioneered a new kind of dual role in the sport, competing in a meet and simultaneously serving as an analyst — giving new meaning to the idea of a dual meet and blurring the line between athlete and broadcaster in a way nobody had ever done before. Stones first discovered the Fosbury Flop as a young athlete and never looked back, and the man who invented it — Dick Fosbury — became not just a technical influence but a mentor and a genuine friend. Fosbury changed the sport forever when he went over the bar backwards at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, and Stones was among the first generation to fully embrace and master the technique. He'll tell us what it meant to have Fosbury in his corner and how a revolutionary way of clearing a bar became the foundation of everything Stones built his career on. It was more than a technique — it was a philosophy about seeing the world differently than everyone else, which suited Dwight Stones just fine. Then there are the two bronze medals — separated by four years and a lifetime of emotion. The first, at the 1972 Munich Olympics, was a stunning achievement for the youngest member of the American team, a teenager who had no business being on that podium and got there anyway through sheer talent and nerve. The second, at the 1976 Montreal Games, is a different story entirely — one that still irks him to this day. Stones joins Scott, Marc, and Bill on Past Our Prime to talk about both medals, the world record, the showmanship, the mind games, and what it felt like to be young, fearless, and on top of the world in the summer of 1976 — with his face on the cover of the greatest sports magazine that ever existed to prove it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

127 . Alvan Adams: Rookie of the Year & NBA Finals Star

Alvan Adams was the Phoenix Suns' rookie center during the memorable 1976 NBA Finals run, and he was nothing short of sensational in his debut season. A 6'9" center out of the University of Oklahoma, Adams won the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 1975–76 after averaging around 19 points and 9 rebounds per game, bringing a unique blend of size, skill, and passing ability that was ahead of its time for a big man. He was a key reason the Suns — a team few expected to contend — made it all the way to the Finals, and his performance throughout the playoffs announced him as one of the league's brightest young talents. The 1976 NBA Finals featured the Boston Celtics defeating the Phoenix Suns in six games, widely remembered as one of the greatest series in basketball history. Game 5 in particular is considered a classic — a triple-overtime thriller at Boston Garden that saw the Celtics ultimately prevail 128–126 in what many still call the greatest game ever played. The series was a showcase for Boston's John Havlicek in what turned out to be his final playoff run, along with Dave Cowens, Jo Jo White, and Paul Silas, while the Suns' Garfield Heard hit a buzzer-beater to force the third overtime before Boston closed it out in Game 6 to claim their 13th NBA championship. Adams would go on to spend his entire 13-year career with Phoenix, becoming the franchise's all-time leading scorer and rebounder at the time of his retirement, and remains one of the most beloved figures in Suns history. The number on his back was a tribute to a player he idolized growing up and battled many times ima his NBA career, and he has openly acknowledged that a legendary player's decision to jump to the ABA helped him win that Rookie of the Year Award 50 years ago — an iconic rookie season that landed him on the June 7, 1976 cover of Sports Illustrated in a battle against Hall of Famer Dave Cowens — an image that perfectly summed up the undersized rookie who refused to back down from anyone. Now Alvan Adams is coming to Past Our Prime to relive it all. He'll talk about that stunning rookie season, the gut-wrenching triple-overtime Game 5 loss that still haunts and thrills Suns fans to this day, the story behind his number, the coach he has to thank for his path to Phoenix, and the teammate he considers the best he ever shared a court with during his Suns career. It's a conversation decades in the making, and Past Our Prime is the place where it finally happens. Download and subscribe and leave a review if you could. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

126. Psycho, Fisk, Sweet Lou and the brawl that defined an era.

On the latest episode of Past Our Prime, we dive into one of the most memorable moments in baseball history — the May 31, 1976 cover of Sports Illustrated that captured a dramatic home plate confrontation between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. The cover photograph, shot by Neil Leifer, showed Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk (#27) making a tag out on Yankees outfielder Lou Piniella (#14), with home plate umpire Terry Cooney visible in the frame. Piniella was ruled out at home, but the collision sparked a bench-clearing brawl, and the cover's headline captured the rivalry perfectly: "Head-On Collision in the East — Speeding Yanks Run Into the Sputtering Red Sox." The brawl turned ugly when Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles and Boston pitcher Bill Lee fought so fiercely that Lee suffered a separation of his left shoulder, significantly affecting the rest of his pitching career. It remains one of the most iconic covers in the magazine's history, perfectly encapsulating the fierce and often physical rivalry between the two American League East rivals. Steve "Psycho" Lyons carved out a nine-year MLB career with the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox — where he was a teammate of Carlton Fisk — the Atlanta Braves, and Montreal Expos. He earned his nickname through antics like playing tic-tac-toe in the infield dirt and famously pulling his pants down after sliding into first base — a blooper reel staple for years. After retiring, Lyons became a three-time Emmy Award-winning broadcaster for Fox Sports, where he worked alongside Lou Piniella, before later joining NESN as a Red Sox studio analyst — proving, as he once said, that he talked about the game better than he played it. Lyons gives us incredible insight into Fisk, the Hall of Fame catcher, and reveals that for some reason, the serious Fisk would let the younger Lyons give him the business. He recounts how Fisk told Deion Sanders to run out a popup — leading to yet another bench-clearing incident — and how Fisk, as captain of the White Sox, was the hardest worker in the clubhouse. Lyons also takes us inside that iconic cover shot of Fisk and Piniella colliding at the plate and the brawl that followed, and reflects on how the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry back then was a whole different animal compared to today. And he tells us how he wishes he'd had the opportunity to play for Piniella, who brought that same fire to the game that Lyons himself always did — and yes, he sets the record straight on how he really got the nickname "Psycho," and no, it had nothing to do with dropping his pants in the middle of a game. If you enjoyed this episode, please download, review, and subscribe to Past Our Prime — and help spread the word to every baseball fan who loves the game the way it used to be played. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]