Am I the only one in Hampton Roads who didn’t realize that this area had – and lost – one of the greatest basketball players of all time?
I was flipping through my new copy of the 2012 Norfolk Historical Calendar, published by the Norfolk Public Library Foundation, and found the accompanying photo of Julius Erving snagging a rebound in a Virginia Squires
uniform.
Lots of folks around here remember, of course. There’s even a still-standing “Unofficial Homepage” of the Squires put up on the Web by admiring fans. And like the other stories I’ve found about the team, it’s tinged with nostalgia and, maybe, regret.
It’s a convoluted history that begins in 1967 with a team called the Oakland Oaks of the fledgling American Basketball Association, partly owned by singer Pat Boone. They were quite a team, winning the ABA championship during the 1968-69 season, with the help of superstar Rick Barry.
Trouble is nobody went to their games, and Boone and company were forced to sell the team to Washington D. C. lawyer Earl Foreman – who promptly moved them to D.C. and renamed them the Washington Caps.
There they remained for only one season, 1969-70, because Foreman was more or less forced out of town when the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA were moved to D.C. Foreman decided to make them a regional team that would play in Norfolk, Richmond and Roanoke – and renamed them again, this time the Virginia Squires.
There was one unfortunate incident before the team arrived. Barry, who made the cover of Sports Illustrated that year – in a red Squires uniform – told the magazine he didn’t like the idea of his kids growing up saying “y’all.” There were other disparaging comments about Virginia and he was quickly on a plane heading north.
But there was still great potential for the team, which recruited some of the best players from the UNC Tar Heels, discovered George “Iceman” Gervin and signed Erving, a star from U Mass. The team played Norfolk home games in 1970-71 at the ODU Fieldhouse, then moved to the just-completed Scope Arena.
During the 1971-72 season, Erving became an instant sensation, scoring more than 27 points per game, many of them in high-flying acrobatic fashion. He would often launch himself into the air somewhere around the free throw line, ending 15 feet later at the boards with a resounding slam dunk.
“Dr. J” – he had been given the name in high school – helped legitimize the ABA. He went on to collect four MVP awards and become the fifth highest scorer in professional basketball history, finishing with over 30,000 points.
But Erving’s career as a Squire was all too brief. After a 1972-73 season, in which he scored 31.9 points per game, the cash-strapped team sold him to the New York Nets. He’d go on to fame and fortune with the Philadelphia 76ers. The decision to sell him for cash appears to have been the beginning of the end of the team.
It seems that every time Foreman, the owner, needed money to pay the bills, he’d sell off one of his most important assets, a star player. In 1974 it was Gervin, to the San Antonio Spurs. It backfired, of course, so angering the team’s fans that attendance plummeted.
Fans were not the only ones disgruntled with the team. At one point the city ordered Scope gate receipts withheld because the owner wasn’t paying rent on time. Virginia National Bank was suing for money owed. Some players found that their paychecks bounced.
A group of investors took over in November ’75 but couldn’t save the team. The Chamber of Commerce sponsored a drive to sell tickets. “In my opinion, the time has come for the public to decide if the Squires stay or go,” Chamber president W. MacKenzie Jenkins Jr. said. “If the people aren’t for the Squires, then the team ought to fold.”
But by then the public and the league had lost interest. In May of 1976, the Squires were no more.
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