Julius Erving is channeling his inner Magic Johnson.
In an appearance Wednesday on ESPN LA 710’s “Mornings with Keyshawn, Jorge & LZ,” the retired basketball great said that his 1982-83 Philadelphia 76ers would defeat the current Golden State Warriors.
“This is a phenomenal team,” said Dr. J of the Warriors. “They can put up points. And they do play team defense. They hustle. They scrap.
“[But] when you have a team with the makeup of our team back then, we could play slow, we could play fast,” continued the Hall of Famer. “Moses [Malone] was such a dominant force. I have visions of him grabbing the rebound a few times and taking it coast to coast … You know we had four centers, four guards and four forwards, so a lot of the parts were interchangeable. We had a guy like Bobby Jones coming off the bench.”
The Sixers went 65-17 that year and won the NBA title after Malone’s famous “fo’, fo’, fo'” proclamation. Other than Erving, Malone, and Jones, they also boasted the likes of Andrew Toney and Maurice Cheeks, bringing the total number of All-Stars on their roster to five.
Johnson made some similar (albeit bolder) comments about his “Showtime” Lakers earlier this week, but once again, comparison between generations is difficult because of how different the game looks nowadays. Perhaps we can all just agree that players across all eras will always think that their team and theirs alone was the greatest team of all-time.
Image via Philadelphia 76ers on YouTube
