20 Second Timeout

Friedman: "I'm doing an article about James Silas, who has that great nickname--'Captain Late.' What do you remember about playing with him as a teammate? What made him so special as an offensive player that people really didn't get to see in the NBA after the knee injury?"

Kennedy: "I called him 'Si-Lee.' I remember when he came in as a rookie. He was very quiet, wouldn't say anything."

Friedman: "Really?"

Kennedy: "Yeah. He was very quiet."

Friedman: "He seems talkative now."

Kennedy: "Very quiet. We became very close. We always talked with each other, even when we were with other teams. He's just an all-around good guy."

Friedman: "There was camaraderie in the ABA, even if you were on different teams everyone seemed to really have an 'all for one, one for all' mentality."

Kennedy: "When Fatty [Roland 'Fatty' Taylor, organizer of the 2005 and 2006 ABA Reunions] started getting this (ABA Reunion) together, we said, 'All right, let's get together.' We started talking to other people who Fatty couldn't get in contact with, so we spread the word and it worked well."

Friedman: "What's your favorite memory from your playing days?"

Kennedy: "My rookie year, first coming in and seeing all these guys with gray hair--the veterans. "

Friedman: "You felt like you knew you had a shot, that some of those older guys were on their way out--is that what you were thinking?"

Kennedy: "No, no, no. I'm thinking, 'What am I to do?' You know some of the guys that you meet because you played with them in college, but you didn't know them that well. When I first came in I knew Collis Jones. We were very close because we had played against each other, he at Notre Dame and myself at Texas Christian University. So we hit it off very well and have been together ever since. When I came in he was the number one draft choice [17th pick overall in the 1971 NBA Draft, selected by the Milwaukee Bucks]."

Friedman: "Collis was with the Chaparrals?"

Kennedy: "With the Chaparrals and in the NBA. He decided to come to Dallas. It was tough, it wasn't easy."

Friedman: "What's your best memory of Julius Erving, the best move that you saw him do? I know that everyone says that his best moves aren't on tape, that they happened in the ABA and were not filmed."

Kennedy: "We all came in at the same time. He was a rookie when I was a rookie. In the ABA, Doc went to a lot of cities that did not televise the games nationally. They were only shown in that town. A lot of people did not see him in his prime. They missed it all. He would come into town and people did not know who Dr. J was. They missed a great opportunity."

Friedman: "Also, he came out of a small, unheralded schoo1."

Kennedy: "UMASS."

Friedman: "Right. He came from a small school into a league that was, undeservedly, given second class status in terms of television coverage."

Kennedy: "Right. The ABA was a great league with great players. Look at after the league folded how many guys went into the NBA from the ABA"

Friedman: "Many of the All-NBA guys for the next several years--Erving, Thompson, Gervin, Moses, Maurice Lucas--"

Kennedy: "Moses and I played together at Utah in the ABA and then we played together in Houston."

Friedman: "What did you think of Moses when you first saw him come out of high school at about 210 pounds?"

Kennedy: "Skinny kid who had so much ability."

Friedman: "You could see it even when he was that young?"

Kennedy: "Yeah and everybody was determined to beat up on him. You could beat up on him and it didn't make any difference. Moses was a quick jumper. He could go down and go back up, go down and go back up. For his size, he was unbelievable. He was young, but he could play."

Friedman: "He developed some offensive moves a little later on, but when you were roommates he was mainly scoring off of offensive rebounds, right?"

Kennedy: "Rebounds and put backs. Then he worked on his little turn around jump shot and taking the ball to the basket. He was just a great all around player and a good guy."

Friedman: "What do you remember of Marvin Barnes, another guy who was a great offensive rebounder?"

Kennedy: "Speaking of Marvin, I was just talking to him out there. We played together in St. Louis--Marvin Barnes, Maurice Lucas, Joe Caldwell, Steve Jones, Fly Williams, Gus Gerard. We had a really good team."

Friedman: "What do you remember of the 1975 ABA playoffs? The Nets were the defending champions and had beaten you something like 13 straight times."

Kennedy: "They had beaten us, but during that playoff we were on a roll. We had come together as a team."

Friedman: "What changed?"

Kennedy: "Everybody started to get to know everybody. Everybody felt real comfortable about what was going on and got to know the system. Everybody liked everybody. We had fun doing it."

Friedman: "For those first couple years, Marvin was an incredible player. He was putting up 25 and 15."

Kennedy: "Marvin was a great offensive rebounder, great defender. He could handle the ball, he could shoot the ball--he could do it all. He had so much ability it was unbelievable."

Friedman: "Did you ever read the book by (David) Halberstam, The Breaks of the Game? Steve Jones was interviewed in that book and he talked about Marvin Barnes. That was the first time I ever read about or heard about Marvin Barnes. That book came out a long time ago, like 25 years ago--I read it as a kid."

Kennedy: "Marvin was the type of guy who did what he wanted to do. He didn't think about what would happen. He just did it and then thought about it afterwards. He's a fun guy, he's a neat guy. He always wants to help somebody."

Friedman: "He has a good heart."

Kennedy: "Good heart, good, tender heart."

Friedman: "After you guys beat the Nets, then you played the Colonels and that's when Freddie Lewis got injured, right?"