20 Second Timeout

Remembering George McGinnis, Two-Time ABA Champion and 1975 ABA Regular Season Co-MVP

George McGinnis, who won two ABA championships (1972, 1973) with the Indiana Pacers and shared the 1975 ABA regular season MVP with Julius Erving, passed away on Thursday at the age of 73 after suffering a heart attack at home last week. McGinnis had deep Indiana roots, as he led Washington high school (Indianapolis) to a 31-0 record and the state championship in 1969 before starring at Indiana University. In 1970-71 in his only varsity season at Indiana University, McGinnis became the first sophomore to lead the Big Ten in scoring (30.0 ppg) and rebounding (14.7 rpg). Taking advantage of the new Spencer Haywood rule that enabled underclassmen to jump from college to pro basketball, McGinnis joined the ABA's Indiana Pacers for the 1971-72 season, departing Indiana University just before the arrival of Bobby Knight; it would have been interesting if those two Hall of Famers had teamed up, and McGinnis later said that playing for Knight would have helped his development as a player.

Listed at 6-8, 235 pounds, McGinnis had a body that looked like a statue of a Greek god carved out of flawless marble. McGinnis drove to the hoop with power, but he also had a soft touch on his patented one-handed jump shot. He possessed a rare combination of size, strength, speed, scoring ability, rebounding prowess, and passing skills; in short, he was LeBron James before LeBron James (although James enjoyed a much longer career). Overshadowed by a Hall of Fame rookie class including Erving and Rookie of the Year/regular season MVP Artis Gilmore, McGinnis averaged 16.9 ppg and 9.7 rpg in 1971-72, joining Gilmore, Erving, Johnny Neumann, and John Roche on the 1972 ABA All-Rookie First Team. McGinnis averaged 15.5 ppg and 11.4 rpg in the playoffs as the Pacers won their second ABA title in three years.

McGinnis was a key figure in the fabled "Interstate 65 rivalry" pitting the Indiana Pacers versus the Kentucky Colonels. In a May 24, 2004 interview at Conseco Fieldhouse prior to game two of the Eastern Conference Finals pitting Detroit against Indiana, I spoke with McGinnis about his role on those dominant 1970s Pacers teams, and he told me, "I was probably one of the first--if not the first--big power forwards who could come out on the floor and handle the ball…In our offense I could bring the ball up." McGinnis was a friendly and enthusiastic interview subject, as were all of the former Pacers who I have been blessed to interview, including Hall of Famers Coach Bobby "Slick Leonard" and center Mel Daniels, plus Len Elmore, Billy Knight, and Darnell Hillman. Researching and writing about the great Roger Brown--who passed away in 1997 and was not inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame until 2013--will always be a life highlight for me. McGinnis had fond memories of Brown, telling me what he learned from Brown as a young player: "I think learning just to--I was very excitable. If there was a big game, I got really up and then by the time you got 10 minutes into the game I was spent, in terms of energy. So I think that one of the key things that I learned for him--especially in playoff basketball--was that you never get too high or too excited because it is a 48 minute game and you have to play the whole 48 minutes. The team that wins the first 10 minutes is not necessarily the team that is going to win the game. So I think just being calm and handling pressure situations, more than anything else, is what I learned from him."

Daniels, Leonard, and McGinnis have all passed away now, and I feel a keen sense of loss not only for the basketball greatness they represent but for a wonderful time in my writing career that exists now only in fond memories.

In his second season with the Pacers, McGinnis averaged 27.6 ppg (second in the ABA behind Erving) and 12.5 rpg (fourth in the ABA). He finished third in regular season MVP voting behind Billy Cunningham (who later coached him with the Philadelphia 76ers) and Erving (his future teammate with the 76ers). McGinnis averaged 22.3 ppg and 13.7 rpg versus Kentucky in the 1973 ABA Finals, scoring 27 points in Indiana's 88-81 game seven victory at Freedom Hall in Kentucky. He was named the 1973 ABA Playoff MVP.

McGinnis averaged 25.9 ppg (second in the ABA behind Erving) and 15.0 rpg (second in the ABA behind Gilmore) in 1973-74, earning the first of three straight All-ABA First Team selections. He averaged 24.0 ppg and 11.9 rpg in the playoffs, but the Pacers lost to the Utah Stars in seven games in the Western Division Finals. 

McGinnis reached his peak in 1974-75, winning the ABA scoring title with a career-high 29.8 ppg, ranking fifth in rebounding (14.3 rpg), and ranking third in assists with a career-high 6.3 apg. In the 1975 ABA Finals, the Colonels avenged their 1973 loss to the Pacers by beating the Pacers 4-1 despite McGinnis averaging 27.4 ppg, 14.0 rpg and 6.4 apg, gaudy numbers that were actually a bit below his overall playoff production that year (32.3 ppg, 15.9 rpg and 8.2 apg). In 2009 when I wrote about the only players to average 30-7-7 in a playoff season that short list included Oscar Robertson (1963, 1966), George McGinnis (1975), Michael Jordan (1989), and LeBron James (2009). Since that time, James accomplished the feat three more times (2015, 2017, 2018), and Luka Doncic did it twice (2020, 2021), while Russell Westbrook (2017) and Nikola Jokic (2023) each posted one such playoff run. Jokic is the only player in that club who won a championship in his 30-7-7 postseason, although Robertson, McGinnis, Jordan, and James each won at least one championship in other seasons. 

I asked McGinnis what it felt like to play basketball as dominantly as he did, particularly during the 1975 playoffs. He said, "I mean I think that was a point in my career where I guess--I hear present day players talk about being 'in a zone' or the bucket being bigger than or looking like the ocean--that is kind of like what it was for me back in '73, '74. I was probably at the peak of my physical ability and things came easily for me. I can't tell you that I thought about it. A lot of it was just natural ability."

McGinnis jumped to the NBA prior to the 1975-76 season, joining the Philadelphia 76ers. He averaged 23.0 ppg (sixth in the NBA), 12.6 rpg (sixth in the NBA), and 4.7 apg as the 76ers improved from 34-48  to 46-36 and qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 1971.

After the ABA/NBA merger in 1976, the New York Nets sold Erving to the 76ers. Philadelphia General Manager Pat Williams had a "20-20-20" vision for the 76ers: he wanted Erving, McGinnis, and Collins to each average around 20 ppg as opposed to having one player average 30 ppg while dominating the ball. Erving averaged 21.6 ppg, McGinnis averaged 21.4 ppg, and Collins averaged 18.3 ppg as the 76ers posted the Eastern Conference's best record (50-32) in 1976-77. Former MVPs Erving and McGinnis each made the All-NBA Second Team, and sacrificing individual glory for team success seemed to be working out wonderfully as the 76ers raced out to a 2-0 lead in the 1977 NBA Finals--but then Bill Walton's Portland Trail Blazers won four straight games to take the championship. McGinnis struggled mightily in the playoffs, but the 76ers' "20-20-20" vision seemed to be on target for the 1978 title after the 76ers again posted the best record in the Eastern Conference (55-27). However, the 76ers lost 4-2 to the eventual champion Washington Bullets (now known as the Washington Wizards) in the Eastern Conference Finals, and then they traded McGinnis to the Denver Nuggets for Bobby Jones. The 76ers lost in the NBA Finals in 1980 and 1982 before acquiring Moses Malone, the 1982 regular season MVP who teamed up with 1981 regular season MVP Erving to lead the 76ers to a dominant 1983 title run. 

Although conventional wisdom is that the 76ers had to get rid of McGinnis to win the title, Erving told me that he disagrees with that assessment: "Probably, if our team had stayed together, instead of being broken up, I think we would have won the title prior to '83. I think that we had the makings of a great team and we had a lot of parts. All the teams that we beat to get to the Finals before we lost to Portland should have spoken volumes."

When I interviewed McGinnis, I told him what Erving said, and I asked McGinnis about his memories of playing against and then playing with Erving. He replied, "Playing against him was a monster. He was absolutely incredible. He did things that make you go, 'Wow, did he really do that?' I never really appreciated how great he was until I actually got the opportunity to play with him for a couple years and I saw him do something different almost every night. He was just way ahead of his time. He was a tremendous guy, hell of a guy, class guy, but I strongly believe that our team would have won a championship, as he said, if they would have left it alone. But hey, that's sports, and they eventually won one in '83. I thoroughly enjoyed playing against him because, I can say this, I beat him more than he beat me (in the ABA)." McGinnis added that Erving "was kind of the straw that stirred the drink for our league" (borrowing the phrase that Reggie Jackson once used to describe his impact on the New York Yankees). It is true that McGinnis' Pacers went 16-14 versus Erving's teams (Virginia Squires, then New York Nets) from 1971-75, although Erving did not play in one of those losses. Per Statmuse, Erving's teams posted a 13-1 record versus McGinnis' teams in the NBA.

McGinnis averaged 22.6 ppg in his first season with Denver and he was selected as an All-Star for the final time, but his numbers declined in 1979-80 and the Nuggets traded him to Indiana, where McGinnis played until 1982 before retiring at just 31.

In 2017, McGinnis was inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Here is how I summarized his Hall of Fame credentials at that time:

McGinnis' career and prime were both shorter than McGrady's but McGinnis was the only Hall of Fame eligible NBA or ABA regular season MVP who had not been inducted. McGinnis shared 1975 ABA regular season MVP honors with Julius Erving, who two seasons later joined forces with McGinnis to lead the Philadelphia 76ers to the NBA Finals. McGinnis played a key role for two Indiana ABA championship teams (1972, 1973), winning the ABA Playoff MVP in 1973. During the 1975 ABA playoffs, McGinnis averaged 32.3 ppg, 15.9 rpg and 8.2 apg while leading the Pacers to the Finals (their third Finals trip in McGinnis' four years with the franchise). McGinnis remains one of just four players who averaged 30 ppg, 7 rpg and 7 apg for an entire playoff season; pro basketball fans are on a first name basis with the other players: Oscar (who did it twice), Michael, LeBron (who has done it twice). Interestingly, all of those players won at least one championship but none of them won a title during his 30-7-7 postseason run.

McGinnis made the All-Star team six times--three in the ABA, three in the NBA--and at his peak he was as good as any player in either league. The one blemish on his resume is that he relied too much on his natural talent, so when his physical skills began to erode he did not adjust his game; he did not make the All-Star team after the age of 28 and by age 32 he was out of the league. Nevertheless, a player who is a key contributor for two championship teams (and two other Finalists) while winning a regular season MVP, a playoff MVP and a scoring title deserves Hall of Fame induction--not to mention the fact that he was also a dominant, record setting collegiate player.

During his Hall of Fame speech, McGinnis talked about how much fellow Hoosier Oscar Robertson was an inspiration for him, and he recalled posting 53 points and 30 rebounds in an Indiana-Kentucky high school all-star game, which was the last time his father saw him play before passing away. McGinnis called fellow Hall of Famer Rick Barry a "professor" because of his on-court wisdom, and he termed Coach Leonard a "father figure."

McGinnis is one of the most decorated and beloved players in the storied history of Indiana basketball--high school, college, and pro--and he played a modern-style game in the 1970s as a triple threat who scored, rebounded, and passed at an elite level. I hope that this tribute article brings back fond memories for readers who are old enough to remember McGinnis' career, and I hope that it is a source of information--and inspiration--for younger fans.

Labels: Bobby "Slick" Leonard, Denver Nuggets, George McGinnis, Indiana Pacers, Julius Erving, Mel Daniels, Philadelphia 76ers, Roger Brown

posted by David Friedman @ 1:51 AM

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