ABA IS STILL WILD AND WACKY; LEAGUE CELEBRATES 30TH BIRTHDAY.

Byline: Kevin Sherrington Dallas Morning News

A fan with a camera walks past, and the large man stops him.

``Get a picture of me and the Iceman,'' the large man says, wrapping an arm around George Gervin.

The fan smiles. He asks if he can include Zelmo Beaty and Willie Wise in the picture.

``Nah,'' Billy Paultz says, ``forget them. Just me and Ice.''

The fan obliges. He squeezes the shutter, and the Whopper squeezes Gervin, still thin as a goalpost, wearing a shoulder-to-shoulder smile, about to be rendered crushed Ice.

They are all glad to be here in the lobby of the convention center, these graying, grinning images of basketball's past. The Doctor. Hawk. Captain Late. More than 50 former players made it. Even News, and as far as most of his peers knew, News needed parole to get here.

They came from all over for the 30-year American Basketball Association Reunion in August. They came from a time when teams didn't play by the rules because there weren't any. Teams signed players drafted by other teams, traded players after the league froze rosters, basically did whatever they wanted to keep franchises alive.

And no one was the wiser. The league that played its first game Oct. 13, 1967, got away with a lot because few paid much attention in the nine years it flew in and over the face of the buttoned-down NBA.

Not much has changed since the ABA died in 1976. Only a handful of national reporters showed for the reunion, and even the local media seem to regard it as little more than a '70s curiosity.

They come from another time, all right. The program includes an award for the ABA's largest Afro. An inordinately long section of the video presentation is devoted to ballgirls in bikinis. The league that gave basketball the three-point shot still doesn't get many points for good taste.

They pick an All-Crybaby team, and Rick Barry is the only member. A former trainer is asked to speak, and he cows most of the 500 or so ex-owners, ex-players and soon-to-be ex-wives with stories better left at the bar.

And, just as in the old days, when it sometimes seems a little cheesy, the players rise above it all.

The two dozen honored on the dais - a who's who of hoops that includes Gervin, Spencer Haywood, Connie Hawkins, Maurice Lucas, George McGinnis, Dan Issel, Artis Gilmore and David Thompson - give Julius Erving a standing ovation when he is introduced. Erving commands $100 for his autograph, then gives all the proceeds to the family of Roger Brown, an ABA All-Star who died last spring.

The same kind of charity got Goose Ligon here. Residents of Kokomo, Ind., took up a collection and flew him in. Bought him a suit, too.

Some of the best stories are about those who couldn't make it. Asked once why he took a shot from his knees, Wendell Ladner said, ``Because I was open.''

Ladner died 20 years ago in a plane crash. Had he walked into the ballroom on his knees, it wouldn't have been any more surprising than the appearance of Marvin ``Bad News'' Barnes. Only a few months ago, no one could find him. News has been in prison four times, gone through 15 stays at drug-treatment centers and wasted some of the greatest talent no one ever saw.

Yet, here he is, microphone in hand, matching wits like a nightclub comic with NBC broadcaster Bob Costas, the former voice of Barnes' old team, the St. Louis Spirits.

``I wanted to be a great guy,'' Barnes tells Costas in a reflective moment, ''but Julius was the ultimate good guy. So I wanted to be the ultimate bad guy.''

He pauses.

``I got a little carried away with it.''

Hey, it was the ABA. That was the idea.

Nothing said ``ABA'' like the red, white and blue ball, the idea of the league's first commissioner, George Mikan. The ball was Mikan's singular genius. He would later tell fans in Oakland during the 1969 finals with Indiana, ``It sure is great to be here in Oklahoma.''

Mikan was the first of six commissioners the league would try, each charged with obtaining a television contract or a merger with the NBA.

The ABA never got TV. And only four of the franchises - the San Antonio Spurs, the New York Nets, the Indiana Pacers and the Denver Nuggets - entered the NBA. The rest of the original 11, plus one expansion team, either died along the way or were bought off.

Some did better than others. The St. Louis owners took $2.2 million to drop out. They also negotiated a one-seventh television share from each of the four surviving ABA teams.

``The best deal ever made in pro sports,'' former Spurs owner Red McCombs calls it.

The St. Louis officials specified that their TV share would be awarded ``in perpetuity,'' which, in legal terms, means, ``We are set for life.''

Few ABA veterans could make that claim, although it was the ABA that first made popular the million-dollar contract.

Or paper millions, at least. Most of the money was deferred for decades, demonstrating great faith on the players' part. Imagine John Beasley's surprise when he got a call from the former owner of the Utah Stars, three years after the club folded. Bill Daniels told Beasley he was paying everybody he owed. So, every month, Beasley, a former Texas A&M star who also played for the Dallas Chaparrals, got a little check in the mail.

A very little check. A two-time All-Star, Beasley wouldn't say how much he made in the ABA. ``I'm a little embarrassed by it,'' he says.

A few ABA stars made big money. Cincy Powell was part of a Kentucky front line in the last days of the ABA that earned more than $2 million combined. Artis Gilmore made $1.2 million, Dan Issel got $900,000. ...

``And I was making fifty-six thousand,'' says Powell, who also played for the Chaparrals.

Dick Tinkham, one of the Indiana officials, said the ABA had no plan, and it showed. The owners were game for almost anything once they calmed down. Ned Doyle, who owned the Miami Floridians - later, simply the Floridians - told Dallas general manager Bob Briner, ``I'd trade my franchise for the TV rights to these meetings.''

The only thing that kept meetings from escalating into full-fledged fights, Briner says, was the breadth of the conference table.

They did whatever they pleased. No one paid attention to drafts. Dallas could have had Issel, but he didn't want to play for the Chaparrals, so he signed with Kentucky. The league froze the assets of the Virginia Squires in 1973 because owner Earl Foreman kept selling off his players. He'd already dumped Erving and Barry when McCombs' general manager, Angelo Drossos, asked about a young 6-7, 170-pound forward named George Gervin.

Mike Storen, then the league's commissioner, told the Spurs he froze Virginia's roster to save the club for a buyer.

``That same day,'' McCombs says, ``I made the arrangements to buy Gervin for $300,000 cash.''

The league tried to stop the deal. Storen sued, and the case was heard in a San Antonio court, where the presiding judge was a Spurs season-ticket holder.

He found in favor of the home team.

Most of the owners never had any intention of hanging on for long. ``We figured that, within three years, we would be part of the NBA,'' Dennis Murphy, one of the league's founders, says in ``Loose Balls'', Terry Pluto's 1990 history of the league. ``Certainly, by five years, we would have either merged with the NBA or been out of business.''

They lasted nine years, or at least a handful did. The league was in its fifth season before all the teams played in the same place they did the year before.

The Houston Mavericks moved to North Carolina early on, leaving behind a fan base of 89. Several visiting players vouched for this number, having taken the trouble to count the fans themselves.

One ABA team had so much financial trouble, it nearly had its uniforms repossessed. The Nets forfeited a playoff game to Kentucky because of loose nails and bolts in the floor of Long Island's Commack Arena.

But, as goofy as the league sometimes seemed, the ABA's quality of basketball was occasionally astounding. The first season after the merger, Denver and San Antonio made the NBA playoffs, and nearly half the players on the All-Star rosters that season were from the ABA.

In its heyday, the ABA had plenty of players to choose from. The NBA had only 12 teams in those days, less than half what it now fields. The ABA had no problem taking players like Hawkins and Roger Brown, both banned by the NBA. The ABA gave Hubie Brown, Kevin Loughery, Larry Brown, Doug Moe, K.C. Jones, Tom Nissalke, Stan Albeck and Al Bianchi their pro coaching debuts.

And the ABA had a profound impact on its stoic rival. The ABA gave pro basketball the three-point shot and the slam-dunk contest. It sped up the game, gave it flair, basically turned it into what it is today, particularly from a promotions standpoint.

Terry Stembridge, an announcer for the Chaparrals, then the Spurs, said the ABA ``dragged the NBA kicking and screaming into major league status.''

But, perhaps most importantly, the ABA gave basketball Dr. J.

Erving was an athletic forward without much of a jump shot when he came out of the University of Massachusetts to join the Virginia Squires for the 1971-72 season. Virginia teammate Willie Sojourner gave him the nickname after watching his arsenal of dunks.

``There's the doctor,'' he would say, ``digging into his bag again.''

Erving says he isn't sure if he'd have been the same player had he never played in the ABA, but he wasn't sorry he did.

``This is something,'' he says at the reunion, ``that should never die.''

The reunion was the idea of Bob Netolicky. Better known as a flake than a dependable center-forward, he used to sign autographs ``Lee Harvey Oswald,'' which went over big when he played for Dallas. Neto probably wishes he'd had this reunion in his old bar rather than the convention center. Dinner's more than an hour late, players keep showing up needing $200 tickets, and the RCA Dome has all the charm of a warehouse.

But the players are oblivious. They seem more interested in reviving old memories than in the money they made in a live auction of their old mementos.

Ron Boone, a former Chaparral and a member of the ABA's Top 30 team, still is in basketball. He's an announcer for the Utah Jazz. But he hasn't seen many of these players since the ABA died.

``What do they look like?'' he asks, looking around the lobby. ``What are they doing? You see someone who was pretty important to you and you realize you've actually forgot about him.''

The night before the final gala, they hung out in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza until 4 a.m., waiting to see who'd walk in the door.

``Where's Fatty Taylor?'' Powell asks. ``You got his number?''

A hunt for a pay phone, then a number is dialed.

``Fatty, why ain't you here?''

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PHOTO Although he gained most of his fame with the Warriors of the NBA, Rick Barry also was one of the original stars of the ABA.

Daily News File Photo