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So many things distinguish Erving, starting with the fact that he returned to college to get his degree and a slew of honorary doctorates besides. He earned them with a style of living, not playing. New York recalls the two A.B.A. titles he celebrated with the Nets, but Mississippi's Necaise Crossing remembers that he came to Wendell Ladner's funeral. The Net forward Ladner died in an off-season plane crash. He was a Li'l Abner from a piney-woods logging town, neither of them very easy for a black man to reach. But Erving got to Ladner, and he got to Necaise Crossing. "That was a memory, right there," he says with a distant look.
For a while after the pro basketball merger, Erving and Philadelphia regularly fell just short of the ultimate victory. He kept telling himself that "the work itself is what counts. As hard as it was to make myself believe that, it was the only thing I had to cling to each year, that every game, every night, I did the best I could." In 1983 Philadelphia's eventual triumph seemed to be fundamentally his, and more than one city cheered.
Almost nothing is as forgettable as the score of an ordinary basketball game or as memorable as an Erving move in the midst of it. "There's no ultimate move," he says, "because they aren't choreographed. They just appear. Not for a whole game, but in the right circumstance, I could probably muster up enough energy to do almost anything I've ever done one more time. If it's there, I will." While not exactly set up, the best moves are prepared for, like the corporate and charitable ventures that have been Erving's off-season concern and will soon be his life. "I know everything will be different, but it should be. I've been gradually preparing myself. The athletic cycle doesn't have to be a vicious circle if you exercise some controls, sacrifice as much as you can for as long as you should."
Erving expects life after basketball to be "less gratifying" but "more meaningful." He says, "I also expect my palms might sweat next year watching the 76ers play. It has a place, but so many things have places. I'll move on." Seeing to his creaky knees, icing them down a thousandth time, Erving is often last out of the locker room. Whatever hour he leaves, there always seem to be children outside the door. "They don't want signatures anymore," he smiles. "They're looking for souvenirs." Winners' out. Memories.