An honest, unflinching self-portrait of the basketball legend whose
classy public image as a superstar and a gentleman masked his
personal failings and painful losses, which he describes here--from
his own point of view--for the very first time. For most of his
life, Julius Erving has been two men in one. There is Julius, the
bright, inquisitive son of a Long Island domestic worker who has
always wanted to be respected for more than just his athletic
ability, and there is Dr. J, the cool, acrobatic showman whose
flamboyant dunks sent him to the Hall of Fame and turned the act of
jamming a basketball through a hoop into an art form. In many ways,
Erving's life has been about the push and pull of Julius and The
Doctor. It is Dr. J who has stories to tell of the wild days and
nights of the ABA in the 1970s, and of being the seminal figure who
transformed basketball from an earthbound and rigid game into the
creative, free-flowing aerial display it is today. He has a long
list of signature plays - he's famous for winning the first dunk
contest in 1976 with a jam on which he lifted off from the foul
line, and he made a miraculous layup against the Lakers on which he
soared behind the backboard before reaching back in to flip the
ball in on the other side, with one hand. He inspired a generation
of dunkers, including Michael Jordan, to express their
improvisational talents. But Julius wasn't always as graceful and
in control as Dr. J. Erving had a pristine image throughout his
career and early retirement, but he was far from a perfect man.
Here he gives detailed accounts of some of the personal problems he
faced -- or created -- behind the scenes, including the adulterous
affair with sports writer Samantha Stephenson, which led to the
birth of his daughter, professional tennis player Alexandra
Stephenson. Though his marriage survived that infidelity, the death
of Erving's 20-year-old son Cory in 2000 in a tragic accident
proved too much for the union to bear. Erving paints a raw,
heartbreaking picture of the dissolution of his marriage, as his
wife Turquoise began to blame him for his refusal to be paralyzed
by grief for as long as she was. Their intense arguments came to a
head when Erving stepped out of the shower one day to find his wife
holding a lamp in one hand and a vase in the other, ready for a
physical confrontation. "I knew somebody was going to get hurt, and
it wasn't going to be me," he says. He packed a suitcase and he and
Turquoise never lived under the same roof again. Erving's story is
a tale of the nearly perfect player and the imperfect man, and how
he has come to terms with both of them. It will appeal to readers
on a sports level and on a human one.
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