By Henry L. Liao
This one’s for Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
To have players appearing on both sides of a basketball game box score seemingly is impossible until you find out what happened in a peculiar National Basketball Association (NBA) regular-season game almost four decades ago.
On March 23, 1979, the Philadelphia 76ers played host to the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets at the old Spectrum in an NBA game that was being replayed under protest by the Nets.
The catch is that two players from each side had been traded for each other by the time the replay was held, resulting in four men appearing in the box scores of both teams during the same contest in one of the most bizarre moments in league annals.
The original game had been played on November 8, 1978, but by the time it was replayed in March the following year, a pair of Philadelphia players had already joined the Nets while two New Jersey ballers had switched allegiance to the Sixers in a four-man swap.
On February 7, 1979, New Jersey jettisoned guards Al Skinner and Eric Money to Quaker City for center Harvey Catchings, backcourter Ralph Simpson and cash.
The four players thus were listed in the lineups of both squads in the replayed game’s final box score.
To this day, it marked the only time in the history of North American professional team sports leagues that anybody suited up for both clubs in the SAME contest.
Recalled the 6-10 Catchings, whose daughter Tamika later saw action in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) in the 2000s, “I remember looking down at the box score the next day and seeing my name for both Philadelphia and New Jersey. It was kind of weird to say the least.”
“It was baffling,” declared Skinner. “Could our names appear in the box scores for both teams? For a long time, we weren’t sure they would allow us to play at all (in the re-started game in March).”
As it turned out, that was not an issue for Skinner since he never entered the game for either club.
How did this unprecedented incident evolve?
It came about after then-NBA commissioner Larry O’Brien ordered a replay of a portion of the Nets-76ers duel. O’Brien had upheld the Nets’ protest of their 137-133 double-overtime loss at
Philadelphia on November 8 even though he denied their request that they be declared the winners.
The main bone of contention in the Nets’ protest was that a third technical foul was called by veteran referee Richie Powers on both Nets forward Bernard King and Nets head coach Kevin Loughery, and that, under NBA procedures, only two technical fouls could be called against any player or coach during a game.
In making the decision, O’Brien ordered the original game be replayed from the point before the third technical foul assessed against King and Loughery as part of a quasi-doubleheader later that season.
Here’s exactly what happened at that point.
After King was whistled his second T, which meant an automatic ejection, he furiously kicked a chair as he left the hardwood. King’s action prompted Powers to slap him with a third T. An enraged Loughery protested, and within minutes he, too, was hit with his third T.
The Nets argued that calling three technical fouls was illegal, but Powers waved them off.
Fast Forward: When the protest game resumed more than five minutes later, Philadelphia was ahead, 84-81, with five minutes and 50 seconds remaining in the third quarter. The 76ers went on to register a 123-117 victory.
In the replayed game, none of the four “history-making” players had much bearing on the outcome.
Catchings, who went scoreless in the original contest, fared the best, contributing eight points and four rebounds in 14 minutes with the Nets. Simpson did not score for the Nets after netting 10 markers (two of which were erased officially following the replay) for Philly.
Money tallied four scores for the 76ers after drilling inj37 points (including 14 that came after King’s ejection and therefore were removed from the official final boxscore) for New Jersey in the protested game.
Philadelphia eventually made it a double victory that night. In the regularly-scheduled game later, the 76ers also triumphed, 110-98.
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