sign in sign up
<<
Home , Ben Wilson (basketball), George Mikan, Hook shot, Houston Mavericks, Jerry West, Julius Erving

Death at the Wing Episode 1: The Invisible Revolution

⧫ ⧫ ⧫

ADAM McKAY (host): When I was a kid in the 70s, I lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, We didn't have video games, or big Marvel movies.

So if you wanted to idolize someone, you pretty much had two choices. You had the Fonz, or you had Carl Yastrzemski, the left felder for the Red Sox.

Then I moved outside , and it was kind of the same thing -- only it was the band Kiss or Mike Schmidt.

But then, towards the end of the 70s, burst onto the scene, and just instantly blew our minds.

We had Dr J. playing for the Sixers, and then in the blink of an eye, there was and .

This felt like it was more than just a new sport, but a whole new culture. The short shorts, the Afros, the fashy uniforms, the cheesy graphics on TV…

Suddenly all we could do was watch basketball.

And a lot of other things were changing as well. The country just felt different. People were talking about sports cars and making money, and there was this kind of fag-waving American vibe going on. Movies like Top Gun, Red Dawn and Rambo. My friends and I made fun of this stuff. And a lot of the music was really terrible. The clothes were ugly. But it all felt new and big.

And in the middle of it, for me and my friends, it was all about the NBA.

ARCHIVAL TAPE

1 ANNOUNCER: Michael in a drive, across the lane, turnaround shot, got it! Sixty-three for Jordan!

I remember watching drop 63 on the Celtics in the playoffs.

I'll never forget Dr. J in the 1980 championship series, that up and under move. And I swear to God when we saw it, it looked like he was walking on the air.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: Unbelievable! ! He was hanging underneath, and he was trapped...

My friends and I would watch this stuff over and over.

But I also remember very vividly the heartbreak of hearing how Len Bias had died of a cocaine overdose right after being drafted by the Celtics.

ARCHIVAL TAPE TV REPORTER: Once again, 22 year old Len Bias, star forward from the University of Maryland basketball team, is now dead.

I remember hearing how Benji Wilson out of had been tragically gunned down…

ARCHIVAL TAPE NEWS ANCHOR: Instead, they shot him. And today Ben Wilson died. Many in Chicago are grieving.

And being shocked that Dražen Petrović, who had seemingly unlimited range, Steph Curry before Steph Curry, had died in his prime.

ARCHIVAL TAPE TV REPORTER: Petrovic was killed late yesterday when his car slammed into a truck near Munich, Germany, in heavy rain. Dražen Petrović was 28.

There are many more: Terry Furlow, Ricky Berry, , Bobby Phils and on and on. All these tragic deaths.

So why did all these rising talents die in that same time period?

2 I realized after we did some digging that there really wasn't one smoking gun. We all love stories with evidence and one clear perpetrator. Look at the 300 different true crime podcasts out there.

But the truth is our lives aren’t usually determined by one other person or a conspiracy or some magical singular event. We’re usually pushed, shaped and sometimes even crushed by big forces, collisions, accidents and changes. And to some degree that’s what happened to the NBA in the 80’s and 90’s.

For better and, sometimes, for worse.

ARCHIVAL TAPE RONALD REAGAN: I think you all know that I’ve always felt that, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’

The 80s saw massive changes in politics, media, and even in the story of how Americans see themselves. This helped create a new kind of superstar in the NBA, even as the same communities these stars came from were being left behind by a nation becoming more and more obsessed with extreme wealth.

It’s a decade that leads very directly to where we are right now in America. Both for our country and the NBA.

It was the 1980’s. I actually lived through it, and it sucked. Except for the basketball.

I'm Adam McKay, and this is a new series from Hyperobject Industries and Three Uncanny Four.

This is Death at the Wing.

Each episode, we’ll look at one player, one tragedy, and the big forces at play behind that tragedy.

Tonight's episode: We set the stage for how basketball started to change, and America did too. The NBA, the ABA, television and Reagan.

3 This is episode one: the Invisible Revolution.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *montage* “Look how high above him he is!” “But yesterday he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “Watch him just taking his time!” “Collapsed early this morning, here in this dormitory.” “Way back to rock the baby to sleep, and a !”

⧫ ⧫ ⧫

ARCHIVAL TAPE PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: “At ’s Madison Square Garden, a City College quintet faces fve fast and fancy feet from the University of Oregon. It’s the opening contest of an intersectional doubleheader.”

To understand just how much the NBA changed in the 80s, it helps to think about what pro basketball USED to be.

And if you need someone to walk through the changes of basketball over the last century, it’s hard to beat the logo.

JERRY WEST: Hello everyone. I'm . Um, my life has led me from West to because of, uh, a talent that I had.

Jerry West’s silhouette mid-dribble has lived as the logo of the league for the last 50 years… Seriously, the little basketball- guy who’s the logo of the NBA? That’s Jerry West.

Jerry West: ...from there I coached the Lakers for three years and was involved with them for, Oh my goodness, seemed like a lifetime.

Jerry West is in his 80s now and for most of those years, he’s been at the of basketball.

He grew up in Cheylan, West Virginia, population 778. And in the 50s, even as he was becoming a local legend, basketball was still just a regional sport.

4 JERRY WEST: Well, you know, at that time, Adam, the recruiting process, if you played in the East, very few people West of the Mississippi would, would bother to recruit you. Basketball wasn't like baseball, or football, or frankly, ice hockey.

West eventually made it through college and into the NBA, in the era of the big man. Jerry West was one of the few superstars who was under 6’10”.

ARCHIVAL TAPE 1950s PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: Basketball, a game of giants…

JERRY WEST: was the frst big guy.

ARCHIVAL TAPE 1950s PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: And there’s No. 99, George Mikan, one of the greatest. He set most of the game’s scoring records…

JERRY WEST: Just that presence alone changed the way the game was played at that in time.

George Mikan. He was the league’s frst superstar. 6’10”, 250 pounds, with big thick round glasses like Harry Potter.

He dropped lumbering after lumbering hook shot. It made sense, right? If you're taller, you're closer to the rim. Get the ball to that guy. But honestly? It wasn’t the most exciting style of basketball to watch.

ARCHIVAL TAPE GEORGE MIKAN: A real highlight in my estimation is a nice chest pass, or a bounce pass…

Kids in driveways don’t dream of standing a foot away from the hoop and laying it in over people. Except for me. I‘m 6’5, pretty tall. Pretty much my only glory moments in basketball involve me lumbering to the hoop and laying it in over short people.

But fans don’t spend hundreds of dollars to watch tall guys move like chess pieces on a .

5 JERRY WEST: When I frst came to Los Angeles, the Dodgers were selling out the Coliseum, and the Rams were selling a hundred thousand seats every game. The Lakers, we were lucky to get, you know, 4,000 people.

And their salaries showed it.

JERRY WEST: You couldn't survive on what we made. I think I was a second player in the and I think in frst year I made $16,500 and I did not even know I was drafted until the next morning.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: I'm old, but I'm not old enough to have been alive in the ffties, but Cous used to tell me, told me that, you know, in the off season he was an auto-school driver.

Here’s legendary sports writer Jackie McMullan. She’s one of the authors of ‘Basketball: A Love Story’

JACKIE MACMULLAN: And so that’s very different.

ADAM McKAY (in tape): Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt you. Bob Cousy was a driving instructor? One of the greatest point guards ever...

JACKIE MACMULLAN: Yeah. I think Tommy Heinsohn told me once he was a waiter, but he was bad at it cause he smoked and he kept going for a smoke break and the customers complained about the smoke on his breath. So he had to quit that job.

JERRY WEST: You know, they called us professionals. We made little or nothing. And it was just people who really liked to compete.

For much of the 60s and 70s, that was the state of professional basketball in America. But that was all about to change.

The NBA was about to have a big problem on its hands.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: It was the ABA, a new style of basketball. The kind of game that was reviving interest around the country.

6 The American Basketball Association was founded in 1967 with teams like the , , , the Tulsa Graverobbers.

Alright, there was no Tulsa Graverobbers, but the other ones were real.

Basically, the ABA was a start-up, a renegade league trying to take on the NBA’s shaky monopoly on pro basketball.

The plan was simple: Go to markets that didn’t have existing teams and focus on stars. You know, be plucky.

But there was a moment early on, in 1969, where the ABA could have changed the entire course of basketball history by landing the greatest big man of a generation.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: If you wanted to hit the NBA where it hurts, you signed the greatest player in the game, who’s graduating from UCLA. High profle player. Seven-footer.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: Feeds underneath to Alcindor, and two more for the big guy!

When Lew Alcindor was coming out of UCLA, he was the most important player of that era. A star on the court, and an emerging voice for African Americans off of it.

He’d converted to Islam while in colege. A couple years later Alcindor would change his name to Kareem Abdul Jabar.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: He was one of those can't miss, like LeBron. And so the ABA is like, okay, let's just, let's use everything we have to, our advantage.

The seven footer who would go on to win six titles and six MVP awards. The man who would go on to score more points than anyone else in the history of professional basketball. And the ABA had a shot at him.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: We'll sell the way we're going to play the game. But we're also going to tell him, ‘Hey, we're going to pay you a ton of money, and we're going to let you choose whatever team you want to play for.’ We're not even going to worry about a draft and all of that -- because

7 Milwaukee had the number one pick and they were, they were surmising that maybe Lew Alcindor didn't want to play in Milwaukee.

He'd be allowed to play in his hometown of New York for the ABA’s Nets, a city with a large Muslim community, and he’d be closer to his family.

And this is how the ABA blew it.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: George Mikan was the commissioner of the ABA at the time.

Yep, the same George Mikan from the 50s, Mr. Basketball, was brought in to give the league the face of credibility by getting Lew Alcindor.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: So the idea was, they're like, okay, we're going to, we're going to pay him a million dollars. We’re going to give him a million dollars.

The ABA would offer Alcindor a four year, $1 million contract, an unheard of sum for that time.

And on top of that, Mikan would hand over another $1 million check on the spot to show Alcindor they were serious.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: And, you know, they got one of those big checks, right? The million dollar checks. And this is where the story gets a little murky.

So they have their meeting at a hotel in , and George Mikan…

JACKIE MACMULLAN: Like, he just forgot to bring the check in this meeting with Alcindor. Mikan would insist later on, “No, no. I was saving that for, you know, when we closed the deal.”

Like we said, it’s a little murky. Maybe he forgot his Harry Potter glasses?

JACKIE MACMULLAN: They just didn't have their, you know, they weren't organized, they were a little disjointed. And, you know, the million dollar check wasn’t there. And I think Alcindor was just like, ‘Well, this isn’t viable, this is Mickey Mouse. I'm going to go with the sure thing.’ And so he signed with the Bucks.

Basketball's next great superstar would head to the NBA and eternal basketball glory.

8 JACKIE MACMULLAN: Now, if he had signed with the ABA, who knows.

As for the ABA, well, they had to carry on. And for all his talent, Kareem was a big man. The kind of guy that you feed, over and over, down low.

So, without Kareem, and still looking for an edge, the ABA had no choice but to double down on their own brand -- part basketball, part entertainment, all fun.

And it all took place on one spot: The wing.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: He gets it over to the Doctor. Tied ball game. And here’s a shot. Julius. He scores! And the Nets win!

We’ll get into that right after this break.

⧫ ⧫ ⧫

The wing is the magical place on the basketball court. A little over 20 feet away from the hoop -- about as far away as you can be on the court from the low post where the NBA’s old stars reigned.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: That's not, that's not how the ABA was playing the game. They weren't all getting down on the post and doing turnaround jump shots from six feet away.

A different type of basketball led by a different type of star. The ABA looked for players who just needed the ball in their hands and a little bit of space on the court to get creative.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: They weren't making a lot of money, but you know, they were playing basketball. Players liked it, and the fans liked it.

The wing became the place for one-on-one basketball. You just worried about you and the person in front of you.

You crossed him over, you spun, you hesitated, head faked, and most of all, you made highlights that were perfect for TV.

9 ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: Oh, Thompson! That’s 23 for Thompson, and that’s the famed and fabled alley-oop pass…

The ABA would throw all sorts of other changes into the game.

The ABA added a three point line out on the wing. The NBA just thought that was a gimmick. Extra points. Why? Who cares? That’s not fundamentally sound.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: “Taylor! Uncorks it! For three! A three-point play for Brian Taylor...”

The rule change would go on to open up the game for a generation of long range snipers, and it would spread the foor for the wings to get even more creative in the open court.

The ABA’s biggest contribution was turning the regimented team game of the old NBA into a creative experience.

TODD BOYD: There's sort of a stylistic difference between the kind of basketball you're seeing in the NBA and the kind of basketball you're seeing in the ABA.

That's USC professor Todd Boyd.

TODD BOYD: The NBA was more traditional, and the ABA was much more comfortable embracing street ball and urban culture. What starts to happen as the late 70s transitions into the 80s, the group of people who are identifed as stars expands. It's not just one guy here, one guy there, and I think basketball is especially suited for this. If you're watching the NFL, you're looking at guys whose faces are hidden behind helmets. You can't see their faces.

TODD BOYD (con’t): The game of baseball is increasingly disconnected from black culture overall. And I was a big baseball guy up to the 80s, so I'm not dismissing it. I'm just saying as the culture changes, there's nothing cool about the game of baseball.

The ABA put its spotlight on characters, celebrities, nicknames. Julius Erving wasn’t Julius Erving, he was the Doctor. With a huge Afro, and a pair of high top . You’d be watching

10 a game, and suddenly everything would stop. And you’d see the Doctor gliding through the air like a swan and fnish with a rim rattling dunk.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *slam dunk sound followed by applause* ANNOUNCER: “And that sends everyone reeling. Julius Erving!”

The ABA would even hold basketball's frst dunk contest. The ultimate practice in personal expression when it came to sports.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *slam dunk sound followed by applause* ANNOUNCER: “Oh! David Thompson! Twist around slam dunk!”

TODD BOYD: And then after that, basically the game of basketball is seen as a sport where black players are dominant.

At the time, had actually banned dunking in the name of preserving the game’s traditional style of play. If that sounds kinda racist, that’s because it probably was. The only guys dunking in college ball tended to be Black players.

The ABA, meanwhile, let players play the way they wanted, with style and expression.

But there was a big problem.

As a business, the ABA didn’t exactly have their act together. They had seven commissioners in nine years. And they were constantly throwing Hail Marys and trying gimmicks to get the league to work.

The ABA would do nights like halter top night, or have a bear -- an actual bear -- wrestle a human during halftime.

The , which is not a made up name, actually held John Brisker Intimidation Night, where they sold a poster of their nastiest player, holding a pair of guns.

11 John Brisker, by the way, left basketball, possibly went to Uganda, got caught up in the civil war there and was never heard from again. Great story. We're not doing it. That's a freebie for anyone out there. I would listen to that podcast.

Anyway, the ABA.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: The ABA had no money and no structure and, you know, they had the red, white and blue ball, but they forgot for their opening night that they needed the red, white, and blue ball. And they didn't have one. So they painted it, and the paint was getting on the player's hands. They were a disorganized group, but all the NBA guys kept looking over at the ABA and saying, “They're having more fun than we are.”

The ABA was cool but struggling fnancially. The NBA was just the opposite. It was gaining a foothold, but it just couldn’t fgure out how to create authentic coolness.

JACKIE MACMULLAN: And the NBA started to realize, “OK, we gotta do something about this.”

And so, they made a big move.

The NBA swooped in, snatched up four ABA franchises, and more importantly, its biggest star, the future of basketball, Dr J.

And after the merger, the three point line, the dunks and the style would make their way into mainstream basketball.

The NBA had fnally found an entertaining product to put out on the court. The basketball revolution was here.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *jingle* SINGERS: “You’ll see the best of basketball when you watch the NBA…”

Just in time for a revolution in virtually every other part of American life as well. Including TV.

This was when kids like me and my friends started paying attention, taping games and putting up our posters.

When basketball became a major cultural and media force.

12 One that refected all the other forces that were about to come crashing down on us.

That’s coming up, after the break.

⧫ ⧫ ⧫

On October 1st, 1975, if you were one of the lucky few with cable television, you had the privilege of watching a special broadcast.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *opening bell* ANNOUNCER: “It’s ffteen rounds, and here is round one…”

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on HBO. The ‘Thrilla in Manilla.’ The frst live sports transmission across the world.

ARCHIVAL TAPE ANNOUNCER: “I think it’s going to be over… it’s all over!”

The fght was sent by a satellite called Westar-1. The frst that could beam a signal to cable companies across the country.

And while Westar-1 may have transmitted Ali-Frazier, it had nothing on Satcom-1. The hall of fame satellite. Some satellite enthusiasts even call it the GOAT.

And I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of satellite enthusiasts listening, and you are jacked right now.

Satcom-1 launched just weeks after the fght. It would bring the frst broadcasts of CNN, ESPN, , the TBS Superstation and more.

This food of new channels beaming down thanks to this giant hunk of metal, thousands of miles away foating in space. We had gone from having our four little pokey TV channels to suddenly having cable TV.

ARCHIVAL TAPE

13 VOICEOVER: Beyond that blue horizon is a limitless world of sports, and right now you’re standing on the edge of tomorrow. Sports, 24 hours a day...

And on top of it all, the VCR had suddenly become very affordable. So we were recording NBA highlights on VHS off this brand new sports cable network that would show the highlights of these NBA games.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *jingle* SINGERS: ESPN! Everything worth seeing!

TODD BOYD: I mean, I remember that vividly, nobody in my house was really watching basketball with me, and so this idea that you could watch anywhere in the country where you picked up the Superstation on cable, that team might've had nothing to do with where you were, but it allows you to see the rest of the NBA.

This, of course, wasn't just happening in sports. By the end of the decade, everything you could possibly want, and a lot of things you didn't want, were being beamed right into your living room.

I remember MTV, the “Angel in the Centerfold” video, J. Geils Band, had women in lingerie doing cartwheels down a high school hallway. I swear it almost sent our entire neighborhood into a full-scale riot. So much excitement and hormones and confusion coming off of that video.

The other thing I remember too is, like, watching these sitcoms that you had no interest in just because they were on. Like, I think I watched three full seasons of Rhoda. It’s a story about a single woman who lived in New York City. She had a relationship with this guy, Joe, a drunk doorman, and suddenly it was, like, every episode. I couldn't wait to see what was happening with Rhoda!

Or they used to show the Braves games on the Superstation all the time. And I became a huge fan of, like, Dale Murphy. Suddenly I was, like, talking about Dale Murphy to everyone in my life.

Cable news suddenly came out with the 24 hour news cycle. There was news, always.

14 It seemed like overnight TV became the defning feature in American life, with the power to push and pull and shape public opinion.

The rich and powerful, of course, knew this. Their power would be determined by how well they could play the new media landscape…

And fortunately for them, at least, they had the perfect star ready and packaged as their salesman.

ARCHIVAL TAPE RONALD REAGAN: “Have you ever noticed that in every community… there are some people… they stand out in a crowd you never forget them…”

One Ronald Wilson Reagan. The Cowboy President. It sells itself.

JANE MAYER: Reagan was basically the front man. He was the entertainer, and he was the guy who could give the speeches with conviction, and he was likable.

Jane Mayer from The New Yorker has cataloged the career of Ronald Reagan and the rise of the right wing.

It turned out that big money in America had fnally fgured out that what Americans really wanted in their living room, more than anything, was a good, charismatic pitch for a product.

ARCHIVAL TAPE *old TV advertisement* REAGAN: “So you see how modern lighting makes a more liveable house…”

JANE MAYER: I was the White House correspondent, and there were literally cue cards that gave you his talking points. They had his lines written down, word for word. It was just for a photo opportunity, but it told them what to say. It also had his jokes written out for him, and they would put marks on the foor showing where he should stand, um, just as you would for a movie actor.

They had learned the lessons from the Kennedy-Nixon debate back in the early 60s that had cost Nixon the election. They knew that TV was to maintaining power.

ROBERT REICH: You see, Ronald Reagan was frst of all, a great salesperson.

15 Robert Reich is a former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton.

ROBERT REICH: But he also was riding a wave that started in the , started really under Carter, of anti-government sentiment.

America wasn't exactly feeling great during the era of Jimmy Carter. That's when the hangover from Watergate and the Vietnam War had fnally hit. Not to mention, we had also learned that basically Saudi Arabia and the oil countries had us on a leash.

Robert Reich: An economy that was stuck with oil crisis and stagfation, a deep recession in the last years of the Carter administration.

Reagan had been practicing for this star turn for decades. The former actor from Hollywood westerns began his political awakening in the ‘40s and ‘50s -- his frst hero was actually FDR.

But Reagan really burst onto the scene in 1964 when Barry Goldwater, a very extreme right-wing candidate, hired Reagan to give a nationally televised speech on his behalf -- an anti-communist infomercial, really.

Goldwater got creamed in that election, but Reagan had found his voice. He paired his Cold War rhetoric with his experience as governor of California, and by 1980, it was all coming together.

JANE MAYER: I see the Reagan revolution basically as a reactionary movement against what came right before it. It's basically a snapback reaction against the and 70s in America, where there was a kind of an uprising of kids in the anti-war movement and of Black power and Black communities. There's also a women's movement, women's rights movement. And of a consumer movement that was anti-business in some ways, and the rise of the environmental movement...

JANE MAYER (con’t): All of those movements were saying that there was a public interest in social policy being fairer, and those movements were very threatening to the old order.

Reagan had kicked off his 1980 campaign in the Deep South with a speech invoking states rights -- an anti-civil-rights dog whistle that everyone who needed to hear, heard.

But the heart of his message was simpler.

16 ARCHIVAL TAPE JOHNNY CARSON: We’re talking to Former Governor Reagan, and during the break we were discussing… When I mentioned that I thought most people were apathetic… I think they’re confused...

And tailor made for soaring speeches or chummy sit-downs, like this one with Johnny Carson.

CARSON: I think they all seem to have different answers as to what is going on. How do you see the thing? How are we going to get out of this?

The man who was about to be tossed the keys to the entire government laid all the problems in one place -- the government.

REAGAN: Well, Johnny, I think that one of the things is that people keep looking to the government for the answer and government is the problem. *Nervous laughs from audience, then scattered applause*

JANE MAYER: Reagan portrayed government as the problem and business as the solution. And before that, everybody had pretty much accepted the idea that government was good and government helped America, and that big government was solving big problems for everybody's beneft.

The movie star president played the part, demonizing the poor and the so-called welfare state.

ROBERT REICH: Reagan took a degree of anger that people had in the working class and began to shift that anger toward minorities, Black people and Latinos. Remember, Reagan was the one who talked frst about welfare being a kind of a sickness, a welfare dependency.

Meanwhile, Reaganomics would lead to a massive tax cut for the top 1%, the biggest our country had ever seen. Deregulation for industries like big banking and other companies that polluted, and a total explosion of wealth to the top earners in the countries, and all of this was done in the name of efciency, and cutting red tape, and, of course, freedom.

17 Reagan’s hero, FDR, had brought us the New Deal, now Reagan was taking us back to the old deal. The one where the rich get richer, and the rest get a bootstrap to pull themselves up by.

REAGAN: “There’s very little that government can do as efciently and as economically as the people can do themselves, and if government could shut the doors and sneak away for about three weeks we’d never miss them.”

And you know what? People ate it up.

My friends and I were going on and on about and basketball, and all the adults in our lives, even the Democrats, even some of the Democrats, that’s how they were talking about Reagan.

They were excited. Life was moving fast. America was rolling up the sleeves of its sportcoat and starting to kick some butt. There were rich people everywhere -- at least, on TV and in the movies, there were rich people.

ROBERT REICH: At the time, there wasn't much of a backlash. You would think that there'll be kind of a populist movement saying, “Wait a minute, don't do that.”

No one stopped to ask the hard question: At what cost?

ROBERT REICH: How can you reward the rich and the big corporations and cut social services? And I mean, aren't you just taking us back to the stone ages?

He was. And 40 years later, in a lot of ways, we’re still living in it.

Gun violence. Drug laws. Prisons. Imperialism. Depression. Protest.

Over the course of this series, we're going to look at the basketball stars who passed away in the 80s and early 90s -- and how each one connects and intersects with a time where the U.S. doubled down on old school American values: greed, violence and racism.

18 Whether you were a wing player for the , or a lobbyist in a suit in Washington D.C., or just a working class person watching television from home, all of us were going to be changed by the .

That’s this season -- on Death at the Wing.

⧫ ⧫ ⧫

19 CREDITS

ADAM McKAY, host and executive producer

JODY AVIRGAN, executive producer and series editor

RAGHU MANAVALAN, senior producer

BRIAN STEELE, producer

SHANE MCKEON, assistant producer

KATHERINE SHOEMAKER, booking help

JASON HEILIG, archival research

WILL TAVLIN, fact-checking

ALISON SCHARY, legal

Mixing and sound design by JOANNA KATCHER at NICE MANNERS

Music composition by BEACON STREET

NUNA CHARAFEDDINE, production manager

HARRY NELSON, executive producer at Hyperobject

LAURA MAYER, executive producer at Three Uncanny Four

Special thanks to Hyperobject’s STACI ROBERTS-STEELE

20