(Photo Credit: NBAE/Getty Images)

by Jonah Goldberg

March 26, 2009

HIDALGO, TEXAS - When the Rio Grande Valley Vipers become the first NBA Development League team to host a parent club in an exhibition game on October 7, it will not mark the first time the Houston Rockets have played a game in the Rio Grande Valley. It will, however, be the Rockets’ first game in the Rio Grande Valley since defeating the San Antonio Spurs, then of the American Basketball Association, 113-109 in overtime in an exhibition game on October 18, 1975 at what was then known as Pan-American University in Edinburg.

The game marked the only time an NBA-ABA exhibition was held in the Rio Grande Valley. It was also the fourth-to-last exhibition game in the history of the rivalry, as the ABA dissolved after the 1975-76 season, when the Spurs, New Jersey Nets, Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers joined the NBA.

“[The NBA-ABA rivalry] was big,” said former Rockets player and head coach Rudy Tomjanovich, who won two NBA Championships as coach. “There was a lot of pride involved, even though they were exhibitions. We wanted to win.”

Entering his sixth year as a Rockets player, Tomjanovich only played in this exhibition game during the 1975 pre-season because of a back injury. He recorded a double-double with 18 points and ten rebounds (four offensive) on 7-of-20 shooting.

“I broke my back,” Tomjanovich said. “They showed me the x-rays of my lower back, and the bones, the little ribs that stick out in the back, coming off of the vertebrae, actually detached about an inch and a half off of my vertebrae. [The doctor] said, ‘well, in three weeks it will grow back. It will reattach, [and] the muscles will grow back.’ I couldn’t believe that in anyway that was going to be possible, but sure enough, that’s what happened. I remember just being really happy to get one game in before the regular season.”

Sixth-year point guard Calvin Murphy led the Rockets with 28 points on 12-of-19 shooting to go with eight assists while third-year center Kevin Kunnert recorded a double-double with 17 points and 17 rebounds.

“[Murphy] was a really good friend,” Tomjanovich said. “We wound up coming in the same year and we wound up being roommates for nine years. He was a special player, and he was one of those guys that never relaxed. Every practice, he felt that, because of his size, someone was going to take something away from him. You never saw a guy play so hard every time he stepped on the floor. He was a good teammate to have on the team.”

The Spurs were led by fourth-year guard James Silas, who scored a game-high 31 points, thanks in-part to an 11-for-14 performance from the foul line. Fourth-year forward George Gervin, who now works with the Vipers, scored ten points in 21 minutes of action. George Karl, who is currently the head coach of the Nuggets, scored 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting.

“Silas had just been cut by us the year before because we had too many guys on our roster,” Tomjanovich said. “We all loved him and he wound up being a phenomenal player in the ABA. We were really said we had to let him go because he was a good player and we had too many guaranteed contracts.”

Down 51-48 at halftime, the Spurs outscored the Rockets 28-19 in the third quarter to take a 76-70 lead. The Spurs kept the lead between one and five points for the first 10:24 of the fourth quarter, at which point Kunnert connected on a ten-footer to give the Rockets a 96-95 lead. Down 99-98 with 35 seconds left, Joe Meriweather tipped-in a shot to give the Rockets a 100-99 lead. Meriweather hit a free-throw with eight seconds left to make it a two-point game, but six seconds later, Mike Newlin fouled Silas, who missed both free throws before rebounding the second one and hitting a field goal to force overtime.

Silas hit a pair of shots to give the Spurs a 107-103 lead with 2:52 remaining, but Newlin has six points to help to fuel a 10-2 Rockets run to end the game.

The NBA went 17-31 against the ABA that year and 76-79 in the five-year history of the rivalry. The Rockets went 9-3 against ABA teams, including a 3-0 mark in 1975. The Monitor reported that the Rockets had “[claimed] the Texas pro basketball championship outright” with the win. Almost 34 years later, Tomjanovich takes a different point of view.

“[The Spurs] weren’t established yet, so it was ABA-NBA more than the Texas rivalry. We hadn’t gotten the roots yet, but once they got in the league, that was a great rivalry for many, many years and it still is.”

Despite the fact that the Spurs were the home team, the three-point shot was not in use, as the NBA did not integrate the three-pointer until the 1979-80 season. In most of the NBA-ABA games, each league’s rules were used for one half. The ABA half included the red, white and blue ball, the three-point shot, the 30-second shot clock, and no-foul out rule. In some games, the no-foul out rule lasted the entire game. The league of the team hosting the game usually provided the referees.

“Their ball was a little bit more lively,” Tomjanovich said. “It bounced a little bit more. It might have been a tad smaller, if I’m not mistaken. The color, of course, was interesting. I don’t remember the three-point shot, or at least we didn’t pay much attention to it.”

The game was as much about the rivalry as it was about establishing basketball as a sport in the home state of “Friday Night Lights.”

“We were just establishing ourselves in the NBA,” Tomjanovich said. “Getting basketball to be a sport in Texas was a heck of a chore. We always had to go out to try to prove ourselves. It was just tough, back in those days. What’s so ironic is that, now, Houston has won a couple of championships and San Antonio’s won a few too. There are championship teams in Texas. That’s what so great about all of those dues we paid back in those days.”

The Rockets won both of their NBA Championships under Tomjanovich with a seven-game series victory over the New York Knicks in 1994 and with a sweep of the Orlando Magic in 1995.

“ We just had everything come together with the team, and we went out and got some good role players and shooters to go with them,” Tomjanovich said. “It was really rewarding because I’m such a part of Houston and Texas after playing there and coaching there for so long. That was like a dream come true.”

This October, the dream of major league sports returning to the Valley will come true as the Rockets take on the defending NBA Champion Boston Celtics on October 7 at Dodge Arena. The Rockets will hold training camp at the McAllen Convention Center on October 4 and 5 before traveling to San Antonio to take on the Spurs in an exhibition game on October 6.

In 1975, the Rockets closed out the pre-season with the win over the Spurs before opening the regular season with a home game against the Celtics, who won the NBA Championship in 1974 before losing in the Eastern Conference Finals in 1975 and winning it all again in 1976.

October 18 was also supposed to be the date for game six of the 1975 World Series between the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox, but the game had to be pushed back until October 21 due to heavy rain in Boston. It was worth the wait, as Carlton Fisk waived one of the most memorable home runs in World Series history fair, to give the Sox a 7-6 win in 12 innings. The Reds took the series the next day.

The Rio Grande Valley Vipers are a professional basketball team in the NBA Development League (NBA D-League). The NBA Development League, founded in 2001, is the NBA’s official minor league and features 16 teams with direct affiliations to NBA teams for the 2008-09 season. An expansion team will begin play in Portland, Maine for the 2009-10 season. Sixty former NBA Development League players were on 2008-09 NBA start-of-season rosters, and the league continues to develop current NBA coaches and referees. In fostering the league’s connection to the community, its teams, players and staff promote youth basketball, support local needs and interests, and assist in educational development through NBA D-League Cares programs. The NBA D-League also advances the game of basketball as the research and development arm of the NBA. Throughout this season fans can watch all NBA D-League games on NBA Futurecast, the free live Web-streaming initiative found at nba.com/futurecast.The Vipers NBA affiliates are the Houston Rockets, and the New Orleans Hornets.