Yesterday, the 76ers family and greater basketball world lost one of its most towering figures in former Sixers center Darryl Dawkins, who died of a heart attack" in Allentown, where he'd lived in recent years. "His family, wife Janice, children Dara, Tabitha, Nicholas and Alexis, along with countless family, friends, and fans, all mourn his loss," read a statement issued by his family. "More than anything Darryl accomplished in his basketball career as the inimitable 'Chocolate Thunder,' he was most proud of his role and responsibility as a husband and father." Dawkins was 58.
Darryl Dawkins was remembered for many things over the course of his 14-season NBA career — namely dunks, nicknames, dunk nicknames, and limitless (though endlessly frustrating) hoops potential — but winning wasn't really one of them. That's not necessarily fair: In seven seasons with the 76ers, after being drafted fifth overall out of high school in 1975, Dawkins made the playoffs every year, and made it to the finals three times: '77, '80, and '82, losing all three. But because Dawkins never quite lived up to his sky-high ceiling, and since the Sixers couldn't win it all until the season after Dr Dunkenstein was jettisoned, his Philly legacy is mostly one of discontent and failure. "'I enjoyed working with him," team president Howard Katz said of Darryl post-trade. "But after seven years you have to stop saying he has potential and start saying, he just hasn't done it." (Dawkins has since owned up to his own part in that, claiming "I was uncoachable... I should have been sent to Cleveland because that is where all the uncoachables went at the time."
Perhaps Dawkins' sweetest playoff win, however, and perhaps the one with the greatest historical implications for the Sixers, came after that trade. In the deal, he was punted to the Nets for little return; the Sixers received $700,000 and a future first-rounder, which would become the historically negligible Leo Rautins. But with the ensuing financial and roster room, the Sixers would swing a game-changing deal for MVP center Moses Malone, who would go on to lead Philly to the championship, while the Nets got swept by the Knicks in the first round.
That story is frequently told in the City of Brotherly Love; less common, however, is the story of 1984. The following season, the Sixers essentially returned the same roster that won 65 games and swept almost entirely unabated through the playoffs, but the mojo was inexplicably off, and Philly won just 52 games the next season, enough to land a first-round date with the upstart Nets of Micheal Ray Richardson, Otis Birdsong, Buck Williams, and — natch — Chocolate Thunder. Dawkins had just enjoyed arguably his best pro season with the Nets, averaging a career high 16.8 points per game to go with 6.7 boards and nearly two blocks on 59% shooting. (He also set the all-time NBA record for personal fouls committed in a season, with 386.)
The two teams' ensuing first-round matchup would go on to be one of the strangest in NBA history. The road team won all five games in the series, and the much more experienced Sixers found themselves prone to underclassman collapses late in games, dropping both of the first two home contests by double digits, and choking away the fifth and deciding game, to end their title defense far more prematurely than anyone could've predicted at season's outset. Dawkins' numbers in the series weren't jaw-dropping — he averaged 14 and five for the series, and had his worst game in the climactic Game Five, scoring just four points on 1-6 shooting — but he helped play reigning Finals MVP Moses Malone to something close to a draw, and hit the go-ahead free throws in the deciding contest, ultimately getting the W over the team that dismissed him somewhat callously two seasons earlier.
Dawkins would actually have a much better second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks, averaging 22 a game on 54% FG as the Nets were nonetheless bounced in six, but the series would end up being something of the last stand for Sir Slam. He would be sidelined with injuries for much of the next two seasons, and barely played at all in the three years after that, ultimately appearing in just 116 games over the final half-decade of his career. Still, it was a poetic finale that even if it was Dawkins' trade that allowed the 76ers to grow into a championship team at long last, it was that same trade that helped mark the abrupt downfall of their potential dynasty a year later. (The Sixers would revitalize their squad with the drafting of Charles Barkley the following June, but would not make the finals again until 2001, while the Nets would not win so much as a playoff series until the following 2002 season.)
Rest in peace, Darryl Dawkins — an NBA character and consummate entertainer first and foremost, but one who also played a far greater role in the on-court successes and failures of his first ballclub than the history books would often lead you to believe. May his single-season personal-foul record stand for all time.