Contract scandal, bounties, guns, goons, Idi Amin and '71 Bulls in Fla...crazy story
Another mystery...page 3 of the online article appears to be missing. What we have of the story is interesting enough to warrant posting. If the rest of the story shows up, perhaps an updated link and further quote will be forthcoming...
I just gotta know what this whole Idi Amin connection is all about.
Each year Howard Porter attends the NBA All-Star game. He meets with old friends such as Wes Unseld and Dave Bing and they spin timeworn tales deep into the night.
This year, Porter had a new story to tell.
It's a story about how a scandal led to the Chicago Bulls playing an exhibition basketball game in Sarasota in 1971.
It's a story about an alleged $500 offer to injure Porter in that game.
It's also a story about the mysterious death of the player who received the money.
"Wow," Porter said upon hearing for the first time that a bounty may have been placed on him. "This is something." Porter is a 1967 graduate of Booker High and quite possibly the best high school basketball player to come out of the area. He earned a scholarship to Villanova.
In 1971, he led Villanova to the national championship game, where his team lost 68-62 to UCLA and Sidney Wicks.
Porter, a 6-foot-8 senior forward, was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four, and was arguably the best college player in the country at that time.
In December of his senior year at Villanova, however, he secretly signed a professional contract to play in the American Basketball Association, which was a violation of NCAA rules.
Porter had actually signed a contract with the league itself, and the league assigned him to play for the Pittsburgh Condors.
There had been whispers before the NCAA tournament that Porter had signed professionally, but he denied doing so.
Two days after the NCAA tournament, the Chicago Bulls took a chance and selected Porter in the second round of the NBA draft, even though the Bulls had been advised Porter may have already signed with the ABA.
Now, there were two pro teams claiming to own Porter's rights. Porter wanted to play for the Bulls.
The Pittsburgh Condors filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court in New York to solely obtain Porter's rights.
Porter's signature on the ABA contract was revealed in court and the story was splashed all over newspapers across the country.
As a result of the disclosure, Villanova forfeited all of its wins dating back to Dec. 16, 1970, which was the day Porter signed the ABA contract.
Villanova had to return $72,000 it received from the national tournament. The school's second-place finish and Porter's Most Outstanding Player award were removed from the record books by the NCAA.
Quote:
It was agreed the Condors would relent and hand Porter's rights over to the Bulls. Porter then signed a five-year deal with Chicago worth $1.5 million.
In exchange, Pittsburgh received a player named Paul Ruffner and could keep the gate receipts from an exhibition game against the Bulls at the site of its choosing.
Because the Condors didn't draw in Pittsburgh, the team approached Villanova about hosting the exhibition game. The university declined.
It wanted nothing to do with Porter.
"They were upset," said Fred Cranwell, Pittsburgh's public relations director at the time. "They lost a lot of money and they were embarrassed." Then someone came up with the idea of playing in Sarasota.
"It was very strange that they would have this game (in Sarasota)," said Jack Gurney, a reporter for the Sarasota Journal in 1971. "It was very peculiar."
"The only reason we went there was because it was his (Porter's) hometown," Cranwell said. "There was a lot of controversy surrounding him and we were thinking a lot of people would show up."
On Oct. 2, 1971, the Chicago Bulls played the Pittsburgh Condors at Robarts Arena.
According to newspaper accounts, roughly 700 people showed up for "Howard Porter Night." The arena held 4,000.
Quote:
According to Cranwell, who said he was inside the locker room at Robarts Arena, Binstein placed a $500 bounty on Porter before the game.
"He said, 'Look, I'm not saying we should go out and try to hurt Howard Porter, but if something happens where he's injured and can't play...
Quote:
One night around 1978, Cranwell played back a message left on his home phone. It was a collect call from Brisker, who cryptically said he was going to Africa to fight in a war.
During that time, Brisker's name had been linked to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
According to a column last summer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Brisker's family once said he had been invited to Uganda in 1978 as a guest of Amin, who happened to be a big basketball fan.
No one ever heard from him again.
It was thought Brisker had been executed in 1979 when Amin's government was overthrown, but the FBI and State Department investigated and never found any evidence.
__________________
You can't fake the funk.
Last edited by TomBoerwinkle#1 : 06-19-2005 at 06:25 PM.
For the record, the October 2, 1971 game between the Pittsburgh Condors and the Chicago Bulls was NOT played in Pittsburgh, but rather in Sarasota, Florida, the hometown of Howard Porter. The game was part of a settlement between the Bulls and the Condors -- who both had Porter under contract. The Condors agreed to allow Porter to fulfill his contract with the Bulls. And the Condors could keep all the gate receipts from the exhibition game. We had offered to play the game at Villanova -- from whence Porter came (costing Villanova big NCAA bucks as well as many forfeitures) -- but AD Art Mahan declined. This game did not attract a large crowd. I remember Mark Binstein offering a $500 bonus to any player who could "accidentally" cause Porter not to finish the game. After a skirmish, Porter was forced to leave the game and did not return. John Brisker returned to Pittsburgh $500 richer.
-- Memories of Fred Cranwell
Quote:
This year, I was at a luncheon at St. Peter's College in Jersey City where Fred Cranwell is the college's public relations man (a position he held with Pittsburgh). Fred always recalls sitting in his Condors office with John Brisker. He was on the phone with a Condors' executive, and in his pocket he had a court injunction to prevent Brisker from jumping to Seattle in the NBA. All Cranwell could think about was that John owned a gun. He basically froze while the executive kept yelling on the phone, from long distance: "give 'im the damn papers!" Fred said Brisker was actually a nice sweet man with children. Some years later, Fred said he picked up Brisker's voice on his telephone answering machine saying hello. He didn't sound well, said Fred. He never heard from Brisker again. Fred told me, believe it or not, that Brisker may have gone to Africa to fight for Idi Amin during civil war in Uganda. Fred told me this with a straight face and swears it's true."
Finally, back to Brisker (this is a bonus tale from a 2/01 Bar
Chat), he was an all-star for the Pittsburgh Pipers / Condors,
playing between 1969-72. His second and third seasons he lit it
up for 29.3 and 28.9 points per game, combining his bruising
inside game with deadly long-range bombs. But there was a
whole lot more.
Teammate Charlie Williams: “He was an excellent player, but
say something wrong to the guy and you had this feeling he
would reach into his bag, take out a gun and shoot you.”
Once, future all-star Billy Knight was practicing with the Pipers
while attending the University of Pittsburgh. “The first time I
played a game against Brisker, he just turned toward me and
busted me in the mouth. (And then) he just stood there, waiting
for me to do something about it. I didn’t do anything. He just
scared me.”
Brisker liked to pick on the big guys. So Pittsburgh brought in
an ex-football player to take care of him during training camp
before he busted up their lineup. The first time he would step out
of line, the footballer was to level him. Former ABA team
official Dick Tinkham describes what happened next.
“So the two guys are going at it and the football player said, ‘The
hell with you, I’m gonna get my gun.’ And Brisker said, ‘If
you’re getting a gun, then I’m gonna get my gun.’ Then the two
guys ran off in different directions. The coaches called off
practice.”
Along with Warren Jabali and Ladner, Brisker was the roughest
player in an often out of control league. Dallas coach Tom
Nissalke related how the team owner would give him a
checkbook so Nissalke could pay out bonuses for outstanding
play right after the game. [Times were different, back then,
especially with this league.] Well, one day the team was on a big
losing streak with Pittsburgh as the next opponent. The coach
had to shake things up.
“The first guy in this room who decks Brisker will get $500.”
Lenny Chappell (normally a reserve at the time) asked if he
could start. At the jump ball to open play, Chappell flattened
Brisker with a punch. None of the officials saw what happened.
[They were all looking up, after all.] The bad boy was out cold
and Dallas ended up breaking their losing streak.
After three years in Pittsburgh, Brisker went to Seattle of the
NBA for the ‘72-‘73 season. His play rapidly deteriorated as it
became well-known that he was using drugs heavily. [Brisker’s
scoring average dropped to 12.8, 12.5 and 7.7 for his three years
in Seattle.] At the age of 28 he was out of basketball.
Then in March 1978, John Brisker headed to Liberia, claiming he
was going to start an import / export business. What is known is
that he called his girlfriend from Uganda some 4 times that April.
That’s the last anyone heard from him.
Rumor has it that he became a mercenary. Others say he was
invited by that great basketball fan, Idi Amin, to play hoops for
him, only to be killed by a firing squad when Amin was toppled
in ’79. For the purposes of clearing up his estate, a King County,
WA court declared John Brisker legally dead in 1985. But if you
think he’s alive and know his whereabouts, drop us a line!
Re: H. Porter scandal, bounties, John Brisker, Idi Amin and '71 Bulls in Sarasota...crazy
I know this is "Slow News Day" stuff, but I found this story pretty entertaining, and downright weird.
It is also food for thought for those of us who consider the whole "Right Way" stuff to be a return to "the good old days." Maybe we get misty-eyed when we watch Gene Hackman in Hoosiers, but the "good old days" of the NBA included sucker punches when the refs weren't looking, injury, players threatening each other with guns in practice illegal contracts, financial shenanigans and inter-league skullduggery.
Yikes. A good reminder that maybe today's NBA is in pretty good shape. I'll take cornrows, tattoos, uniform malfunctions and pager throwing incidents over players whose skills decline because of rampant drug use, coaches hiring football player goons as practice players to keep their own players in line and "$500 to the guy who injures ______" pep talks, all in a game the public didn't give two hoots about.
Contract scandal, bounties, guns, goons, Idi Amin and '71 Bulls in Fla...crazy story
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