- Title: Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association – Growing Pains
- IMDb: link
Moving into the 1970s, the aptly-titled second episode of the series focuses on the ups and downs of the struggling league starting with the dominance of Spencer Haywood, the first underclassman drafted to play professional basketball, who led the league in both scoring and rebounding, but who left the league after discovering most the money in his contract was smoke and mirrors and not actually guaranteed. Life in the NBA for the young player, whose teams took out their aggressions for the ABA, and their drafting of the young star on Haywood, was little better with the Seattle SuperSonics forcing legal action by Haywood leading eventually to a landmark Supreme Court decision.
1971 All-Star Game organized by players, ignoring the wishes of the owners, provided a showcase for ABA talent which led to the NBA working harder to poach several of the ABA’s best players in an attempt to turn it into the inferior league the NBA always argued the ABA was. There was turmoil internal to the league as well as more quetionable owner moves led to Rick Barry‘s discontent and his eventual relocation to New York.
In terms of the ups, the second episode of the documentary highlights Julius Erving‘s introduction to the league and his first playoff run ending in the semi-finals against Barry and the New York Nets who fell to the Indiana Pacers (highlighted as the class of the ABA in the documentary, both on and off the court) in the finals.
