In 1976, I was a basketball fan of two leagues, in the soon-to-be-merged ABA, I rooted for the Kentucky Colonels, and in the NBA, I didn't really have a favorite team that I liked as much as the Colonels but my lukewarm favorites were the Washington Bullets and the Phoenix Suns.
My parents usually visited Ohio one weekend a year when I was a child and on this April weekend, I was getting closer to my eighth birthday and my dad flipped on the AM radio and found Game Two of the Eastern Conference semi-finals between the Bullets and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
As we drove on the signal from WWWE in Cleveland became stronger and stronger and the game wound down to its final minutes, Cavaliers radio play-by-play commentator Joe Tait was in full excitement mode (even if we weren't traveling, the game was untelevised in either city) with the style that made him the best radio commentator in the league screaming to be able to be heard over the crowd noise.
With the Bullets leading the series 1-0, and the Cavaliers desperate for a win to avoid a 2-0 deficit and going on the road for game three in Landover, Bingo Smith drained a twenty-five-foot jumper (in the era without the three-point line) to lift the Cavaliers to an 80-79 win and a series tie.
In a series filled with improbable endings (three of Cleveland's four wins came either at the buzzer or under five seconds remaining), Bingo Smith had delivered the first and when we pulled into Ashland and my grandfather's house, I was still excited from listening to the game.
My uncle Russ was staying there that evening and as I talked excitedly to him (he was listening on the radio as well), he asked me if I was a Cavalier fan and then he said you should be.
In the way that seven-year-olds think, I said sure and that's the way it's been ever since.
Cleveland's series victory in seven games would be the only playoff series win that I would see for the next sixteen years, and when they would finally win a series (in those sixteen years, Cleveland would lose in the first round six times), and I would be watching it ( a win over the New Jersey Nets in five games) with my son.
Bingo Smith had been the first-round pick (sixth overall) of the then-San Diego Rockets from Tulsa in 1969 in the final year before the Rockets moved to Houston, averaging seven points in only sixteen minutes per game before the Rockets left him unprotected in the famous expansion draft where the Cavaliers used Topps basketball cards as their scouting records in the expansion draft.
Just imagine the difference in the league now, can you imagine a team allowing the sixth overall pick to be available in the expansion draft after one season?
Or can you imagine buying a bunch of basketball cards as your scouting materials for the draft? Crazy!
Known for his shooting range that would have seen even more success had Smith played in the three-point era, Smith would play for Cleveland for nine-plus seasons, being traded after eight games of the 1979-80 season to, ironically, the San Diego Clippers for a future third-round draft pick.
I use the word ironically as the Clippers didn't protect Smith after the season for the expansion draft of the Dallas Mavericks, who drafted Smith but Smith never played for the team and retired, making Smith the only player to be selected twice in expansion drafts and from the same city.
Smith had his number seven retired by the Cavaliers during the 1979-80 season when the Clippers visited the Cavaliers after being traded to San Diego as the second retired number (after Nate Thurmond) in team history.
Bingo Smith- long-range marksman, member of the Miracle of Richfield, a retired number for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the man who started the ball rolling into making me a Cavaliers fan for life.
R.I.P. Bingo.
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