Murphy’s Law States That All Need Not Be Tall

It was the night of Feb. 28, 1981. The game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Houston Rockets was safely over when the coach of the Spurs slipped a cog and began berating the officials. They promptly slapped a technical on him, awarding the Rockets a postgame free throw.

The Rockets knew whom to tap for the foul shot. Calvin Murphy at the line was as automatic as a Swiss watch. Nobody even bothered to look. The crowd was filing out. The broadcasters were wrapping up. The players headed for the locker room.

They missed a historic event in NBA basketball. Murphy missed.

He was probably the only man in that arena who knew immediately what an unfortunate event it was. It was as if Babe Ruth had struck out with a chance to put No. 60 in the seats, or as if No. 61 had just curved foul for Roger Maris, or Ted Williams had popped up with his average at .3998.

In point of fact, it was like the night in 1941 when Joe DiMaggio had a hitting streak of 56 straight games. Cleveland third baseman Ken Keltner made great stops to get DiMaggio out his first two times up, then shortstop Lou Boudreau made a bare-handed stab in the ninth, cutting off a chance for a hit and stopping the string. DiMaggio went on to hit safely in the next 17 games. Had he hit safely that night, his record would have been 74.

Calvin Murphy’s consecutive free throw record was 78 when he stepped to the line that night in the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio. He went on to make 29 more free throws in a row. Had he scored that night, the record would be an astronomical 108.

“You have no idea how many times I have re-shot that one in my dreams,” Murphy was remembering ruefully the other day. “I have made that shot over and over since in my mind.”

Like DiMag, Calvin Murphy still holds the record. The thought that it could be even more unassailable must haunt the dreams of both.

Actually, the free throw record is the least impressive of Murphy’s accomplishments in basketball.

If you were to look at his statistics--17,949 points, 17.9 average, 1,002 games played, 7,247 field goals--you might conclude you were dealing with some pituitary type they had to get a rope to capture.

Then you meet the real Calvin Murphy and you want to say, “What is this, your idea of a joke?”

Murphy looks like Wilt Chamberlain’s watch fob. At 5 feet 9 inches and 160 pounds, you figure he had about as much chance to last in the NBA as a pork chop in a lion’s den.

Calvin Murphy had trouble all his life convincing everyone but the guy he was playing against that he was a basketball player. His stats have always been two feet taller than he is. In fact, there are only 18 players in history who have scored more points and all but two, Hal Greer and Gail Goodrich, are six inches to 18 inches taller.

As a result, now that he’s retired after a lifetime of having to convince gate guards he really was the basketball player who scored all those points and stole all those balls--1,165--on court, Calvin has embarked on a crusade to convince the average- sized person that he can play top-drawer basketball.

“Look at Spud Webb (5-6). He has proved that,” says Calvin, who likes to point out that the average man is 5-9 in this country, not 6-something.

Like all littler men, Webb has to guard against being used as comic relief, Murphy points out. “He has to guard against being used as a novelty. I had to.

“If I had been used as a novelty, if my (rookie) coach, Alex Hannum, had just put me in there in games where we were 30 to 40 points behind and told me to go out and play 10 minutes of scatter basketball to entertain the customers, I could never have been a star. But Alex said he was going to give me some quality minutes. He wanted me to play, not clown.

“Once, when my mother came to a game and I got in, I thought to myself ‘Hot dog! I’ll go out and hog the ball and throw in 15 points and show off for her,’ and Elvin Hayes (6-10 center) calls me over and says, ‘Murph, I need two points for 50. Get me the ball.’ What could I do? I got him the ball.”

Too many under-sized people give up the game just because they are convinced you have to be a 7-footer to play it, Murphy says.

To that end, he has joined forces with the Kinney Shoe Corp. in a campaign to reassure younger, smaller players that there is a place for them on the court. He has authored a booklet, “Calvin Murphy’s Tips to Playing Great Basketball (Even if You’re Not Seven Feet Tall).”

This small guard’s manifesto lists the five basic rules and six basic moves in ball handling.

“But, you also have to know your edge is psychological, not his,” he says. “You have to be an aggressor. You have to play as if you have something to prove and it can be a powerful motivator.

“You will also have sentiment on your side and don’t underestimate this. I used to have a coach who made me wear uniforms two sizes too large. It made you look even smaller. You could almost feel the other guy get overconfident and lazy. By the time he woke up, you had 30 points.”

Continues Murphy: “When you’re 7-4, you can have the luxury of lapses. When you’re 5-9 1/2, you cannot have lapses. Plus, the 7-4 guy cannot play the half-court game.

“I have had big guards who hated to play me precisely because I was smaller. Forwards, too. They couldn’t play that push-and-shove game with me. They had to play 48 minutes at both ends of the court. That’s not easy when you’re 7 feet, 280.”

And no one ever crafted the cerebral side of the game any better, either, than Calvin Murphy, or shot the basketball any better. He missed exactly 9 of 215 free throws one year and only 10 of 110 the following year. He is second to Rick Barry in all-time percentage.

Calvin, who has two brothers 7 inches taller than he, considers that they just got lousy breaks in life. When you’re 5-9 and you love basketball, you have to learn it at sea level in the way no 7-footer has to.

To the doom sayers who discourage any sub-six-footers from going out for the game, Calvin can only say, “Do you know any six-footers who have ever thrown in 107 out of 108 free throws?” And missed the other one only after the clock had run out.