Gus Johnson? That brings back the memories

He was a great basketball player, a human highlight film before there was such a term. He was also an Idaho Vandal.

Gus Johnson - First in Flight

Take all the things that make up an NBA superstar­talent, tenacity, intelligence, imagination and style­and put them together. What's the result? Michael Jordan. And what happens if you take away good health? You get Gus Johnson.

To those who saw Gus and Jordan in their primes, bum knees were all that separated these two stars. With apologies to Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson and Julius Erving, the man known as "Honeycomb" for the sweetness of his game was MJ before MJ­the prototype of the modern American basketball superstar. A generation before Jordan, Gus was the man who believed he could fly.

Gus Johnson Jr. was born on December 13, 1938 in Akron, Ohio. (Click here for today's sports birthdays.) He had one brother and four sisters. Central Akron in the postwar years was not a pleasant place to live. The Johnsons resided in an urban slum where crime and hopelessness were constant companions to kids of Gus’s generation.

Fortunately, Gus was unlike most kids. He had a big ego, a belief in his own invincibility, and a sense of good and bad and right and wrong. And everything he tried, he did with a flourish that made him hard to ignore and impossible not to like.

Gus also stood out thanks to a leading-edge sense of style. He was a sharp dresser with a cool, confident swagger. By age 17, he had a gold earring and a Fu Manchu beard.

Gus’s dream was to join the Harlem Globetrotters. At the time, they were the highest-paying outfit a black player could find. The NBA was still struggling­ and still unwelcoming to African-American players. To hone his skills, Gus would practice no-look and behind-the-back passes for hours, hitting spots he’d chalked out on a wall. He was accurate from 25 feet away. On his first basketball card, Gus asked that he be pictured throwing one of his patented passes...

Go here for the remainder.

Here's another Gus Johnson feature.