One in a series of stories remembering the 1982-83 76ers, one of the NBA’s best teams ever.
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PHILADELPHIA — The van did not have air conditioning but it had enough in the summer of 1982 to make it across the country. Marc Iavaroni bought the stick-shift Ford Econoline 150 for $8,100 and drove it to California clinging to his dream. He had been cut by three teams, spent three seasons in Italy, and had yet to play an NBA game four years after being drafted.
Iavaroni didn’t have a place to sleep in Los Angeles and he had been used weeks earlier by an NBA team as a measuring stick for the general manager’s high school son. Yet he remained undeterred as he pointed his van west.
He had a spot in the L.A. Summer League and believed he would finally grab the attention of an NBA team.
Iavaroni spent a week on a buddy’s couch before deciding to just sleep in his van and take showers at a health club in Hermosa Beach. He was just a 25-year-old with a dream in his van. Ten months later, he was a rookie starting for the 1983 world champion Sixers.
“He will always be a great trivia question,” said Pat Williams, GM of that Sixers squad. “Who was Julius Erving’s running mate at forward for the 1983 championship? Bobby Jones? No, it was this guy from the University of Virginia who was basically an unknown guy. He was the guy. Marc Iavaroni.”
The 1983 Sixers had four Hall of Famers — Erving, Jones, Maurice Cheeks, and Moses Malone — and another player — Andrew Toney — who many think was headed for the Hall if injuries didn’t shorten his career. Forty years ago, they also had Iavaroni, who started most of the regular season games and all 13 playoff games.
The 6-foot-8 forward provided a spark for the team and played with an edge. After everything he went through to get there, it’s hard to blame him.
“I went through some stuff,” he said.
The Knicks drafted Iavaroni in 1978′s third round and he spent the next two seasons in Italy.
“We go up to Novella, Italy, which is up in the north,” Iavaroni said. “They have a guy named Mel Davis. They also called him ‘Killer Davis.’ He played at St. John’s and with the Knicks. We’re going for a rebound, I’m on offense, and he just turns around, ‘Baaaam.’ He cracks my zygomatic arch. I wake up, I’m half numb, I’m leaning over and the crowd is chanting ‘Deve morire, deve morire.’ I’m like what the hell does that mean? An Italian guy says to me, ‘He must die. He must die.’ This wasn’t like, ‘He’s OK. Let’s give him a little cheer.’ No, he must die.
“I was like I have to get the heck out of here.”
Iavaroni returned to the Knicks in 1980 but was the last player cut in training camp. Terry Holland, his old coach at Virginia, offered him a chance to come back as a graduate assistant and coach the JV team. Iavaroni took the job and practiced everyday against a team led by Ralph Sampson that won 23 straight games and reached the Final Four.
He was ready for the NBA and drove the next summer to Portland. But Iavaroni became infected with salmonella, lost 18 pounds, and did not make the Trail Blazers. It was back to Italy. He played another season and returned home determined to make an NBA team.
Iavaroni paid his own way to attend Washington’s training camp, where he soon found himself practicing against Danny Ferry, then a teenager and the son of Washington’s GM, Bob Ferry. His outlook only appeared more bleak at a D.C. summer league game when a player who showed up 30 minutes late entered the game before him.
“I said he’s freaking late and he’s going in. I don’t have a chance,” Iavaroni said.
He called some of his supporters and they found him a place in the L.A. Summer League. Greg Newell, the son of legendary coach Pete Newell, said he could sleep on his couch. Iavaroni loaded up his van and headed out.
“I had just gotten out of a used jeep and it was too cold in the winter. It was a soft top,” Iavaroni said. “My high school buddies had vans and fixed them up. It was the generation of the love van. I had a temporary mattress in there and the stereo. It got me across the country.”
The Sixers did not have a team in the league so Mark McNamara, their 1982 first-round pick, was assigned to the free-agent squad. It was the same team as Iavaroni, which meant the Sixers watched him every game. The summer league coach, Bob Gottlieb, had recruited Iavaroni out of high school and knew he could play. Finally, everything seemed to be coming together.
The Bulls and Jazz invited him to training camp as Iavaroni was gaining traction with NBA teams.
“And then one day, I’m walking to go stretch and I hear this voice ‘Hey, Mark.’ I’m ignoring it. I have things to do,” Iavaroni said. “‘Mark.’ Who is this? I turned around and it’s Billy Cunningham. It’s like ‘Hey Mawk,’ he’s from Brooklyn. ‘We like what we’ve seen and we’d really like you to come to our free-agent camp in Philly.’”
Iavaroni left his van in L.A. and flew to Philadelphia. He played with confidence and found himself at training camp in the starting lineup. Iavaroni told Jack McMahon, one of the team’s assistant coaches, that it was fun to start but he’d rather come off the bench in the next scrimmage so he could get ready for the role he planned to play during the season.
“He said, ‘Hey rookie. Shut up and play.’ He was really direct,” Iavaroni said. “I was like ‘OK.’ Then it became pretty apparent that that’s how it was going to be.”
He averaged 20.2 minutes that season while playing mostly the first and third quarters. Iavaroni played seven years in the NBA and was a coach in both college and the NBA. First, he was the perfect role player for one of the best teams in NBA history.
“Mark played those early minutes, banged around out there and did what he did and then Bobby Jones would come flying off the bench,” Williams said. " A big, strong guy. He didn’t need to score. He didn’t need the ball. He did whatever the team needed and ended up being the starter on a championship team because Bobby Jones was so valuable coming off the bench.”
The Sixers won all but one of their playoff games and clinched the NBA title less than 10 miles from where Iavaroni used to sleep in his van. But there was no time that night to think back about his journey. The locker room at The Forum was too jubilant as players sipped champagne and passed around the trophy after sweeping the Lakers.
It didn’t hit him until the team’s flight to Philly was circling the airport and they could see a crowd waiting for them near the tarmac. As the plane descended, Iavaroni was listening to a song by Italian singer Loredana Bertè. The song was in Italian but Iavaroni — who spent three seasons there as he waited for a chance back home — knew the words.
“It was all about how your life can turn at any moment. It goes like this and you can make a wrong move and your life turns again. That’s the way it goes, that’s the way it goes,” Iavaroni said. “It was a really good jingle and I listened to it a lot.
“Then it really dawned on me that I was kind of living that song. Being at the right place at the right time and going through enough rejection. I try to impart that to my sons: ‘Hey, rejection is part of life. How you deal with it is very, very important.’ You get knocked down and it’s either going to make you hungrier or go in a different direction. Thanks to a lot of people supporting me, I was lucky.”
