James Silas: “Captain Late” Commanded Respect in the Clutch (Part III)
Author: David FriedmanPublished on: Mar 17, 2005
James Silas developed his game through careful observation of moves and techniques used by other players: “I looked at guys who were able to penetrate, take the lick and get the shot off. During pickup games I liked to play around the basket and I never shied away from contact. At 6’2”, I could touch the top of the square where you bank your shot on the backboard. So I was a great leaper and I was just a strong guy. I knew that free throws were the only free shots in the game, so I kind of tried to master how to put a guy at my mercy and make him touch me in ways that if we were both moving (I would draw a foul and) most of the time I felt like I could get the shot off.”
Silas disagrees with the approach that many current players take on offense: “I always felt—and what guys need to understand today—you don’t take the shot that people give you. You take the shot that you want. I was good at being able to go where I wanted to go on the floor and take the shot that I wanted, not the shot that the defensive player expected me to take. Today a defender could give a guy a shot and if the person thinks it’s a good shot, he’ll take it, but I didn’t like that. If you give me a shot, even if I’m comfortable with it, I’m still going to go where I want to go to take the shot.” When it is suggested to Silas that the 2004 U.S. Olympic Team, which fired a torrent of errant jump shots in Athens, could profit by viewing the game in that fashion, he laughs and replies, “You got that right.”
The Spurs built a lot of their offense around Silas’ ability to break down opposing defenses, particularly in late game situations: “I was real fortunate to have coaches like Bob Bass and Doug Moe who really saw the ability that I had. I don’t know if Bob Bass was the first guy to come up with this play, but it was called a 1-4 play. The other four guys lined up on the baseline in the positions that they were good at and I went to work out front. I went to work from the top of the circle to wherever I wanted to go to get whatever shot was best for me. If I was double teamed I could always find the open guy. It was an almost unstoppable play that Bob and Doug let me run when the game was on the line or for the last second shot at the end of a quarter.”
Even a player as gifted as Silas has to make an adjustment when he goes from college to the pros. Joe Hamilton remembers when Silas first showed up in training camp with the Dallas Chaparrals (as the Spurs were known before moving to San Antonio): “Although he was running guard with me, I just had confidence in my ability, so it (competition for playing time) didn’t matter because it was all about being together. I was trying to show him the ropes on what he had to do. He already had the ability. One good example is dribbling—you had smaller guys (in the ABA) from Billy Keller to Billy Shepherd to myself who would smack down on the ball when you would go up for the shot. I taught him (Silas) that once he got the ball in the air there was nothing we (smaller guards) could do.”
Hamilton—who is 5’10”-- and other smaller guards in the league could not block Silas’ shot once he got the ball over his shoulders, but they could strip the ball from him down low if he left the ball unprotected in front of his body before he elevated to take the shot. At the “ABA Ol’ School Reunion,” which was held in Denver to coincide with NBA All-Star Weekend, Silas and Hamilton reminisced about their time as teammates and Silas thanked Hamilton for helping him as a rookie. Hamilton adds, “James Silas and I would go one-on-one (after practice)—and I’m talking about banging--but when it was over, when the game was over, we’d go drink a cold Pepsi and talk about it. That’s where the togetherness was. That’s the thing, even today, here we are 30 years later, and he’s saying, ‘Joe taught me that.’ It makes me feel good.”
The close knit feeling among the ABA players makes it even more hurtful that the NBA often acts like the ABA never existed. Silas says, “I feel like this: when you look at the Spurs and how they do the statistics and the history of the franchise, when I scored my 10,000th point they gave me a ball to recognize that I had scored 10,000 points for this franchise. If the franchise still exists, I don’t see how they can not acknowledge it in the stats…If you look at when the leagues merged, the best players for years to come were the former ABA players. If you really just look at it, until Bird and Magic came along, the guys who were the best players came from the ABA—Moses, the Doctor and Ice were the ones carrying the league. I think that when they write in these magazines during the season they have to give it up—it has to be known what these (ABA) players did for their franchises.” He concludes, “The NBA is taking full advantage of the ABA when you talk about merchandise and jerseys being sold. Yet they don’t include the true background and statistics (in the record books). This is very unjust and it’s very unfair. When I take my kids and my kids’ kids (to a Spurs game) and we get a program, they say, ‘Dad, you have a ball at home that says you scored 10,000 points just for the Spurs. Why is that not in here?’”
Who better to have the last word about Silas than his teammate, Hall of Famer George Gervin? This is what the “Iceman” said when I asked him about “Captain Late” at the ABA Reunion: “James Silas was a guy who we really went to at the end of the game. James Silas never missed free throws. They don’t give him enough credit and I’m disappointed in that, but we (the ABA players) give it to him because we played with him and respect him and a lot of us idolize his play.”
Additional reading about the ABA:
This is my first person account of the “ABA Ol’ School Reunion”:
http://hoopshype.com/articles/aba_friedm...
I tell the story of Roger Brown, a vital member of three Indiana Pacer ABA championship teams, here: