What kind of person loses sight in one eye and then through dedicated practice and honed skills becomes one of the top 50 NBA players of all time? What kind of person, with limited business experience, builds a start-up company into a thriving corporation and is recognized as one of the world’s most successful black executives? What kind of person, while running a $350 million business, takes the time to reach out to black youths lacking father figures and provides counsel and support? And what kind of person, instead of enjoying a well-deserved luxurious retirement, chooses to become mayor of a large city that many long ago had written off as dead? Dave Bing, that’s who.
In Dave Bing, Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp chronicles the compelling story of a figure whose sheer will to succeed, refusal to make excuses for setbacks, and efforts to contribute to society set him apart as an anomaly—a man of virtues so rarely found in recent history. His path from Washington D.C. to Syracuse to Detroit is sometimes tumultuous, blazed by hard work, perseverance, and savvy. Much more than the stereotypical tale of celebrity ex-jock who does good, this is a story about a black male who, even as a youngster, determined to conquer whatever challenges came his way.
And now, as mayor of Detroit, Bing encounters perhaps his greatest test of all. Faced with entrenched and power-hungry political foes, a series of failed and corrupt predecessors, a work force ill prepared for today’s job market, a staggering city debt, and recent health problems, Bing would appear to have little chance of surviving his office. Both the naysayers and optimists would do well to read the book.
Chapter 1 The Anomaly
Chapter 2 The Start in D.C.
Chapter 3 The College Choice
Chapter 4 The Syracuse Experience
Chapter 5 The Possible Destination
Chapter 6 The Draft
Chapter 7 The Riots
Chapter 8 The Rookie Year
Chapter 9 The Mentor
Chapter 10 The City’s Disorders
Chapter 11 The Trade
Chapter 12 The Return
Chapter 13 The (Almost) Deal
Chapter 14 The Boardroom
Chapter 15 The Next Mayor
Chapter 16 The Political Mess
Chapter 17 The Speech
Drew Sharp joined the Detroit Free Press in 1983 and served as the paper’s beat writer during the Pistons’ first two NBA championship seasons in 1989 and 1990. He also covered Michigan State University sports for eight years before becoming a columnist in 1999. Sharp is the only columnist in Detroit to have grown up in the city, giving him a unique first-person point of reference to the significant sports and political events in the city over the past five decades.
A versatile columnist who has developed a national reputation for delivering critical analysis, Sharp has an extensive body of work that reveals a mixture of compelling commentary and character profiles. He once wrote a regular column for USA Today and has appeared frequently as an ESPN contributor on shows such as SportsCenter, Outside the Lines, and Pardon the Interruption. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.
“An unflinching look at a fascinating mayor, who refused to be defined by the athletic shoes he once wore or the safe paths people expected him to take. An eye-opening read.”
—Mitch Albom, best-selling author and Detroit Free Press columnist
“What Dave has achieved—a great basketball career, success in business, and a prominent political post at a challenging time—speaks to how all athletes should look at, and not limit, themselves. We should always stand for something more than what the box score says about us.”
—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, six-time NBA Most Valuable Player
"Dave Bing's journey from the Basketball Hall of Fame to City Hall is a compelling story with lessons for all of us. His life has spanned one of the most unique and transformative periods of American history. The details of his actions and achievements in the context of the Black experience in Detroit and the United States will inspire and inform readers from all walks of life."
—Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento, NBA All-Star
“Drew Sharp, a lifelong Detroiter, has followed all of Bing’s careers up close. He has skillfully told the story of this unique and compelling American life, with new insight and depth.”
—Michael Rosenberg,Sports Illustrated
“The Dave Bing story is an extraordinary take on an extraordinary life.”
—Joe Dumars, Hall of Fame NBA star, business entrepreneur, and president of the Detroit Pistons
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
A player ready to make his mark in a city ready to explode
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year’s NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing’s adopted hometown was already in trouble.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
The Detroit that first welcomed Bing in the fall of 1966 after the Pistons tabbed him with the second overall selection in that year's NBA draft was a smoldering powder keg. What would become Bing's adopted hometown was already in trouble.
“I could sense the increasing tension,” Bing said. “I wasn't unfamiliar with the symptoms, having grown up in an urban environment in Washington, an increasingly predominant black community with a police force that was predominantly white. There was a high level of sensitivity.”
Bing wasn't fearful of police harassment during his early times in Detroit, but he wasn't naïve enough to think that it couldn't happen if he found himself in the wrong situation at the wrong time (i.e., a situation that could lead to a wrong interpretation by law enforcement). It wasn't as though everybody in the city recognized his face wherever he went.
His public profile improved after he won NBA Rookie of the Year honors in the spring of 1967; however, Bing knew that unless he walked around town constantly wearing his Pistons' number 21 jersey, it was unlikely that anybody would make the connection that he was the rising NBA basketball star.
If the police found him in a situation that could be interpreted the wrong way, he would just be another black guy getting handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. Bing figured it was just a question of time before that powder keg blew up.
And it did in the early-morning hours of Sunday, July 25, 1967, after Detroit police raided what was called a “blind pig,” an after-hours establishment that illegally served alcohol. Blind pigs were also havens for fomenting rage over the growing perception that the white Detroit police force had declared “war” on the city's black residents.
After the raid, the anger immediately spilled out onto the streets. What began as shouting soon turned into throwing rocks and bottles at neighboring businesses. And that soon turned into setting that section of Detroit on fire.
The fuse was lit on what would become—at that time in history—the worst urban riot ever in America.
Bing and his family didn't leave their house on Preston Street on Detroit's east side. They were several miles away from the riot's flashpoint, the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount Avenue.
When the thermostat and individual temperatures run equally high in a hot summer, it doesn't usually require much encouragement to light a fuse—especially when it involves a lily-white police department that had increasingly drawn criticism for its treatment of a city population that had increasingly turned black. People hit the streets, transistor radios hanging from their ears, getting the latest news about what was happening.
As the situation continually eroded through that first day, one of Bing's neighbors offered use of one of his rifles if Bing were interested. He declined. Everyone worried that the violence might spread. Flames spit into the thick afternoon air. Stores were randomly looted. Rioters even broke into gun shops, normally closed on the Sabbath, arming themselves with weapons for what looked like the onset of anarchy in those initial hours.
“People were worried about what might happen if this situation got worse,” Bing said. “It wasn't like you could step outside and see something burning right in front of you. But it was very upsetting for my family. You don't want to think of your home being threatened, and there were plenty of people willing to defend their property through any means necessary.”
The irony was that 10 years earlier, white homeowners in Detroit were the ones mounting a defense of their private property “through any means necessary” from the influx of black residents. Now black homeowners were determined to protect their investment from those threatening its security.
Mel Farr had just signed his rookie contract with the Lions and was just days away from his first NFL training camp. He had made his first big purchase; he had bought a Jaguar two-seater sports car in Ann Arbor and was heading east on the I-94 freeway. Farr could faintly see charcoal-gray plumes from the distance. The clouds grew thicker the closer he got to the city. His new NFL home was engulfed in flames.
“It was more than a little scary when you started to learn exactly what was going on,” Farr recalled.
Lem Barney had also just signed his rookie NFL contract. He was driving to town from his native Mississippi when he received word from the Lions' organization that the players shouldn't meet at the team's headquarters at Tiger Stadium because of safety concerns.
The Tigers played at Tiger Stadium that Sunday afternoon. Billowing plumes of smoke could be seen from the stands. The Tigers were scheduled to play the Baltimore Orioles on Monday, but the team, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, moved the game to Baltimore. It was deemed unsafe in Detroit. After the Sunday afternoon game, players were instructed to head immediately for the airport for the trip to Baltimore. That bothered many of the players; a lot of them lived in Detroit and wanted to check on the safety of their families.
Tigers' outfielder Willie Horton didn't heed the team's warnings. He grew up in Detroit, starred at Northwestern High School, and became one of the franchise's first significant black signings five years earlier. Horton thought that he might compel the rioters to cease if they saw him in his Tigers uniform. He immediately drove to the most dangerous areas. Horton couldn't just sit still as his hometown burned. His actions, though riskily impulsive, nonetheless spoke to the impact that the professional athlete had on the people of Detroit. Horton recalled that when some recognized him as he walked down 12th Street, suddenly the conversation shifted from looting clothing stores to wondering if the Tigers could win the American League pennant for the first time in almost 20 years.
But this wasn't Bing's hometown. That first day of the riots was the first time that Bing entertained ideas of uprooting his family from the actual city limits and moving them to the suburbs, joining the steady procession of families dashing for the city's borders.
“You tried forgetting about what was happening right outside your doorstep, but it became increasingly difficult,” Bing said. “We played right downtown, and there were times that even players were concerned about their personal safety leaving Cobo Arena to go home.”
Nor was Detroit home to Farr. “We were paid to be here,” said Farr, “and because of that, you're going to look at it a little differently.”
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The unlikely beginning of a legendary NBA career
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city’s pension and health care commitments to city employees.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Bing offered the Pistons yet another clean slate, a fresh starting point in changing the narrative of an organization known more for its intrinsic bungling. It made no sense that they waited 17 games before finally starting him for the first time—November 18 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Cobo Arena.
Player-coach Dave DeBusschere's rationale was that the rookie needed time for acclimation. But it wasn't long before everyone realized the natural maturity and leadership that belied Bing's lack of NBA experience. He was already vocalizing his concerns during practice when players weren't properly running the correct plays.
There were rumblings that DeBusschere kept using Bing off the bench as long as he did because he felt threatened that this rookie was usurping his power as the team's top player. It was part of the fraternal hazing in sports, veterans putting the neophytes in their proper place.
Owner Fred Zollner wondered why DeBusschere waited. It's not as if the Pistons were a genuine playoff contender. They stunk. They'd still reek regardless of whether or not they entrusted a rookie as their starting point guard. Just throw him out there. Let him learn. Let him grow.
There wasn't much public interest in the introduction, either. Cobo was half empty, even with the popular Lakers as a visiting draw. But Bing got the attention of everyone there, scoring a game-high 35 points, with some of those numbers coming in dazzling fashion. Lakers' star Gail Goodrich, in his second year out of Wooden's UCLA program, drew the defensive assignment of staying with Bing. He required a GPS. Most of the evening, he couldn't find the speedy rookie; the only evidence that Bing was in the vicinity was the trail of rear exhaust. There was an explosiveness in Bing's play that neither the Pistons nor their fans had ever witnessed before. Bing was a smooth scorer, but speed was the primary element of his game.
“There was nobody who could keep up with me,” Bing said. “I'm not saying that I thought the game was easy just starting out, but I thought there was a facet of my game that some of these guys already in the league hadn't seen before. I could outrun anybody.”
Bing's play was an indication of what was to come in the NBA in the coming years with the addition of more athletic, exceptionally quick guards capable of bringing a more exciting off-the-dribble dimension to the professional sphere. NBA games in 1966 were not typically played at an accelerated pace. The style of play was slow, stodgy, and predicated on positioning and designed movement. This style was sold as selflessness, dedicated to the concept of team. But the integration of lightning quick backcourt players such as Bing with a strong handle and deadly eye would change the look of the NBA.
The new athleticism—a term that was code for black—would change the game. But like most change, it encountered resistance. And a strong prejudice against black players still existed, a biased underestimation of their mental acuity and ability to handle the responsibilities of controlling the game from the point guard position.
In addition to his 35 points, Bing had seven assists and eight rebounds in his starting debut. Moreover, he made an impression. Laker great Jerry West praised Bing after the game and assured the young rookie that he had a great future ahead of him. West marveled at how Bing always seemed in control. That simply wasn't natural for a first-year player. The point guard, charged with distributing the ball and getting his teammates involved, was also able to easily adapt to being the primary scorer when necessary.
Bing averaged just over 25 points a game in his first 10 starts. And the Pistons won 6 of those 10 games, including beating the ubiquitous Celtics in three of their four meetings during that 10-game stretch.
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
The toughest test yet for Detroit's iron-willed mayor
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge.
Now, on November 16, 2011, Bing faced perhaps his most daunting task. The city under his command was spinning in a cauldron, a creature of its own political hubris and fiscal neglect. And it was sure to get a lot hotter for everyone—the mayor included—before it cooled off.
Reporters received an advanced text summary of Bing's speech. It was filled with the standard calls for sacrifice while still promising delivery of essential services. Some elements of the plan were new, such as the privatization of certain city services, including mass transit and electrical services.
The imminent threat of bankruptcy gave Bing license to demand dramatic cutbacks, especially in the city's pension and health care commitments to city employees. And the man still had a trump card he could play if left no other alternative—the emergency manager.
The local television stations cancelled their scheduled 6 p.m. newscasts so they could cover the critical speech live. The timing of the speech magnified its importance. Bing didn't want this desperate message buried in the morning or afternoon news cycle.
Ample discussions took place among the inner circle regarding the desired pitch for the speech. Bing didn't want to come across as a bludgeoner, constantly pounding home the bad news, because he feared that such a tone would suggest futility. The speech must have some balance, conveying the necessity for historic budget cuts while also appealing to the notion that this would be the best hope for molding a newer, more financially viable Detroit.
Communications consultant Bob Warfield thought it best that the speech not occur at City Hall. This was a purely symbolic gesture. If you're hoping to appeal to the people, it's probably better that you're out there with them rather than insulated within the trappings of political power.
There had been criticisms, primarily from the city pastors, that Bing had distanced himself from those who elected him into office. The accusations were greatly exaggerated, if not downright ill-founded. But moving the speech away from the antiseptic pallor of the Coleman A. Young Government Center was the right call.
Bing's team scheduled the speech for the Northwest Activities Center, a community outreach center on Seven Mile Road, not far from the Sherwood Forest area of Detroit. This area was one of the few residential pockets in the city still fairly populated; it was perched on the northern fringes of the city limits. However, even that area underscored the infrastructural problems befalling Detroit.
Woodward Avenue, the city's primary artery cutting a north-south swath through the city, represents the eastern border of Sherwood Forest and its neighbor, Palmer Woods, home of some of the biggest, most stately homes in the city. But drive up Woodward on a winter's evening and it is completely in the dark. There were no streetlights and few businesses open. In the distance, however, there was an oasis illuminating the evening skies.
It was Ferndale, one of the southern entries to Oakland County, situated immediately across Eight Mile Road. Not only were there lights, but there was vibrant activity for a cool, windy winter's night. Restaurants, bars, and little shopping boutiques were open and busy. The disparity was stark and alarming, but nonetheless perfectly symbolic of the serious challenges facing Detroit. If the city wasn't realistic about what it could no longer provide, it would basically be pulling the plug on the city.
Bing actually looked forward to this opportunity to make his argument to the public that Detroit had no alternative but to accept less. “You don't want the state taking over the city, do you?” became the administration's battle cry and the impetus for selling the argument that Detroit should be able to take care of itself, regardless of the punitive measures taken.
In the hours leading up to the speech, there was actually great anticipation within the administration. This was finally “his time, his moment.”
Nobody ever questioned Bing's empathy or his limitless degree of humanity. This was a guy who seriously cared about doing what he strongly believed was the right thing. He truly lived the pain of those families who lost loved ones in a rise of homicides in the city during 2011. He had spoken with many young people in the city of Detroit who sadly didn't see themselves living much longer, justifying why they were drawn more to negative influences. How would telling the people of this city that they must accept less alter that sense of futility?
Could he move the mountain?
Read more from Dave Bing: A Life of Challenge by Drew Sharp.
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