Even more old basketball cards

Yay! We have a College Basketball final! That means it's all over tomorrow! No more college basketball more months and months! I don't care for the two teams in the finals but as long as they don't play again later next week I'm cool with it. Here's five more cards from the grab bag of 20 (?) cards for 4 bucks.

1973-74 Jerry Lucas

This pack was chock full 'o Hall of Famers. Jerry won an NCAA championship with Ohio State, a gold medal with the 1960 Olympic team and trainwrecked a basketball franchise owned by George Steinbrenner before playing a single minute in the NBA. He later won a title with the Knicks, before retiring to make a living by remembering things.

The man was a rebound machine, but also a talented magician! Watch him pull a rabbit out of his hat! (again?!?)

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!!

He doesn't know his own strength!

1974-75 NBA Checklist

Here's the companion to that ABA checklist I posted. The poor sap was not only missing the Julius Erving card but also didn't have Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Sounds like most of my sets!

1975-76 Washington Bullets

Elvin Hayes, Hall of Fame. Wes Unseld, Hall of Fame. Any wonder the Bullets won the NBA title in the '70s? Clem Haskins had to retire before the bullets won that title and later got involved in a brouhaha as coach of the Minnesote Golden Gophers.

You see a lot of Hayes and Unseld on the back of this card. Combine the two and you've got the number of times Earl Monroe lead the Bullets in a statistical category. Well, at least from 1966-1975. Wes and Elvin piled up a lot more stats when it was all said and done. I hate the new Nickname-that-shall-not-be-named. They're the Washington Bullets and they have weird red white and blue stripey uniforms forever as far as I'm concerned so get off my lawn you Harry Potter reading whippersnappers!

1974-75 Nate Thurmond

Ho hum, another Hall of Famer. Nate had 14437 points and 14464 rebounds. Now that's a ballplayer. Nate is also a bit of a ninja, as he is well camouflaged into the background on this card. Now you know how he got all those boards.

Fouteen thousand rebounds gets you a Rolls Royce. Now you know kids! Work on those ninja skills and you can have a car with a flying lady hood ornament. Note that the Warriors used to be the San Francisco Warriors. Golden State always bugs me. It sounds like a college team for one thing. I want NBA basketball not college basketball so forget Golden State. the other thing is that San Francisco is a world-class city, why euphemize that one into Golden State? I could understand if it was the Fresno Warriors, but let Frisco be Frisco. Yes, I have a ton of neurotic hangups about NBA franchises and their choice of team names, wanna fight about it?

1988-89 Fleer Charles BarkleyAll-Star Team

This photo and especially the WTF look on the poor Clipper's face is awesome. Look at it. Savor it.

Most of the pack was '70s basketball, but there were a couple of Fleer cards in there too for good measure. This one shows pretty well why Barkley was such a good rebounder. 1988-89 Fleer was the first full box of basketball cards that I bought and it's a pretty nice set. Lots of rookies and it has sort of held it's value, at least compared to most of the other stuff released at that time. I'm a Barkley fan too, so this is a nice one to find.

Late tonight or early tomorrow I'll post the last five. Then... a surprise!