Over And Back: Stories About Nba History

We look at how the Spurs, Nets, Nuggets, and Pacers adjusted to life in the NBA after being part of the 1976 NBA-ABA merger in the latest edition of Over and Back's Basketball Mysteries of the 1970s.Adam Johnson of Basketball Pantheon joins the show to discuss how the former ABA teams were at an initial competitive disadvantage because of the terms of the merger, how 1977 was the first season with a fully balanced NBA schedule, how the Nuggets with David Thompson and Dan Issel had come off an ABA Finals run in 1976 and were a strong NBA Finals contender, a forgotten classic Nuggets-Bucks playoff series in 1978, how Thompson's drug problems eventually caught up with him, how the Spurs were initially successful in San Antonio, how the Spurs became contenders in the late '70s but fell short in two consecutive series vs. the Bullets, how the Pacers were forced to rebuild in the late '70s after being an ABA dynasty, Indiana's puzzling series of trades where they would lose out on future superst