“I think,” Julius Erving told me one day over the phone ... and better in this way, too: dignified, a family man, smart, a stand-up guy in his careful baritone, a dream for white suburbia.

making it Dr. J -- he was born Julius Winfield Erving Jr. on Feb. 22, 1950 in East Meadow, N.Y. When he was 13, his mother remarried, to a sanitation worker, and the new family moved to Roosevelt ...

Unquestionably the greatest known athlete in UMass history, Julius Erving, known simply to the world as "Dr. J," played basketball for two seasons under legendary head coach and fellow UMass Athletics ...