8/5/2023 0 Comments Basketball team stat keeper![]() “I don’t join the conversations about it. Specifically, subjective stats like assists. “And they had four people who could go back in the machine and change things.” Herb still keeps score, but he leaves the details to the statisticians behind him. “About 15 years ago, I stopped calling everything out,” Turetzky says about his role these days. Herb knows the game as well as anyone, even if keeping score is just a part-time gig where his only compensation at first was “two free tickets to the game.” Because of Herb’s ubiquity at the scorers table since the inception of the Nets franchise, he’s the perfect person to talk to about keeping score. “Once Steph Curry started shooting 35 and sometimes 40 feet, without even thinking, and looking good at it, all of these guys started practicing that shot.” And yet, the NBA used to laugh at us: Red, white, and blue ball, who gives three points for a shot? They laughed and laughed. ![]() The last ABA game we had, Brian Taylor was 2-for-6 on 3-pointers and that was it-no one else took a 3-pointer in the NBA. “Steph Curry literally changed the game where no one ever shoots. At every level.” His answer comes so quickly and forcefully, you know he’s been asked it before. Steph Curry changed the game of basketball. Herb also fondly recalls getting drenched with champagne celebrating the 1976 ABA title in the locker room after what would be Dr. J, “put on a show” and electrified people” Herb says, before he went national in the NBA. Up close, Herb has seen every ABA star until the league merged with the NBA in 1976, and every NBA star in the modern era. Shaq is good people, so of course Herb knows him. You could see David’s feet when Reebok did a marketing campaign around the busted backboards. Turetzky’s son had been under the stanchion as a ball boy when O’Neal broke the whole basket support in his rookie year. Or the time Shaquille O’Neal signed a pair of sneakers for Herb’s son with a message that read: ‘“David, stay out of the way of falling baskets.’” According to Turetzky, when the 6 ’5 ” baller first came over to the NBA from Croatia, Portland “didn’t accept him” because he was “not using deodorant.” But Drazen wasn’t automatically an All-NBA selection. ![]() Herb and “Draz” were close-the Croatian All-Star used to give his sneakers to Herb’s son, David, because they both wore size 12. Like his humorous explanation for why Drazen Petrovic never caught on in Portland. Arriving journalists shuffle past us as we talk, but we might as well have been alone as Herb recounts a half century of keeping score in eight different arenas, two leagues, and two states. The Nets are a couple hours from tipping off against the visiting Memphis Grizzlies. Herb’s wife, Jane, who has accompanied him to every Nets games since before they were married, sits to his right, their connection explicit in the their closeness. As the Nets ’ resident scorekeeper, he’s been tallying up the details of the team ’s game since they were known as the New Jersey Americans of the American Basketball Association (ABA). It’s remarkable Turetzky could see enough of the shirt to even make the connection, but he ’s someone who pays attention for a living. It was the greatest.” His glee at the memory is genuine. “The thing with Mase,” Herb Turetzky begins with a smirk, “was that when he was trying out with us he was wearing all the big jewelry. I said to him, ‘Mase, you got a better chance of someone picking you up in this league if you get rid of all that crap.’ He did, he got rid of it. After spotting an inscrutable T-shirt-featuring the late bruiser, most famous for his days with the Knicks and his unique buzzcuts- the man sitting in a wheelchair with white hair and matching mustache has a story to tell.
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