Dr. J's ultimate reverse layup

16th in a series of 25

JULIUS ERVING'S perfection of the dunk raised it to a new art form.

There was the dunk from the foul line during the 1976 ABA All-Star Game's dunk contest.

Of course, there was the swooping dunk over the Lakers' Michael Cooper.

And there were a few dunks over Bill Walton during the 1977 NBA Finals.

But the one play that has awed basketball aficionados for the last 4 decades, was not a dunk but a reverse layup.

Calling it a reverse layup, however, would be like calling a Maserati Quattroporte a nice little car.

It has become an iconic move. It is still being used in commercials and Sixers promos. It was a move that defied gravity as we knew it back then.

And it came during the NBA Finals . . . Game 4 . . . May 11, 1980. It was a game the Sixers won, 105-102, to tie the series, 2-2.

The move came with 7:35 left in the fourth quarter and the Sixers ahead, 89-84. After receiving a cross-court pass from Bobby Jones, Erving took one hard dribble at the Lakers' Mark Landsberger and, from the block, took off for the moon.

While in midair, Erving, with Landsberger already left in the dust, confronts Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, all 7-3 of him. Erving contorts his body to now be facing the basket while still in midflight. With his arm flailing out of bounds, Erving reaches his long arms toward the backboard and is able to flick the ball off the glass with his Size 11 hands, bank it just to the left of the box, puts enough English on it that William Shakespeare would be proud of, and gets his two points while falling to the hardwood.

It was a spectacular play. Some who were at the game say it was an all-timer.

"I couldn't believe my eyes," recalled Magic Johnson. "It's still the greatest move I've ever seen in a basketball game, the all-time greatest."

Interviewed a couple of years after the fact, Johnson was still in awe.

"We had him cut off and there was no way to go for him but out of bounds," Johnson said. "So he jumped in the air out of bounds. And he's floating and he spun it real high off the top of glass [Erving actually kissed it off the glass below the box].

"My mouth was like [wide open]. And I looked at Coop [teammate Michael Cooper] and he looks at me and I said to him, 'Hey Coop, you think we should ask him to do it again [laughing]?' "

Jones, who put Erving in motion, had his doubts on whether Doc would complete the play.

"I didn't think the ball was going to go in," Jones said soon afterward. "I thought that he was going to be stretched so far that he was not going to get it up there. But it wasn't even close to not going in. It was a beautiful shot. And all you can do is just say, 'Wow!' "

All the Lakers could do after the shot was call a timeout.

"I don't know how he ever got the ball back in a position to shoot," Sixers guard Lionel Hollins said after the game. "That was incredible."

Coach Billy Cunningham, who had watched Doc operate in the ABA, was equally astonished.

"It's gotta be in his Top 5," Cunningham said. "It was three moves in one."

As for Erving himself, he was taking - as usual - a different approach.

"I couldn't feel what happened," Erving said postgame. "It took a funny bounce and went in. I guess I made it do that."

Erving, who finished the game with 23 points, five rebounds, three assists and a block, took the game over at that point. He scored 10 of the Sixers' last 16 points. He hit two foul shots after the reverse layup, hit an 18-foot baseline jumper, hit two more foul shots and then one swooping finger roll that was Ervingesque.

With the Sixers heading to Game 5, Doc was asked what he called the move. Not a move namer like teammate Darryl Dawkins, Erving simply said, "A reverse layup."

The media chuckled knowing they had witnessed the reverse layup of all reverse layups.

"I didn't plan it," Erving said later. "A bigger force than I allowed that to happen."

The Sixers dropped Game 5 in Los Angeles, 108-105, despite Doc's 36 points. But Abdul-Jabbar went for 40 in what would be his series finale. He left things up to Johnson, the 20-year-old phenom, to take care of business in Game 6, which unfortunately for the Sixers, he did.