9-73 Sixers don't define Fred Carter

FRED CARTER doesn't mind being remembered as a loser. He embraces the idea.

Actually, he embraces the idea of being remembered - period. One wouldn't think that by the way Carter played the game, he'd even entertain the possibility of being associated with a loser's legacy. After all, he was nicknamed "Mad Dog" after biting Bullets teammate Ray Scott during a practice. But Carter's logic is that it's always good to be remembered for something. And if it's being remembered as the best player on the worst team in the history of the NBA, so be it.

Which is why whenever a team comes close to approaching the 1972-73 Sixers' 9-73 record of ineptness, Carter gets nervous. People might forget about him.

"I learned a long, long time ago that it's better to be remembered than not be remembered at all," said Carter, who lives in East Norriton. "You're only going to be the best or the worst to be remembered. We remember Super Bowl champions, but the runners-up are never remembered. But the best teams and the worst teams are the ones that are always remembered."

His old team is getting Carter nervous. With 16 games left, the Sixers are 9-57, having lost 13 of 14 games. But as long as the Brooklyn Nets are around, the Sixers will have a chance of winning. And the Sixers play the Nets, whom they beat Friday, on Tuesday night with a chance at win No. 10. The Sixers haven't beaten a non-Nets team since Jan. 26.

"For a while there, I thought I was home free because I thought they would get it," Carter said. "But all of a sudden, they dropped (13) straight."

And it's not like the Sixers can find easy wins on the schedule.

"From the Sixers' standpoint, they're not playing any bad teams," Carter said. "They are the bad team bad teams are playing against. The Sixers can't pencil in the schedule and say, 'That's a win and that's a win,' because those other teams are looking at them as, 'That's a win and that's a win.' "

Carter learned all about winning in his two-plus seasons with the Baltimore Bullets. Playing with Wes Unseld, Earl Monroe, Gus Johnson, Kevin Loughery and Jack Marin helped the young Carter learn what it took to become a successful NBA player.

In his second season, Carter helped the Bullets reach the NBA Finals, knocking down the game-clinching shot against the Knicks in the seventh game of the Eastern Conference Finals, in Madison Square Garden no less, cementing his legacy in Bullets lore.

But then on Oct. 18, 1971, just two games into the 1971-72 season, the winning halted. Looking for an All-Star guard to pair with Monroe, the Bullets acquired Archie Clark from the Sixers in exchange for Carter and Loughery. The Baltimore duo joined a Sixers team that would finish 30-52.

At first, the trade rattled Carter; he wasn't sure how to take it.

"I was disappointed first of all because we'd just come off the Finals," said Carter, who is back with the Bullets/Wizards franchise as a scout. "And I made the jump shot to put us in there. Frankly, I felt betrayed. I felt like that was disloyal because I had just committed myself to the Bullets. And all of a sudden you're going to trade me?

"I wasn't a troublemaker. I was a hard worker, never late, never late for practice. But I didn't know the business then."

Coming home softened the blow. As did getting traded with Loughery.

"Kevin and I were good friends," Carter said. "And it was amazing because I was a threat to take his job in the backcourt. It was he and Pearl (Monroe) and then it became Pearl and I. Yet we remained good friends."

Just as the season ended, head coach Jack Ramsay announced he was leaving and eventually took the coaching job with the Buffalo Braves. And on the same day the Sixers were announcing Roy Rubin as Ramsay's successor, they lost franchise player Billy Cunningham to the American Basketball Association's Carolina Cougars.

The 1972-73 season was already off to an inauspicious start. Carter did not anticipate being a part of history.

"I didn't see it coming," the 71-year-old Carter said. "We started off the year with Roy Rubin. We go to training camp and Rubin has all these collegiate rules for the locker room, which just wouldn't pass in the pro game. Roy didn't know that. I guess he should have discussed it with the general manager (Don DeJardin) that this was a different game, a man's game."

The sign that the team was really heading in a bad direction under Rubin came after a preseason win over the Boston Celtics. Rubin, previously the head coach at Long Island University, acted like he had just won the NBA championship.

"He's running and raving, '(Screw) the Celtics. I told you guys we could win, that we're winners. We can win, we can win games. We just beat the Boston Celtics,' '' Carter recalled. "Kevin Loughery and I just look at each other and say, 'He doesn't know that they didn't play to win.' He didn't know that they put their third unit in, guys who weren't going to be there when the season started. He didn't know that. That's when we looked at each other and said, 'We're in trouble.' ''

For Carter and Loughery, it was obvious they weren't in Baltimore anymore.

"We looked around the locker room and we didn't see Earl the Pearl, we didn't see Wes Unseld, we didn't see Jack Marin, and God rest his soul, Gus Johnson," Carter said. "But we didn't know it was going to be that bad."

Bad is what the 2015-16 Sixers are going through right now. Losing almost 90 percent of your games can be tough. Getting motivated to dig deep can be a tedious chore. If anyone knows that, it's Carter. So, where does that motivation come from?

"Two phrases: Respect yourself and respect the game," Carter said. "Don't roll over. Don't give in. Because it's so easy to not come ready to play. If we lose, it's not our fault; it's management's fault. We didn't put us together."

It's realizing you have to play the hand you're dealt. Just like the 1972-73 team, the 2015-16 team is built mostly on contingent players.

"When we were 9-and-73, we knew that management put all these bench players together to make a starting team," Carter said. "So we never had dissension or finger-pointing or guys being mad at each other, because we knew."

But looking back, Carter has no regrets. Coming from a family of six with a domestic worker for a mom and a dad who was a junk collector ("We were Sanford and Son before Sanford and Son") and an alcoholic, those humble beginnings from near 20th and Girard helped shape Carter. But it was one Friday afternoon that turned his life around, an afternoon that defies explanation.

"I drop out of Ben Franklin (High School)," Carter said. "My buddy and I pass the test for the Army. My girlfriend at that time was going to Cheyney (University) for freshman orientation, so I went up there with her on a Sunday. Meanwhile, on Friday, when we took the test, there was no one there to swear us in, which was unheard of in the military because no one leaves their post. So we didn't have to swear in. If I did, I was gone (to the service).

"I go with my girlfriend to Cheyney and I see these guys over at Cheyney who I knew that I was smarter than. I knew that. There was no ifs, ands or buts. Then when I got home that night, I had made up my mind to go back to school."

Monday morning, the Army calls the Carter house.

" 'Where are you, son?' '' Carter remembers the caller asking. "I said, 'I'm going back to school.'

" 'If you don't, we'll get ya.' They never did."

From that day on, Carter has felt there was a higher power with a better plan for him. He earned his high school diploma at Temple University High School, was spotted in a Philadelphia summer league all-star game by Jim Phelan from Mount Saint Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Md., got drafted in the third round of the 1969 NBA draft by the Bullets, and the rest is history.

"In the book Jeremiah, God says, 'For I know the plans I have for you,' " Carter recited. "And I know he had a plan for me because he moved that guy (at the recruiting office). He gave the guy a reason not to go to work, maybe his wife was sick or something. Can you imagine that day turned my life around? God knew the plans he had for me and it wasn't Vietnam."

The rest of the passage from Jeremiah 29:11-13, is "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

So going 9-73 and playing for Roy Rubin was part of a plan?

"That 9-73 was part of my life that was a building block," said Carter, who attends Mass every Sunday. "It wasn't a negative. It strengthened me. It taught me how to get through hard times, the pitfalls of life. Again, respect yourself, respect the game. Respect yourself, respect life.

"Nine-73 certainly did not identify me. It did not make me who I am. But it strengthened me to be who I am. And there's a difference."

Respect yourself, respect the game.