Sixers fans hated Big Shot. Then a guy from Bridesburg made the mascot come alive.

One in a series of stories remembering the 1982-83 76ers, one of the NBA’s best teams ever.

Joe Kempo was a few games into his gig as Big Shot, the fuzzy blue something in a Sixers uniform and Converse sneakers, when he dared to climb to the third level of The Spectrum.

Kempo won a tryout, outlasting 50 others in 1982 for the right to resuscitate the mascot that fans jeered so much that it was taken out of the lineup for a few seasons. So what better way to win over the crowd than to travel to the cheap seats?

“I’m all pumped up and I hear, ‘Hey, look it’s Big Shot. Come up here and see if your hair lights on fire,’” Kempo said. “‘Oh crap.’ I barreled my ass down the stairs. It was like they wanted to kill me.”

Kempo’s first season as Big Shot ended 40 years ago with a parade down Broad Street after the Sixers won the 1983 NBA championship. But it started with his first and last trip to the third level. In between, the guy who grew up on Melrose Street in Bridesburg found a way to make the fans fall for Big Shot.

“Philly, they love you or they hate you. There’s not much in between,” Kempo said. “We hung in there and tried to get creative.”

The Sixers introduced their new mascot in 1979 but called the sunglasses-wearing thing “It” for three months until settling on a name. It was the team’s response to the Phillie Phanatic, an instant hit after arriving in South Philly a year earlier from the Galapagos Islands.

“It” simply appeared at a Sunday afternoon game without a name or backstory. The Sixers even hired the same costume designers — New York’s Harrison and Erickson — to create their mascot. But “It” was no Phanatic.

Pat Williams, the team’s general manager, had successfully created mascots in Chicago and Atlanta but his attempt with the Sixers was an air ball.

“We tried to get it going and couldn’t,” said Williams, as the first Big Shot was a member of the team’s sales department. “It just never clicked.”

The Sixers had Julius Erving and reached the 1977 NBA Finals yet struggled to fill The Spectrum. They hired Lou Scheinfeld as their new president in 1980 and his first move was to can Big Shot. More than 50 people, Scheinfeld said, complained about Big Shot. So he was gone. Scheinfeld resigned after a season and Big Shot returned to the court.

The mascot still missed the mark. The Sixers needed the right person inside, Williams said. So they held an open tryout at a hotel in South Philly and Kempo — who worked as disc jockey, performed as a rodeo clown at a country-western club, and did magic tricks as a teenager — took a shot. The North Catholic grad was their guy.

“They said you’re our No. 1 choice,” Kempo said. “I was never a fan, really, even though I lived in Philadelphia all my life. But I said, ‘Great, I’ll take it.’”

Going to the upper deck wasn’t the way turn the crowd so Kempo tried something else. Other mascots around the league were slam dunking off trampolines but they weren’t doing it with a costume like this.

“It was about 30 to 40 pounds and got even heavier as you sweated. This was one big jumpsuit,” Kempo said. “I had probably the biggest suit ever to slam dunk in. I couldn’t do anything fancy. I could barely make the rim on the slam. But it just looked funny. This fat guy jumping up and slamming it in there.”

The dunks were a hit — Sports Illustrated featured a photo of Big Shot soaring off his trampoline in Feb. of 1983 — and Kempo decided to add some flair. He dragged a Larry Bird dummy onto the court when the Celtics were in town and placed it onto his trampoline. He was going to dunk over Bird but M.L. Carr came off the bench and ripped the dummy away. The crowd groaned as Big Shot retrieved his prop.

“I grabbed the dummy, slammed it down on the trampoline, and said ‘I better not miss this dunk’ because every once in a while I missed,” Kempo said. “I came running full steam, I hit that dummy, jumped off the trampoline, and I never got so high in my life. I almost saw the top of the rim. I slammed that thing and it was awesome.”

The beef with Big Shot before Kempo got in the suit was that he didn’t have any personality. The Phanatic wasn’t a hit just because of the costume but because the guy inside — former Phillies intern Dave Raymond — injected life into the furry green outfit. Kempo tried to do the same, seeing Big Shot as a cross between The Fonz and Fat Albert.

One thing Kempo did not want Big Shot to be was The Phanatic. He knew how popular the Phils’ flightless bird was and didn’t want to be a rip-off. The Phanatic thrusted his stomach so Big Shot wiggled his from side-to-side. The Phanatic blew out his tongue and Big Shot blew a whistle.

To Kempo, Big Shot was “cool and laid back with a very friendly personality.” He was a little mischievous (“If he was coming down the aisle and saw a baldheaded guy, he’d stick a plunger on his head,” Kempo said), he loved the ladies (“Nothing raunchy,” Kempo said) and he loved to dance.

» READ MORE: After 40 years, PhanaVision is part of the Phillies ‘show.’ It just got even bigger.

The Sixers gave Big Shot the floor during the second timeout of the third quarter, so Kempo had to be ready for the stoppage and hoped it came after the home team went on a run so the crowd would be in a frenzy. That’s exactly what happened for his first dance: a Michael Jackson routine featuring Big Shot moonwalking wearing a leather jacket and sequined glove. The crowd — and even the Jazz players as they peeked from their huddle — loved it.

“Joe Kempo was a great performer,” said Raymond, who performed as The Phanatic for 16 years. “He was a D.J. so he understood music and had a real connection to how crowds were affected by music. Joe did a marvelous job. If you were a Sixers fan like I was — I was a huge Sixers fan and went to all their games because that was the team I could actually be there as a spectator — Joe was fabulous.

“Completely lost. No one mentions his name. He was really great. As good as anyone I’ve seen in costume. He was very smart and understood how to create tension, build that up, and then have some comedy involved.”

Kempo was Big Shot at night and a salesman during the day. He often gave his four season tickets to clients, brought them to the locker room, and visited their seat once the costume was on. The job had perks. It ended that first season with a championship and the crowd was hot every night.

But a decade later, the Sixers had a bottom-feeding team with one of the NBA’s worst attendance marks. The crowds that loved Big Shot were no longer packing The Spectrum. Some nights, they even told Kempo to skip his dance routine when the timeout was called as the crowd seemed hostile.

The Sixers were soon sold and new president Pat Croce said the franchise needed to undergo “a revolution.” That revolution did not include Big Shot. Kempo drove the costume to New York in 1996 and watched it get stuffed into a closet at Harrison and Erickson.

“It was sad,” Kempo said.

There were rumblings 10 years ago that Big Shot was coming back when the team eliminated his replacement, Hip-Hop. Kempo said he was hoping for another chance to wear the costume or even just teach someone his tricks. The Sixers instead unveiled Franklin, a blue dog.

Kempo now lives in southern Virginia, about an hour from Richmond. He works in sales and performs at a restaurant twice a week as “Wally the Wacky Waiter,” a character he created. Getting into a costume, he said, is like flipping a switch. It’s been 40 years since he first turned on the switch, but Kempo still can’t get the furry guy out of his head.

“I have these dreams where I’m getting ready to go out and I forgot my shoes or I forgot my hands or I forgot my head,” Kempo said. “It’s so weird. It still comes back to me after all these years. That character kind of locks in and sticks with you.”