Donny Dodds ‘was a magician,’ Delaware County’s Pete Maravich
"Donny, without question, was the best player on the floor."
Pat Purcell, if you don’t know him, was a basketball star at Malvern Prep, went on to play at Delaware.
“I played a lot of basketball, against a lot of people,” Purcell said this week, thinking back to summer leagues, high school tournaments, all of it.
Getting on the phone, Purcell had a list he wanted to share.
“The best five players I ever played against …”
Ralph Sampson — Purcell played against the legendary Virginia big man in college. Virginia played Delaware? “At Delaware,” Purcell said. Then there were Gene Banks, Michael Brooks, and Reggie Jackson — high school matchups … against three of the best Philadelphia ever produced. West Philadelphia High, West Catholic, Roman Catholic.
The last spot on the all-Purcell five, high school or college.
“Donny Dodds,” Purcell said.
When Dodds died this month, age 62, texts started coming in about him from well-known Philadelphia basketball figures.
“Hundreds of stories …”
“This could be a Netflix film …”
That last one was Penn coach Steve Donahue, who grew up in Morton, just up the road. The next text was from Phil Martelli, who remembered seeing Dodds for the first time as a seventh-grader when Martelli played at nearby Widener: “Best grade-school player I ever saw. … Playing for St. Robert’s [of Chester], saw him get 56 vs. triangle-and-two — both guys guarding him.”
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Jim Rowe, son of the late Widener coach C. Alan Rowe, noted on Facebook how Dodds would show up at the college to “play pickup before our season started and he basically was unstoppable. Even when some of the Sixers would run full court with us back in the day, they couldn’t stop him.”
Dodds was class of ‘78, St. James High. If you check the list of great local high school players, class of ‘78, there’s another name, Purcell.
“He and I were very close,” Purcell, who grew up in Upper Darby, messaged back. “I’m going to go through all the scrapbooks that my father made for my two brothers and I …”
Purcell knew the name Dodds was all over those scrapbooks. He got them out, texted over a bunch of photos.
“The very first picture,” Purcell said over the phone, was from an eighth-grade CYO all-star game, where one player from each region played, at the Palestra. “We had one practice. Donny, without question, was the best player on the floor.”
True at the game, too. But the practice was the first time Purcell ever saw Dodds.
“We’re 13 years old,” Purcell said. “He’s looking to his left, and then the ball ends up to the right. Kind of like Maravich used to do. He was Pistol Pete Maravich. He was effortless. If you can picture what Iverson did to Michael Jordan one night, that crossover. I swear I’ll die by this — Donny Dodds invented that.”
As they got to know each other, Purcell said he’d bring up Maravich’s name. Dodds didn’t want to hear it.
“He wanted to be Donny Dodds,” Purcell said. “He didn’t want to be Pete Maravich. You’d see he got 25 points, and the team had 50. It didn’t tell half the story. The other 25 were because of him, with all the razzle-dazzle and the assists. He would look to dish it off, behind the back, through the legs first.”
Height listed at anywhere from 5-foot-9 to 5-11, Dodds maybe was closer to 5-8. It did not matter.
“He was a magician,” Purcell said. “We were teammates in summer leagues, so many summer leagues back then. We were actually on a travel team before there were travel teams. We went to Baltimore for a week. Donny would take over the show. You walk on the court, they’ve got 6-8, 6-8, a 6-2 guard, 6-3 … here comes a guy strolling out with long hair who is 5-9. Who is that guy? Three minutes into any game, they found out who he was.”
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What would Purcell’s role be? “To be ready at any second,” he said. “He would jive and juke, the average person didn’t expect to get the ball while he was doing his thing. But I knew he would do his thing until I had an open 15- or 20-footer. The biggest thing I had to do was be ready at all times. The ball would appear in your hands, unbeknownst to the defense and anybody else.”
The summer leagues could be a show.
“One game, we probably combined for 90,” Purcell said.
The legend of Dodds included some basic facts. He explained in interviews that he wasn’t looking really keen on commuting up to St. Joseph’s Prep from Chester, but his parents thought the academics at the Prep were best for him. Dodds once related how he kind of flunked himself out after his sophomore year, after being the second-leading scorer in the Philadelphia Catholic League, including putting 35 on St. John Neumann in 1976.
He transferred back to St. James, blocks away from his house, and the Catholic League, in its infinite wisdom, declared him ineligible — so Dodds played junior varsity that year.
“Best JV player in the history of the Catholic League,” Purcell said.
Ted Silary used to have fun with all-this and all-that teams in the Daily News. For the years 1975-84, Silary printed various categories, including a “That’s-Entertainment Team.” First team, Donny Dodds. (Purcell was on the Midas-Touch all-decade first-team, for purest shooters.)
After another varsity season, first-team all-Southern Division, Dodds moved on to Temple, recruited by the Owls, but school wasn’t really his thing, by his own admission. He never played Division I ball again after those 26 games off the Owls’ bench.
That would all be part of the Netflix series.
“He was real, real interested in basketball,” Purcell said. “Not so much with school.”
Purcell relates that Dodds, who coached for a time, was a dear friend through the years, one of the first to call when Purcell had open-heart surgery in 2017. Same thing in 2019 … “I was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung and liver cancer. I’m 33 months in remission.”
It’s been a tough week, Purcell said, losing this man. Maybe Dodds didn’t reach the heights attained by Pistol Pete, but in Delaware County and around Philadelphia, if you saw this man, you did not forget him. A walking AND1 highlight tape, years ahead of all that.
“Maravich was a magician,” Purcell said. “I thought Larry Bird was a magician. Magic Johnson was a magician. When we were kids, Earl the Pearl [Monroe, from Bartram High] was a magician …”
Purcell said all that for a reason, to lay down an historical marker from his own days on the court.
“... Donny Dodds was a magician.”