USBL Philadelphia Spirit gathers three decades later to remember a championship season

That group standing by the front windows at the Landmark Americana just across 54th street from Hagan Arena — as a group of older men, in a basketball-adjacent place like this, they got noticed … Tony Costner and Rodney Blake, St. Joseph’s Hawks of consequence in the 1980s, attract attention whenever they show up by their old haunt.

Who were these other men who kept getting joined by more people? Jim Lynam, for instance, walked in, started chatting up the group.

Were they all Hawks? Nope, just all pros.

This group of mostly Philly ballplayers banded together as the Philadelphia Spirit to win the 1991 United States Basketball League title. (I remember it, since I wrote the Inquirer game story.)

It made sense to have a reunion near St. Joe’s before a Hawks game because Spirit head coach Bill Lange is the father of Billy Lange, now the Hawks coach. The Duquesne game made sense because Ron Dick, one of Lange’s assistants, now is a marketing professor at Duquesne.

The Spirit roster was like a who’s who of local hoopsters … leading scorer Michael Anderson from Drexel at the point, second top scorer Tim Legler from La Salle at shooting guard, Blake from St. Joe’s and Dallas Comegys from Roman Catholic High and DePaul at the forwards, Costner from Overbrook and St. Joe’s at center.

Most of the five made it to this little reunion put together by Jim Clibanoff, now the vice president of scouting for the Denver Nuggets, then just out of Tufts University, who offered his services as Spirit personnel director.

The Cheltenham High alum got the job since nobody else had thought about there being such a job.

The concept of the Spirit was simple … Many of these players, some with significant NBA experience already, were off in the summer from either playing in the Continental Basketball Association or overseas. Why not get together, pick up $500 a week or so, have an apartment thrown in, play at Holy Family?

It worked like a charm for a couple of years. Comegys, for instance, was making high six figures in Italy. Who got him involved?

“Probably this knucklehead,” said Comegys, pointing to Anderson, sitting next to him at the Landmark. Anderson also was making good money in Spain at the time. Comegys talked to Paul “Snoop” Graham, Ben Franklin and Ohio U grad — Graham was in, and ended up being the Spirit sixth man, scoring 25 points in the title game, just before signing a three-year deal with the Atlanta Hawks.

They all had their roles. Blake pointed to some framed photos Lange had spread out by the windows.

“What do you see there?” Blake asked about the four photos.

He answered the riddle himself. Himself, Graham, Legler, and Costner were all featured. Look at what they were doing.

“Shot … shot … shot …”

Blake got to his photo … “Only one not shooting,” said that team’s primary defensive stopper.

But if someone was shooting too much, one of them said, they all had the standing to say, Hey, give it up a little.

“This was in the days before two-way contracts and G League assignments. I think this was one of the best minor league teams,” Clibanoff said, and he meant ever. “They knew each other, had played in the [Sonny] Hill League together. To have it during the summer, it came together in two months.”

Lange was coaching at Bishop Eustace High at the time, but the high school coach had the respect of this group, treating them like pros. Lange did tell a tale of one time that got slightly sidetracked. A couple of starters asked if they could travel to a game in North Jersey separately. He thought about it, sure.

“They arrived 15 minutes before the game,” Lange said.

And the Spirit was quickly getting trounced. At halftime, Lange lit into them all. After halftime, they got it going, won going away.

“Great speech,” Lange remembers Comegys telling him right after the game.

Then Comegys added about the fiery speech, “Never do that again.”

Trust the pros to be pros. Some younger players picked it up on the fly. Did Emanual Davis, a Kensington High graduate straight out of Delaware State, know he could hold his own with players he had looked up to for years?

“No, absolutely not,” Davis said.

“I haven’t seen him in 30 years,” Blake said when Davis walked in.

“I haven’t seen him in 10 years, but he doesn’t remember,” Davis said of Blake. “Maybe it was 20 years.”

If there’s a poster child for an all-time Spirit success story, it could be Davis. He’s convinced the summer of 1991 changed his life.

“I was a small forward in high school,” Davis said. “Maybe power forward.”

But he played in the Donofrio in Conshohocken, where Delaware State’s coach approached him.

“I want you to play point guard,” Davis remembers the coach saying, and Davis remembers himself responding, “You talking to me?”

Whatever the coach saw, he’d nailed it. The 6-foot-4 Davis became a guard. He broke his right arm and continued to play, he said, and even that helped him, developing his left.

“Crazy,” Davis said.

Ron Dick, a Spirit assistant coach, remembers going to Delaware State to look at another Davis on Delaware State, the team’s top scorer. He came away impressed by the Davis from Philly. Clibanoff also liked him. They kidded each other at the Landmark about who really “discovered” Davis.

“Every winner has multiple fathers — failure is an orphan,” Dick said, adding that it wasn’t like they thought they’d uncovered this incredible gem. “We passed on him nine times, took him in the 10th round.”

All this is remembered because Davis was an all-star as Spirit seventh man, after a couple of teammates couldn’t make the game, went on to be defensive player of the year in the CBA, then played 226 NBA games in six seasons with Houston, Seattle, and Atlanta, starting 62.

“His daughter [Tiffany] has a national championship ring playing for Dawn [Staley at South Carolina,]” Clibanoff mentioned.

For those couple of years, Spirit games were kind of a central summer gathering place for Philly hoops. Former Rowan head coach Joe Cassidy relates how when Eddie Burke was out at Drexel in 1991, that meant Cassidy was out as an assistant. Rob Wilson, Drexel’s sports information director at the time, handled PR for the Spirit. One time, Wilson needed someone to do the scorebook and asked Cassidy if he wanted to do it. Sure, he wasn’t doing anything else.

Cassidy got there, ran into Spirit assistant coach Joe Betteridge, Lange’s assistant both at Eustace and with the Spirit. Betteridge asked Cassidy if he knew new Rowan head coach John Giannini, that Giannini was looking for an assistant. The rest of Cassidy’s working life — decades working in Glassboro as assistant and then head coach — happened because he’d walked in Holy Family’s gym one time.

They’d tried to have a reunion before, but life got in the way, and the pandemic got in the way of a 30th. The team was allowed six veterans and four rookies … and generally kept 12 on the roster in case of injuries. Chris Gardler, just out of St. Joe’s, made the team as a rookie from a tryout.

At the reunion, Anthony Mason stories got passed around. Before he was a star for the Knicks, Mason had been with the USBL Long Island Surf. Blake had played against Mason in the CBA. Dick still remembers Blake’s scouting report: “He jumps pretty well. He’s a tremendous ballhandler for, like, a power forward. He’s a great passer, can shoot it a little bit, from 10-15 feet. Most of all, he’s incredibly mean.”

As if to prove all that true, Mason purposefully smashed a basketball into Comegys’ face, held on to it, somehow put it in the hoop, inexplicably picking up a foul call from a ref who hadn’t seen what had really just happened.

“We were all off the bench,” Dick said.

One game, Mason was in the hallway, holding his own assistant coach up at the wall. But he brought his mother to the USBL All-Star Game, “brought her everywhere, was incredibly nice when he was with her,” Lange said.

Lange coached Mason in that all-star game, let him play point guard for a time, which worked out great. Mason found Lange at a game later in the season, told him next summer, he’d be with Lange, “you and me, wherever you are.” Except Mason went to the Knicks, and Lange returned to the Spirit. Mason, who died in 2015, eventually played in an NBA All-Star Game.

Clibanoff brought the stat sheet from that year … These Spirit players didn’t just shoot, they scored. Anderson averaged 23.7, Legler 19.5, Comegys 18.8, Graham 17.8, Costner 12.9. This may have been the best basketball team ever in Philadelphia that was not in the NBA. (Think about it, the sixth and seventh men both went on to the NBA, and most of the starters spent some time in the NBA.)

“An absurdly short time,” Clibanoff said of his one Spirit summer that changed his life, after he walked in a side door that nobody else knew existed.

The championship game, Anderson had hit two free throws with seven seconds left to lock up a 110-108 victory over the Miami Tropics.

There were no big speeches at the Landmark. They’d gone on to productive lives, as teachers, coaches — Davis and Comegys help out at Community College of Philadelphia — in business, as real estate investors. Legler was on ESPN later that night analyzing Denver. This group didn’t need to be told what they’d done on a basketball court.

“We were the last professional [basketball] team in Philadelphia to win a championship,” Lange pointed out.