Brooklyn Nets: Top 5 Postseason Series of NBA and ABA

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2. 1976 ABA Finals

Spoiler alert: the next slide is the 1974 Finals. Sorry for giving it away, but it would be a sin to exclude any championship the Nets won. 1976 was the ABA’s last season and the end of a terrific three-year run by Julius Erving.

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It was a six-game slugfest that featured three Hall-of-Famers and zero defense. Erving, in his true fashion, dominated from the onset. He averaged 37.7 points and single-handedly won the war against the two-headed monster that was David Thompson and Dan Issel. The highlight was a 31-point, 19-rebound performance in Game 6, and the Doctor was the leader for the Nets’ 14-point fourth-quarter comeback. In that same contest, Thompson and Issel dropped 42 and 30, respectively.

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This series was peak Erving, and it paints his dominance of the ABA. Game 7 wasn’t even his most jaw-dropping performance — that came in a loss, oddly enough. In the second contest, the Doctor went 17-of-26 from the field and 12-of-16 from the foul line in his 48-point effort. That didn’t suffice. Erving finished two assists shy of a triple-double and hauled in 14 boards just for good measure.

New York’s final four games didn’t see the same outrageous volume from him, but Erving remained the incredibly efficient slasher and was the catalyst for the run.