Unconventional career path doesn’t even begin to cover it
A word that gets thrown around a lot in athletic discussions today is “unique.”
Well, it is safe to say that the path Swen Nater followed to play 11 professional seasons in the ABA and NBA and one in Italy was indeed unique.
For starters, Nater never played high school basketball.
On his website, Nater described how he eventually emigrated to the U.S. from the Netherlands at age 9, a journey than ended with the boy and his sister, Renee, being reunited with their parents and younger brother, Ibo, on national television.
By the time he was a junior at Los Angeles’ Wilson High School, Nater had grown to 6-foot-4 and was the second-tallest student in the school. But he was cut from the basketball team and didn’t try out as a senior.
Yes, a professional basketball player who never played in high school. If you’re thinking that’s rare, it is.
Through a series of providential events, Nater wound up at Cypress Community College in Orange County, discovered by their coach at the time, Don Johnson, who had been an All-American at UCLA under legendary coach John Wooden.
That discovery, according to Wooden in the video below, came at a gas station where Nater was working after graduating high school.
Nater improved rapidly at Cypress and Johnson reached out to Wooden about the Dutch immigrant. Wooden offered Nater a scholarship while being very direct about the fact the kid might not play much at all.
That was because Nater would be playing behind Bill Walton for the Bruins.
Nater said his time with Wooden, Walton and the Bruins was incredibly beneficial, more so than had he gone just about anywhere else and started every game.
When asked about his decision and his time at UCLA, Nater described it in one word.
"“Priceless. Just priceless. I worked very, very hard to catch up and getting to work against Bill every day in practice was very beneficial, that and being coached by Coach Wooden. I got more experience in practice than if I had gone to another school and started, because I was playing against the best team in the country every day. “It was either find a way to make it, or you become like some of those guys who sit on the bench and go through the motions in practice because they gave up. I just kept working.”"
In 1973, Nater became the first player in the history of the NBA Draft to be selected in the first round after playing at an NCAA school without starting a single game. If North Carolina’s Nassir Little goes in the first round next month, he would become just the second player to have done so.
Nater had been drafted by the ABA’s Floridians in 1972 and the Virginia Squires had acquired his rights after the Floridians folded. Nater had been drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA and rather than go back up another all-time great big man from UCLA, Nater signed with Virginia.
He didn’t stay there long. The perennially cash-strapped Squires sold Nater to the San Antonio Spurs, where he finished the season, earning ABA Rookie of the Year and All-ABA second team honors.
After leading the ABA with an average of 16.4 rebounds per game for the Spurs in 1974-75, Nater was acquired by the Nets in a trade for Larry Kenon in June 1975.
The problem was that Nater had finished the 1974-75 season playing on a broken knee cap in his left knee and was recovering from offseason surgery that slowed him to start the next season.
The Nets ultimately traded Nater back to Virginia in late January 1976.
He spoke highly of his time with the Nets, however, and the joy of getting to play even a half a season with Julius Erving.
"“He was a great player and a good guy, too. After an away game, the rest of us would get on the bus and go back to the hotel, but Doc would stay and sign autographs until he signed the last one, then take a cab back to the hotel. He did that every single road game. You don’t see that today.”"
The the ABA and NBA about to merge, Nater made the jump to the NBA, signing with Milwaukee on June 9, 1976, about a month after the Virginia franchise had been folded by the ABA.
Nater said the qualify of play in the ABA is better than many of today’s fans and analysts realize, but also said it varied largely by team.
"“I mean, Virginia? We were horrible. (Owner Earl) Foreman had sold everybody, so we didn’t have any players. But you get New York and Kentucky together, it was a great game. Denver, San Antonio, Indiana all played great games in front of a lot of people. “The difference was that the NBA had two, or sometimes three, superstars on a team. In the ABA, you had just one. But we played exhibition games against the NBA and (the ABA) came out .500. “Those NBA guys always said the same thing, ‘We like that 3-pointer a lot.’ John Havlicek pushed for it at the 1976 All-Star Game and it wasn’t too long after that (1979-80) that it was implemented.”"