Nearly six decades after the fact, Point Loma resident John Block still shakes his head in disbelief when he tells the story. It was the night he, a second-year NBA player with the first-year expansion team San Diego Rockets, dunked on 11-time NBA champion and Hall of Famer Bill Russell, the centerpiece of the Boston Celtics’ dynasty in the late 1950s and 1960s.
“Oh my gosh,” Block, 81, re saying to himself as he jogged back down the floor. “I just dunked on Bill Russell. I can’t believe it.”
It was Dec. 15, 1967, part of a neutral-site doubleheader at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Block, a natural power forward at 6-foot-9, was often pushed into playing center for the undersized Rockets, who lacked a true starting big man. The team rotated Hank Finkel and Toby Kimball in the middle, but more often than not, Block was left to battle the league’s giants. That night, it was Russell.
“He was shading out to the corner,” Block recalled. “I gave him a fake, stepped through, drove middle — and went up. He went up, too. I dunked it with both hands.”
Block finished with 27 points to Russell’s 12.
And then there was the league’s first modern Goliath: Wilt Chamberlain, standing 7-foot-1.
“Wilt, of course, was unbelievable,” Block said. “His physical presence was overwhelming in so many ways, and he could play. I got to play with 14 or 15 Hall of Famers in my career, and I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made that Wilt is the greatest player of all time. I’d say he’s the best big-man athlete that ever lived. He was stronger than anybody, could run as fast as any point guard and could jump high. He was just incredible.”
Block, who grew up in Glendale and attended USC, played 10 years in the NBA. After spending his rookie season with the Los Angeles Lakers, he came to San Diego in the 1967 expansion draft.
“For the whole season with the Lakers, I only played 118 minutes,” said Block, who played with the Rockets during their entire four-season run in San Diego. “I do not recall how I found out [about the expansion draft], but my response to that was elation. I was going to go to a team and have a chance to play.”
With the Rockets, Block found a cash-strapped team that struggled to win games.
“[Ownership] was doing it on a shoestring,” Block said. “Back in those days, it was hard. The stress of the travel was a killer. We played 13 or 14 games in 17 days once, all over the country, and you had to take care of your own uniform. I don’t think [owner] Bob Breitbard knew what to do or how to do it.”
For the inaugural season, Block averaged a team-high 20 points per game.
In Year 2, the Rockets drafted future Hall of Famer and volume scorer Elvin Hayes.
With Hayes, the Rockets improved from 15 wins to 37, making the playoffs for the only time during their stay in San Diego.
“I always knew Elvin was going to get his shot off and I was going to get his offensive rebound. I lived on that,” Block said. “He had a turnaround bank shot and you knew where he was going to shoot it. … There were no bad egos in the group. I liked Elvin a lot [though] he was a little strange. I got him into horses. We rode in the Coronado Easter parade together.”
In their fourth and final season in San Diego, the Rockets won 40 games and attendance was on the rise. The city even hosted the NBA All-Star Game that year, but persistent financial troubles — including a burdensome tax assessment tied to the San Diego Sports Arena — led to the franchise’s abrupt sale to a Houston-based group.
“Toward the end we were averaging 9,000 [fans a game] — not bad, but [ownership] didn’t build a fan base,” Block said. “When I was with the Lakers, they spent six weeks going around the county to high schools doing basketball clinics, investing in the community. Well, the Rockets didn’t do any of that. We weren’t engaging the community to bring the community together around basketball.”
When the Rockets relocated to Houston in 1971, Block wasn’t part of the move. Instead, he ed the Milwaukee Bucks, playing alongside basketball legends Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That season, in January 1972, Block scored 17 points in a victory that snapped the Lakers’ historic 33-game winning streak.
Block went on to play in Philadelphia, Kansas City, New Orleans and finally Chicago.
“I injured my back severely in an exhibition game my last year and never really recovered from that,” Block said. “I was talking to the Lakers, but my rehab wasn’t really coming along, and one day my wife [Margie] and I just looked at each other and said, ‘I think my career is over.’”
Block transitioned into coaching, taking head coaching roles at UC San Diego, Gordon College, Bethany College and Point Loma Nazarene University, where he retired after the 2002 season.
“I was a journeyman basketball player and a journeyman coach,” Block said. “I went into programs and turned them around and then moved on.”
His grueling 10-year NBA career in the days of floppy shoes, hard hotel mattresses and unrelenting travel left Block’s body battered. In his post-playing years, he has undergone 33 surgeries to repair the damage.
“I’ve had back surgeries, I have a new left ankle, a fused right ankle, a new hip on my right side, a new shoulder on my right side,” he said. “[And] I’ve had open-heart surgery — pacemakers put in.”
Despite it all, Block has remained active, frequenting the San Diego Tennis & Racquet Club for pickleball.
“I can’t take more than two steps, but I still have some good reach and hands that can hit a ball,” he said.
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