Old-School Drafts Longer, Quite Odd

By SCOTT HOWARD-COOPER

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He was either the team doctor for the Philadelphia 76ers or the personal physician and poker buddy of then-owner Harold Katz.

He might have even been a pharmacist to another Katz holding, NutriSystem. There is no consensus among several people around then, small-print details lost to time.

But Norm Horvitz was 49 years old and stood 5 feet 10 inches and weighed 205 pounds in 1983. That much was chronicled that night. He was an older gentleman, rounded, a product of the intramural program at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy as a 1956 graduate.

Modesto Bee - 1985 File photo by Ted Benson Cal. Relays L-R Harvey Glance, Carl Lewis, Ben Johnson.

And he was suddenly the 10th-round draft pick of the 76ers.

Katz, a hands-on owner and constant presence in the locker room after games, ordered the Horvitz selection while in a makeshift draft room inside the Spectrum, the old home arena. His basketball people phoned the choice ahead to the draft in New York, gritting their teeth but, frankly, out of better recommendations.

It was that kind of draft in that kind of era.

Long before the process was shortened to two rounds in 1988, the draft went 10 or 12 or even pressed up against 20 rounds. The lengthy drafts commonly ended in favors and publicity stunts as teams reached for attention in the days when the championship series was televised on tape delay.

Some years, it didn't end so much as collapse from exhaustion, such as in 1966, when the Baltimore Bullets made the second and last pick of the 16th round and then drafted alone in the 17th, 18th and 19th as everyone else passed. Or went to bed. The Bullets went solo the final three rounds a year later. The Bulls did it in 1972.

"You're numb at that point," said Pat Williams, now a senior vice president with the Orlando Magic. "You're grabbing for names."

He should know. Williams was the general manager as Chicago raced itself to the finish in 1972 and was the GM when the 76ers beat out everyone else mining the intramural leagues at Philly pharmacy schools to land Horvitz.

Williams should really know: He was the personnel boss in Atlanta when his first son was born May 27, 1974. That night, the Hawks picked James Williams in the 10th round in celebration of the blessed event.

In 1969, a year after the Mexico City Olympics, the Suns chose long-jump sensation Bob Beamon in the 15th round. In 1977, the New Orleans Jazz selected Lucy Harris in the seventh round after she was a three-time All-American at Delta State. Two picks later, Bruce Jenner went to the Kansas City Kings, thus becoming the only team to really follow the mantra of taking the best athlete available. In 1984, the Bulls used a 10th-round pick on Carl Lewis.

The Pacers didn't actually draft Ann Meyers, but she did briefly join as a free agent, becoming the only woman to sign an NBA contract. The San Francisco Warriors did, however, select Denise Long in the 13th round in 1969 on orders from owner Franklin Mieuli, who wanted to start a women's team and knew of a high school star from six-on-six girls basketball in Iowa. And the Nuggets did invest their seventh-, ninth- and 10th-round picks in 1983 on players from Catawba, the North Carolina school where the son of Denver coach Doug Moe was a sophomore guard.

Some coincidence.

The draft was clipped to seven rounds in 1985, and silliness slowly disappeared. In 1989, the proceedings went to three rounds. The next year, it became the two-round process of today.

As for Horvitz, he isn't in the NBA logs but remains in the 76ers' record book. Katz would have wanted it that way.