Bob McKillop just wouldn't have handled it well. Or maybe, his presence would have changed everything. We'll never know.
In the spring of 1972, following a stellar college basketball career at East Carolina and Hofstra, the 6-foot-1 guard defied the odds and signed a free-agent deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. On the cusp of realizing his dream of playing in the NBA, McKillop never made it out of training camp. It might have been a blessing.
"I was cut from one of the worst teams in NBA history," McKillop has long joked about the 1972-73 Sixers team that finished 9-73, four-thousandths of a percentage point off the most fruitless season of all time.