Air Ball (1976); Slam Dunk (1972)

[Rick H Kennerly]

|o| (That's how I remember it.  Julius Erving, of the ABA Virginia
|o| Squires.  So Chick Hearn, broadcasting for the Los Angeles
|o| Lakers, probably would not have coined it--ed.)
|o|

I'm not invested in the Hearn story either way, but I don't see where an
east coast NYT quote would have much bearing on whether or not a west coast
broadcast personality did or did not coin a phrase during a play-by-play.
Indeed, as someone else recently pointed out, the terms could just as likely
have filtered up from street games--or high school or college rookies--and
began circulating as teams traded players and played each other before the
term was picked up by sports broadcasters or sportswriters.

Certainly we have a bias for first to print, which, I suppose, cinches it.
But in a multimedia world, that may not be enough anymore.  It's just a
pipedream, but wouldn't it be grand if closed captioning were perfected and
somehow stored in a cross indexed and searchable database like the printed
words of the NYT?

rhk