and he has more ways of passing the ball than Bob Cousy. I saw Cousy as a senior at Holy Cross, and he couldn’t do what Max can do with a basketball. You couldn’t change a natural talent like Williams. You just lived with it.”
Williams led SMU to a stunning victory over Kentucky and Adolph Rupp when the Wildcats were ranked number one in the nation and destined to win the NCAA championship, then spearheaded wins over Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt, both rated among the country’s top ten teams. It was little different from days at Avoca. The bigger they were, the more he enjoyed cutting them down.
He was called a high- flying Houdini with a basketball, a player who could build two points in mid-air and out of thin air. He was the driving force that helped engineer a Southwest Conference championship. Williams, however, did have one major obstacle confronting him. Size. Or, at least, lack of it. The proud NBA, even then, frowned on ball players who stood less than six feet tall, no matter how high they could jump. Williams quietly put his basketball aside, buckled down, earned a business degree at SMU while taking a class in geology simply because he needed a course in science. Growing up in an oilfield camp, he had more than a passing interest in the ancient earth around him. After graduation, he took a job selling insurance, but detested every minute of it. There must be a better way, he thought, and if there were, Max Williams was determined to find it.
Max Williams had no avowed intention of going into business for himself until George Smith met with him one afternoon and offered him a chance to potentially earn a small fortune by importing mercury from the badlands of Mexico. “I’ll handle the deal with the miners on the other side of the Rio Grande,” Smith said casually, “and you can make arrangements for the sale of the mercury on the United States side of the border.”
“Is it legal?” Williams asked.
Smith grinned wryly. “By the time it gets to U.S. customs, it will be,” he said.
“It sounds a little like smuggling.”
“Don’t worry,” Smith assured him. “If it wasn’t on the up and up, I wouldn’t be involved. It’s just business. That’s all. The United States needs all of the mercury it can get its hands on. Mexico has the mercury to sell. You and I are just the middle men.”
George Smith’s role was to acquire the mercury. He knew his way around the cinnabar mines of Chihuahua and Sonora. Williams would be responsible for finding the money necessary to pay for the mercury when it reached U.S. customs. There would be as many as three hundred flasks for mercury, and it would all be sold to Associated Metals. Smith and Williams would split the profits. It was a clean and simple deal, and it might go on forever.
But as the months passed, Williams, on a lonely stretch of highway south of San Antonio, decided he was giving up a lot more than he was earning. He was giving up his time away from Dallas, time he would never be able to recover during those long days and weeks away from his wife Carolyn, daughter Laura, and son Wayne, who had just entered the first grade. He thought, why have a family if you become a stranger in the house? It was, he knew, the right time to leave. He was driving across those endless miles for the final time. It was just as well. During the Christmas holidays, the cinnabar mines shut down. No more flasks. No more trips to Laredo. He had imported his last flask of mercury. Might as well stay around Dallas and home, which, in retrospect, became a wise decision.
In the midst of the holidays, Max Williams received an unexpected phone call from Jim Hammond, who had played basketball with him at SMU. Hammond was working with the All Sports Association of Dallas, and, he said, the organization had a serious interest in pursuing a franchise with the newly created American Basketball Association. Would Max like to investigate the possibility of making such a project a reality? Williams grinned. Might as well, he thought. He knew a lot more about basketball than mercury.
Williams telephoned Roland Spaeth, whose brother had originated the ABA and who was on the road, desperately seeking to secure new franchises. Yes, he said, Dallas was definitely on the list of potential cities. Yes, he would be happy to fly to Dallas and outline the league’s strategy for moving forward.
All Dallas needed to do, Spaeth said at a clandestine meeting in the Chaparral Club, was come up with an investment of three hundred thousand dollars, which, if the league’s figures were correct, would certainly be enough money to run a basketball team for a year. Last a season and build for the future. That was the formula, and it did not seem to be a complicated venture. Dallas would need to submit a formal application for a franchise to the league, but, with three hundred thousand dollars in ready cash, how could the ABA turn Dallas down?
Williams immediately made arrangements to meet with Bob Folsom, a good friend and a successful real estate developer, the last four-sport letterman to graduate from SMU. He outlined the plan for obtaining professional basketball. All Dallas had to do was raise three hundred thousand dollars.
Folsom nodded. “We’ve tried to land a franchise in the past,” he said, “and this might be as good a chance as we’ll get. Here’s what you need to do to get your money. Find thirty guys who’ll give you ten thousand dollars apiece.” Folsom had raised money before. He continued, “I’ll draw up a list of potential investors. You just call them and tell them that I asked you to call. Then tell them what you want and why you want it. These are good men. They’ll do anything they can to support Dallas.”
Within two weeks, Max Williams had his three hundred thousand dollars, and Dallas had its franchise. If Bob Folsom wanted a deal done, to no one’s surprise, it was done. There was, however, one stipulation from those who had handed Williams their ten thousand dollar checks. Bob Folsom would take over as president of the franchise. No vote. No need to vote. No opposition. Bob Folsom would look after their money.
From day one, it was a struggle. The league didn’t have the history, the notoriety, or the fan base of the NBA. It had difficulty signing the nation’s top players if any team in the NBA wanted them, and, for the most part, league owners didn’t even know who the nation’s top players were. Williams spent days on the phone with college coaches scattered across the country, scanning basketball magazines, searching out seniors who might have the potential to play. He compiled an unofficial list and sent their names – posted from A to Z – to Roland Spaeth, who erroneously thought Max Williams had assembled a scientific draft order with the best player written in first and the worst player penciled in at the bottom. The Dallas Chaparrals thus drafted names as they appeared in alphabetical order. Matthew Aitch from Michigan was the first name called and Charlie Beasley the second.
The Chaparrals were a week away from their opening game and still didn’t have a radio contract. No one had thought about going out and finding one. The general manager and advertising director for KRLD Radio showed up at Williams’ office and asked about the possibility of his 50,000-watt, clear channel station broadcasting the games. For Max Williams, it was an under-the-wire godsend. KRLD, however, expected the Chaparrals to provide their own play-by-play announcer.
Williams turned to Terry Stembridge, who had just signed on to work with him in the business office. In the back of his mind, Williams remembered that the young man had previously broadcast Kilgore High School and Kilgore College basketball games. Was pretty good at it, too. He had heard the tapes. Williams leaned back in the chair behind his desk and told Stembridge, “You’re it.”
“I’m what?”
“Our radio voice.”
Terry Stembridge did not merely broadcast games. He was a master storyteller. He painted word pictures, and it sometimes seemed that the ninety-feet of action, from basket to basket, was more of a theatrical stage than a sporting contest. With Stembridge behind the microphone, Chaparral fans did not hear the game on radio. They watched the game on radio as surely as if they had
