World B. Free couldn’t help himself. His NYC side had to show.
Free was a Sixers rookie on a fast break in 1975, running a two-on-one scenario with veteran and venerable teammate Billy Cunningham alongside him.
“I saw Billy,” Free, a recent first-time Naismith Hall of Fame nominee, told The Post. “But I saw the hoop, too.”
The sold-out crowd oohed and aahed as Free converted a spin move “like Earl the Pearl Monroe.
“Coming from New York, we’re shaking and baking, we’re doing what we do to get to the basket. That’s the theme of New York. But I didn’t finish it. I got there, and didn’t finish the layup,” Free said. “So Billy went to the coach and said, ‘Get him out of the game.’ I didn’t play much for two months after that. That’s when I had to learn the difference between streetball and this ball.”
Free might’ve understood the difference as a rookie but still blurred the lines for much of his 13 NBA seasons. A combo guard who averaged over 30 points in a season for the Clippers, Free dazzled with his showmanship, 44-inch vertical leap, an eagerness to shoot and one of the best names in sports.
Now 71, and 35 years removed from retirement, Free had mostly given up on the Hall of Fame — at least until last month, when the Brooklyn product was nominated by the veterans committee for the 2025 class. Finalists are to be announced on Valentine’s Day, with other candidates including Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Doc Rivers and Paul Silas.
Free’s credentials suggest he’s a long shot for Springfield — most notably the lack of team success when Free was a leading scorer — but the selection process is shrouded in mystery and difficult to predict.
“It would be a tear-dropping moment if I got in,” said Free, who was only once an All-Star despite averaging over 20 points for his career with the Sixers, Warriors, Cavaliers and Rockets. “To go through all the things I had to go through to get to where I was in the sport.”
Free grew up in the same Brownsville projects as Mike Tyson, who was younger but nonetheless memorable — “he was Dirty Mike back then,” Free said. His model in the pros — for both basketball and clothing styles — was Walt Frazier.
“Back in my era, it was showing that we could do things without sticking people up and robbing people,” Free said. “You could do different things. Sports were the vehicle to get me out the hood.”
Like any NYC player worth anything back then, Free built a reputation on the streetball courts, touring the boroughs and battling with Brooklyn’s finest James “Fly” Williams and Phil “The Thrill” Sellers.
Free’s own famous name was forged on the Brownsville court.
“First they called me ‘All World,’ ” said the man who at birth was named Lloyd Bernard Free. “Then they called me ‘Kangaroo,’ because I could jump. But then one time, I went to the basket, we had about 1,000 people out there in the park for a tournament, and I went up real high and a defensive person was in front of me, but I did a complete 360-degree turn on him, and did a Darryl Dawkins dunk — that’s how high I was up.
“And the crowd was just like, ‘Ohhh, that’s World.’ The crowd was like, ‘Worrlld.”
In 1981, he legally changed his name to World B. Free. It was a genius branding move and also fit the style of a Brooklynite who wasn’t shy about taking shots.
Over an eight-season stretch of his prime, Free never averaged fewer than 22.5 points or 17.8 field-goal attempts for a season and wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“The way I played the game, I know people didn’t think it was the right way. But it was the way I grew up, and it was something — it was always good for me. I enjoyed playing the game,” Free said. “That was the knock on me — ‘He’s going to shoot. He’s shooting before he gets into the building. And he’s taking these long shots.’ Well, yeah, I was taking those shots. But those shots are going in.”
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