Wilt Chamberlain
NBA TREASURES: From Wilt and Kareem to Maravich and West, 1973 Topps Basketball filled with Hall of Famers
(EDITOR’S NOTE: To help celebrate SCD’s 50th anniversary, we look back at some of the top card sets from 1973, our first year of publication. Next up: 1973 Topps Basketball.)
It took just one magnificent rookie season for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (or Lew Alcindor as he was known then) to emerge as the most dominant player in the NBA in the 1970s.
The 1969-70 Rookie of the Year, Alcindor led the Milwaukee Bucks to their first NBA championship in 1970-71 — the same year he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — and won his first league MVP and NBA Finals MVP.
Two years later, he led the Bucks back to the Finals, where they came up just short in a fantastic seven-game series against the mighty Boston Celtics.
That same year, Abdul-Jabbar was the headliner of a 1973 Topps Basketball set filled with basketball Hall of Famers.
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While basketball cards were just starting to catch on in the early ’70s, the NBA was racing toward the height of its popularity in the 1980s thanks to the emergence of new stars. While legends like Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson were winding down their Hall of Fame careers, new stars like Kareem, Pete Maravich, Tiny Archibald and rookie Bob McAdoo were taking over the league.
Boston ruled the East, winning its 12th NBA championship behind John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and “Big Red” Dave Cowens. The Celtics dispatched McAdoo’s upstart Buffalo Braves in the conference semifinals before taking down the rival New York Knicks, led by Walt Frazier, Dave DeBusschere and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe.
The Bucks, meanwhile, dominated the West, with Kareem, Bob Dandridge and “The Big O” taking down the Jerry West-led Lakers before sweeping the Chicago Bulls.
As a kid or card collector, how could you not love the NBA in the early ’70s?
The Celtics ruled the late ’50s and 1960s, winning 11 NBA championships from 1957-69, and adding two more in 1974 and ’76 with a lineup that included four Hall of Famers (Cowens, Havlicek, White and a young Paul Westphal).
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Chamberlain, West, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson were the faces of the league in the ’60s, but were wrapping up Hall of Fame careers in the early ’70s when exciting, new stars like Kareem, Archibald, Maravich and McAdoo emerged. And more big names were on the way with Julius Erving, George Gervin, George McGinnis and Artis Gilmore joining the league when the NBA and ABA merged in 1976.
What better time to plunge into collecting basketball cards?
While there were more popular and highly regarded Topps Basketball sets in the ’70s, the 1973 set was at least unique. Though hampered by a lack of key rookies and a somewhat mundane design, it was filled with Hall of Famers worth collecting, from both the NBA and ABA. The 264-card set features 39 Hall of Famers, from Wilt and West to Kareem and Maravich. The top rookies are Westphal and McAdoo, who led the league in scoring (30.6) as a rookie.
DESIGN & CHECKLIST
Unlike the artsy 1972 set, the Topps design of 1973 is pretty pedestrian, with a simple white border, artwork of a basketball and a hoop in the bottom-left corner, with player position printed on the ball, and the player’s name and team centered at the bottom.
There are plenty of cool action photos in the set, including Kareem posting up Wilt on his classic Bucks card. But other cards, like McAdoo’s rookie, feature a posed shot of him in a hallway in front of a concrete wall.
The card backs are highlighted by a cartoon at the top along with some cool facts — like Cowens’ nickname, or the amount of the check McAdoo was awarded for winning Rookie of the Year — with vital statistics, a short bio and career stats at the bottom.
The biggest difference from other basketball sets is that it does not include an NBA All-Stars subset. Instead, the stars have the All-Star designation on their regular base cards, along with a bizarre floating head mugshot inset over the main player image.
NBA and ABA cards are split, as in previous sets, with the NBA players appearing on cards #1-176 and ABA players on cards #177-264. Subsets are also split by leagues, with NBA stat leaders on cards #153-158 and ABA on #234-239. There are also subsets of playoff cards for both leagues.
One oddity is that Topps had to make concessions for two teams named the Rockets, the NBA Houston Rockets led by Calvin Murphy, Rudy Tomjanovich and Co., and the ABA Denver Rockets with virtually no recognizable names and a future as the Nuggets. Topps solved the problem by simply adding the name Houston to cards of the NBA Rockets.
BIG HITS
The top two cards in the set are of the two tallest players and biggest stars in the league — the 7-2 Abdul-Jabbar (#50) and the 7-1 Chamberlain (#80). The Wilt card is the most valuable, with a PSA 10 selling for $41,985 on eBay in October 2022. A Kareem PSA 10 sold for $22,844 the same year.
Other top cards include: West (#100), Maravich (#130), Erving (#240) and McAdoo’s rookie (#135). The #1 card fittingly belongs to Tiny Archibald, who was coming off a phenomenal 1972-73 season when he averaged 34 points and 11.4 assists in an astounding 46 minutes per game.
McAdoo’s rookie card in a PSA 10 grade sold for $16,111 in 2022, while Dr. J’s 1973 ABA card sold for $7,700 in 2020 in a PSA 10. A wax box of 24 unopened packs sold for $16,800 at Heritage Auctions in July 2021.
The beauty of the set, however, is the depth of superstars and Hall of Famers, from the Celtics’ Havlicek and Cowens to Bill Bradley, DeBusschere and Frazier of the Knicks, Murphy and Tomjanovich of the Rockets, and Robertson of the Bucks. And such all-time greats as Rick Barry, Willis Reed, Connie Hawkins, Dave Bing, and the Bullets’ tough duo of Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld.
There’s even three Hall of Fame coaches with three-time inductee Lenny Wilkens joined by Phil Jackson and Pat Riley, the latter two both sporting big hair and groovy mustaches.
Several 1970s greats signed autographs at the National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago this year, thrilling longtime hoops fans with tales and memories of one of the most colorful and glorious eras in NBA history.
Dandridge and McAdoo were joined by Bob Love and “Iceman” George Gervin. Bing, Frazier and the always popular Dr. J. were there, as were Wilkens and Charlie Scott.
And the headliner, of course, was the 76-year-old Kareem, frail and in poor health but signing autographs for hundreds of fans during two long sessions. And he gave collectors a treasure, signing his full name for the first time ever in public.
That’s what you will find in the 1973 Topps set. NBA treasures.
Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.
