Ed. — From the Sunday, April 28, print edition.
VIRGINIA BEACH — A reunion of former Virginia Squires legends kicked off the recent Portsmouth Invitational Basketball Tournament.
The Squires, the Virginia American Basketball Association team, disbanded a season before the ABA merged with the NBA. Their games were played around the commonwealth at sports venues in Richmond, Roanoke and here in Hampton Roads – first at Old Dominion University, then at the Scope in Norfolk.
And a number of Squires players lived right here in Virginia Beach – Lamar Green, Bernie Williams, Roland “Fatty” Taylor and George Gervin. Dave Twardzik, later of the Portland Trail Blazers, liked Sandbridge.
The suburban and beach culture gave them a peaceful respite from the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan areas.
During the recent reunion in Portsmouth, I spoke with “Jumbo” Jim Eakins about his time in Virginia Beach. I first met him when he was a young player, and he lived in the Kempsville area of the city.
“We lived in a nice, new subdivision named Larkspur,” Eakins said. “What I remember was going there – I’d take the weirdest-named road to get there.”
Locals, and fans of Grace “The Witch of Pungo” Sherwood, might suspect where this train of thought was headed.
“Yeah,” Eakins said. “It was Witchduck Road.”
Virginia Beach was a fantastic place to live, Eakins told me.
“It was a great place for a young professional athlete with a three year old and a one year old because the community was supportive and treated us like family,” he said.
Jumbo was the consummate journeyman center who did not back down to anyone at center court.
He was a great teammate, too, according to Julius “Dr. J” Erving and George “Iceman” Gervin, who spoke while taping a special segment of Sports Inside and Out with producer and director Tim Reid and veteran sportscaster Charlie Neal.
That’s probably because he was always passing them the ball for an “artistic” slam dunk from the top of the key or a cool, finger roll that couldn’t be blocked.
Eakins never worried about numbers due to the legendary scoring machines he played with.
“If anyone other than Dr. J or Ice took a shot, I’d position myself to get the rebound, and then I’d get the put-back and a rebound on the stat sheet,” Eakins said.
A star athlete in high school, Jim Eakins played center at Brigham Young University during the mid-sixties. In 1968, the San Francisco Warriors, now the Golden State Warriors, selected him in the midround.
Earl Foreman signed Eakins in 1972 when he bought the Washington Capitols and moved the team to Virginia as the Squires.
Eakins said his career led him to Utah, but he did not plan to retire there. He wanted to return to Virginia Beach after his playing days, but his wife had other plans.
“We love Virginia Beach,” he said. “We loved the people. It’s a great place to start a family. … My wife has always been supportive of my professional basketball career. Whenever I got traded, she packed up and just made the adjustments wherever the league sent me. And never complained.”
He promised she could pick where they lived after he retired.
“I knew it would be Virginia Beach – at least, that’s where I wanted to return to,” he told me, “but she chose Utah.”
At reunions and appearances, Eakins still dishes out assists, relishing the attention Gervin and Erving receive, but he was a wonderful player, too.
Eakins could run all day long. His abilities were more natural athlete than workhorse in style. It was his rebounding that would initiate a fast break.
If another teammate missed, he was ready to rebound and put the ball back in the net.
“The problem was,” he said, “they seldom missed.”
The author is a writer and documentary filmmaker who grew up in Norfolk and lived in Virginia Beach for much of his life. He ran a production company, worked in college athletics and was curator at an art gallery in Virginia Beach for years.
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