Dave Bing is sort of a basketball version of Forrest Gump, only smarter.
A native of Washington, D.C., Bing met Marvin Gaye playing basketball. Unable to keep up, Gaye sang on the sidelines. They remained friends for years.
At Syracuse for a time, he roomed with Jim Boeheim and got to know law student Joe Biden.
After his playing career, he founded the NBA Retired Players Association. He started Bing Steel in 1980; in 1984, Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Minority Small Business Person of the Year.
In 2008, he ran for mayor of Detroit and won. Later, he worked on the 2009 bailout of the auto industry with – surprise – President Biden.
In short, the man has a very long list of accomplishments.
But in his day, he was a formidable basketball player, as you’ll see in this video from the 1976 All-Star game.
He was 32 here, and the Detroit Pistons had traded him away, thinking that he was a bit long in the tooth.
He wasn’t done – Bing played until 1978. The great thing about him?
The second chapter was just as exciting as the first.
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