“Billy Knight of the Indiana Pacers lost the final ABA scoring race (1975-76) by 1.2 ppg to Julius Erving of the New York Nets, who averaged 29.3 ppg to capture his third scoring title. After the 1976-77 NBA-ABA merger Knight again finished second in scoring, this time trailing Pete Maravich of the New Orleans Jazz (31.1 ppg) by 4.5 ppg.
Another notable ABA runner-up is George McGinnis, who finished second to Erving in 1972-73 and 1973-74 before winning his only scoring title the next season. McGinnis joined the Philadelphia 76ers in 1975-76 and, although he shared the scoring load with current Wizards head coach Doug Collins (20.8 ppg) and current ESPN NBA analyst Fred “Mad Dog” Carter (18.9 ppg), his 23.0 ppg ranked sixth in the NBA.”
David Friedman talks about scoring champ runner-ups such as Knight and McGinnis in his latest over at the great blog 20 Second Timeout.
The whole thing is worth your time, particularly the Shaq stuff. I knew that the scoring title he lost to Diesel was that close, but didn’t realize the other two were. Shaq nearly won 5 scoring titles? I’m starting to feel that he might actually be underrated historically — as hard as that is to believe.
