Supersonicpedia: Al Tucker, Part IV

His NBA career in disarray, Al Tucker was at a crossroads. Was he a professional basketball player? Everything he had worked for in the past decade – past two decades, really – was seemingly for naught. Sure, he had made it to the NBA, he’d been named a member of the All-Rookie Team, but four different franchises had dumped him in the past four years.

Did he really need this anymore? At that point, fate intervened and reunited Al Tucker with someone from his past.

Coach Bob Bass, who had been such a friend to Tucker back at Oklahoma Baptist, had been named the head coach of the Floridians (they didn’t bother with the “Miami” at that point) in the ABA in mid January, and had converted an 18-30 team on his arrival into a more potent force.

Still, Bass needed some extra firepower to go with Mack Calvin and Larry Jones, and his prior relationship with Tucker must have held some sway, as the Floridians picked up Airline Al for the final 14 games of the season.

Tucker delivered, averaging 12 points in only 24 minutes, and by the time the playoffs rolled around, Tucker was a crucial part of the rotation.

The Floridians lost in the first round to Dan Issel and the Kentucky Colonels, but Tucker tallied the fifth-highest minute total on the team in the post-season, and, just as it did 10 years before in Shawnee, the future seemed bright for Tucker and Bass.

In the 1971-72 season, Tucker returned to Miami and played in all but 3 games for the team, knocking down 30 of 82 3-pointers for the best percentage on the team, and averaging his usual 18 or so points per 36 minutes.

Something happened in the second half of the season, though, and Tucker seemingly wound his way into Coach Bass’ doghouse, as the 28-year-old only played in three of the team’s four playoff games, and even then for only minor action. While the year before he was one of the five regulars in the playoffs, in 71-72 Tucker played the next-to-fewest among the Floridians.

After the Floridians were knocked out of the post-season in the first round (again), the team folded, and in June Tucker was picked in the third round of the ABA’s dispersal draft by the Denver Rockets.

He never played another game.

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And that’s all we know about Al Tucker. For the rest of his life, he’s invisible, on the internet, anyways, until May 2001, when he was struck by a brain aneurysm and died in Dayton, Ohio.

Four years later, his younger brother, Gerald, who had teamed up with Airline Al at OBU so many years before, still wasn’t over his brother’s death, forcing him to cut short an interview with the Dayton Daily News.

We’ll let John Parrish, longtime member of the Oklahoma Baptist family, and author of a book which details even more the story of Al Tucker as it relates to OBU to have the final word about Airline Al.

"We've got three trophy cases filled with Al's things,” Parrish told the Dayton Daily News. “Everybody remembers him. The last time he was out here in 1999, we were walking around the campus and went into the cafeteria.

“An old guy was in there and I said, 'You remember who this is?' And he just grinned, 'Oh course. Nobody forgets Al.’”