Jim Cummins: Rhythm of the game and the secret 'fifth frame'

• How Jim Cummins took the series of photographs that captured Dr J's baseline move in the 1980 NBA Finals
• He is one of the most respected music photographers to world famous musicians and bands
• Cummins explains how we took the Dr J photos and the iconic black and white of guitarist Jimi Hendrix

New Yorker Jim Cummins was in the rafters and in the studio for two of the most iconic photographs in both basketball and music history.

He witnessed them both through the lens of his camera — stopping time, for all-time.

Cummins, now 81, is the photographer who focused his Nikon F2 on Julius “Dr J” Erving as he swooped from one side of the rim to the other against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1980 NBA Finals.

More than a decade earlier, he was the only photographer in the room when Jimi Hendrix recorded the revolutionary Izabella over an extraordinary 10 hours at The Record Plant Studio in New York City.

For Cummins, it is this joyous blend of understanding the aerial artistry of Dr J and musical genius of Hendrix that seemed to, always, bless him to be in the right place at the right time.

How Jim Cummins captured “The Move”

“The game was turning into a rebounding game,” Cummins told basketball.com.au.

“Now the best way to picture a rebounding game, to get the best expressions, is if you're up high because you're looking down, you see expressions on faces and you see better positioning of where and how players are against each other.

“(The game) was kind of sloppy, they were shooting and you had to look for the rebound so during the timeout, which happened right before The Move, I ran upstairs and got into the rafters.

“I got up there just in time as they were coming back on to court. I was using a Nikon F2 with a 200mm lens, an incredible lens, which was one of the fastest lenses on the planet. Not a lot of people were using it because it was expensive but it was worth it.

“If you wanted a different kind of picture, because I like to play the percentages with pictures, you can use a 50mm lens and get everything, but if you use a 200 or use a lens that's a little longer, you're in tighter and you're paying attention, you know your lens, and if you have some idea what you're doing you can get a better picture.

“So I was using this lens, I can't think of too many people that were using it, everybody had a 300, which I had, but the 200 covered a good bit of the court and covered it as tight as you wanted for the action away from the ball.

“I knew my way up there (to the rafters), I knew a shortcut up to the ceiling but you had to be careful because they had planks of plastic down and what happened was during the summers the heat would heat up that plastic and it would warp so if you didn't take your time walking across it the end of it would fly up.

“I saw what it was going (before the timeout) ... this is a rebound game, so I got upstairs and got up there just in time and, as I said, I have this lens which is a fast crisp lens, it's one of the best pieces of equipment I’ve ever owned.”

Did Cummins know he had one of the most iconic photographs in the history of the NBA when he pressed the shutter multiple times?

“I knew I got it because the place went bananas,” he said.

“I mean I saw it and I said to myself, ‘well, it is Julius doing another thing’. I saw that it was a good move but nobody else had really seen Julius play or run this kind of play where he goes from one side to the other, stays in the air, turns and makes a layup.

“Nobody had seen anything like this before but if you looked at ABA ball, you would say ‘oh, another walk in the park’ but this was nationally televised.

“The people upstairs, the reaction was upstairs, looking down and looking into the sea of people that went bananas, people went crazy.

“They were running up and down the aisles, they were faking the move. It was incredible. It took a moment for the arena to calm down after they saw it.

“You could feel (the energy) from the floor, could you feel the energy in the roof, the place was in an uproar.

“Normally at a playoff game it's loud anyway, there's a din in the in the air, where it's loud and you can't talk because you can't hear yourself but this was a big game, and in a key a key part of the game, where the game could turn either way and Julius turned it around.

“Magic (Johnson) and (Michael) Cooper, they couldn't believe it, they said ‘you know we don't believe that he did that, that he went from one side of the key to the other in the air.

“(My photos) are really the clearest way of seeing it. The picture they show from the floor and the video, it doesn't show what he did or how he went from one side to the other.”

It was then Cummins revealed there was another photo in the series that not had been — and will never — published.

“I'll let you in on a secret,” he said.

“There's a fifth frame before he got off the floor. The one that you see where he's just off the floor, there's a frame before that one right but four frames sums it up.
“(But) you don't need that fifth frame.”

Cummins shared it with basketball.com.au under the proviso that it wouldn't be published.

“Keep it to yourself, hang it on your wall and nail it in because somebody's gonna come to try to take it!” he said.

The only reason why we have the aerial photograph of Erving baseline move is because of Cummins instincts, understanding the rhythm of the game, anticipating the moment, the unpredictable but inevitable … much like Hendrix’s unique ability to play every same song differently but as Cummins describes with the “same intensity”.

Jimi Hendrix records Izabella ... love

“I had the opportunity to cover Jimi at a recording session,” Cummins explained.

It was the only studio session that Hendrix approved of a photographer to shoot while he was doing a recording for an album. The iconic photograph Cummins captured of Hendrix staring straight at him was used in Life Magazine as part of his obituary in 1970.

“I covered him in concert on several occasions but then I got a call one day and they said ‘Jimi's gonna be at the Record Plant’ and we want you there because he's trying something new,” Cummins continued.

“At the time, Electric Ladyland was open but they couldn't do the song that he did — it was Izabella. This is the problem they had with layers of recording (on the same track) at the time, everything became muddy.

“The person that they call in, the genius, was Eddie Kramer. So he and Hendrix worked out something but they couldn't do it at Electric Ladyland, it just wasn't equipped properly or the way that it could work, so they went to the Record Plant.

“Eddie and Jimi went there, and the band that they was playing with at the time, and they worked something out. They worked on it all night because I got there about six in the evening and didn't leave there till about four in the morning.

“I realised how critical this was because when they told me ‘we want you to come into the studio’, I was one of the few photographers that was able to get into recording sessions like Led Zeppelin, like Vanilla Fudge, Roberta Flack.

“They would call me in because one of the things they knew was I'm trying to be unobtrusive when it comes to these things.

“You have to be in the studio, you can't be you're not there as a fan, you're there to take pictures and be out of the way.

“So I had a blimp camera and I went in there and I found a spot behind some baffles where I could see the whole room because Hendrix was walking around.

“He had a long extension cord and somebody behind him, like he was just walking around playing guitar and he did Izabella over and over and over again and then they would come back into the recording booth, they'd listen to it they'd find that it got muddy, so they'd make adjustments and they came back in, this went on till like about four in the morning.

“I got there at six and they started at seven, there was this conversation going on, I was introduced to him and, you know, it looked like there was gonna be conversation
But I said look ‘I'm here to shoot, I don't wanna interrupt you from what you're doing, I'll be off somewhere in a corner.

“He came over and he looked at me, and he would be playing and then he walked away, so I was able to get pictures of him, direct contact with him, direct eye contact up close.

“That went on until they figured something out, they’d a break then came back to it.

“I don't think he went and did the same thing twice playing Izabella, it was different each time, same intensity and it was intense, the mood in the room was like being at a championship fight. That's how intense it was so you just didn't get in the way.

“I didn't go into the booth to listen to what they played, I stayed where I was because you could hear it because it would go throughout the studio. I just stayed out of the way. I'm unobtrusive. My thing is always a stalker, seen but not heard, I wanna be a myth.”

Ten hours behind the camera, tucked into a corner of the record studio, Cummins described it as intense, especially Hendrix. He also understood the gravity of the moment.

“Intense!” Cummins exclaimed.

“This was a moment in history because when the recording came out recordings with multiple tracks were muddy, if you went above two, three, four tracks and you were playing a certain way with the guitar, it came out muddy but if you listen very carefully to Izabella, everything is distinct and that's due to the brilliance of Eddie Kramer and the musicians that were there in the room.

“I had to be aware, I had to have my eye to the camera every second. This wasn’t a situation where you rested. This was intense.

“I've covered him in concert quite a bit but this was more intense, very high energy and the one picture that I got that I was very happy with is a very quiet moment, which was the obituary picture that ran in Life Magazine.”

From music to hoops

Cummins was one of the leading music photographers in New York but in the mid-70s, he shifted his focus to basketball, specifically the ABA.

“The entire ABA, not just the Nets were good, they were good solid teams and it was always exciting, more exciting because I covered basketball from the early seventies up until a few years ago,” he said.

“A lot of players like George McGuinness, Roger Brown, George Gervin, there were quite a few players that transferred over to the NBA very easily.

“I was shooting for the NBA actually from about 1975, and at the time the role of an NBA photographer was really to record missed calls, complaints files that coaches didn't go for and you could legitimise this by knowing they had pictures right from what was shot and then it just evolved into more of an advertising (media) situation.

“Back then you had more access and one of the things that I had access to, (but) couldn't talk, was to the officials locker room.

"What helped me out was being able to listen to the officials talk and they talked about the game, how they felt the game was gonna go and how they had to handle it if things got out of hand.

“At the time they only had two officials so players and coaches got away with a lot of stuff that you couldn't see from a third angle, I mean a lot of stuff. A lot of hand checking and foot checking, tripping people until they finally brought in a third referee.

“One of the things that happened was (teams) had plays that were actually made around those blind spots, you could get away with holding somebody, pulling somebody's jockstrap to just out and out assaulting him.

“The thing became no death, no foul. It was a physical game and it was actually played on a very high physical level.

“You had a lot of big guys, (Bob) Lanier, (Dave) Cowens, naturally (Kareem) Abdul-Jabbar.

“The game then was really interesting especially when it changed over to the NBA. Julius went to Philadelphia, which was a very good move not only for him but for the league, period. Because he became an ambassador for the game.

“(So) when I saw the move I was impressed but I'd seen other things that he'd done that were just as incredible right in the ABA because I covered a lot of ABA ball.

“I saw some fantastic things that he did, going from one side of the basket to the other or just you know turning around and dunking while in midair.

“A lot of things that he didn't do in the NBA because they wanted to save him from being a one man show right, which he could be and he was perfectly capable of doing that but that wasn't his role.

“They tried to surround him, which they did finally, with the players that could work with him right and that he could work with.

“So he became an ambassador to the game, being able to speak to people and go on tour for speaking engagements. He was just a draw in every town that he went to because he was always doing incredible things.”

Cummins watched from the sidelines as the modern NBA dunking style that sends social media into a frenzy today was in its infancy.

“ABA warm-ups used to be like slam dunk contests, the warm-ups would be all slam dunks,” he said.

“That was a crowd pleaser right there and then finally the ABA went south it then became a contest at the All-Star Game yes.

“I think Julius won like the first two or three and it was quite the game (then) but today I don't think it's as exciting as it was back then.”

Cummins said he watched the 2025 NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers and it reminded him of a tougher era of basketball.

“The Finals were more physical than I've seen in years,” Cummins said.

“They let them play, look away from the ball and see how much hand checking was going on, and how much stuff that the officials didn't call. There were a bunch of charging fouls, I was surprised.

“I enjoyed that series because it was played the way it should be played. I watched pretty much what was going on away from the ball and I was like ‘damn, he got away with that’.

And he should know. In the ABA in 70s, Cummins said: “There was a lot of grabbing going on and pushing and a lot of the times what they used to do when there was only two officials, what they would do is a guy would lean against another guy and he'd be surrounded by two players of the opposing team and one would lean against him and then the other would like pull his jockstrap and by doing that he would fall forward and be in the paint, and that's a violation but the the official didn't see this or didn't catch on to it.”

Extraordinarily, it led to Cummins being recruited by the officials to help curtail some of the most extreme physicality.

“I was in the officials locker room and they're talking, they said this is gonna be a foul, this is a foul situation between two particular players but we don't always have a chance to read it,” Cummins revealed.

“They said to me, ‘you can always see it goes on’ — normally didn't say anything — but I said ‘I see some things’.

"They said ‘well here's what we like you to do, okay you're on the blind side in a lot of the plays, so what you do is, you tap on the floor when you see a foul on the blind side’.

“I had a unipod and what I would do is just as soon as I saw something, I’d wrap it on the floor, the whistle would go off and the players would turn to the referee and say ‘how did you see that’ … ‘How did you know?’.

“The players were astounded and this went on for a few games until it got around that the officials saw less than you thought they did.”

What Cummins would focus on in games

“A lot of times what I used to go for, not just action, people with the ball shooting, because to me that was dull,” Cummins explained.

“Usually what I went for in a game were situations where players would foul one another or come close to fouling one another or grabbing or blocking people like (Bob Lanier).

“Lanier, you couldn't move him. He was bottom heavy, he played low, so when you play low, you're heavy, people trip over you. He was a hard man too and he a good shooter, he had a good, good touch.

“(Darryl) Dawkins used to have a problem with him. Dawkins would complain anytime Detroit played, the Philadelphia Dawkins was always running his mouth to the referees: ‘he (Lanier) got in my way’ … ‘well what is he supposed to do?’ they would reply.

“Another person that was hard to get around was Wes Unseld, another strong centre. He’d set the pick and you might as well run into a tree. I've seen nights where guys were knocked unconscious because they ran into Unseld. He was so strong his shirt didn't move.”

On the night he watched Wilt Chamberlain vs Bill Russell

“I saw Wilt Chamberlain once in a game and then he retired, I never got to another game that he was in because I didn’t cover him in any real capacity but in that single game he was phenomenal,” Cummins said.

“He was everywhere, he knew where to place himself. The game I saw him in was against (Bill) Russell. They talked shit all the time, I mean they just went back and forth. Russell was an incredible shot blocker. Guys today, they block a shot, but Russell banged the ball into the concessions and his line was always: ‘Don't bring that weak shit in here’.

“Russell was to be feared as far as a block shot because he'd embarrass you.”

Does Cummins have a favourite picture?

He has taken "millions" of photographs during his more than 50-year career but it’s the frame of Hendrix that he holds dear.

“One of my favorites is the one of Hendrix, that's the black and white of him staring straight into the camera,” he revealed.

“I think he appreciated the fact that I didn't want to get into a conversation. He could talk and you know, I could see this, he wanted to say a little bit more and I wanted to say a little bit more, but I am here on business. I don't wanna get in your business, I don't wanna get in anybody's way and I think that that's one of the things that kept me being able to work in a studio. When they thought of somebody for a studio shoot, they usually thought of me.

“As a matter of fact one night I was so unobtrusive I got locked in the studio! I can’t remember who it was but I found a baffle in Atlantic Studios, built it up and nobody could even see me and I stayed back there and and I'm packing up when the the session ended, the lights went out and I yelled: ‘Hey I'm in here, I knocked on the window, ‘we thought we thought you were gone, we didn't know you were still here’. I would have been stuck in there all night.

“I was very fortunate, I thank my my stars, I was very fortunate that a lot of a lot of artists that I admired as a kid, I was able to cover as well as a lot of ball players.”

A humbling moment

Perhaps the only way to explain the significance of Cummins’ photography is left best to Miles Davis, the legendary American jazz trumpeter.

“I'll tell you a strange story about (Miles Davis),” Cummins said.

“Two friends of mine who I grew up with played with Miles Davis, Larry Willis and Al Foster, who just passed away. So they were playing with him down in Union.

“They were in town so we would keep up with each other. They told me to come on down and we can hang out with Miles. I got down there and we're in the dressing room and we're laughing carrying on old times and finally Miles walks into the room.

“Miles just busts into the room and says ‘what's going on’ in that raspy voice.

"My friends said ‘Miles, we'd like you to meet Jim Cummins, he’s a photographer.

“Miles looks at me and says ‘you're Jim Cummins?’ I said ‘yeah, that's me’ and he says ‘oh’ and just stared at me.

“I said, ‘well, I'm going downstairs to get out front, being unobtrusive, I don't want to be in anybody's way, just probably some things that he wants to go over with them .. ‘Let me get out of here’ and get down in front to get a position.

“The concert goes on and the concert is over and I'm on stage left, well actually right as you're facing, and Miles starts walking over that way and he's maybe 10 feet away from me, looks at me, and tips his hat.

“Now I didn't understand what was going on until I got back upstairs and talking to Larry, I said: ‘You know, a strange thing happened downstairs, Miles came out, he doesn't usually go that way and tipped his hat. Larry says: ‘He knows your work,’

“That gave me a new respect for what I do.

“That made me realise, always be your best because you never know who sees your work, you never know who sees what you do.

“It was humbling, a big artist like Miles, who I admired as a kid and who I had a chance to photograph, that's one of the times that I really felt appreciated.”

Two photographs of two of the greatest artists of all-time — one a basketball God the other the greatest guitarist to ever live.

They and the photographs of them are without doubt, appreciated.

About the Author

Peter Brown is the head coach of the Sydney Comets Women’s Youth League team in the Waratah Basketball League in NSW. He is also the assistant coach for the Comets NBL1 women’s team in the NBL East Conference. Peter is a 30-year journalist, starting as a sports reporter at the NT News in the early 1990s. He played junior basketball for the Northern Territory at national championships from U16 to U20 and for the Territory’s senior men’s team at numerous international tournaments. Peter has been a basketball fan since the early 80s, especially the NBA. Basketball is his passion — and his opinions his own. Email peter.brown@basketball.com.au with feedback. Any email feedback on articles sent to Peter can be published on basketball.com.au for others to read.

Hidden New York: The Art of the City

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