Distinctly Montana Magazine

38 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 6 visiting opponents in the apartment he shared with teammate Bobby Cattage. Friendship, according to Clay Johnson, "kind of got us through." "It was cold outside, nothing really to do but get together at different apart- ments and just hang out," he remem- bers. "Everybody knew that it could have been our last straw, might nev- er make it to the NBA, but we didn't think like that. After a while, we just forgot about the NBA. We were there making our little $300 a week, trying to manage to save money." Everyone was. As a means of cutting trav- el costs, the league increased the number of regular season matchups between the Mon- tana teams to 16 for the second season in 1981- 1982. The two teams traversed the state until they were ragged, road-weary, and sick of one another. Guys were playing for the same NBA roster spots. It was combustible. "I don't know how much I can improve playing Billings 16 times," Montana forward and current Golden State Warriors As- sistant Coach Terry Stotts told the Kansas City Star at the time. "Basically I'm playing against Marlon Redmond 16 times. He knows my moves. He knows I'm going to fake and turn. I know he's going to drill it." On March 3rd, 1982, in what was the final of the 16 regular sea- son matchups, Sam Clancy, Billings' 6'7", 260-pound power forward who would later make the jump into professional football, earned a three- week suspension for clocking league MVP Ronnie Valentine between the third and fourth quarters. "If you ever watched the old NBA type film, the hard fouls and the physical nature of the game, it was that and more at the CBA level," remembers Spear, Valentine's teammate on the Golden Nuggets. "Some guys had chips on their shoulders that were play- ing in that league, wanted to play well in that league, and so it just created an atmosphere where there was a lot of hun- ger and desire from the players to do well." As if to tempt fate, the two teams met again in the playoffs a few weeks later for what would be five more games. Billings avenged its postseason loss to Montana the previous season by winning the series 3-2. Two of the three victories were by just a single point, including the series-clinching game five victory in front of 2,212 at the Me- tra to advance to the 1982 CBA Finals. The championship series marked Clay Johnson's call-up to the Lakers. He received the news in his Pennsylvania hotel room hours before game four of the championship series against the Lancaster Lightning. After nearly three seasons across Hawaii and Billings, that night's game was his last game as a Volcano. Billings dropped the series to Lancaster, but a few weeks later, Johnson's former teammates were watching on television as he became an NBA champion. After the game, standing on a chair in the corner of the locker room in The Forum and surveying the celebratory scene, Johnson thought of them. "I knew they were there with me," he says. The following season, 1982-1983, it was Karl and the Golden Nuggets who returned to the CBA finals, pushing the newly-es- tablished Detroit Spirits to seven games before falling. Despite the two Montana teams representing the west in the finals in all three of their shared seasons, the teams' financial issues were becoming impossible to ignore. Atten- The two teams traversed the state UNTIL THEY WERE RAGGED, ROAD-WEARY, AND SICK OF ONE ANOTHER

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