As it turns out, the shenanigans happening in All My Children's Pine Valley stopped quite a few head-to-head battles between famed NBA player Charles Barkley and referee Dick Bavetta.
Susan Lucci has been known to turn a few heads, but her portrayal of All My Children's Erica Kane, along with Michael E. Knight's (Simon Neville, The Young and the Restless) portrayal of Tad Martin, was enough to distract famed NBA player Charles Barkley and referee Dick Bavetta from duking it out during games.
Bavetta, who was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame this week, says that he used Barkley's love of AMC to distract him whenever he was unhappy with a call.
"Charles was very tough on referees," Bavetta recalls. "I got in argument after argument with him in games. One day, I'm going to the game and I read in the paper that he's a big soap opera fan, that he liked All My Children. So I have the game that night in Phoenix. I make the call, there's a time out. He says 'that's the worst call!' I said, 'Just go back to your huddle, I don't want to talk about it."
And then Bavetta had a fabulous idea: he decided to try distracting Barkley by asking him about Pine Valley's latest shenanigans, which led to the following exchange:
Bavetta: "Did you watch All My Children today?"
Barkley: "You watch All My Children?"
Bavetta: "Yeah, Erica Kane is now involved with the chauffeur."
Barkley: "You've got to be kidding me."
Bavetta: "Yeah Tad is going out with some waitress."
Barkley: "No I missed it today."
Bavetta: "You've got to check it out."
Much to Bavetta's surprise, the tactic worked! ""By this point he's back in the huddle, no more conversation about the call," the referee recalls. "The down side to that is every time I had him in a game, I had to watch All My Children that day. I was afraid he would ask me a question, 'Did you watch today? What's going on,' I had to be updated about what was going on."
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