Rob Wilson Photography had the privilege filming Darius Griffin with a Rutgers Professor and friend Bryce Nickels. Friday, December 3, 2021, is the 40th anniversary of this iconic game. Our first release on Rutgers
Basketball, the forgotten Era, focused on Darius Griffin reliving the UCLA game in 1981 when Rutgers shocked the nation with a 57-54 upset. Coach Griffin reads from a 1981 New York Times article which sets the tone for the rest of the video.
Everyone has a story to tell, and Darius Griffin, coach of the Piscataway Basketball High School boys team and a Rutgers Alumni who played for the Scarlet Knights from 1978 through 1982, isn’t any different. Bryce Nickels and I, a friend and a Rutgers Professor, teamed up to help Coach Griffin promote the Piscataway High School basketball team. During the interview, Coach had so many stories that we will be releasing multiple videos on various subjects.
Even with the most diehard Rutgers fans, the 1981 team isn’t familiar to many.
There isn’t much information about these players or their season. With assistance from the Rutgers Library, we obtained photographs that we couldn’t find on the internet. That’s why we have named this video the Forgotten Era. Sadly, not much is mentioned of this group of men who are now in their late 50’s and early 60’s.
We are putting a series about this era to bring to light many of their individual and teams accolades.
Furthermore, most people don’t realize that this 1981 team played against Michael Jordan’s famous UNC team that also had James Worthy and Sam Perkins, a total of 3 NBA standouts.
This was Michael Jordan’s first televised basketball game and his first game in Madison Square Garden, which he later coined the Mecca of Basketball. A video will be released about that game within the next few weeks. Darius Griffin was an easy person to interview. He’s a humble thoughtful man, and he indeed came across that way in the interview. His community outreach efforts will be focused on in our future series of videos. Since the main
objective of interviewing Coach Darius Griffin was to promote the Piscataway Boys Basketball team, we decided to film him in their High School gym with Chiefs clothing. With how accomplished Coach is throughout his basketball career, we hope this brings attention to the wonderful job he does with the Piscataway Boys Basketball program along with his community outreach efforts.
We hope you enjoy this video as much as we enjoyed creating it.