"How are you, your honor? " Since May, that is how one of the NBA's 50 greatest players of all time has been addressed. Dave Bing was elected mayor of Detroit in a special election on May 5 and sworn in six days later after out-polling 14 other candidates to replace the incumbent who went to jail for perjury. Bing has accepted one dollar a year for the job, the legal minimum, and will seek re-election in November. Unemployment is over 28 percent in Detroit, and the city is threatening to go broke soon with a 250-million dollar budget deficit. Bing, who is 65, was born into poverty, but overcame vision problems to become a seven-time pro All-Star with the Pistons, and was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1989. Following 13 seasons in the NBA, Dave retired, and in 1980 started an auto supply store in the tough areas of Detroit. He built the business into an empire and has become a wealthy philanthropist. The Bing Group, among other things, supplies metal stampings to the automobile industry. When he was five years old, Bing accidentally fell, and a nail on a piece of wood penetrated his left eye. That gave him fuzzy vision permanently. Then 23 years later, Dave suffered a detached retina in his right eye, but he played basketball for six more seasons. Born and raised in Washington, D. C., Dave Bing was a highschool All-American before attending Syracuse University where he set the school scoring record, averaging almost 25 points a game in his career for the Orangemen. Bing was Syracuse's first consensus All-American in 39 years. Detroit made him its second pick in the first round of the 1966 NBA draft. After winning the NBA Rookie of the Year Award while averaging 20 points a game, Bing led the league in scoring the next season with a 27-point average. His career high was 54 points. Dave, who was 6-3 and weighed 185, topped the Pistons in assists for nine consecutive seasons. Bing scored 37 points in the second half of a playoff game against the Boston Celtics in 1968, but Detroit lost the series. In his 12-year career, Dave's teams never advanced past the second round of the post-season. He was the MVP of the 1976 NBA All-Star game. A member of the Pistons from 1966 to 1975, Bing wound up his playing days with the Washington Bullets for two years and the Celtics for one. He averaged 20 points and six assists a game in the NBA, finishing with over 18,000 points before retiring in 1978. Of his new challenge, Mayor Bing says, "There are drastic measures that we're going to have to take. Business will bring Detroit back, not politics."