nate33 wrote:doclinkin wrote:nate33 wrote:Yeah, I suppose that's fair. Hayes was a bit before my time. I vaguely remember him as a kid.
He was All-NBA 1st team in 77 and 79, and finished 3rd in MVP voting in 77, so yeah, that's better than anything Arenas did.
Arenas was All-NBA 2nd team once and 3rd team twice, and he had multiple people vote for him as MVP in 2007. That's better than anything Wall or Beal did. (Lots of guys, including John Wall in 2017, will often get one homer MVP vote, so that doesn't really count. But Arenas had 31 MVP points.)
Wes Sr who won MVP and ROY the same year? I didn’t see him play but seems like he did exert his will on the game.
I dunno. I look at the numbers and I see 13 points and 18 boards on 47% FG%. Even the rebounding wasn't quite as awesome as one would think. He ranked 5th in the league in rebounds per game that year.
It really looks like a fluke, narrative-driven award to me. He didn't even make another All-NBA team (1st or 2nd team) over the rest of his career, in a league with just 14 teams. That's like not even making 4th team All-NBA today (if they had one).
Yes, a little flukey, but some context on the numbers you cite can help. League average FG% was significantly lower than it is today, even without the three-point shot. Unseld’s career shooting percentage was higher than that of two Celtic MVPs, Bill Russell and Dave Cowens, and Red Auerbach was an admirer of Unseld’s game. Eventually, Unseld’s FG% would routinely be among the league leaders.
Regarding Unseld’s rebounding, yes, he finished fifth that year, but the top five were fairly close, Chamberlain leading with 21.1, and Unseld at 18.2. But Unseld played 36.2 mpg, and the others were well over 40 mpg (which was the norm at the time). Jabbar, who came into the league the next year and overshadowed all other centers, was also a great admirer of Unseld, especially his ability at 6’6” to use his size to block out much taller centers and get the rebound. He was routinely among league leaders in rebounding his entire career, finishing third in his second to last year, when he was completely floor bound.
The main reason he was MVP that year was the fact that the Bullets won 36 games the year before, and 57 games to lead the league his rookie year. Based on contemporaneous accounts, he played like a veteran as a rookie, always being in the right place on offense and defense, sort of a Wide Fundamental. His picks, passing, and full court hockey assists vastly improved the team’s offense. Other than scoring, he had a fairly complete game, despite being pretty slow and having bad knees his entire career. It’s also worth mentioning that his teams made the finals four times.
I didn’t see Unseld play until 1978, three years after his last All-Star game, and he was still doing all the “little things” that don’t always show up in the stat sheet, and still routinely facing off against players half a foot taller. The first game I saw him play was against the Lakers, and he somehow outscored Jabbar. In another fluke, they somehow won the championship that year, as undersized underdogs, just like their leader.
Maybe he gets a bonus for being undersized overachiever, but he’s my favorite player ever, and watching the things he did on the court helped me understand how to watch the game. My admiration for his game probably has a lot to do with why Tim Duncan is my favorite non-Bullet/Wizard player.