bastillon wrote:Wilt 68. those guys got embarassed vs Hakeem and LeBron. Dirk actually didn't play well but he was still having a great impact offensivley getting triple teamed all the time (Mavs lost that series because of defense and Avery's unwillingness to play big). Wilt was embarassed vs Wayne Embry that year and didn't win a title despite playing on by far the most talented team in the league at the time.
It was deemed remarkable that they even got to the Division Finals vs. Boston with all the injuries. There were times during the NY series when the hobbled Sixers were getting killed on the boards, as Bellamy & Reed were feasting on the offensive glass. They played Games 4, 5, and 6 consecutively. No days off in between.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3jIemiXiPs#t=16m15sDELAWARE COUNTY - April 13, 1968Club Rated 'Most Courageous' By Hannum as Injuries Mount
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The Philadelphia 76ers could be billed as the best touring troupe In basketball. All they need is a doctor to complete the cast.
Going into the fourth game Sunday of their National Basketball Association playoff series with the Boston Celtics, the 76ers are hurting from head to toe.
So what's new? Injuries have plagued the defending NBA champions since the opening of the season.
"Alex Hannum says this is the most courageous team he's ever coached," says Harvey Pollack, the 76ers' statistician. "The locker room looks like a hospital ward every time I walk in."
Pollack ticked off some of the cases, which read like a medical diary:
-Wilt Chamberlain (partial tear of the calf muscle in his right leg, a strain in his right thigh and an injured right toe):
-Wally Jones (injured knee cartilage):
-Luke Jackson (pulled hamstring muscle):
-Hal Greer (bursitus in his right knee):
-And, Billy Cunningham (broken right wrist).
"That's not mentioning (rookie) Jim Reid who had a knee operation after injuring it the first game of the season," said Pollack, "and Larry Costello," the veteran guard who tore an ankle tendon after one-third of the season was gone.
The most recent injury was to Chamberlain in Friday night's Eastern Division playoff contest with the Celtics. The dipper was given whirlpool treatments for the calf muscle tear, but Pollack wasn't sure how he'd respond.
The 76ers have nine men in uniform for the best-of-seven playoffs, which they lead, two games to one. But whether they'll have anybody left for the finals against the Western Division winner is anybody's guess.
The team's troubles multiplied in the Eastern Division semifinals against the New York Knickerbockers. Cunningham broke his wrist, knocking him out for the season, Jones and Jackson suffered their injuries and Chamberlain aggravated his perennial toe injury.
And when Boston thumped the 76ers in the opening game of their playoffs here last Friday, some predicted a quick knockout of the injury-riddled champs.
But Philadelphia whacked Boston two straight, including Thursday where an injury actually helped the 76ers cause, points out Pollack.
How so?
"Well, Chamberlain was hurt and he couldn't turn around to score-so he kept feeding Greer, and he scored 31," explained the statistician.DELAWARE COUNTY - April 4, 1968
There they are—the Philadelphia 76ers. See them gulp pills. Notice their bandages. Watch how they limp. Look at how they struggle.
They are sick and battered invalids. Pain and fatigue stagger hand in hand. They do not belong on a basketball court, they belong in wheelchairs.
There are only eight of them left now, and seven are ailing. They're wearing so much tape -they look like mummies in short pants. Do you wonder how they keep playing? Or why?
* * *
The 76ers will return to their rightful place at the Spectrum Friday night to meet the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Division finals.
From a New York viewpoint, the older 76ers should not have beaten the youthful, deep Knicks in the semifinals. After, the Knicks evened the series at 2-2, New York newspapers had buried the 76ers. The act seemed to be contagious.
Loyalists in Philadelphia started believing it, too. But it was mostly the New York press. And when the 76ers resisted the early burial last Sunday, the New York press became cranky.
The sour grapes began to spill. A sportswriter who is one of the very biggest in New York City characterized the mood when he spent a greater part of the afternoon last Sunday complaining loudly and bitterly about the location of the TV cameras during foul shots. As a result, several heated arguments between TV and NBA officials and the writer developed along the sidelines.
It was exemplary of the New York mood, which was soon compounded by the 76ers' demoralizing 123-105 victory.
* * *
The turning point of the series was Sunday. The Knicks, feeling they could take advantage of the 76ers' badly battered and undermanned squad, suffered a psychological breakdown after the battered and undermanned 76ers destroyed them in the fifth game.
Then in the third game in three days Monday — an incredible piece of scheduling by the NBA—the 76ers administered the coupe de grace as the Knicks fell apart after blowing a big early lead.
Winning the rough, bruising series with a team riddled by injuries and its bench practically stripped may — under the circumstances — be one of the most remarkable feats in NBA history.
* * *
A TEAM playing under these conditions should not be expected to survive such a series. Have you ever tried driving a car on three wheels?"
But the fact that the 76ers did win was a glowing tribute to the sheer determination and dedication of a proud team; one whose supreme pride shunned defeat in the face of most dire circumstances.
You had to be there to appreciate it . . . the way Hal Greer and Wally Jones ran and shot on battered knees; the way Wilt Chamberlain played the middle with a volcano in his stomach and an injured toe shot full of needles; the way Johnny Green kept hustling although long past the point of exhaustion; the way Luke Jackson, Chet Walker and Matt Goukas played their guts out despite assorted injuries.
It was an effort propelled by a strong motivation; dedication to a mission known as winning. These were driven men. Old pros who refused to buckle.
The Knick series can be forgotten now. The 76ers face a new challenge; one that is much bigger. Can they produce another maximum effort against Boston?
* * *
THERE THEY are — the Philadelphia 76ers. See how they scrap. Watch how they claw.
Notice their contempt for adversity. Fond Du Lac Commonwealth Reporter - March 30, 1968Injuries Plague 76ers
The Philadelphia 76ers, a team some rank as the physically strongest in professional basketball history, are in trouble. The trouble is injuries—to handyman Bill Cunningham and starting forward Luke Jackson, and to a lesser degree the two standouts of the defending world champions, Wilt Chamberlain and Hal Greer.
Cunningham broke his right wrist in the double overtime, 138-132 victory over New York which gave the 76ers a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series Wednesday night at Philadelphia. Cunningham shoots southpaw, but the injury has kayoed him for the year.
Jackson, the brutish, 6-foot-9 forward who supplies Wilt with rebounding assistance, has a hamstring pull, and was a doubtful performer when the series resumed at Madison Square Garden today.
Chamberlain has been taking cortisone shots in his right toe, and Greer, the middle-distance shooting star, has a knee which troubles him and on which he wears a brace.
Wally Wonder
It appears that Wally Jones, Greer's partner at guard who unblushingly dubbed himself "Wally Wonder," and Chet Walker, the smooth cornerman, are the only healthy 76er starters now.
The team, which ended Boston's domination last winter and then went on to stop San Francisco in the final playoff, was conceded as good a chance this season before the injuries set in. To make matters worse, the current opponent— the Knicks—is a young team which is just starting to feel its oats. The Knicks would enjoy nothing more than knocking off the world champions, and you can bet that Boston will be cheering for them.
Those who watch the pros over ABC each Sunday afternoon will have a chance to watch two games tomorrow. ABC announced Thursday that it will "split" its telecasting time, switching from the 76ers-Knicks' game to the Pistons-Celtics' match and back as the occasion arises.
This will give fans a chance to watch pivotal games in the Eastern Division playoffs, from which will probably spring the eventual champion.
The Pistons and Celtics are tied at 2-2 after Boston's 135- 110 win Thursday. Detroit, which won 10 of its last 13 games to beat out Cincinnati for the fourth playoff spot in the East, has given Boston a stronger run than the aging Celtics expected.
The two playoff series will probably be decided by the play of the two men who have dominated the game in recent years, Chamberlain and Bill Russell.
Counting On Wilt
With his team crippled by injuries, 76ers coach Alex Hannum said Friday that he is counting on Chamberlain to carry his club through against the Knicks. For Boston, player-coach Russell must play well for the Celtics to win.
Both teams depend on their big men to lead them to success. In both cases, the chores have been handed to capable men. So it will come as no surprise if the Celtics and 76ers end up in the Eastern Division's final round.
But the Knickerbockers will have something to say before it's over, and the Pistons likewise. The more experienced 76ers and Celtics are hoping the youngsters remember an old saying which goes, "Children should be seen and not heard."Lawrence Daily Journal World - April 29, 1968
There never has been a keener rivalry in athletics than the one between basketball's Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.
But while they go at it tooth and nail on the court, Wilt of Philly and Bill of Boston have great respect for each other.
After the Celtics edged the 76ers in the Eastern playoffs — mainly because the 76ers turned stone cold from the floor m the second half — Chamberlain led his mates to the Boston dressing room to congratulate the Celts.
But Russell, sportsman that he is, was quick to turn it around and laud Wilt, who played the final game with a bad leg injury. "Any lesser man wouldn't even be on the court, yet here was Wilt out there giving it all be had," Bill said.
At one point, Celt guard Larry Siegfried tried to stop Wilt from making a dunk by wrapping both arms around him The fabulous 7-1 strongman merely unleashed his fantastic power and flipped the 6-4, 215 pound Siegfried clear off the end of the court. Russell ha often said he never hangs or to a jump ball too long with Chamberlain: "I'm always afraid he'll pick both of us up and stuff us through the hoop, Russell chortles. Everyone in the NBA contends Chamberlain is the strongest man they've ever encountered.Wayne Embry's ability to keep Wilt off the offensive boards, clearing Russell (the GOAT defensive rebounder) to get the rebound and outlet to start the break was basically the reason the Sixers didn't close Boston out in Gm. 5 of the '68 EDF, despite an injured Wilt (partial tear of calf muscle in his right leg, a strain in his right thigh, partial tear of right knee tendon, and an injured right toe) coming out strong with a 28/30/7 effort. To quote Russell during the series,
"A lesser man wouldn't be out there." Hell, the reason they won G4 was big Luke making Russell pay for sagging back on Wilt by hitting 4 big outside shots (3 consecutive) in the 4th quarter to open up a 10 pt. lead. Final score = 110-105. Chamberlain's G5 effort (28/30/7) exceeded his regular season statistical averages in both points & rebounds.
While it is noted that Russell switched himself onto Chet to cool him off, it appears he killed two birds with one stone. Of course the Sixers exceptionally poor outside shooting (below 25% FG in the 4th) when it counted along with Billy C's glaring absence didn't hurt either.
Article prior to Gm. 1 vs. Boston:
Christian Science Monitor - Apr 5, 1968
For example, Philadelphia lost Billy Cunningham for the season in the New York series with a broken right wrist. This is like Boston having to play without John Havlicek or St. Louis minus Joe Caldwell. Cunningham is a shooter' in all that the term implies. He played almost as many minutes during the season as the 76ers' two starting forwards, Luke Jackson and Chet Walker. Bill is an expert at driving the middle, drawing fouls, and then cashing them in at the free throw line. There is no one on the Celtics who really plays him well. Havlicek probably comes closest. But John's quickness is generally wasted against Cunningham, mostly because Bill gives no indication of when he is going to shoot.
The 76ers run what they call a C-pattern for Cunningham. It allows Billy to come across the top of the key from either side, pull up for a quick jumper whenever he feels like it, and then clears out the middle so that he can follow his own shot to the basket.Article prior to Gm. 7:
Gettysburg Times - May 9, 1968According to Vince Miller after the game Chamberlain got five touches in the 4th quarter of G7. Whether it two touches or five in the final period, all accounts agree that he got 7 touches in the 2nd half. This after 23 touches in the 1st half.
"What would I have looked like if I had said, 'Hey, we lost because my teammates didn't get the ball into me? If Alex Hannum didn't have guts enough to lay it on the line and accept a certain amount of responsibility for the loss and name the reasons why, then I've lost a lot of respect for him, which I have and I will tell him that when I see him. You can't shoot the ball if you don't have the ball. But you know something, after the game, not one writer came up to me and said 'Hey, how come the ball didn't come into you?' Not one. But all of them did ask me, 'How come you didn't shoot more?'Bill Russell interview from 2008:
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/prin ... /rus0int-1Before we leave 1968 altogether, can we talk about game seven for a minute? In 1968 you limited your friend Wilt Chamberlain to two shot attempts in the entire second half of game seven.
That's not true at all. That was a coach's decision. There was a forward on their team named Chet Walker, and he was hurting us badly, okay? So I had my backup center, it was a guy named Wayne Embry. Now Embry had been in the league seven or eight years, and he played against Wilt all those years. So at half time I said to him, "Wayne, I'm going to try something. It's not new. I want you to guard Wilt. Okay? I have to take care of Chet Walker." And see, when I made that substitution everybody thought it was trying to stay out of foul trouble, something like that, which was to me the best part of that because I made adjustments that they didn't know what I was doing. So they couldn't make a counter adjustment. You see if you make an adjustment, and they know what you're doing, well they can just counter it. But I made an adjustment, they thought it was to get off of Wilt. They didn't know it was to get on Chet. Now Wilt had a game plan, but his game plan was counting on me trying to guard him. When we put Wayne on him, he guarded him a completely different way.
He was used to you guarding him.
Yes. To me, the pretty part of it was -- I hate to use the word beauty -- is that Wayne had enormous experience guarding him. So it wasn't like you took some guy out of the stands and put him on Wilt. Here's a guy who's been guarding him for years. That adjustment was for Chet Walker, it wasn't for Wilt.
Can you talk us through the last minute of the 1968 Eastern Finals?
It was a close game, but we were in charge. So they got to the place where they've got to foul us. So they fouled, and we make free throws and they go down, and they score and make three fouls. So they get down to 12 seconds to go. That's when the thing with Sam came up. It was going to that series. After we got down three to one...
I'm the coach, okay, and so I'm talking to my guys before the fifth game. And I says, "We're going to beat these guys, and this is how we're going to do it." And we had a rookie on the team who's now a judge in Boston, because he had an ailment, he had to retire, but he told me a few years ago, he said, "You know, I was in the locker room when you said that. That's the most disciplined situation I've ever been in my life, because I had to discipline myself from falling out on the floor laughing, when you said we're going to beat these guys." He says, "They're going to kill us!" And he says, "We haven't got a chance!" And he sat there and watched the whole thing happen. And he says that's one of the wonders of his life, because I said it with complete confidence. And then I said, like I said earlier, "We don't have to win three games in a row. We've just got to win one." You see, after we won two of them, the pressure completely shifts. The pressure is on them. You're up three to one, and how do you lose three straight?
So it was basically routine.
I think that that move that I made at half time was the most important move I made as a coach in that series, because it worked, and we got accomplished what we wanted to get accomplished without them knowing what we were trying to accomplish. See everybody still talks about the fact that Wilt only took two shots. They still almost won the game, right? And the key was that Chet Walker had been killing us. And I knew that I could guard him. And the reason I knew I could guard him is his moves were very deliberate. As part of my teaching myself, I learned -- we had six plays and nowadays they number those positions. One is point guard, two is shooting guard, three is a small forward, four is a power forward, five is a center. Well, I made a point to learn how to play all those positions on all six plays. Now not that I ever wanted to or hoped to play in those other positions, but in knowing those positions I know the problems that go with that position. So that if my teammate needed help I can help. And on defense I watched these guys, how they play defense, and I know how to guard almost any position. And I physically took over Chet.The inside game: race, power, and politics in the NBA - Wayne Embry
