Retro POY '63-64 (voting complete)

[Doctor MJ]

In this thread we'll discuss and vote on the top 5 best player seasons of '63-64.

Trying something new now. Schedule will be Mon-Fri, and Thu-Mon. Typically this will be morning to morning.

Some things to start us off:

NBA
Season Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/lea ... _1964.html
Playoff Summary http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... _1964.html
Award Voting http://www.basketball-reference.com/awa ... _1964.html
Final Box Score http://webuns.chez-alice.fr/finals/1964.htm

[JordansBulls]

Don't you mean '63-64???

I know the top 3 this year are

1. Oscar
2. Wilt
3. Russell

Also that was the same order for MVP voting as well.

This year, both Oscar and Wilt lost to the team with the best record in the league in Boston, so no shame in that.

My 4 and 5 are more than likely these guys.

4. West
5. Pettit

[Dr Positivity]

Interested in the Warriors adjusted ORTG/DRTG stats. It looks like they played at a WAY lower pace than everyone else. How low? Their opponent ppg was 2.5 points below the Celtics who put up one of the all time greatest defensive years and cleared 2nd place by 5.6 DRTG points according to the ElGee thread

[Mean_Streets]

Title says "64-65".

[Dr Positivity]

I'm giving Oscar about the same credit for this year as the rest. Biggest difference in this season was the defense.

Early rankings

1. Russell
2. Wilt
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

[Dipper 13]

Sports Illustrated - March 02, 1964

Meet The New Wilt Chamberlain

Pro basketball's greatest scorer changed his style and became a complete player this season. The result is that his team is winning in the West


A strange thing happened at a National Basketball Association game in St. Louis early this season. The ball was thrown to the San Francisco Warriors' 7-foot-1[1/16]-inch 290-pound center, Wilt Chamberlain, who was positioned near the St. Louis Hawks' basket, and Chamberlain threw the ball right back out to one of his teammates. This maneuver so unsettled Ed Macauley, a former NBA center and a spectator at the game, that he nearly choked. "Chamberlain threw the ball out," he said, loosening his tie. "He actually threw the ball out!" If Macauley was surprised, so were the Hawks, who stood around in a state of deep shock while one of Chamberlain's teammates, cutting toward the basket, made the layup unmolested.

To understand the loss of composure by Macauley and the Hawks, you must remember that in previous seasons when the ball got to Chamberlain the rest of the Warriors would react as if they were watching a spectacular Pacific sunset. They would be open-mouthed and motionless, because Wilt Chamberlain leads the world in taking shots. But so often did the ball fly back out to a moving teammate that night that Chamberlain scored only 22 points, exactly 22.8 points less than he scored per game last year, and 28.4 less than the year before, when the big center averaged a phenomenal 50.4 points.

All this does not mean that Chamberlain is slipping. A year ago the San Francisco fan, paying his money to see Wilt play, got his 50 points' worth all right, but he still felt like someone who bought a Rolls-Royce only to discover that the horn didn't work. San Francisco fans had every right to expect perfection from such a specimen, but they not only did not get perfection, they did not get to see the Warriors win very often, and no citizen of San Francisco is going to stand for that very long. Eventually they began to leave the Warriors alone in alarming numbers, except when the champion Celtics would come to town, and then they came to root for Boston.

But that was last year. This season there is a new Wilt. The Warriors won their early game with the Hawks, mostly because Chamberlain was doing workaday things. He passed to his no-longer stationary teammates when they were clear, he raced back downcourt in order to block shots when St. Louis got the ball, and he gathered up rebounds on both backboards. Furthermore, Chamberlain has been playing this way for four months now. He is, to be precise, scoring less and having the time of his life.

So are the Warriors, a team that lists on its roster some of the slowest players and worst shooters ever to play in the NBA. With just 14 games remaining in the regular season, San Francisco—in next-to-last place this time last year and until recently the obvious choice to finish there again—is in first place, ahead of the St. Louis Hawks and the defending Western Division champions, the Los Angeles Lakers. There is a related phenomenon: the curious fans of early last year are back, along with quite a few brand-new ones. When they press the horn now they get a sturdy, melodious toot for their money.

There are, to be sure, critics who insist that the Warriors are first only because the Lakers are unlucky. They are right. The Lakers are unlucky. Their two best players, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West, have been hurt. When West was lost for two weeks with a broken thumb, they lost eight of their next nine games. But the critics are not right when they say the Warriors' lofty state is a fluke. "No fluke," growls Cincinnati Royal Coach Jack McMahon. "The Warriors are tough. Every game with them is all-out, dog-cat-dog, kick-'em-where-it-hurts warfare. Let up a little and they'll beat you to death." Why? How could such a bad team suddenly become so good? There are two reasons. The first, of course, is Chamberlain, a player Ed Macauley once called the worst in the world because he wasn't doing what he could do. Now he is one of the best because he is doing just that. The other reason is Alex Hannum.

Alex Hannum is a 6-foot-7, blue-eyed fellow who pops into hotel lobbies with mincing steps, grinning as if he were about to spring some outrageous prank like wearing a Beatle wig on his balding head. Hannum's hair first began to disappear in 1957, the year he took over as player-coach of a tired old St. Louis Hawks team and drove it to within two points of an NBA championship, losing to Boston in the seventh game in double overtime. The next year the Hawks went out and did it right, upsetting the Celtics, bringing great joy to St. Louis and a strange sort of tribute from Hawk President Ben Kerner. " Hannum," said Kerner, "is not my kind of guy."

So Alex Hannum went to the Syracuse Nationals, and one year nearly beat Boston in the playoffs. Winning was sweet, but Hannum was homesick for California. When the Nats deserted Syracuse for Philadelphia, Hannum deserted the Nats for Los Angeles and a job as a building contractor. A month before training camp opened, the Warriors' managing director, Eddie Gottlieb, put in a call to Hannum and offered him the San Francisco job.

"Does Chamberlain demand to play the full 48 minutes of every game?" Hannum asked.

"Absolutely not," Gottlieb said.

"Is Chamberlain going after points to insure his high salary?" Hannum then asked.

"Absolutely not," said Gottlieb.

"O.K.," said Hannum. "You got yourself a coach."

San Francisco had a coach, but what Hannum got was no bargain. The team had the morale of a bunch of recruits immediately after their first G.I. haircuts. Says Hannum, "I realized how completely inadequate the team had become. They had learned to depend on Wilt so completely they were even incapable of beating a squad of rookies. I had to convince them that they, too, had responsibilities."

Hannum demanded that the Warriors play all-out the entire time they were in a practice game, running constantly and finally cutting toward the basket or to an uncluttered spot for a jump shot. When a player began to bleed from the eyes, Hannum would send in a substitute. But the trouble was, these players had no stomach for continuous motion because they knew that if Chamberlain got the ball they would never see it again.

Hannum's next task, then, was to convince Wilt Chamberlain—the greatest scorer in history, the man who once scored 100 points in a single game, the man who holds eight of the 10 major scoring records—to let someone else shoot once in a while and to play defense with as much enthusiasm as he did offense. "For us to win," said Hannum, "Wilt has to play like Bill Russell at one end of the court and like Wilt Chamberlain at the other end of the court."

There were experts who were sure Hannum did not have a chance. "Chamberlain," said one eastern sportswriter, "is a loser. Has been all his life. Neither his college nor his pro team has ever won a title, because he won't take coaching. All he wants to do is score points." Alex Hannum, however, insists he had no trouble at all getting Chamberlain to play it his way. Whether he did or not, he obviously persuaded Wilt. And to a man, the Warriors were willing to give Hannum's battle plan a try. "What could we lose?" says Forward Tom Meschery. "Our shirts? We'd already lost those."

Chamberlain, of course, had quite a bit more than his shirt to lose, having parlayed his scoring talents into a $70,000-a-year job that enables him to drive a Bentley and to maintain apartments in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. He says now, "I don't care about points or my salary. All I care about is winning the NBA championship."

For those who insist that all this is just so much talk, there was a game in Philadelphia last month in which the Warriors came on the floor at half time trailing the 76ers by 15 points. In the next three minutes Chamberlain blocked four shots, picked up seven defensive and three offensive rebounds and was the playmaker, controlling the ball in one gigantic hand until a teammate was clear for a shot. Finally Hannum had to call a time-out so that his big center could stop laughing. The Warriors had outscored the 76ers 20-3, and Wilt's contribution was four points. Said Hannum, "He didn't exactly look like a man who was disappointed."

With Chamberlain now doing what everyone expected of him all along, San Francisco fans are coming back. They like him and his perpetual-motion supporting cast, and they like winning. About the only people not happy are the Warriors' opponents. The St. Louis Hawks' 6-foot-9, 240-pound Zelmo Beaty, for example, found out recently that he can no longer take Chamberlain's great strength for granted. Unable to slow Wilt down with conventional maltreatment, Beaty tried to yank his shorts off. Chamberlain, who can press 400 pounds without breathing hard, makes it a point to control his temper, primarily because he is genuinely afraid he might kill somebody. Beaty's unethical yank, however, was too much. Wilt flicked an arm, and Beaty flew across the floor like a man shot out of a cannon. Referee Mendy Rudolph rushed over to him and said: "For God's sake, stay down, man. Don't even twitch a muscle." Beaty didn't twitch, and he is still active in the NBA.

Baltimore's Terry Dischinger has a recurring nightmare. It was born the recent night the Warriors beat the Bullets 120-118. Dischinger got away from his man and went in for the last—tying—shot of the game. "I don't know whether the shot would have gone in," he said, "and I never found out. Wilt jumped up and grabbed it with both hands, and that was the game." To San Francisco's way of thinking, that is the game.

[Dr Positivity]

Great article and it ties into the Wilt listened to what coaches wanted theme. But after reading that, I think this is the 'last' year I'll be giving Wilt a ton of love

[Doctor MJ]

Interested in the Warriors adjusted ORTG/DRTG stats. It looks like they played at a WAY lower pace than everyone else. How low? Their opponent ppg was 2.5 points below the Celtics who put up one of the all time greatest defensive years and cleared 2nd place by 5.6 DRTG points according to the ElGee thread

ElGee's breakdown of the offense:

Year ORtg (relative) -- rank
1959 85.3 (-3.8) -- 8th of 8
-----------------------------------
1960 87.9 (-2.4) -- 7th of 8 *Wilt joins team averages 38 on +3.0 TS%, wins MVP
1961 90.8 (-0.7) -- 5th of 8
1962 94.5 (+1.9) -- 4th of 9 *the 50-point season
1963 95.4 (-0.6) -- 5th of 9
1964 93.0 (-1.5) -- 7th of 9
1966 95.5 (+0.3) -- 5th of 9
1967 102.8 (+6.7) -- 1st of 10 *Shoots only 14 FGA's/game
1968 99.1 (+2.1) -- 2nd of 12

We all know many of those teams weren't particularly good. But it's not like they were epically bad without Wilt.

I will post estimated numbers for 1965 shortly...

For the talk of Wilt becoming an all around offensive player this year, seems clear that the improvement happened on the defensive end.

[Doctor MJ]

Great article and it ties into the Wilt listened to what coaches wanted theme. But after reading that, I think this is the 'last' year I'll be giving Wilt a ton of love

Not yet sure how much love I'll give Wilt in these "early" years. It's definitely the case that his offensive impact in these years is only a fraction of the difference between his '66 & '67 impact, and that's a big deal for me. I have a real tough time buying a player that was only having a small fraction of his potential impact was having more impact than everyone else in the game - particularly when the change necessary to maximize his potential was not relying more on him, but less.

With that said, if you look at a year like '61-62, that's him taking a team that was worst on offense, and dragging them up to above average while playing at absurd volume, and the team having really strong overall success, nearly beating Boston in the playoffs. He's still a #1 contender that year at least - though the fact that Boston was still vastly superior in the regular season (their best SRS of the dynasty, nearly 6 points better than any one else in the league), and in the Boston-Philly series Russell really took Wilt's scoring down severely (from 50 to low 30s, lower efficiency, and everything seeming to get lower as the series progressed) give some strong argument for Russell.

[semi-sentient]

* = led the league

Regular Season

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Player            GP   MIN    PTS    TS%    REB    AST
=======================================================
Bill Russell      78   44.6   15.0   .461   24.7*   4.7
Jerry West        72   40.4   28.7   .562    6.0    5.6
Oscar Robertson   79   45.1   31.4   .576    9.9   11.0*
Wilt Chamberlain  80   46.1*  36.9*  .537   22.3    5.0
Bob Pettit        80   41.2   27.4   .535   15.3    3.2

Post Season

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Player            GP   MIN    PTS    TS%    REB    AST
=======================================================
Bill Russell      10   45.1   13.1   .406   27.2*   4.4
Jerry West         5   41.2   31.2   .564    7.2    3.4
Oscar Robertson   10   47.1*  29.3   .568*   8.9    8.4*
Wilt Chamberlain  12*  46.5   34.7*  .543   25.2    3.3
Bob Pettit        12*  41.2   21.0   .483   14.5    2.8

Awards Recognition / Misc

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Player            MVP     All-NBA   Team Record
===============================================
Bill Russell      3rd     2nd       59-21*
Jerry West        5th     1st       42-38
Oscar Robertson   1st     1st       55-25
Wilt Chamberlain  2nd     1st       48-32
Bob Pettit        4th     1st       46-34

This is a tough year. Wilt and Oscar had a good amount of team success and they were too good on offense to not get high marks this year. Wilt had a really bad supporting cast and picked it up defensively while buying into more of a team-oriented approach. Russell, I'm sure, was still great on defense, but I have a rally hard time swallowing the huge gap in offensive production between he and Wilt/Oscar. Wilt especially because there would have to be a massive difference on defense and I just don't believe that there is.

I'm probably going to have Wilt at #1 this year while Russell and Oscar duke it out for the #2 spot. I'll have to see the offense/defense rankings, as well as further analysis to see who I'll be going with.

After that it's a pretty big gap, with West and Pettit rounding out the top 5. Pettit would have been above West if not for the lackluster post-season, but I still have some reservations since the Lakers just weren't that good. It's hard to imagine how they could only go 42-38 with West and Baylor, so we'll see what kind of stories come out.

[bastillon]

I'm giving Oscar about the same credit for this year as the rest. Biggest difference in this season was the defense.

Early rankings

1. Russell
2. Wilt
3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

why Wilt ahead of Oscar ? 30/10/10 with top efficiency on 55W team + MVP + great playoffs seems like an easy #2.

[penbeast0]

1 great team -- Boston, 2 very good teams – Cincy (again Oscar leads them to a very good regular season record) and SF, 2 decent teams – STL and LAL.

The stars of each team are obvious . . . Russell, Oscar, Wilt, Pettit, and West (still a bit better than Baylor). Looking deeper, only Baylor has the numbers to hang with the big 5 and he’s the second best player on the 5th best team. Nor does anyone from the losing teams leap out at me to move up.

The other thing that impresses me is that Oscar, Pettit, and West had very solid teams – very comparable to Boston with good depth. No one on Boston impresses that much; Sam Jones was solid but not great offensively with little else; Havlicek is still in his inefficient period, and Heinsohn just isn’t impressive on either end. The Warriors, however, are even weaker with little support for Wilt and some lousy starters (Gary Phillips – blah!) plus no depth. Since those are the Champion and Finalist respectively, it makes the top two a fairly clear pair for me . . . Wilt and Russ; or Russ and Wilt. One of those.

The second grouping is Oscar, Pettit, West . . . in that order probably. Oscar has easily the best record with probably the best team around him, but not the best by that much. Pettit has depth but no Baylor; The Lakers have 4 solid players but a major donut hole in the center. A point I had overlooked -- Pettit had a mediocre playoff whereas West performed his normal playoff heroics so West easily overtakes him.

Back to Wilt and Russ . . . Wilt had a great scoring playoff this time for once and, as I said, his supporting cast is pretty lackluster talentwise (your second best player is pothead Tom Meschery, that's an expansion team. Russell was his normal great self but I think I have to credit Wilt more for this one (shocking myself if no one else).

1. Wilt
2. Russell

3. Oscar
4. West
5. Pettit

[ElGee]

Estimated Pace-Adjusted Numbers 1964

ORtg

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1.  Cincinnati    99.2
2.  Los Angeles   98.0
3.  New York      95.6
4.  Baltimore     95.2
5.  St. Louis     95.2
LEAGUE AVG.       94.5
6.  Philadelphia  93.3
7.  San Francisco 93.0
8.  Detroit       92.1
9.  Boston        89.3


DRtg

Code: Select all

1.  Boston        83.0
3.  San Francisco 88.6
2.  St. Louis     93.8
LEAGUE AVG.       94.5
8.  Cincinnati    94.9
9.  Baltimore     96.6
5.  Philadelphia  96.9
6.  Los Angeles   97.1
4.  Detroit       98.6
7.  New York      101.4

Individuals numbers placed here later...

[Doctor MJ]

Man, that DRtg is so telling. Will be very interested to see the Warriors DRtg over the next few years.

[Dr Positivity]

Yeah, wow @ the Warriors being 5 points head of everyone but Boston in DRTG. Once again Wilt's pre Lakers defense is impressing me more than I expected coming in. During 64-69 I think you can put his d impact near Kareem's

[Doctor MJ]

Yeah, wow @ the Warriors being 5 points head of everyone but Boston in DRTG. Once again Wilt's pre Lakers defense is impressing me more than I expected coming in. During 64-69 I think you can put his d impact near Kareem's

Well, but it's not at all consistent in that time period. It's great in '64 & '68, strong in '66, nothing remarkable in '65, '67, or '69.

[bastillon]

Yeah, wow @ the Warriors being 5 points head of everyone but Boston in DRTG. Once again Wilt's pre Lakers defense is impressing me more than I expected coming in. During 64-69 I think you can put his d impact near Kareem's

and he still looks like a lost child compared to Russell's D - over 5 pts worse than his team. I'm laughing at all those posts about Wilt being comparable defender to Russell... and there were even guys who thought Wilt was better when he wanted, lol.

also let's not forget Thurmond played 2000 RS mins and averaged 34 MPG in the playoffs. Thurmond is a guy whose impact defensively is much higher than Wilt's historically. come to think of it, Russell was better than Thurmond and Wilt defensively COMBINED

before you take for granted Wilt was all that made this team borderline contender, consider previous year and the changes made in the meantime. Warriors were 31W team in 63, Thurmond and Hannum joined the team and they're 48W challenging Celtics in the finals.

[mopper8]

and he still looks like a lost child compared to Russell's D - over 5 pts worse than his team. I'm laughing at all those posts about Wilt being comparable defender to Russell... and there were even guys who thought Wilt was better when he wanted, lol.

also let's not forget Thurmond played 2000 RS mins and averaged 34 MPG in the playoffs. Thurmond is a guy whose impact defensively is much higher than Wilt's historically. come to think of it, Russell was better than Thurmond and Wilt defensively COMBINED

before you take for granted Wilt was all that made this team borderline contender, consider previous year and the changes made in the meantime. Warriors were 31W team in 63, Thurmond and Hannum joined the team and they're 48W challenging Celtics in the finals.

As is par for the course, you overstate Wilt's supporting cast tremendously. As you have noted and everyone recognizes as obviously true, the vast majority of players are not nearly as good as rookies as they are in their prime, so I think its a little ridiculous to act like Thurmond was hugely impacting the defense. His per-36 minutes this season as opposed to the following are noticeably inferior (10/14.5 on 40% shooting and 55% ft vs 14.5/16 on 42/66). In short, all the evidence suggests he is just like most every other rookie.

Meanwhile, you say he played 2000 minutes...well, that was good for only 6th on the team. 26 mpg in an era where players regularly average over 40 is not eye-popping. Heck, even Al Attles may have played fewer total minutes because he played 6 fewer games, but he average more mpg than Thurmond as well, putting Nate at 7th on the team in mpg. Sure, his mpg went up in the playoffs, but what does that have to do with his Regular Season numbers when you're talking about Regular Season Drtg? Sloppy at best, disingenuous at worst.

Overselling Wilt's cast to exaggerate the difference between him and Russell...nothing new there.

[bastillon]

what did I say to oversell Wilt's cast ? I simply pointed out that differences between 63 and 64 Warriors are that Thurmond joined the team, Hannum became a coach and they played a lot better. it would reasonable to assume that as these two were the only variables that changed, they're responsible for Sixers improvement.

side note: both Thurmond and Hannum have a history of making high impact when playing/coaching. 67-69 comes to mind in both cases. Warriors suffered tremendously when Thurmond missed games and we all know how dramatically Philly improved when Hannum became their coach in 67.

Elgee, could you perhaps give us an idea where Sixers improved ? was it offense or defense ? or both ?

[mopper8]

what did I say to oversell Wilt's cast ?

The fact that you want to give equal if not more credit to Thurmond for the Warriors' defense even though Wilt played nearly twice as many total minutes and Thurmond was 7th on the team in MPG as basically the 3rd forward (behind Mescery and Hightower) while Wilt was far and away the leader in MPG (46, next most being Rogers at 34 and then Hightower at 32) and total minutes played.

Add in that per-36 minute production and efficiency suggest that Thurmond was nowhere near the player he would be in his prime, and yeah, I'd say you were overselling his impact big time. And considering the thrust of your post was that (a) Thurmond had as big an impact as Wilt defensively and (b) Wilt + Thurmond < Russell, therefore Russell is the best, and it should be obvious how sloppy the thinking is.

As for Hannum's impact, what makes you so confident that its not the case that his impact was precisely because he could get Wilt to play better defense? And as such, Wilt, not Thurmond, should share credit for that improvement? Or does Hannum's impact only count for changing the level of play for everyone else but Wilt? Since Hannum himself isn't playing, he's impacting the game by getting guys to play better. Apparently, according to you, that couldn't possibly include changing Wilt's impact.

Of course, aside from being absolutely ridiculous and/or fallacious logic, its also incorrect.

Hannum felt Wilt needed to become more aggressive. He was also determined that Chamberlain play a complete game. [...]
As the team continued to win, sportswriters began talking about the "new Chamberlain" and the "new Warriors."
"You've got to bow down, Wilt," [Guy] Rogers told Chamberlain. "Admit it, cat, that we're a much better club with you feeding us part of the time and then getting back to protect our basket."

That's John Taylor's The Rivalry. In nearly 25 pages on the 63-64 season, nearly a third of which were dedicated to the Warriors' and their coach, the dynamic between Chamberlain and Hannum, their changing style of play and resultant success, you cannot find a single mention of Nate Thurmond, who gets his introduction when discussing the 64-65 season.

If you can find some articles from that time talking about how Thurmond's addition has changed the face of the team, by all means, post it here, but most contemporary accounts credit Hannum's ability to change Wilt's style of play, and the resultant increased impact he had on the team both offensively and defensively.

edit: you need look no further than MVP voting to see the perception that Wilt was to credit for the team's success. In 62-63 he received 0 first place votes and finished 7th in MVP voting; in 63-64 he finished second, with 19 first-place votes to Russell's 11.