RealGM Top 100 List #86

[trex_8063]

Thru post #14:

Mel Daniels (1) - penbeast0

Chris Webber (3) - ronnymac2, SactoKingsFan, trex_8063

Chris Bosh (1) - Quotatious

Carmelo Anthony (1) - Clyde Frazier

The player who will come out of no where and beat Webber in the run-off has yet to be determined.....

And that player is (once again out of no where) someone who didn't have a single vote at the time I posted the above count: Neil Johnston.

[Clyde Frazier]

It is starting to get a little discouraging that we haven't been able to get at least 10 initial votes over the last several threads.


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[penbeast0]

Sorry but I've never bought into Neil Johnston. He was a great offensive player in the weak 50s but even then his defense was questionable and no one ever talked about his leadership qualitities. His team seemed to fall apart despite his having a prime/peak year when Arizin went into the army (though losing one of your two top stars will hurt anyone) and I just don't see him as dominant in the way that Mikan or even Cousy was.

Don't like Webber, I've been one of his biggest bashers here, but if I want a finesse big who isn't particularly strong defensively, I'll go with Webber's elite athleticism and passing skills and try to put someone with a big heart next to him (the Euroflopper?). Runoff vote: Webber.

[RSCD3_]

Runoff vote webber

Better offensive player in A Much tougher era, his passing and athleticism seem much more portable than anything Neil Johnston did'. Also his defensive abilities where at worst average to Johnston, likely Better on that end due to how much more athletic the league got

the era difference is too big for me, so im going with webber

[Moonbeam]

Runoff vote webber

Better offensive player in A Much tougher era, his passing and athleticism seem much more portable than anything Neil Johnston did'. Also his defensive abilities where at worst average to Johnston, likely Better

I'm not sure Webber was a better offensive player. A better passer? Sure. A better rebounder? Hard to say. Better with other stuff like screen setting? Impossible to know. But Johnston was several orders of magnitude more impactful as a scorer.

I think the essence of this vote is how you judge the era and longevity comparison.

[Johnlac1]

One huge myth that has been spread about Johnston and propagated by a bunch of Celtic flacks like Bob Ryan is that Bill Russell drove Johnston out of the league by blocking all his shots the first time they played against each other. After a disastrous first game against Russell, supposedly Johnston was so humiliated he had to retire at the end of the season.
Russell did dominate the first meeting. Nobody in the league had ever faced a shot-blocker like Russell, and the easy, sweeping hook shots (Johnston's basic shot) they got away with against other league centers didn't work against Russell. So Johnston had a very rough first meeting.
Well then I had to go back in Basketball Reference to see what happened on subsequent matches between the two. Johnston actually performed very well and averaged over 20 ppg against the Celtics for the rest of his career. Which basically ended after the next season when Johnston suffered a severe knee injury that killed his career. He had a good season in 57-58 but suffered his career-ending injury during the '58-59 season. He didn't retire because Russell humiliated him. He was still playing at a high level when he suffered his career-ending injury.
So after that I could never take the word of Bob Ryan seriously about bb matters. He's an interesting writer, but you have to take what he says with a grain of salt.

[penbeast0]

Actually, I read that story back in the mid 1960s in a book I bought at the scholastic book fair in elementary school so I think it was around before Bob Ryan. I did like you and looked up his season(s) after Russell and yeah, he didn't have a big falloff.

[Johnlac1]

Actually, I read that story back in the mid 1960s in a book I bought at the scholastic book fair in elementary school so I think it was around before Bob Ryan. I did like you and looked up his season(s) after Russell and yeah, he didn't have a big falloff.

That hokum about Russell forcing Johnston into retirement has been spoken by Auerbach and Heinsohn, and I've seen video of both of them saying that. Ryan was younger and heard the stories, so he's maybe a little less culpable than Auerbach and Heinsohn. But a decent journalist would have checked the books to find out the truth.

[Owly]

Sorry but I've never bought into Neil Johnston. He was a great offensive player in the weak 50s but even then his defense was questionable and no one ever talked about his leadership qualitities. His team seemed to fall apart despite his having a prime/peak year when Arizin went into the army (though losing one of your two top stars will hurt anyone)

About this ...

1) It's not just one of your top 2, it's (a) one of the league's elite players (already in in this project and had a very strong season in the early 50s) and then also their third best player Andy Phillip (sold 13 games in).

2) The conventional criticisms of failures of low post offensive anchors (holding the ball too long, possibly not creating shots for others) don't make much sense for the time frame covered when there wasn't a shot clock i.e. even if he was doing these things (and I'm not sure there's evidence he was, he succeeded after the clock came in) it wouldn't matter. The only real problem at that time of an offensive anchor would be to be dreadfully turnover prone.

3) Teammates, coaching and shot allocation: I'd suggest in it's earliest days was when there was the greatest variability in coaching (less known who was good, far less support systems) so that can factor into a team struggling. Then ditto with the player pool; the scouting systems just aren't there, nor is there necessarily the incentive for the best players to play basketball, so bad teams can field some bad players. Finally the combination of the two poor coaching plus poor roster and player awareness helps lead to poor shot distribution, or "Hey, Joe Fulks shooting 30% six years ago was pretty sweet and now he's up to 35% lets have him shoot the most often per minute. And that Johnston guy, he should be our 9th option [where he was in fga per 36, albeit 2 of those ahead played a combined total of 49 minutes in the season]." Of their top 9 (by minutes and fwiw, FT attempts) two are above league average in FT%. And both those two are within 1% of the non-Warriors league average (non-Warriors shot 72.0% - or .719657597). Then too, with the sale of Phillip 13 games in, tanking comes into the equation.


At this point you can make a case for 50 guys (hence the ongoing Webber situation, though this was a known factor of this method of voting, so whether you consider it positive or negative - and at this point it does admittedly give odd - or different - influence to whoever decides to vote or change vote late, it's been like this all along). So I don't mind Johnston not getting support (kind of anticipated he wouldn't and didn't mind Webber getting in and that being done with), still, whilst I see the team level issues, I think there's a lot going on around Johnston at the team level that makes it pretty unreliable. Anyway as before lots of good players out there which, by different criteria, and in different contexts could be considered for the spot, but of those voted for, I'd lean towards the one who it seems might have had an extended dominant spell, at least by the boxscore.

fwiw I think the Russell story might have hurt Johnston's legacy (not here necessarily but in general) in fairly quickly making him seem like a dusty old relic, "proven" and shown to be obsolete, rather than still one of the league's top players for a small overlapping period with Russell.

[Doctor MJ]

Runoff Vote: Webber.

I'm definitely more comfortable with Webber here. Johnston played in a suspect era and showed signs of being a bit of an inflated stats guy even in that era.

[Clyde Frazier]

Runoff vote - Webber

Even relative to his era, I'm not in love with johnston's longevity. Yes, he had 6 solid seasons, but that's essentially it. We didn't get to see how he'd adapt to playing in the 60s, which is something i've taken into account for players during that era. As noted, in the 56 championship run, his #s dropped in the playoffs, and even further in the finals. His 22 PPG on 45.7% FG and 80.1% FT in the reg season dropped to 13.6 PPG on 33.8% FG and 61.1% FT in the finals.

I've alluded to webber's uneven playoff career, but he did play fairly well in the 02 WCF against the lakers:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/pla ... ml#LAL-SAC

Considering it went 7 games with OT and they didn't have a peja for half the series, not to mention the infamous horry game winner, I think you got all you could ask for out of that kings team.

[penbeast0]

Chris Webber wins the runoff vote . . . on to 87