lebron3-14-3 wrote:On the one hand george mikan was the more dominant player, winning more rings and being measurably more impactful, but on the other hand pettit played in a far better league (being drafted only 2 years before russell and 5 years before wilt), where black players were allowed since 5 years before his draft, the shot clock had just been introduced, etc, and he also played longer than mikan.
So, who do you consider better?
A debate I've gone back and forth about a lot.
Offensively, I think the key thing to focus on is what changed from '50-51 to '51-52. Up through '50-51, Mikan had a strong case for being the best offensive player in the league. From '51-52 onward, he's not remotely a candidate. 2 things happened:
1. Mikan got hurt in the 1951 playoffs which ended up costing his team the title. While he clearly got better, it's possible he was really much less effective offensively from there on out without it actually having that much effect on his defense.
2. The NBA widened the key specifically to undermine Mikan's offense. There's no doubt it had an effect, but question is how big that effect was.
I'm inclined to think that Mikan's one-sided drop off was more about the rule change than anything else which raises this question:
When we're talking about ranking Mikan & Pettit's offense, are we judging based on how dominant they were at apex, or how good they were with a modern key? If the former, it's Mikan, if the latter, it's Pettit by a wide margin.
From there we go to defense, where Mikan definitely deserves the advantage, and where Mikan's continued dominance from '51-52 to '53-54 allowed him to continue to be more dominant than Pettit ever was.
But then we get into the question of how Mikan would do against guys like Russell/Chamberlain/Thurmond.
I saw a post recently from someone saying they don't think Russell was that much different from Mikan, and I think that's perhaps the most important question for someone to answer.
Some things I'll mention:
1. George Mikan was neither the first guy associated with goaltending, nor the guy that made them make the rule change.
The first player I've actually seen talked about as a serious goaltender was actually Mikan's Laker teammate Jim Pollard. Some folks might know that the 6'4" Pollard was known as an incredible leaper, but they probably don't realize that goaltending was part of what he was known for before he became a Laker and ceded the interior to Mikan. At 6'4", no matter how high he jumped, the time it took him to get to that apex limited his capacity on this front so I don't want to make out like he could play that role better than Mikan, but it's just worth noting.
And of course, the guy who was the main reason they changed the rules in college was Bob Kurland, who was taller than Mikan and I think probably more of a natural athlete. Mikan actually tried out for Notre Dame's college team before he played for DePaul and was cut because of being too slow and uncoordinated. What changed for him was an intense work out regiment designed by DePaul's coach. Mikan worked his ass off and became an extremely aggressive player - considerably more so than Kurland - and once he had that he was capable of bullying everyone in the college, including Kurland, so long as he avoided fouling out.
2. However, when Mikan gets to the pros, he reports getting bullied by the bigs in the game, with Cowboy Edwards being the main guy he mentions. Edwards' height has been mentioned to be as low as 6'4" to 6'9" (from Mikan himself), so while it's unclear how tall he was exactly, he was definitely shorter and stronger than Mikan.
This means that Mikan's success wasn't predicated simply dependent on him being bigger and/or stronger than everyone else, which says good things, but does place some limitations on how strong we assume him to be. He may well have been stronger than a lithe guy like Russell, but I don't think we're talking about someone anywhere near the strength of Wilt or Nate.
3. Russell talks about when he was getting started in high school & college, that shot-blocking wasn't seen as a major part of defense because of the downside of leaving your feet. Meaning, we should be very careful about thinking of Russell as Mikan 2.0, because it's clear that no one was mentoring Russell by saying "block shots like Mikan", this despite the fact that Mikan was the best known basketball player in the world at this time.
This leaves us with a bit of a mystery. How exactly where the Lakers so effective on defense if it wasn't about Mikan's shot blocking?
I think it might have been the rebounding. The Mikan drill after all is really all about getting rebounds and going up for scores based on that. Then recall how poor the FG% was back in those days - in a league where shots are more likely to lead to interior rebounds, interior rebounding is going to be very valuable.
When we look at the '51-52 finals, here's the rebounding leaderboard:
1. Mikan (MPL) 122
2. Gallatin (NYK) 69
3. Clifton (NYK) 64
4. Mikkelsen (MPL) 58
That's one hell of an advantage, and it's not an advantage I think would be remotely sustainable against the stronger big man competition that was coming.
4. Now, this isn't to say that Mikan's shot blocking threat wasn't a thing, but doing things on the interior to avoid blocked shots was something well established at this point with the dominant form of interior attack being hook shots.
Russell also talks about how when he started most of the non-interior players were set-shot shooters, and how trivial it was too block their shots. While in general I think the thing that killed the set shot was perimeter defenders blocking shots, what Russell had going for him was what he called "the horizontal game". He was all about rushing out to block the perimeter players shots and then getting back to the interior quickly enough he didn't get burned.
This to say, that I think that what made Russell such an outlier as a shotblocker wasn't simply that he was more likely to block the shots of interior scorers - though he was of course - but that he became this threat that terrorized far more of the court than anyone had done before.
5. I think it's important to understand that Mikan's per36 rebounding numbers aren't what goes down as he fades from prominence. It's his minutes. He's down to 32 MPG at age 29, retires, and when he comes back at age 31 again putting up great per36 rebounding numbers, he's down to 20 MPG.
And this was from a big man who had always been known for slowing down teammates like Pollard who were more fast-break oriented. To me, it really feels like much of what happened with Mikan having a shorter career seems to be explainable in terms of having major issues with endurance as he lost the explosion of youth.
This is a stark contrast to a guy like Russell who played for ultra-fast teams and continuing to be a 40+ MPG guy until his last year at age 34.
All this to say, that I don't think Mikan was a poor man's Russell. I think Russell came in and was a fundamentally distinct thing.
So who is better Mikan or Pettit? Gah, totally depends on your criteria.
I don't think think a Pettit born sooner would have prevented Mikan from being the dominant player in his time, but I do think that Pettit's approach would have scaled better to the better competition that was coming down the pike.