The Walton-to-Eaton Opening: Is it possible guards really deserved DPOY?

[Doctor MJ]

Over the 7 year stretch of 1979-80 to 1985-86, Boston was the league's 2nd best team defensively at 102.0 pts/100poss allowed. The only team better defensively was Milwaukee. So Boston was as close to excellent defensively over that long span as anyone was sans the Bucks.

Over those 7 years Bird played 21401 regular season minutes. He alone played 1/7 to 1/6 of the Celtics' total minutes, and almost 6000 more minutes than any other Celtics player.

For the team as a whole to have been excellent or close to excellent on defense over all that time, compared to the other teams in the league, Bird playing all that time himself also had to be very good to excellent on defense. If he was just an average defender or worse than average all that time would mean all the other Celtics players who played the other 6/7 to 5/6 of the playing time would have had to have played excellent defense for the whole team to have been very good to excellent on defense.

To anyone claiming Bird was just an average or even a poor defender need to look at the team's overall defensive numbers over a number of years and apportion the defensive credit to individual players.

Good points to bring up.

Yeah, I think skepticism about Bird being a DPOY guy makes sense because we know he had weaknesses, but I think we do have to ask,

If Bird isn't the most valuable defender on those early Celtic teams, who is? And if it's Bird, and the defenses were excellent, doesn't that make him someone we have to consider for DPOY?

In Bird's rookie year one might be tempted to champion Cowens, because he was great in his prime, but Cowens was there before and the defense was bad, and the new year he's gone and the defense is still great. So if it's not Cowens, who is it? The 3 main minutes guys out there are Bird, Tiny Archibald, and Cornbread Maxwell. Of those 3, I have no qualms about giving the nod to Bird.

Even when Parish & McHale first show up, you're talking about guys playing in considerably more limited minutes than will eventually do, so maybe their impact per minute is sufficient to overwhelm Bird overall, but it's not clear to me for a while yet.

Fitch?

The things Fitch was known for being a drill sergeant, "Captain Video" ... that's the sort of stuff that might especially pay off on D. Perhaps him (and Bird giving the chance of being good) changes a Celtic culture that had fallen off. They're rid of guys perhaps perceived as mercenaries (McAdoo, Barnes, Knight, Rowe). Cowens doesn't have to try to coach (nor have they just hired a former Celtic player). They don't seem to be exceptional in any one area, which might at the margins support a coach just getting a team executing rather than one player making them exceptional in one area. They have decent within year health and continuity too.

I don't know but my guess would be everyone or many people at least are contributing a bit rather than one DPoY monster making huge impact. And part of that might well be Fitch. I don't know.

Fair point, but while I'm all for giving coaches love here, I'm not keen on treating value between players and coaches as a zero-sum game.

That said, I'm also not trying to say "If the team defense is good, we must single out one player as the Monster", so it's plenty reasonable to say that, maybe Bird was the defensive MVP of the team but he had less value than other defenders on other teams even if they had a worse DRtg.

[AEnigma]

Over the 7 year stretch of 1979-80 to 1985-86, Boston was the league's 2nd best team defensively at 102.0 pts/100poss allowed. The only team better defensively was Milwaukee. So Boston was as close to excellent defensively over that long span as anyone was sans the Bucks.

Over those 7 years Bird played 21401 regular season minutes. He alone played 1/7 to 1/6 of the Celtics' total minutes, and almost 6000 more minutes than any other Celtics player.

For the team as a whole to have been excellent or close to excellent on defense over all that time, compared to the other teams in the league, Bird playing all that time himself also had to be very good to excellent on defense. If he was just an average defender or worse than average all that time would mean all the other Celtics players who played the other 6/7 to 5/6 of the playing time would have had to have played excellent defense for the whole team to have been very good to excellent on defense.

To anyone claiming Bird was just an average or even a poor defender need to look at the team's overall defensive numbers over a number of years and apportion the defensive credit to individual players.

Uh it is very possible for the minutes leader on good defences to be nothing special himself.

The 1979 Nets (anchored by George Johnson) were a top three defence with Bernard King comfortably leading the team in minutes. King repeated the feat for the #1 defence 1984 Knicks. Secretly good defender?

The 1977 Nuggets were first in defence with Skywalker and Issel as their two minutes leaders. The 1986 Jazz were third in defence with Dantley as their minutes leader. These are just off the top of my head, but already, looks like a lot of examples even with guys defensively worse than Bird.

You mentioned the Bucks topped the Celtics over that span. Well, in 1980 they were a -2.4 defence with Marques Johnson, Brian Winters, and Junior Bridgeman as their minutes leaders. -3.7 the next year again led by Marques Johnson. Moncrief is the leader the next year, but then they are -3.3 in 1983 with Marques returning as their minutes leader. Either Moncrief or Pressey lead the next few years after that, but in 1987, Terry Cummings leads, and Moncrief plays less than half the season, and they are still a top four defence.

Coaching and team construction matter, and on that point I tend to agree with Tsherkin and Owly in their analysis of what makes sense as the reason for the 1980 Celtics posting the best rDrtg (and indeed the best overall net rating SRS) of Bird’s first six seasons, without assuming that Bird had an outlier defensive peak his rookie season.

[Doctor MJ]

Re: Gilmore specifically. While I haven't watched as much Gilmore as several folks here, and welcome being corrected, the way I see mid-to-late stage Gilmore at this point is as someone who is a known factor whose effect can be mitigated.

Doesn't mean he has no defensive impact, but he has less than he would if he were going up against teams who had no idea who he was - and this is distinct from the drop in explosion as he ages, which also reduces impact.

One might wonder if this is true to an extent for all established veterans, and I think you can say that, but I do think that everyone's always trying to figure out their opponents to increase their impact, and I see Gilmore as someone who got figured out more than he did the figuring out.

Now, props to his ultra-efficient offensive game which let him be valuable on the other end of the floor too for a long time, and being a big who is valuable on both sides of the floor for a decade plus is no small thing, but just on defense, I struggle to see him as a DPOY level guy in this era.

That's interesting opinion, but could you elaborate what's the reason of your conclusion? Is there any specific reason why you think Gilmore got "figured out", instead of simply getting older (and losing younger mobility after 1979 injury)?

First, I'll just say it's hard to tell the difference, and so maybe I should default to an assumption of natural aging.

Second, this is a thing on my mind in the '70s when it just seems like Gilmore should have been the dominant defender of his era, but his stats peak as a rookie, and he never really emerges as an outlier on defense in the NBA, despite the fact that it seems like the NBA's style of play should have helped him.

Then there's the matter that in the '80s, while I'll grant he was clearly less athletic than he was when he was younger, he was still among the league leaders in blocks and a clear cut scary monster in the interior in the minds of everyone who played against him. And yet, he goes between teams and it's hard to see a drastic difference in defensive effectiveness for those teams.

In Chicago for example, when he leaves they become a worse shot-blocking team, just as one would expect...but it doesn't actually make the team considerably worse defensively.

He goes to San Antonio, and the shot-blocking actually seems to get worse. And yes he was effectively replacing George Johnson, and Johnson was good, but they were about the same age and I never saw Johnson as a monster on the level that I saw Gilmore.

And then there's the eyeball stuff, which you have a much better claim to than me, but what sticks out to me is the way offensive players seem like they know they are actively adapting to the knowledge that you have to avoid certain approaches because of Gilmore. The same could be said to be true for any interior threat, and we will sometimes talk about this as a value-add through inhibition...but if you're not actually seeing massive impact data for the interior threat, then the mitigating efforts would seem to be working, aka, "things figured out".

[Doctor MJ]

I understand the feeling, but I make a thread like this one because it's an era where I don't really feel like anyone in those years is a DPOY caliber defender, and yet someone had to have the best defensive season each season.

Who would you pick for the years in question, '78-79 to '83-84?

It's tough, because with little footage available we could always forget about someone notable. With that in mind, here are my candidates:

1979: Jack Sikma, Bobby Jones, Sam Lacey

HM: Dennis Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think Jones only weakness in comparison to the other candidates is that he played only 29 mpg in the RS. I don't think it's impossible to pick him with smaller load though.

Sikma was a very fundamentaly sound defender, but he was surrounded with some excellent defenders and I always viewed Sonics as the earlier version of Bad Boy Pistons - they didn't have a clear anchor.

Sam Lacey is a very underrated player. He wasn't a huge shotblocker, but I like his activity in games I have seen.

1980: Jack Sikma, Sam Lacey, Caldwell Jones

HM: Bobby Jones, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

This time I decided to go with Caldwell Jones, who played more minutes than Bobby whose minutes regressed to 26 mpg. Caldwell was a very gifted athlete and excellent shotblocker. I like his ability to play both big positions due to his mobility.

1981: Caldwell Jones, Robert Parish

HM: Sidney Moncrief, Dennis Johnson

Parish is another one with lower minutes, but I have no doubts he's the best Celtics defender. I really like Squid and DJ, but I dom think they were as impactful as these bigs.

1982: Jack Sikma, Robert Parish, Buck Williams

HM: Dennis Johnson, Sidney Moncrief

I'm not very comfortable with putting rookie Williams at the top, but he was outstanding defender and Nets started their defensive mini-dynasty with him.


Also, special HM to George Johnson who didn't play enough minutes to qualify, but was enormous shotblocker.

Thank you.

So first, I think we're all in agreement that Bobby Jones was incredible and it's just a question of minutes.

In general you're favoring DJ's teammate Jack Sikma over him, and I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on how you make that determination.

Something subtle you probably realized already is that by avoiding the discussion of '77-78, we remove Marvin Webster from the Seattle context. Just looking at '77-78, to me Webster seems like the defensive MVP of the Sonics with DJ as the obvious 2nd choice (playing a lot more minutes than Sikma).

The following year Webster leaves, and we have a team where Sikma leads the team in regular season minutes followed by DJ, but DJ again plays the bigger minutes in the playoffs, and DJ leads the team in blocks in both RS & PS.

We can thus look at this and craft various narratives. Maybe the big man didn't really matter? Maybe Sikma was the best big man defender all along, and since Webster was already good, we don't realize how special Sikma was?

Of course when we recognize the actual basketball involved, we know the value of the actual block isn't as big of a deal as we thought, and while that doesn't mean your shotblocking threat is overrated, it can mean that in a given context.

Anyway, that's a bunch of stuff I'm curious what people think about. If the answer is "Actually, the guard DPOY candidate still wasn't as good at defense as the big man behind him.", that certainly makes a lot of sense, but since Sikma wasn't your traditional shotblocker, it's not so clear.

[70sFan]

I understand the feeling, but I make a thread like this one because it's an era where I don't really feel like anyone in those years is a DPOY caliber defender, and yet someone had to have the best defensive season each season.

Who would you pick for the years in question, '78-79 to '83-84?

It's tough, because with little footage available we could always forget about someone notable. With that in mind, here are my candidates:

1979: Jack Sikma, Bobby Jones, Sam Lacey

HM: Dennis Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

I think Jones only weakness in comparison to the other candidates is that he played only 29 mpg in the RS. I don't think it's impossible to pick him with smaller load though.

Sikma was a very fundamentaly sound defender, but he was surrounded with some excellent defenders and I always viewed Sonics as the earlier version of Bad Boy Pistons - they didn't have a clear anchor.

Sam Lacey is a very underrated player. He wasn't a huge shotblocker, but I like his activity in games I have seen.

1980: Jack Sikma, Sam Lacey, Caldwell Jones

HM: Bobby Jones, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

This time I decided to go with Caldwell Jones, who played more minutes than Bobby whose minutes regressed to 26 mpg. Caldwell was a very gifted athlete and excellent shotblocker. I like his ability to play both big positions due to his mobility.

1981: Caldwell Jones, Robert Parish

HM: Sidney Moncrief, Dennis Johnson

Parish is another one with lower minutes, but I have no doubts he's the best Celtics defender. I really like Squid and DJ, but I dom think they were as impactful as these bigs.

1982: Jack Sikma, Robert Parish, Buck Williams

HM: Dennis Johnson, Sidney Moncrief

I'm not very comfortable with putting rookie Williams at the top, but he was outstanding defender and Nets started their defensive mini-dynasty with him.


Also, special HM to George Johnson who didn't play enough minutes to qualify, but was enormous shotblocker.

Thank you.

So first, I think we're all in agreement that Bobby Jones was incredible and it's just a question of minutes.

In general you're favoring DJ's teammate Jack Sikma over him, and I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on how you make that determination.

Something subtle you probably realized already is that by avoiding the discussion of '77-78, we remove Marvin Webster from the Seattle context. Just looking at '77-78, to me Webster seems like the defensive MVP of the Sonics with DJ as the obvious 2nd choice (playing a lot more minutes than Sikma).

The following year Webster leaves, and we have a team where Sikma leads the team in regular season minutes followed by DJ, but DJ again plays the bigger minutes in the playoffs, and DJ leads the team in blocks in both RS & PS.

We can thus look at this and craft various narratives. Maybe the big man didn't really matter? Maybe Sikma was the best big man defender all along, and since Webster was already good, we don't realize how special Sikma was?

Of course when we recognize the actual basketball involved, we know the value of the actual block isn't as big of a deal as we thought, and while that doesn't mean your shotblocking threat is overrated, it can mean that in a given context.

Anyway, that's a bunch of stuff I'm curious what people think about. If the answer is "Actually, the guard DPOY candidate still wasn't as good at defense as the big man behind him.", that certainly makes a lot of sense, but since Sikma wasn't your traditional shotblocker, it's not so clear.

Good point about Seattle situation. As I said in a previous post, I don't think they had a clear anchor on defensive end. They worked as a collective and it makes sense that they didn't seem to be reliant on one player on that end. It's not only about DJ vs Sikma/Webster - they also had strong defenders in Shelton and Silas.

Now, about Sikma vs Webster - although I think that Webster was a very strong point of Sonics defense, keep in mind that Sonics actually improved in 1979 when they decided to go with Sikma as their starting center. Marvin was undoubtely a better shotblocker, but it doesn't mean he was a better defender overall. I always view Marc Gasol as a solid comparison to Jack Sikma - they weren't vertical threats but they knew how to position themselves to keep opponents away from the paint. Of course, there are some differences (Gasol was bigger, Sikma was more mobile) and Marc was definitely better overall, but that's just a rough comparison. Sikma was just very smart player, very underrated one.

About DJ vs Sikma - keep in mind that Seattle didn't have DJ in 1982 and they remained very strong defensively. Part of that is the addition of Bill Hanzlik, but as much as I appreciate Bill, I don't think we can call him DPOY candidate in limited minutes.

So keep that in mind that I am open to reevaluate Sikma impact on defensive end, but for now I view him as the best candidate.

[70sFan]

First, I'll just say it's hard to tell the difference, and so maybe I should default to an assumption of natural aging.

Second, this is a thing on my mind in the '70s when it just seems like Gilmore should have been the dominant defender of his era, but his stats peak as a rookie, and he never really emerges as an outlier on defense in the NBA, despite the fact that it seems like the NBA's style of play should have helped him.

Thank you for the reply.

I think we should be catious of calling Gilmore rookie season his peak on defense just because of block numbers. Kentucky were absurdly dominant defensively throughout Gilmore's whole ABA career and they actually peaked in 1975, when Artis posted his 2nd weakest block rate in the ABA. It's not only about overall DRtg, Kentucky were better in opponent FG% in 1975 than 1972, despite the league being visibly better overall.

About Gilmore in the NBA - we have seen him being fairly effective in his first season, without elite support (outside of old Van Lier). They started the season roughly, it was probably caused by Gilmore adjusting to the new league (it can be seen in his offensive numbers as well), but Bulls still finished 2nd in the league in DRtg and they actually played like clearly the best defense in the league in the last ~50 games. I think he showed in his "rookie" NBA season that his defense was a factor.

1978 and 1979 is a mystery to me to be honest. I know that Gilmore had horrible rosters around him (especially on defense, they looked terrible in games I have seen), but I don't really know what happened exactly. I just started tracking Gilmore games very closely recently (including a big focus on his defense), so I hope to come up with a better answer later this year (so far I am into 1975 and I plan to track all of his available games from 1973-79 period).

Then there's the matter that in the '80s, while I'll grant he was clearly less athletic than he was when he was younger, he was still among the league leaders in blocks and a clear cut scary monster in the interior in the minds of everyone who played against him. And yet, he goes between teams and it's hard to see a drastic difference in defensive effectiveness for those teams.

In Chicago for example, when he leaves they become a worse shot-blocking team, just as one would expect...but it doesn't actually make the team considerably worse defensively.

Bulls regressed from +1.7 to +3.3 defense between 1982 and 1983. I know we can't just say it's all about Gilmore, but assuming it is then +1.6 difference for a 34 years old player isn't too bad.

He goes to San Antonio, and the shot-blocking actually seems to get worse. And yes he was effectively replacing George Johnson, and Johnson was good, but they were about the same age and I never saw Johnson as a monster on the level that I saw Gilmore.

Again though - Gilmore was 34 when he came to San Antonio and it was his 12th season. By that point, a lot of elite defenders are useless - that's the equivalent of 2020 Howard, 2009 Wallace, 1997 Ewing... I think we often don't appreciate how huge mileage Gilmore already had in those early 1980s seasons.

And then there's the eyeball stuff, which you have a much better claim to than me, but what sticks out to me is the way offensive players seem like they know they are actively adapting to the knowledge that you have to avoid certain approaches because of Gilmore. The same could be said to be true for any interior threat, and we will sometimes talk about this as a value-add through inhibition...but if you're not actually seeing massive impact data for the interior threat, then the mitigating efforts would seem to be working, aka, "things figured out".

Again, I hope I will come up with better answers in next months. Gilmore defensive regression is certainly a very interesting topic, I am still open to new interpretations, even though I already watched a lot of his games.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Good points to bring up.

Yeah, I think skepticism about Bird being a DPOY guy makes sense because we know he had weaknesses, but I think we do have to ask,

If Bird isn't the most valuable defender on those early Celtic teams, who is? And if it's Bird, and the defenses were excellent, doesn't that make him someone we have to consider for DPOY?

In Bird's rookie year one might be tempted to champion Cowens, because he was great in his prime, but Cowens was there before and the defense was bad, and the new year he's gone and the defense is still great. So if it's not Cowens, who is it? The 3 main minutes guys out there are Bird, Tiny Archibald, and Cornbread Maxwell. Of those 3, I have no qualms about giving the nod to Bird.

Even when Parish & McHale first show up, you're talking about guys playing in considerably more limited minutes than will eventually do, so maybe their impact per minute is sufficient to overwhelm Bird overall, but it's not clear to me for a while yet.

Fitch?

The things Fitch was known for being a drill sergeant, "Captain Video" ... that's the sort of stuff that might especially pay off on D. Perhaps him (and Bird giving the chance of being good) changes a Celtic culture that had fallen off. They're rid of guys perhaps perceived as mercenaries (McAdoo, Barnes, Knight, Rowe). Cowens doesn't have to try to coach (nor have they just hired a former Celtic player). They don't seem to be exceptional in any one area, which might at the margins support a coach just getting a team executing rather than one player making them exceptional in one area. They have decent within year health and continuity too.

I don't know but my guess would be everyone or many people at least are contributing a bit rather than one DPoY monster making huge impact. And part of that might well be Fitch. I don't know.

Fair point, but while I'm all for giving coaches love here, I'm not keen on treating value between players and coaches as a zero-sum game.

That said, I'm also not trying to say "If the team defense is good, we must single out one player as the Monster", so it's plenty reasonable to say that, maybe Bird was the defensive MVP of the team but he had less value than other defenders on other teams even if they had a worse DRtg.

There were lies being told because fans had become tribal loyalist cheerleaders in the Bird vs Magic and Celtics vs Lakers debate. As in Trump supporters vs Trump haters the truth stops mattering to tribal loyalists.

Rookie Bird could not guard Dr J. Bird’s natural position on defense was power forward. All teams hide their best offensive player on defense to some degree. Bird waa hidden on the weakest offensive players to some degree which enabled Bird to play free safety which Bird waa very good at. Maxwell had to change his defensive position to small forward. Even McHale often changed his defensive position to small forward. McHale at small forward was a good gimmick defense because the small forwads beat McHale’s feet but McHale’s hand is still blocking their shot from behind and the small forwards get confused and lose confidence.

Bird’s natural position on defense was power forward. Celtics had 3 of the top power forwards in the NBA in Bird, Maxwell and McHale but their small forward ML Carr was not a top 30 small forward. Normally you solve this by trading one of your power forwards for a small forward but the Celtics chose not to trade their power firwards.

So fine Bird could not defend small firwards that drove like guards and the Magic supporters would not let anybody forget that Bird could not defend people like Dr J. The Magic fans wanted Magic to be best and for Magic to be the MVP so they had to trash Bird.

So you had wildly different opinions of Bird’s defense. Bird fans said Bird’s defense was great. Magic fans said Bird’s defense was garbage. The people voting on all defensive teams liked Bird’s defense. Cedric Maxwell changed his defensive position from power forward to small forward. McHale learned to guard small forwards.

Bird took the Power forward or the weakest offensive player. Bird’s roaming free safety defense was great. Bird waa a better than average man on man defender on power forwards. But the fact that the media had declared Bird to be a small forward because he could do things on offense that power forwards could not do combined with the fact that Bird failed as a man to man defender on half of the NBA’s small forwards left room for the Magic supporters to have a small case when they trashed Bird’s defense,

One example of Bird being hidden on defense was McHale guarding Wilkins, Parish guarding Kevin Willis and Bird guarding Tree Rollins.
Willis and young Barkley were the only power forwards that Bird had problems defending. Willis because he was really a scoring center who was to big for Bird and Barkley because he could drive like a small forward and was too quick for Bird.

On all the other Power forwards Bird was fine. Parish on Corzine, Bird on Oakley and McHale in Woolridge waa fine in the 1986 playoffs and the Celtics won easily despite being torched by Jordan. Oakley was good but Bird had no problem defending Oakley.

The media stuck with their false idea that Bird was a small forward who could not defend small forwards. Rookie Bird got torched by Dr J on national TV. But Cedric Maxwell who had only defended power forwards prior to the arrival of Bird, had turned himself into a very good defender of small forwards and Dr J by the 1981 playoffs.

With Maxwell defending the small forwards it no longer mattered that Bird could not defend small forwards.Later McHale learned to defend small forwards. When McHale broke his foot in 1987 and could no longer defend small forwards and could not defend James Worthy while playing on a broken foot the problem of Celtics having nobody to defend small forwards reemerged.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

Over the 7 year stretch of 1979-80 to 1985-86, Boston was the league's 2nd best team defensively at 102.0 pts/100poss allowed. The only team better defensively was Milwaukee. So Boston was as close to excellent defensively over that long span as anyone was sans the Bucks.

Over those 7 years Bird played 21401 regular season minutes. He alone played 1/7 to 1/6 of the Celtics' total minutes, and almost 6000 more minutes than any other Celtics player.

For the team as a whole to have been excellent or close to excellent on defense over all that time, compared to the other teams in the league, Bird playing all that time himself also had to be very good to excellent on defense. If he was just an average defender or worse than average all that time would mean all the other Celtics players who played the other 6/7 to 5/6 of the playing time would have had to have played excellent defense for the whole team to have been very good to excellent on defense.

To anyone claiming Bird was just an average or even a poor defender need to look at the team's overall defensive numbers over a number of years and apportion the defensive credit to individual players.

Good points to bring up.

Yeah, I think skepticism about Bird being a DPOY guy makes sense because we know he had weaknesses, but I think we do have to ask,

If Bird isn't the most valuable defender on those early Celtic teams, who is? And if it's Bird, and the defenses were excellent, doesn't that make him someone we have to consider for DPOY?

In Bird's rookie year one might be tempted to champion Cowens, because he was great in his prime, but Cowens was there before and the defense was bad, and the new year he's gone and the defense is still great. So if it's not Cowens, who is it? The 3 main minutes guys out there are Bird, Tiny Archibald, and Cornbread Maxwell. Of those 3, I have no qualms about giving the nod to Bird.

Even when Parish & McHale first show up, you're talking about guys playing in considerably more limited minutes than will eventually do, so maybe their impact per minute is sufficient to overwhelm Bird overall, but it's not clear to me for a while yet.

It was a collective effort. Only Bird played on both the 1980 and 1986 teams. Bird played hard on defense and set the culture right.

In 1980 ML Carr was still a great defender.
Gerald Henderson was a good defender. In the 1981 playoffs Cedric Maxwell was the best defender.

In 1980 Cowens played smart and Robey was good but they were not rim protectors. in 1981 Parish and McHale brought the rim protection,

Robey was traded for Dennis Johnson in the beginning of the 1983-84 season. Mchale and Gregg Kite took Robey’s minutes.Celtics could choose between Kite’s strngth or McHale’s shot blocking and mobility when backing up Parish.

I think I put Parish and Maxwell and by 1985 McHale and DJ as well above Bird as defenders but Bird was very good.
Every team coukd really benefit from a good defensive center and Parish was very good.

Wedman replaced Carr. I never saw Wedman as that great of a defender but Wedman was good. In Kansas city Wedman got defensive team votes.

Cedric Maxwell got an injury he could not recover from and got problems with Celtic management. Celtics missed the good play from Maxwell. Henderson waa traded for the Len Bias draft pick. Improvement from Ainge could not make up for the loss of good Maxwell and the loss of Henderson so the Lakers beat the Celtics in 1985.

Injured Maxwell was traded for injured Walton.

At small forward defense in 1986 the options were 1st McHale playing his gimmick hand is faster than the foot defense, Bird playing out of position, and Scott Wedman. Thirdkill was a good defender but he did not play.