OhayoKD wrote:When we account for era, the Celtics were a much more dominant team over the course of the full season, and most of that stretch came after Cousy retired and most of Russell's best teammates were declining.
Then in 1969 Russell beat two +4 teams(a rarity in the era) to win a title(if you want to go by name rep/star rep, the second of those two teams literally had the 2nd and 3rd or 4th best player in the league on the same roster).
Like, if Lebron beat the Warriors in 2018, would you be saying "it's not about peak?"
The cavs were probably a weaker cast, but russell faced a much better team to get to the finals, curry's injury and kd's issues with the system are similar to what limited the Lakers, and Russell led a much better rs team while also operating as the coach. I don't see why that wouldn't be reasonable to argue against Lebron peak for peak(frankly it may be more unreasonable to argue the reverse if you're ranking players relative to era).
I think its impossible to bring up the Celtics rs dominance from 62-65 without also bringing up those post season runs for the same reason that a number of 67 win teams will never be considered top 20 teams of all time due to lack of post season success. For example:
62 win two series 4-3
63 win two series 4-3 then 4-2
64 4-1 and 4-1(probably their best playoff run)
65 4-3 4-1
I am someone who is generally very pro Russell in terms of most things but you can't really argue team dominance when a team struggles like that in the postseason. I'd say 64 was an extremely dominant team. The others its harder to say that and its also hard to give Russell all the credit as well. You also mentioned Shaq having an all time supporting cast and I don't think I'd agree with that either. He had Kobe and possibly the goat coach with a few decent role players. 2000 being better for depth but also pre prime and injured Kobe.
