Retro POY '74-75 (Voting Complete)

[JordansBulls]

If anything West's Game 7 would be one of the reasons I'd vote for him.

69 will def. be an interesting year. Russell's older, West's injured, Wilt has a shaky ending and it'd be egrarious to vote him over Russell in a year where he loses with a better team, Oscar missed the playoffs. Reed and Unseld are not quite as good as all these guys. Billy Cunnigham might be my regular season MVP. Shaky PS stats though.

Also in the playoffs taht year, Havlicek had double the WS that Russell had and on the season Bailey Howell led the team in both PER and Win Shares.
So overall this will be a tough year to vote.

[Doctor MJ]

If anything West's Game 7 would be one of the reasons I'd vote for him.

69 will def. be an interesting year. Russell's older, West's injured, Wilt has a shaky ending and it'd be egrarious to vote him over Russell in a year where he loses with a better team, Oscar missed the playoffs. Reed and Unseld are not quite as good as all these guys. Billy Cunnigham might be my regular season MVP. Shaky PS stats though.

Also in the playoffs taht year, Havlicek had double the WS that Russell had and on the season Bailey Howell led the team in both PER and Win Shares.
So overall this will be a tough year to vote.

This is true, and a factor for me.

As to who the MVP of the Celtics was though, I doubt I'll side with anyone but Russell. His stats dropped off yes, however:

1) The team was still doing fine until Russell retired, and then they fell off a cliff.

2) Dude was coaching in addition to playing. One might say "So give the credit to Bill the coach", but "Bill the coach" was just using Auerbach's existing plan. Bill being coach simply meant that Bill's ability to lead was so damn strong that Auerbach realized he didn't need to supervise any more. It was simply a Nash-style "coach on the floor" thing taken to a crazy extreme. Bill the player deserve huge kudos for that.

[Sedale Threatt]

You make a good point. On the other hand, the Lakers probably get just as far in the playoff with only giving the equivalent of his injury-riddle regular season *and* to be honest, I really wary of using the "Player X was better, he just had a weaker supporting cast" argument against Russell. I'll be spending a good amount of time thinking it over.

In some cases, I think that was definitely the case. But it would be hard to argue Wilt had the weaker cast that year. A lot of things happened in that series -- two incredibly lucky shots for the Celtics, West's injury, the Van Breda Kolff/Chamberlain feud flaring up at the worst possible time -- but I don't think it's unfair to say the Lakers squandered a golden opportunity.

It was right there for the taking, and they couldn't get it done.

Beyond that, rating Russell in general is probably going to be the toughest part of this whole project. I'm already wrestling with the debate versus him and Chamberlain.

I feel like I've locked myself into to a certain camp, having championed Kareem for so many seasons, and thinking that Wilt was generally given an unfair rap throughout his career.

I also feel like Russell was more blessed than anybody in history in terms of his supporting cast -- Hall of Famers at SF and SG throughout his career, Hall of Fame PG for about half, numerous other All-Stars, plus arguably the greatest coach/general manager ever.

At the same time, he clearly made his teams better, and impacted the game, in ways that cannot be measured, while Wilt seems to have had the exact opposite effect. It's just so hard to gauge such things.

I've read three or four books on the subjects, filled with opinions of people a lot smarter and more experienced than we all are regarding basketball, and even they can't come to a consensus on who was better. I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody else has to say on the subject.

One thing I do know -- I'm taking Bill Simmons' case with a gigantic grain of salt.

[ElGee]

If anything West's Game 7 would be one of the reasons I'd vote for him.

69 will def. be an interesting year. Russell's older, West's injured, Wilt has a shaky ending and it'd be egrarious to vote him over Russell in a year where he loses with a better team, Oscar missed the playoffs. Reed and Unseld are not quite as good as all these guys. Billy Cunnigham might be my regular season MVP. Shaky PS stats though.

Also in the playoffs taht year, Havlicek had double the WS that Russell had and on the season Bailey Howell led the team in both PER and Win Shares.
So overall this will be a tough year to vote.

This is true, and a factor for me.

As to who the MVP of the Celtics was though, I doubt I'll side with anyone but Russell. His stats dropped off yes, however:

1) The team was still doing fine until Russell retired, and then they fell off a cliff.

2) Dude was coaching in addition to playing. One might say "So give the credit to Bill the coach", but "Bill the coach" was just using Auerbach's existing plan. Bill being coach simply meant that Bill's ability to lead was so damn strong that Auerbach realized he didn't need to supervise any more. It was simply a Nash-style "coach on the floor" thing taken to a crazy extreme. Bill the player deserve huge kudos for that.

Couple things:

(1) Win Shares are estimated at this point in time. Which is very meta to me because I think of WS as an estimation. Anyway, you can read the BR glossary and see what he's doing and understand how that would reflect with someone like Russell in that setting. Or Bailey Howell, if you've seen him play.

While were here, I think I've seen every youtube game available from the 60s. If someone has a way to access more games it would be a huge help for that period. Personally, I'd be open to buying DVDs online or contacting the league office. Anyone live in New Jersey?

(2) Bill AND Sam Jones left in 1970. I mention this, because there will be a 4-5 year period where Jones will be on my radar for a spot. I think he's perhaps the most underrated player of the 60s, and someone who jumped out at me more than any other player not named West when I first started watching old games. He, like West, had a very modern game. And like West, he was a big-time money player who set himself apart as a scorer on the Celtics IMO. Yes, sometimes Hondo (or someone like Tommy Heinsohn, who was a lunatic gunner) would post comparable scoring totals, but Jones stood above them ITO of % for a reason.

[Sedale Threatt]

I'll bet they don't even have copies of most of those games any more, if they even had them to begin with.

I bought a compendium of old Lakers games the NBA produced a few years back. Among them is a Finals game against the Knicks that they only had one half for -- with no audio -- because the other reel had been lost. Just like that, half of a Finals game gone, with no known visual record of it.

The NFL was light years ahead in that regard.

[ThaRegul8r]

69 will def. be an interesting year. Russell's older, West's injured, Wilt has a shaky ending and it'd be egrarious to vote him over Russell in a year where he loses with a better team, Oscar missed the playoffs. Reed and Unseld are not quite as good as all these guys. Billy Cunnigham might be my regular season MVP. Shaky PS stats though.

I was thinking about '69, and I think I'd have Cunningham as my MVP for the regular season as well. Philadelphia just traded Chamberlain to the Lakers, and a Wilt-less Sixer team still wins 55 games, which is only seven less than they did with Chamberlain the year before, and the same amount as the Lakers with Chamberlain... and West and Baylor. This was due to Cunningham, stepping into a starter's role for the first time.

[ronnymac2]

Oh ok. Hmmmm.....well, your two alternatives that you didn't think will suffice are to just forget about REG SEA games missed OR severely penalize guys for things that didn't reduce their end team success one iota.

Could you give an example of that second alternative? Not sure I understand it.

With the games missed.....I mean, that is sort of what I do. If you miss, like, half the season, then I'll start to penalize you. If you only miss 10 or 20 games though, I don't really care.

Example? Well, Shaq in '02 is a plenty good example. The post-seasons ends, and I don't think anyone really cares about the time he missed, and I think Duncan would switch the year he had for Shaq's year in a heartbeat. I also don't think Shaq missing an additional 10-20 games would change that.

Re: games missed. Yes, I gathered that was your approach, and as you've said, it makes things more fair. The decay for me with time missed isn't quite the same (I do penalize a guy more linearly for regular season absence), but it's not glaringly different.

Okay. Yeah, I'm also not a fan of that one. Indirectly runs opposite to my feelings on REG SEA injuries.

ElGee's way of looking at injured superstars is similar to my own.


Sam Jones will be a contender in the mid-60's.


I see 69 coming down to Russell vs. West. MAYBE Wilt. I don't think Unseld will be in the running for me.

[ThaRegul8r]

(2) Bill AND Sam Jones left in 1970.

Thing is, though—taking absolutely nothing away from Sam Jones—EVERYONE else came and left at some point during those 13 years, including Auerbach himself, and the Celtics kept winning so long as they had Russell. In '64, it was in doubt how Boston would do without Cousy. Auerbach said at the time after the NBA Finals that—next to the first title—that championship was the biggest because people didn't think they could win without Cousy. Russell wanted to prove they could still win as well (of course, Russell just wanted to win every year, regardless of the circumstances). Every year the Celtics would get a year older, someone else would leave, and again the doubts would surface as to whether the Celtics' run would finally end. I'll go more into it when we come to the appropriate seasons.

[ThaRegul8r]

Sam Jones will be a contender in the mid-60's.

Definitely.

I see 69 coming down to Russell vs. West.

Yep.

MAYBE Wilt.

Nah. Not over those two.

[ThaRegul8r]

2) Dude was coaching in addition to playing. One might say "So give the credit to Bill the coach", but "Bill the coach" was just using Auerbach's existing plan. Bill being coach simply meant that Bill's ability to lead was so damn strong that Auerbach realized he didn't need to supervise any more. It was simply a Nash-style "coach on the floor" thing taken to a crazy extreme. Bill the player deserve huge kudos for that.

Russell was quite LITERALLY the coach on the floor. Nothing figurative about it.

[Doctor MJ]

In some cases, I think that was definitely the case. But it would be hard to argue Wilt had the weaker cast that year. A lot of things happened in that series -- two incredibly lucky shots for the Celtics, West's injury, the Van Breda Kolff/Chamberlain feud flaring up at the worst possible time -- but I don't think it's unfair to say the Lakers squandered a golden opportunity.

It was right there for the taking, and they couldn't get it done.

Beyond that, rating Russell in general is probably going to be the toughest part of this whole project. I'm already wrestling with the debate versus him and Chamberlain.

I feel like I've locked myself into to a certain camp, having championed Kareem for so many seasons, and thinking that Wilt was generally given an unfair rap throughout his career.

I also feel like Russell was more blessed than anybody in history in terms of his supporting cast -- Hall of Famers at SF and SG throughout his career, Hall of Fame PG for about half, numerous other All-Stars, plus arguably the greatest coach/general manager ever.

At the same time, he clearly made his teams better, and impacted the game, in ways that cannot be measured, while Wilt seems to have had the exact opposite effect. It's just so hard to gauge such things.

I've read three or four books on the subjects, filled with opinions of people a lot smarter and more experienced than we all are regarding basketball, and even they can't come to a consensus on who was better. I'm looking forward to seeing what everybody else has to say on the subject.

One thing I do know -- I'm taking Bill Simmons' case with a gigantic grain of salt.

Wait, you're talking about Wilt in '68-69? He's not even on my radar. He joins the Lakers with West & Baylor, and their SRS gets WORSE! Obviously this has nothing to do with what Wilt's capabilities are, but that year at least, he wasn't achieving ridiculous lift.

Russell to me will probably the most interesting thing in the entire project.

I'd encourage you to not feel like you have to vote one way just for consistency sake. Your core rubric should remain essentially the same, but we're here to learn, the idea that someone can't change their thinking goes directly against that purpose.

For me, I'll say that I expect to have votes for each - and I'm not just talking about Wilt's obvious victory in '67, or Russell pre-Wilt. In '68 for example, the more I look at it, the more "blaming" Wilt for the loss seems silly. By contrast, it's hard to really think Wilt had more impact than Russell in '66 when we see how much more impact Wilt had when playing Russell-style.

[JordansBulls]

Where will Connie Hawkins fit in in 1968? He won MVP and the Title the same year.

[Sedale Threatt]

Wait, you're talking about Wilt in '68-69? He's not even on my radar. He joins the Lakers with West & Baylor, and their SRS gets WORSE! Obviously this has nothing to do with what Wilt's capabilities are, but that year at least, he wasn't achieving ridiculous lift.

Russell to me will probably the most interesting thing in the entire project.

I'd encourage you to not feel like you have to vote one way just for consistency sake. Your core rubric should remain essentially the same, but we're here to learn, the idea that someone can't change their thinking goes directly against that purpose.

For me, I'll say that I expect to have votes for each - and I'm not just talking about Wilt's obvious victory in '67, or Russell pre-Wilt. In '68 for example, the more I look at it, the more "blaming" Wilt for the loss seems silly. By contrast, it's hard to really think Wilt had more impact than Russell in '66 when we see how much more impact Wilt had when playing Russell-style.

I'm definitely not thinking Wilt is first in 69, but certainly on the list.

I know he didn't make an immediate impact, and that the Lakers underachieved in that they didn't win the title as expected (and as they should have). But he's still got to be among the top five, if for no other reason than there being no clear-cut candidates.

West, Chamberlain, Willis Reed and Oscar Robertson all look about the same to me. Then you have Russell, who had pedestrian stats but obviously made a huge impact on defense and intangibly, as he always did.

(For whatever reason, this little tidbit stood out to me while I was glancing through some of my books last night. Wilt had a game where he out-rebounded MVP/Rookie of the Year Wes Unseld 38-9. 38-9!!! It's not going to bear any impact in my decision as it was just a regular-season game, but that's pretty amazing.)

I'll also keep your advice in mind. I also anticipate switching back and forth between Russell and Wilt. I guess I was trying to be cognizant of the arguments I made in the 77 thread, and trying to apply those same standards here as the comparison is somewhat similar, between a statistical marvel and a unique team player whose intangibles are difficult to measure.

The difference in my mind -- we have no idea if Walton could have done what he did on a consistent basis, whereas Russell did so year after year after year. He's so much more of a proven quantity.

[Doctor MJ]

Where will Connie Hawkins fit in in 1968? He won MVP and the Title the same year.

Well, Hawkins and Spencer Haywood took HUGE hits when they game to the NBA. They probably won't be in my top 5. The ABA's climb toward being comparable to the NBA was a gradual one.