Retro POY '64-65 (Voting Complete)

[bastillon]

how was West better than Oscar in the postseason ? 40/5/6 and 28/12/5 is pretty much the same and Oscar was clearly better in the RS (30.5/11.5/9 to West's 31/6/5). I don't see why West is above Oscar on everyone's list. finals appearance ? West had to beat one 37W team to get there. he could literally DREAM of ever making the finals playing in EC.

[Doctor MJ]

how was West better than Oscar in the postseason ? 40/5/6 and 28/12/5 is pretty much the same and Oscar was clearly better in the RS (30.5/11.5/9 to West's 31/6/5). I don't see why West is above Oscar on everyone's list. finals appearance ? West had to beat one 37W team to get there. he could literally DREAM of ever making the finals playing in EC.

I think it's funny how you say 40 & 5 is about the same as 28 & 12. Box score stats don't tell the whole story of course, but it never makes sense to treat 1 assist like the guy scored a bucket on his own, and it is incredibly difficult team your efficiency from falling apart when you're shooting enough to score 40 PPG. Taken on face value, if you took a poll of any knowledgeable group of people, they'd say the 40 & 5 number was more impressive.

And why was West shooting so much? Because Baylor was hurt. Defense is completely able to key on him, and he's still able to score way more than Oscar at comparable efficiency.

With that said, it is a good point that making the finals from the WC wasn't all that difficult. However, Cincinnati didn't lose to Boston, they were upset by Philly. How you see that Philly team definitely affects how you see this matchup. If you think Philly was easily the 2nd best team in the league saw this year by this point, and would have beat a healthy Lakers, point in Oscar's favor.

Is that a reasonable assumption? Well, the Lakers clinched the WC with a 17 & 3 run, during which time they went 4-1 against Philly (haven't check if Wilt played all the games, but he was on the team), and 2-1 against Boston. Cincy didn't end the year anywhere near that strongly, and had gone 2-3 against Philly since the Wilt trade. So no, not a valid assumption imho.

Totally get a vote for Oscar based on all-season impact. Would certainly listen to specific arguments for why Oscar was as/more impressive than West in the post-season. However as I see it, a healthy Laker team was a significantly bigger threat to win the title regardless of the conference they were in, and West did everything you could ask for once they lost Baylor.

[ThaRegul8r]

it is a good point that making the finals from the WC wasn't all that difficult. However, Cincinnati didn't lose to Boston, they were upset by Philly. How you see that Philly team definitely affects how you see this matchup. If you think Philly was easily the 2nd best team in the league saw this year by this point, and would have beat a healthy Lakers, point in Oscar's favor.

Is that a reasonable assumption? Well, the Lakers clinched the WC with a 17 & 3 run, during which time they went 4-1 against Philly (haven't check if Wilt played all the games, but he was on the team), and 2-1 against Boston. Cincy didn't end the year anywhere near that strongly, and had gone 2-3 against Philly since the Wilt trade. So no, not a valid assumption imho.

Totally get a vote for Oscar based on all-season impact. Would certainly listen to specific arguments for why Oscar was as/more impressive than West in the post-season. However as I see it, a healthy Laker team was a significantly bigger threat to win the title regardless of the conference they were in, and West did everything you could ask for once they lost Baylor.

Lakers won the season series against Philadelphia, and interestingly enough, to a man they all would rather face Philadelphia in the NBA Finals rather than Boston:

Jerry West: “I was rooting for Philadelphia. We could match them better personnel-wise.”

Rudy LaRusso: “We can match Philadelphia’s personnel better, but I’m afraid they won’t beat Boston” (The Evening Independent, Apr. 15, 1965).

Leroy Ellis: “I’d rather play Philadelphia and I’m sure everybody else would. We beat them seven out of 10 times during the season” (Reading Eagle, Apr. 14, 1965).

The Lakers went 3-2 in the five games against Philadelphia before acquiring Wilt, and 4-1—as you said—in the five games after acquiring Wilt:

1) 12/1/64 - LA 118, Philadelphia 117
2) 12/6/64 – LA 109, Philadelphia 104
3) 12/19/64 – Philadelphia 140, LA 113
4) 12/23/64 - LA 135, Philadelphia 117
5) 12/30/64 - Philadelphia 117, LA 115

*** 1/13/65 - 76ers get Wilt ***

6) 2/8/65 - LA 117, Philadelphia 98
7) 2/10/65 - Philadelphia 110, LA 99
8) 2/18/65 - LA 117, Philadelphia 110. Elgin Baylor had 34 points and Dick Barnett 30 to lead LA. Wilt Chamberlain led Philadelphia with a game-high 40 points (Eugene Register-Guard, Feb. 19, 1965). Philadelphia lost its third in a row.
9) 2/28/65 - LA 122, Philadelphia 118. Jerry West led LA with a game-high 44 points (16-24 FG, 12-14 FT) and Elgin Baylor had 33. Wilt Chamberlain led Philadelphia with 34 (Park City Daily, Mar. 1, 1965).
10) 3/2/65 - LA 126, Philadelphia 117. Jerry West had 34 and Elgin Baylor 24 for LA (Hartford Courant, Mar. 3, 1965). Hal Greer led Philadelphia with 24, and “Wilt Chamberlain was held to sixteen points equaling his low of the season” (The Sun, Mar. 3, 1965).

[bastillon]

I think it's funny how you say 40 & 5 is about the same as 28 & 12. Box score stats don't tell the whole story of course, but it never makes sense to treat 1 assist like the guy scored a bucket on his own, and it is incredibly difficult team your efficiency from falling apart when you're shooting enough to score 40 PPG. Taken on face value, if you took a poll of any knowledgeable group of people, they'd say the 40 & 5 number was more impressive.

Kobe vs Nash ? after all that's been said about volume scoring and theory of anarchy I'm surprised to see you favoring West's numbers.

also, West scored 33.8 PPG in the finals so it's the first round when he was really scoring much more than Oscar (46.3 in the 1st round).

but given that Baltimore was dead last in Drtg:

Code: Select all

1.  Boston        83.5
2.  St. Louis     91.5
3.  San Francisco 91.9
4.  Detroit       92.6
LEAGUE AVG.       93.4
5.  Philadelphia  93.9
6.  Los Angeles   95.8
7.  New York      96.0
8.  Cincinnati    96.3
9.  Baltimore     99.0

should it really be that much of an advantage ? West pounded a team that was -5.6 in relative pts. does that really push him over Oscar after clearly worse regular season ?

[Optimism Prime]

1. Bill Russell
2. Jerry West
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Oscar Robertson
5. Sam Jones

[drza]

Just like 1966, all of the interesting debate seems to center around Wilt, West and Oscar. Russell and Jones seem comfortably slotted in at #1 and #5 this year, and I'm good with them there. So, that leaves the other 3.

In looking at these 3, and at the arguments/votes I've seen in this thread, the first step seems to be to figure out exactly how good I believe each team really was. Because in the end, that seems to be the criterion by which people are justifying their votes. The logic (as I understand it) is that Wilt isn't worthy of a top vote because his numbers didn't translate to the Warriors/Sixers being good; that West is worthy of a top vote because his numbers increase kept the Lakers elite even after Baylor went down, and that Oscar is a step below West because despite putting up comparable numbers his team got upset by an inferior team in the first round.

So, let me examine that logic. And I'll start in Philly, who was a fringe playoff team the year before (34 - 56, -4 SRS, 1st round playoff exit). They were 21 - 20 before Wilt got there and finished the season at the same pace, looking like a slightly better team on paper than they had been the previous season (40 - 40, 0 SRS). Then, in the postseason they comfortably beat Cincinnati (48 - 32, 2 SRS) and played the mighty Celtics (62 - 18, 7 SRS) to a virtua-draw before losing at the buzzer.

Now, you guys know I love the +/- impact-style stats, and I appreciate the work of those that have pointed out that Wilt's numbers didn't translate to as big of an impact as you'd have expected historically (and this year seemed to do almost nothing IN THE REGULAR SEASON). However, to me the postseason makes it incredibly clear that Wilt had a huge impact on Philly for the 1965 season as a whole. Had they lost a close matchup with Cincy, or even if they had somehow surprised Cincy then got blown out by the Celtics then maybe I could buy that their postseason was lucky. But instead they beat Cincy convincingly, and then compounded that by playing the Celtics down to the wire. The Celtics, who at that time were 6-time defending champions and finished 13 games higher than the 2nd best team in the regular season. The Celtics who went on to easily win the Finals. To me, that all adds up to Wilt having a tremendous impact on the Sixers in 1965. As Warspite and a couple of others pointed out, there were serious chemistry/positional/strategy/style issues that needed to be worked out when Wilt got to Philly. But at the end of the day, adding Wilt took Philly from a fringe playoff team to a very, very legitimate contender. That's impact.

Now, let's look at the Lakers. They had the second best record in the league with 49 wins, and as Doc MJ pointed out they beat the Sixers 4 out of 5 times in the regular season. The problem that I have is, though, that those accomplishments came with Baylor in the line-up. (Remember, right now I'm looking at the Lakers as a team, not West as an individual). As a team, the Lakers seem to be reasonable contenders with both West and Baylor (still probably wouldn't have beat the Celtics, but you never know I guess). But after Baylor went down, the Lakers beat only a 37-win team and then got the HOLY TERROR beaten out of them by the Celtics in the Finals (their four losses were by an average of more than 21 points).

Now, the Royals. About the only thing that I can say confidently about them in the postseason is that they clearly weren't as good as Philly. If you take Philly as a 40-win upstart then that would reflect extremely poorly upon the Royals. If, on the other hand, you believe Philly to be in a virtua-tie as the best squad in the league then all that says is that Cincy lost to a better team. It's not clear-cut, but Philly's postseason performance (especially with the hindsight knowledge that Philly would have the best record in the league for the next 3 seasons, including a title 2 years later) strongly suggests to me that in the postseason the Royals just ran up on a better team, one that was one of only 2 legitimate championship contenders that year.

Now that I'm clear in my mind what I believe about team level, my next post will focus more on the individual players.

[drza]

So, now that I have a feel for the team hierarchy, where does that leave me on this vote? Well, for one, it means that I'm not throwing out Wilt's stats in the wash. Had the Sixers missed the postseason and thus never revealed to us that they had another Wilt-based gear, then yeah. I'm in. But just like the 2010 Celtics, the 1965 Sixers proved to me in the postseason that they were very legitimate title contenders far beyond what they showed int he regular season. And by far the biggest reason for that (literally and figuratively) was Wilt. Huge impact with huge numbers means Wilt is going to be very high on my list.

For two, it means that I need to take a hard look at West vs Oscar. Because once again, the Royals and the Lakers look like carbon-copy teams except that one played in an extremely weak conference and the other was in the same league with the 2 best teams (and players) in the league. That still isn't, of itself, a virtue that should go in an individual player's camp. And once again, by general comparison tools West and Oscar look extremely similar. In the regular season they finished next to each other by a razor-thin margin in the MVP vote and statistically were just as even. Their teams had almost identical records and SRS. Just no difference. And in the postseason...still, no difference that I can see. In the effort to keep the playing field level, this is what I've been able to gather about how West and Oscar played against the Celtics and Sixers respectively (2 best postseason teams, 2 best defenses):

West against Boston: 34 points per game (only stat I have for every game), one game with five boards and five assists, one game with 12 boards, and that he shot 18-for-52 (34%) from the field in the last two games of the series (thanks to Regul8tor's articles for those numbers).

Oscar against Philly: 28 points, 12 assists, 5 rebounds per game on 43% FG and 53% TS.

The curse of this project continues to be the loss of information through the years. But again, I still see nothing to conclude that West was suddenly a better player than Oscar in the postseason. With the variables that they can control, it seems to me that West vs Oscar in '65 looks exactly like it did in '66...essentially a tie. And just like in '66, my tie-breaker is that Oscar has to carry a larger offensive load than West does as both the primary point-scorer and almost exclusive offense initiator on his team. As such, Oscar wins my tiebreaker again.

Final Vote:

1. Russell (All of the pros that allowed him to eek out my 1966 vote over Wilt, but to a larger degree)
2. Wilt (His pros vs Russell weren't as strong as in '66 and his cons were worst, pushing him easily out of the top spot. But to me he was still clearly the best other player in the league, with a proven postseason impact in conjunction with the stats in both the regular and postseason and the fact that he individually took a team from fringe playoff to very legitimate co-champ contenders).

3. Oscar (Still tight with West, but still gets the tiebreaker)
4. West

5. Sam Jones

[bastillon]

drza how do you know Wilt was the reason why they improved in the postseason ? 2nd question, what seperates Wilt from Oscar or West ? both Big O and Mr Clutch distinguished themselves in the PS and were miles ahead of Wilt in the RS. both played with really bad teammates and had enormous impact based on their history outside of the line-up.

[Sedale Threatt]

1. Russell
2. Chamberlain
3. West
4. Roberston
5. Jones

[drza]

drza how do you know Wilt was the reason why they improved in the postseason ? 2nd question, what seperates Wilt from Oscar or West ? both Big O and Mr Clutch distinguished themselves in the PS and were miles ahead of Wilt in the RS. both played with really bad teammates and had enormous impact based on their history outside of the line-up.

1) Wilt was clearly the focal point player for Philly. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that improvements in his peripheral players made the difference from a .500 fringe playoff team (both the year before, and the pace they were on when Wilt got there) and a championship contender. Doesn't even sound logical to me.

2) I think that the "miles" ahead that the others may have been was based purely on the notion that they made their teams better than Wilt did. Numbers-wise Wilt was always there, but if he really did have no impact and the team stayed .500-caliber with him then yeah, Oscar and West would have been ahead. But the postseason proved positive (to me at least) that Wilt was the difference between a .500 team and a team capable of going toe-to-toe/blow-for-blow with the best team in history to that point. So if there is no longer an a priori assumption that Wilt had no impact and he showed extremely clearly that his Sixers were much better than Oscar's Royals, I see no reason to pretend that Wilt's stats shouldn't count.

Said another way, the other Sixers in '65 don't distinguish themselves in my eyes from the support West and Oscar had. Yet when matched up, Russell and Wilt's squads both treated West and Oscar's teams like step-children. Just seemed clear to me who the real contenders were. There were only two, and Wilt was the engine behind one of them.

[Dipper 13]

In the first game against the Royals it was Chamberlain who hit the two game winning foul shots to give the Sixers a two point victory, however he did have a "so-so" performance as the paper put it that game with only 26 points. In the concluding game against the Royals, he had 38 points, 26 rebounds, and 11 blocks.

'Philadelphia's playoff hopes hinged on the condition of Chamberlain, who is suffering from pancreatitis, with pain much like that from an ulcer. "I'm sick, but I can play."



You can say he wasn't the reason (or even one of the reasons) for that team's success, but I doubt anyone else would say with a straight face that the Boston series goes 7 games without Chamberlain on the roster.



Game 1: Celtics win 108-98

Wilt - 33 points, 31 rebounds, 3 assists
Russell - 11 points, 31 rebounds, 6 assists

"Every game against Chamberlain is three days work," Russell said. "He's always so tough to play there's no talking about degrees."

"I thought it was one of Wilt's best games ever. It was a case of their defense and their cornermen doing a better job than our cornermen," said Philadelphia Coach Dolph Schayes. "I though Wilt outplayed Russell. They both played well."

"They hack pretty good in there," Schayes said. "The Celtics foul Wilt any way they can and get away with it."


Game 2: 76ers win 109-103

Wilt - 30 points, 39 rebounds, 8 assists, 8 blocks
Russell - 12 points, 16 rebounds, 5 assists

Russell had nothing to say. Asked why Chamberlain was able to dominate him so completely, the 6'9 Boston captain replied sullenly, "You saw the game, didn't you?"

Chamberlain however, refuses to make a vendetta of his joust with Russell.

"I don't go into a game with the idea of beating Bill Russell. I go out there to beat Boston - not Russell, " says Chamberlain. "They're the world champions and to beat them you have to play your best."



Game 3: Celtics win 112-94

Boston's Bill Russell has successfully made a surprise raid on Wilt Chamberlain's domain - scoring.

"Russell really beat us with those tap-ins and he did a great job on the offensive boards," said Chamberlain. "Heck, yes, he surprised me the way he scored early in the game. But I don't know what I could do about it."

Russell held the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain without a field goal until there were eight seconds left in the first half.

Chamberlain finished ahead 24-29 in the game and 37-26 in rebounds but the damage had been done. Russell had the better shooting average, a 9-7 edge in field goals, 8-1 bulge in assists, and was ahead 3-1 in steals.


Game 4: 76ers win 134-131 (OT)

Hal Greer's 35-foot twist-around shot as the buzzer sounded tied the game up in regulation and the 76ers went ahead in overtime to defeat the Celtics 134-131 Friday night and knot the Eastern National Basketball Association playoff finals at two apiece.

Wilt Chamberlain, a demon on both offense and defense, led the 76ers with 34 points & 34 rebounds, followed by Chet Walker's 31 and Greer's 27

Wilt Chamberlain, the 7-foot-1 inch pro basketball star, said he was consulting his attorney about a Sports Illustrated magazine article appearing this week under his byline.

The Philadelphia 76ers player said the title of the article was distorted and many unauthorized thoughts interjected in the story. The article is entitled, "My Life in a Bush League."

In New York, a spokesman for the magazine said the article "was a completely accurate statement of remarks made over two or three weeks, many of them recorded on tape."

"I would have have to be out of my mind to approve the title placed above my byline by the magazine," Chamberlain said in a statement. "I feel that Sports Illustrated has given a distorted title and interjected many unauthorized thoughts to my story without my consent. It has subjected me to uncalled for embarrassment and humiliation, and I am discussing my legal rights with my attorney."

A source close to the 76er management said the article actually wasn't too bad "but why couldn't the magazine wait until after the season was finished before publishing it." Bob Ottum did the writing after spending many weeks following Wilt around the league.



Game 5: Celtcs win 114-108

The Celtics wound up 114-108 winners in the fifth game of their best-of-seven series after leading by an average of a dozen points through most of the late stages of the Boston Garden battle. Boston's Bill Russell lost in the point battle with Philadelphia's Wilt Chamberlain (30-12) but took everything else. He mastered Wilt in rebounds(28-21), blocked shots (12-2), assists (7-2), and steals (3-0).



Game 6: 76ers win 112-106

A Philadelphia crows of 11,182 saw the 76ers take a 17-point lead at 61-44, then survive a Boston rally that put the Celtics within three points 107-104 with 90 seconds left. Hal Greer's one-hander and a free throw by Chet Walker pulled the 76ers out of danger.

Big Wilt Chamberlain, hampered by five fouls, didn't score in the last quarter, but was high for the game with 30 points.




Game 7: Celtics win 110-109

http://www.megavideo.com/?d=WJYZJVCA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESDFppbQ2zM#t=2m32s

[Doctor MJ]

I think it's funny how you say 40 & 5 is about the same as 28 & 12. Box score stats don't tell the whole story of course, but it never makes sense to treat 1 assist like the guy scored a bucket on his own, and it is incredibly difficult team your efficiency from falling apart when you're shooting enough to score 40 PPG. Taken on face value, if you took a poll of any knowledgeable group of people, they'd say the 40 & 5 number was more impressive.

Kobe vs Nash ? after all that's been said about volume scoring and theory of anarchy I'm surprised to see you favoring West's numbers.

also, West scored 33.8 PPG in the finals so it's the first round when he was really scoring much more than Oscar (46.3 in the 1st round).

but given that Baltimore was dead last in Drtg:

Code: Select all

1.  Boston        83.5
2.  St. Louis     91.5
3.  San Francisco 91.9
4.  Detroit       92.6
LEAGUE AVG.       93.4
5.  Philadelphia  93.9
6.  Los Angeles   95.8
7.  New York      96.0
8.  Cincinnati    96.3
9.  Baltimore     99.0

should it really be that much of an advantage ? West pounded a team that was -5.6 in relative pts. does that really push him over Oscar after clearly worse regular season ?

Hmm.

1) Nash is very clearly one of those "box score stats don't tell the whole story" guys. Certainly doesn't mean than anyone with stats more like his is having impact more than a strong volume scorer.

2) I don't give peak Nash the nod over peak Kobe anyway. I give Nash the nod when his team was much better than Kobe's (not by rule, but it's a factor). The whole point I was making about the Lakers finish was to emphasize that I thought West's team was better, so this analogy doesn't even line up even granting superior intangibles to Oscar.

3) And I don't think Oscar has superior intangibles. He was a grumpy gus whose teammates didn't like playing with him very much. West was more inspirational.

4) "price of anarchy" is not about an inherent problem with volume scoring. It's not even about volume scoring specifically, that's just an example they give. I can also tell you that in games 2 through 5 against Boston, the Lakers TS% was 51.4%, whereas Cincy's TS% for the post-season was 49.9. Granted we don't have game 1's numbers, and there's more to offense than TS%, but we really don't have any evidence that healthy Cincy was better offensively in the playoffs than the Lakers sans Baylor against the Celtics.

5) The point about West's really huge scoring coming not against Boston is correct though. West only averaged about 33.8against Boston, with a TS% of 51.2. So only 6 PPG better, with a TS% 1.5 worse than what Oscar did against Philly.

[ronnymac2]

Too much ruckus this weekend. I'm going to read this at some point, but I most likely wont be able to get a vote in by today.

[Doctor MJ]

Now, let's look at the Lakers. They had the second best record in the league with 49 wins, and as Doc MJ pointed out they beat the Sixers 4 out of 5 times in the regular season. The problem that I have is, though, that those accomplishments came with Baylor in the line-up. (Remember, right now I'm looking at the Lakers as a team, not West as an individual). As a team, the Lakers seem to be reasonable contenders with both West and Baylor (still probably wouldn't have beat the Celtics, but you never know I guess). But after Baylor went down, the Lakers beat only a 37-win team and then got the HOLY TERROR beaten out of them by the Celtics in the Finals (their four losses were by an average of more than 21 points).

One thing I wanted to make clear. I'm not confident the Lakers still had the matchup edge over Philly without Baylor. I really don't know. The important point to me though is whether Cincy's loss to Philly should be looked at as due to Philly taking a huge leap forward or not. Since Philly was winning the matchup against Cincy win they had Wilt, them winning the playoff series isn't really a shocker - and since Philly didn't have that same edge over a healthy Lakers, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to just give Cincy a pass for the loss.

[drza]

Now, let's look at the Lakers. They had the second best record in the league with 49 wins, and as Doc MJ pointed out they beat the Sixers 4 out of 5 times in the regular season. The problem that I have is, though, that those accomplishments came with Baylor in the line-up. (Remember, right now I'm looking at the Lakers as a team, not West as an individual). As a team, the Lakers seem to be reasonable contenders with both West and Baylor (still probably wouldn't have beat the Celtics, but you never know I guess). But after Baylor went down, the Lakers beat only a 37-win team and then got the HOLY TERROR beaten out of them by the Celtics in the Finals (their four losses were by an average of more than 21 points).

One thing I wanted to make clear. I'm not confident the Lakers still had the matchup edge over Philly without Baylor. I really don't know. The important point to me though is whether Cincy's loss to Philly should be looked at as due to Philly taking a huge leap forward or not. Since Philly was winning the matchup against Cincy win they had Wilt, them winning the playoff series isn't really a shocker - and since Philly didn't have that same edge over a healthy Lakers, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to just give Cincy a pass for the loss.

Again, just how good Philly was in '65 isn't a clear-cut answer. But this is how I look at it:

1) We just saw, this year (2010), that a team "underachieving" in the regular season based upon circumstances outside of basketball doesn't always capture the reality. The '10 Celtics were getting beaten right regular by inferior teams at the end of the regular season, despite the fact that nominally they had their full-power team out there. Even after KG and Pierce came back, they were still losing. And I don't think anyone on here would consider a team beating the late regular season Celtics as the same thing as beating the team that went to game 7 of the Finals. Thus, I'm hesitant to give much extra credence to a team for beating the late-season '65 Sixers. We know that the Sixers were under .500 after the Wilt trade in the regular season, so I don't think it's new information that they were getting regularly beaten by a good team. But the way those Sixers handled the Royals, followed up by the way they went at the Goliath Celtics, followed by my point 3 below is enough to make me very comfortable in my assessment that the postseason '65 Sixers were a huge step forward from the late regular season '65 Sixers.

2) As Warspite pointed out, Philly had to reconfigure their entire scheme in order to fit Wilt in, including displacing what had previously been one of their best players to another position. I'm not going to completely re-quote Warspite's post, but just in a vacuum it is extremely logical to me that fitting a player of Wilt's style onto a team that already had a style and personnell of its own might take some time. To me, it is to their credit that they figured it out after only 30-something games, in time to put it together for the postseason.

3) Given the hindsight advantage that is one of the key tenets to the project, we know that this Philly team would have the best record in the league for the next 3 seasons in a row and that they would win the only non-Celtic title of that period. Of course there were some changes from year to year, but the foundation of the team was in place by the postseason of '65 and to me it makes a lot of sense that postseason '65 Philly was much more similar to 66-68 Philly than regular-season '65 when they were getting used to life with the Dipper.

[bastillon]

1) Wilt was clearly the focal point player for Philly. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that improvements in his peripheral players made the difference from a .500 fringe playoff team (both the year before, and the pace they were on when Wilt got there) and a championship contender. Doesn't even sound logical to me.

fair enough. what do you think about the additions of Cunningham and Wali Jones the following year ? what do you think about developing prospects of 76ers ? 2 of the TOP3 players pre-Wilt (Walker and Jackson) were just starting in the NBA. additional 2 prospects in the following year (both of whom were selected to all-rookie 1st teams) - Jones and Billy - were also developing.

TOP6 in MPG in 1966:
Chamberlain 29
Greer 29
Walker 25
Jones 23
Cunningham 22
Jackson 24

it makes perfect sense that they progressed and peaked when they added great coaching.

I could understand that Wilt made the difference in 65 to some extent but to act as if all of their improvement was caused by a guy who didn't improve them at all when he was the only variable changed is unreasonable, especially for a guy like you, drza.

what I'm saying is that Philadelphia clearly kept progressing without Wilt which is evident by their 69 record. how could you say they were fringe playoff team without Wilt in 66 when the same exact team minus Wilt and with Imhoff had almost 5 SRS in 69 ? that's not a fringe playoff team.

to isolate Wilt's impact you need to consider all of the variables, one can't just look at Sixers record after Wilt joined them and assume nothing changed outside of him. that's not what happened. when Wilt was the only thing that changed, their record didn't improve at all.

2) I think that the "miles" ahead that the others may have been was based purely on the notion that they made their teams better than Wilt did. Numbers-wise Wilt was always there, but if he really did have no impact and the team stayed .500-caliber with him then yeah, Oscar and West would have been ahead. But the postseason proved positive (to me at least) that Wilt was the difference between a .500 team and a team capable of going toe-to-toe/blow-for-blow with the best team in history to that point. So if there is no longer an a priori assumption that Wilt had no impact and he showed extremely clearly that his Sixers were much better than Oscar's Royals, I see no reason to pretend that Wilt's stats shouldn't count.

so I still see no reason to think Wilt was better than either. Sixers were fringe playoff team without Wilt as you already said. Royals, based on our experience from other years we've analysed so far, are maybe 20W team without Oscar. same with Lakers without Baylor and West. why would you assume Wilt outplayed either of them ?

it's been established in this project that Oscar is clearly the best offensive player of the generation and West is his lone rival. after them there's a huge gap with nobody really anchoring great offensive teams on a regular basis. it's also quite obvious by the historical results that smalls generally have offensive advantage over big guys.

on the other hand, bigs are better defensively. what makes you think that Wilt's defense closes the gap here when his team wasn't anywhere near as dominant defensively as Oscar's or West's teams on offense ? team results don't support your conclusions.

I think you can make a case that Wilt was at Oscar/West level in the playoffs, but it's pretty much impossible to argue that he could've been much better and he would have to be in order to close the gap in RS when he wasn't anywhere near as impactful as guard duo. the only reason you may take Wilt here is that you just completely ignore what happened in the RS and take his impact for granted in the playoffs and thus his playoff performance is somehow better than that of West/Oscar. but you didn't ignore RS in the past so why would you do that now ?

Said another way, the other Sixers in '65 don't distinguish themselves in my eyes from the support West and Oscar had.

ridiculous. Sixers played .500 basketball without Wilt. West and Oscar led their teams to that record WITH them. they're hardly 25W teams without them.

[bastillon]

Doc, Nash's assists are so valuable because they're coming on double teams to the open man what allows other players to score without defensive attention. it's exactly the same situation with Oscar and Royals and is evidenced by their team offense and its drop off without Oscar. 7 APG difference in this case is like 7 easy scores generated for teammates. 12 pts on 53% TS are that much more valuable ? c'mon man, you know better as Magic/Nash fan.

the comparison to Kobe was made because there's about 12 pts/7 APG difference between them too. you thought that I was suggesting Nash was clearly a better offensive player with similar boxscore comparison, but it's not even that. my point is valid even if Nash was EQUAL to Kobe in any of those seasons offensively, because I was arguing that Oscar wasn't WORSE than West in the playoffs, not that he was better than him.

so if you think West is clearly ahead of Oscar this year, then Kobe is clearly ahead of Nash too, despite much worse team results and with lower offensive +/- too. that's my analogy.

but all of this comparison seems to be lost for Oscar for one simple reason: he didn't have the opportunity to pound the worst defensive team in the league. his performance against Boston was nowhere near Oscar's against the Sixers actually. with his raw pts and TS% down a lot (and still poor APG numbers in this comparison), I don't really see a case for West over Oscar based on the finals. especially considering that his team was a joke against the Celtics, being blown out is probably an understatement...

[bastillon]

2) As Warspite pointed out, Philly had to reconfigure their entire scheme in order to fit Wilt in, including displacing what had previously been one of their best players to another position. I'm not going to completely re-quote Warspite's post, but just in a vacuum it is extremely logical to me that fitting a player of Wilt's style onto a team that already had a style and personnell of its own might take some time. To me, it is to their credit that they figured it out after only 30-something games, in time to put it together for the postseason.

I read Warspite's post, but I don't know what you mean. could you elaborate on that ?

[Doctor MJ]

One thing I wanted to make clear. I'm not confident the Lakers still had the matchup edge over Philly without Baylor. I really don't know. The important point to me though is whether Cincy's loss to Philly should be looked at as due to Philly taking a huge leap forward or not. Since Philly was winning the matchup against Cincy win they had Wilt, them winning the playoff series isn't really a shocker - and since Philly didn't have that same edge over a healthy Lakers, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to just give Cincy a pass for the loss.

Again, just how good Philly was in '65 isn't a clear-cut answer. But this is how I look at it:

1) We just saw, this year (2010), that a team "underachieving" in the regular season based upon circumstances outside of basketball doesn't always capture the reality. The '10 Celtics were getting beaten right regular by inferior teams at the end of the regular season, despite the fact that nominally they had their full-power team out there. Even after KG and Pierce came back, they were still losing. And I don't think anyone on here would consider a team beating the late regular season Celtics as the same thing as beating the team that went to game 7 of the Finals. Thus, I'm hesitant to give much extra credence to a team for beating the late-season '65 Sixers. We know that the Sixers were under .500 after the Wilt trade in the regular season, so I don't think it's new information that they were getting regularly beaten by a good team. But the way those Sixers handled the Royals, followed up by the way they went at the Goliath Celtics, followed by my point 3 below is enough to make me very comfortable in my assessment that the postseason '65 Sixers were a huge step forward from the late regular season '65 Sixers.

2) As Warspite pointed out, Philly had to reconfigure their entire scheme in order to fit Wilt in, including displacing what had previously been one of their best players to another position. I'm not going to completely re-quote Warspite's post, but just in a vacuum it is extremely logical to me that fitting a player of Wilt's style onto a team that already had a style and personnell of its own might take some time. To me, it is to their credit that they figured it out after only 30-something games, in time to put it together for the postseason.

3) Given the hindsight advantage that is one of the key tenets to the project, we know that this Philly team would have the best record in the league for the next 3 seasons in a row and that they would win the only non-Celtic title of that period. Of course there were some changes from year to year, but the foundation of the team was in place by the postseason of '65 and to me it makes a lot of sense that postseason '65 Philly was much more similar to 66-68 Philly than regular-season '65 when they were getting used to life with the Dipper.[/quote]

Good post, solid points.

The one additional thought I'll put out there: Regardless of the adjustments needed to fit Wilt in, while they were making them, they were beating Cincy in the regular season, and getting killed by the Lakers in the regular season. I'll be spending these last minutes thinking about what you've said, but the idea that Cincy doesn't look back for losing to Philly in the post-season because of how good Philly was in the post-season doesn't really wash with the fact that Cincy wasn't good enough to beat the "bad" Philly team in the regular season.

[drza]

1) Wilt was clearly the focal point player for Philly. It doesn't seem reasonable to me that improvements in his peripheral players made the difference from a .500 fringe playoff team (both the year before, and the pace they were on when Wilt got there) and a championship contender. Doesn't even sound logical to me.

fair enough. what do you think about the additions of Cunningham and Wali Jones the following year ? what do you think about developing prospects of 76ers ? 2 of the TOP3 players pre-Wilt (Walker and Jackson) were just starting in the NBA. additional 2 prospects in the following year (both of whom were selected to all-rookie 1st teams) - Jones and Billy - were also developing.

TOP6 in MPG in 1966:
Chamberlain 29
Greer 29
Walker 25
Jones 23
Cunningham 22
Jackson 24

it makes perfect sense that they progressed and peaked when they added great coaching.

Jones and Cunningham were solid rookies in '66, but they certainly didn't come in and dominate. And they weren't there at all in the '65 postseason, when Philly looked an awful lot like the team they'd be in '66.

Purely in '65, I don't doubt that Walker and Jackson got better. But they could have gotten to their maximum career peak in '65 and, without Wilt, I seriously doubt they beat Oscar's Royals. And if by some surprising turn of events they did beat the Royals, no way Philly even with super-peak Walker and Jackson take the Celtics to the wire without Wilt. The playoffs are a small sample size, it's true, but for a team to convincingly beat a good team, play the best team ever to a standstill, and look almost exactly like they would the next season...it strains credulity to me to assume that this drastic improvement was due to the 3rd and 4th best player on the team getting better.

I could understand that Wilt made the difference in 65 to some extent but to act as if all of their improvement was caused by a guy who didn't improve them at all when he was the only variable changed is unreasonable, especially for a guy like you, drza.

what I'm saying is that Philadelphia clearly kept progressing without Wilt which is evident by their 69 record. how could you say they were fringe playoff team without Wilt in 66 when the same exact team minus Wilt and with Imhoff had almost 5 SRS in 69 ? that's not a fringe playoff team.

to isolate Wilt's impact you need to consider all of the variables, one can't just look at Sixers record after Wilt joined them and assume nothing changed outside of him. that's not what happened. when Wilt was the only thing that changed, their record didn't improve at all.

IMO it appears to me that you're cherry-picking evidence to support your opinion. For example, above you just got done praising Jones and Cunningham (who weren't even on the '65 team), implying that they were difference-makers as rookies. Yet here, you want to use the performance of the '69 team (at which point Cunningham and Jones were entering their primes, with Cunningham especially playing a much larger role) as evidence that the '65 team wasn't a fringe playoff team? You can't make both of those two arguments, not and be logically consistent. In my view the '65 squad with Wilt was a championship contender, as evidenced by their demolition of the the #2 seed and their coin-flip series with the best team in history. The fact that they also performed almost exactly as they would in the next few seasons is just icing on the cake to me.

Also, I've already mentioned several times that Warspite's post had a ring of truth in it to me. When Wilt joined Philly everything changed. The team essentially rebuilt from ground zero on the fly, in the middle of the season. It's not as simple as just adding Wilt's numbers on top of everyone else's and the team gets better. Wilt came in and became the offense...which means that everyone else's impact got a lot smaller as they had to lear to fit in around him. And if that's all that happened in '65, I'd be right there with you that Wilt had no impact. But it's not. We saw what happened once they figured out how to play in the new situation. And it certainly wasn't a non-effect.

2) I think that the "miles" ahead that the others may have been was based purely on the notion that they made their teams better than Wilt did. Numbers-wise Wilt was always there, but if he really did have no impact and the team stayed .500-caliber with him then yeah, Oscar and West would have been ahead. But the postseason proved positive (to me at least) that Wilt was the difference between a .500 team and a team capable of going toe-to-toe/blow-for-blow with the best team in history to that point. So if there is no longer an a priori assumption that Wilt had no impact and he showed extremely clearly that his Sixers were much better than Oscar's Royals, I see no reason to pretend that Wilt's stats shouldn't count.

so I still see no reason to think Wilt was better than either. Sixers were fringe playoff team without Wilt as you already said. Royals, based on our experience from other years we've analysed so far, are maybe 20W team without Oscar. same with Lakers without Baylor and West. why would you assume Wilt outplayed either of them ? (snip)

I've already stated my case. Statistically Wilt was right there with either West or Oscar in both the regular and postseason, and it is very clear to me that he was the biggest change between a fringe playoff team and a contender. That it took 30-something games for the Sixers to get up to speed doesn't bother me at all, because it was ultimately irrelevant. No matter how good they'd have looked in the regular season after the Wilt trade they weren't catching the Celtics' 62 wins, so they still wouldn't have had HCA in their series. When it counted, they showed what impact the Wilt trade really had for their team.

You do have a point that the Royals relied extremely heavily upon Oscar. I'm not sure about West (ETA, I mean I'm not sure that West without Baylor made the Lakers contenders. Obviously I'm not suggesting West didn't have a big impact), because once Baylor went down the Lakers didn't do anything to prove that they were anything more than a fringe playoff team themselves. Nevertheless, on the whole, you have a point here. But in the end, I'm forced to depend on something with which to make judgments. Wilt had the best stats in the league, he was the difference between an also-ran and a contender, and frankly I've never seen a case that convinces me that either of the wing players was better.