Is lack of multiple 70's titles a knock on KAJ?

[penbeast0]

I like Adrian Dantley and always thought he got a bad rap. He was a DeMatha grad and didn't act like a jerk that I ever saw. As a player, he was Charles Barkley a size down . . . incredibly efficient offense; bad defense; you had to build your offense around him for him to really be effective but he was good enough to do just that. I've argued here, against much resistance, that he was better than Nique (though not as good as Gervin) -- it's the inefficient volume scorers that I tend to think badly overrated.

[NO-KG-AI]

Dantley does get a bad rap. You can't tell me that a guy can be that efficient and hurt hte team, I just can't buy it.

Think about sticking that guy in as a scorer on this years Celtics team in place of Pierce. They'd not go through those ridiculous scoring droughts all the time.

[TrueLAfan]

Penbeast...I have to pretty strongly disagree with you about both the talent level and overall team quality of the Lakers (besides Kareem) form 1976 to 1978. First, let's keep in mind that Kareem was, indeed, a high scoring player...that was very efficient and averaged four and a half assists a game. (And did it in the flow of the offense...sorry, but Adrian Dantley was an offense killer everywhere he went.) Kareem took about 25-26% of the team's shots when he was on the court...that's a pretty low amount for a top level scorer. That's less than Joe Johnson took last year with the Hawks; I don't think Joe slowed down the offense in any way. Your point that the Lakers had talent was exactly what Laker fans thought at the time. We/they didn't know that most of these players had slipped badly or were already shot. We didn't realize that Lucius Allen, Cazzie Russell, Don Cheney, Lou Hudson, and Donnie Freeman would be out of league with a year or two of their Laker run. They were on the decline—often steep—with the Lakers. You can't look at what they used to do and compare it to what they did.

--Lucius Allen. Tore a cartilege in his knee in late 1974 and was never the same afterward. Scoring went from 19.1 a game (1974-5) to 14.7, 14.6, 11.9, and finally 5.1 ppg in 31 games in 1979 with the Kansas City Kings. Lucius was, at best, an average player by 1976, and was declining.

--Don Ford was one of the worst NBA starters in the mid and late 1970s. He was a PF that couldn't rebound or defend, and wasn't much of a scorer either.

--Donnie Freeman was a capable player with the Lakers in 1976. He wasn't as good as he had been in the ABA—his jumper had largely gone south--but he was okay. He was also a guard on a team that had Gail Goodirch and Lucius Allen..a team that didn't need a guard. He retired after 1976; something was up with him. So they Lakers brought on...

--Don Chaney. Chaney was a defensive player, and a good one. When he was younger. He had been injured in 1976, and lost some mobility. That left him with his 39% shooting. He could still rebound and pass well for a G, but he was on a steep decline by 1977.

--Cazzie Russell was a scorer, plain and simple. Couldn't guard anyone, didn't rebound. Had been injured in 1975 or so—I can't remember what it was. He became almost exclusively a jump shooter after that. A one dimensional player, but an okay one—except his dimension was duplicated by Goodrich, Hudson, Tatum, Allen, etc. He was a perimeter shooter that didn't play D.

--Lou Hudson. Speaking of Sweet Lou...he was one of my favorite ballplayers. He's is vastly underrated; the question of whether peak Lou Hudson is better than peak Ray Allen is a very good one. His jumper has that good, and he had a complete game to go with it. He was a stud that blew out a knee in 1975. It was painful to watch--and, obviously painful for him to play. He'd lost his explosiveness and his speed; . He never lost the jumper, but he simply couldn't play extended minutes and couldn't guard anyone with speed and/or quickness on the perimeter.

--Charlie Scott, a ball dominant guard, joined the team in 1978, the year they got Norm Nixon (a ball dominant PG) and Adrian Dantley (who wanted the ball in his hands at all times). You had to feel for Jamaal Wilkes and Lou Hudson, who were wondering if they'd ever get a touch. (And, oh yeah, Kareem.) Nobody was happy; six players on the 1978 team averaged between 12 and 13 shorts a game, and they scrambled and complained and sulked about every one they got or didn't get...Charlie Scott most of all.

--Gail Goodrich...good ol' Stumpy. He was a good player and was still pretty good in 1976. But age was taking away his quickness, and left him as a crafty but small combo guard. He was on the decline in 1976 too.

Notice that there's a strong connection between most of these players. Perimeter player … scorer … not much defense at this point. The Lakers had, perhaps, the best defensive player in the legaue and were average, at best, on D with him. Without him, they were miserable. The players above manned the spots at PG, SG, and SF. They were worthless at PF; the Portland series in 1977 was just an embarrassment for Don Ford. There was one player that could have helped out, though.

--Kermit Washington. Banger. Great PF. Injury riddled. Played only 492 minutes in 1976. Played 1392 minutes and 57 games in 1977, but got injured and missed the playoffs. The Punch happened in December 1977, ending his Laker career. He played less than 2600 minutes in the 1976, 1977, and 1978 seasons with the team.

So the players were not good, in general. What's worse, they were poorly organized from a team standpoint. They had holes—obvious holes. Everyone saw it. West acknowledged it. They were a bad team without Kareem. How bad? The 1976 and 1977 teams were horrid; with an average C, they would have struggled to win 30 games. 25 would have been more like it. With Kareem, they averaged 47 wins a year. IMO, that makes Kareem worth around 20 wins a year. That's the definition of an MVP player.

[Doctor MJ]

Dantley does get a bad rap. You can't tell me that a guy can be that efficient and hurt hte team, I just can't buy it.

Think about sticking that guy in as a scorer on this years Celtics team in place of Pierce. They'd not go through those ridiculous scoring droughts all the time.

Consider the case of Wilt on the 76ers. I assume you know that from '66 to '67 Wilt took on a role with less scoring, and more passing, and that the 76ers offense became far better. Well, while Wilt's efficiency did go way up in the '67 season, he already has easily the best TS% on the team in '66. By taking on less of a scoring role the most important effect was not that his efficiency went up, but that the rest of the team's efficiency went way up. So it's been pretty clear for a long time, that it's possible to have at the very least far less positive impact than you'd superficially think by doing efficient volume scoring.

Even intuitively it makes some sense: If I'm a guy who has a tendency to hold on to the ball trying to get my shot, and when I know I can't, I pass the ball back out with very little time on the clock to guys who aren't in a position to shoot it, it's entirely possible that my shooting percentage will look good while the whole team suffers. Same goes if I'm bad at receiving or making passes.

Dantley was a guy who teams just kept trading for players who don't look nearly as impressive statistically, but there wasn't any trend of offenses getting worse after he left - heck there wasn't really any examples of an offense being really good while they had Dantley. And of course, on defense Dantley had a terrible reputation.