Outside wrote:Owly wrote:Outside wrote:[b]Vote: Nate Thurmond
....
A pared down list of notable info (my hope is that a shorter list will be more impactful).
-- NBA record for rebounds in a quarter - 18
-- One of only four players with 40 rebounds in a game
-- One of only five players to average 20 rebounds for a season
-- 10th all time in career rebounds
-- Averaged 15.0 points and 15.0 rebounds for his career
-- Five consecutive seasons averaging 20 PPG
-- Six seasons with MVP shares, including 2nd in 1966-67 (behind Wilt, ahead of Russell, Robertson, and Rick Barry)
Might want to build up or modify the list.
I suspect many looking at that (and so far as the above is intended to persuade them that Thurmond was better than their favoured candidate) think ...
-pace
-pace
-pace
-pace
-pace
-pace/was this helpful (TS%)
- More acceptable but even then - what is MVP? fwiw a fairly clear-cut 2nd - but not sure how much many will find this persuasive.
To the extent this line of argument hinges on rebounds, it could just as well be for a version of Jerry Lucas, and given how much his teams missed him (i.e. often not), I wouldn't find it persuasive.
I'm loathe to trust small samples, but to me his best case hinges on being an elite man-defender and the jobs he did on Jabbar. The question is how valuable that is in a vacuum.
LOL, okay. I've been promoting Thurmond since the 30s threads, including numerous lengthy posts. I know others don't hold him in as high regard as I do, so I've been concerned that my posts would become so much noise that other voters roll their eyes at and skip over, so I've tried to balance keeping him in the discussion with not overdoing it. For this thread, I decided that maybe less was more and a refreshing alternative to presenting a wall of text. In your case, at least, I guess less wasn't more.
As it turns out, I'll be traveling today and don't have time to prepare a proper post in response to your request, but I'll try to add something.
I'm not sure what all the "pace" references you had are getting at, other than teams in Thurmond's era playing at a faster pace. TS% is the biggest argument against Thurmond, and I've addressed that previously, essentially that his impact was huge defensively, second only to Russell, that his TS% was virtually identical to Russell's, and that due to roster construction he was relied upon to provide offensive production and did so, but not efficiently, and likely would've demonstrated greater efficiency if he had better offensive weapons around him.
Here is some info from prior posts.
Nate Thurmond. Nate the Great. My favorite player ever, so I can't claim to be impartial, but I can be his advocate for this project.
Thurmond was a great, great defender and rebounder, and his offense was very good. Even though he was better at defense than Wilt and Kareem and better at offense than Russell, his profile never rose above those three, and he's overlooked because of it.
Defensively, he was second only to Russell. The Warriors with Thurmond were consistently top 5 in DRtg, including 2nd or 3rd for a four-year stretch, and that was with Russell's Celtics in the league. When the league began recognizing All-Defensive Team honors in 1968-69, his sixth season, he was 1st team twice and 2nd team three times.
He was an exceptional shotblocker, one of the best the game has ever seen, but blocks weren't recorded until 1973-74, his 11th season in the league. Even though the game had taken a toll on his knees by that point, he was still top 10 in blocks the next two seasons (8th and 3rd).
Once blocks and steals became official stats, another stat became possible -- the quadruple-double. Thurmond was the first to record one, with 22 points, 14 rebounds, 13 assists, and 12 blocks. There have been only three other quadruple-doubles since.
But to provide some context, Thurmond said this:
Any good basketball fan knows that there were plenty of quadruple-doubles back in the 1960s... Let me put it this way: I had 12 blocks in my quadruple-double game, and it was my 12th year in the league. That’s with two bad knees and more than 30,000 minutes pounding NBA floors, night after night. You bet I had plenty of quadruple-doubles before 1974. I’m not trying to brag, but there were games where it was ridiculous the number of shots I blocked. When I was young, there were nights when guys couldn’t come close to getting shots off on me. Only Russell could have blocked more in his career.Said Walt Hazzard: "As for blocking shots, I've seen guys get offensive rebounds and then go back 15 feet to make sure they can get a shot off. They know Nate is there."
Kareem said Thurmond was his toughest opponent. "He plays me better than anybody ever has, He's tall, has real long arms, and most of all he's agile and strong. When I score on Nate, I know I've done something."
Wilt Chamberlain: "Nate Thurmond was an incredible defensive basketball player. He played me as well as Bill Russell."
Offensively, Thurmond had an inside and outside game. He averaged 15 PPG for his career and had five straight 20-point seasons. His outside shot could be inconsistent, but he was one of the earliest centers with floor spacing ability, benefitting his team by drawing the opposing center outside. Often overlooked are the other aspects of his offensive game -- he was an excellent passer for a big man and one of the best at setting screens.
Nate Thurmond was beloved by teammates and coaches and respected by opponents. His number 42 jersey is retired by both Golden State and Cleveland.
