RealGM Top 100 List #44

[Fencer reregistered]

My point is that people have said in these threads "Cousy was a bad defender", and I fail to see much evidence for that other than his coach having called him out early in his career to play harder on defense, something that has had to be said about other guys too who were either the most active offensive player in the league or close to it.

I.e., Cousy's alleged lack of defense is a close-to-baseless narrative, and IMO pretty much a non-issue.

Shooting efficiency and shot selection? Sure, and they raise doubts about him, although the evidence about mitigating factors is thin enough to allow for substantial disagreement about them.

Quality of overall offense? Sure, and he led a pretty successful one by almost any metric except TS%.

But supposed bad defense from a PG on a supposedly great defensive team? I don't see how that can reasonably be a major consideration.

[penbeast0]

Re: Rodman’s rebounding dropping badly in the playoffs. To quote someone earlier . . . because no one bothered to look. Thanks.

Vote:

Moncrief – penbeast0

Cousy – Fencer, DavidStern, JordansBulls, lukekarts, Laimbeer

Paul – therealbig3, DoctorMJ, ronnymac2, ElGee

Cowens – Dr Mufasa


Nominate

English – penbeast0, Fencer, therealbig3, ronnymac2

Walton – JordansBulls, lukekarts, drza, DavidStern

Gasol – Dr Mufasa

Lanier – ElGee

Schayes – Laimbeer

Allen – Doctor MJ


Looks like Cousy is in; Walton and English both have a 4 votes with no one else greater than 1 . . . I will add them both to nominations list unless people object (in which case I will take them both off); not really worried about it one way or another, they will both make it by the time people are ready to vote for them.

[ThaRegul8r]

My point is that people have said in these threads "Cousy was a bad defender", and I fail to see much evidence for that other than his coach having called him out early in his career to play harder on defense, something that has had to be said about other guys too who were either the most active offensive player in the league or close to it.

I.e., Cousy's alleged lack of defense is a close-to-baseless narrative

So in other words, testimony of peers who were there at the time and teammates who played with him mean nothing when it doesn't fit in with whatever point one wants to make. I'll keep that in mind.

Shooting efficiency and shot selection? Sure, and they raise doubts about him, although the evidence about mitigating factors is thin enough to allow for substantial disagreement about them.

I cited Jason Kidd as a poor-shooting, distributing point guard (who also happened to excel on the break) who was an MVP candidate in the modern era. Evidently that was ignored.

supposed bad defense from a PG on a supposedly great defensive team?

What are the "supposed"s for? The greatest defensive dynasty of the modern era (second greatest ever) did not have a great defender at the point. Again, this is recent. So the two are unrelated. The two greatest defensive dynasties in league history were led by their big men, not their points. Cousy wasn't a good defender. So talk about what his strengths were instead of trying to revise history. He had the GOAT defender on his team who specifically covered for his weakness, so it wasn't a problem. I recall ElGee making the point about Steve Nash:

The greatest defensive dynasty of our time, the San Antonio Spurs, started Tony Parker. […] I don't see why Nash couldn't play on a great defensive team.

Every member of a team does not have to be a good/great individual defender in order for the team to be a great defensive team.

[Fencer reregistered]

My point is that people have said in these threads "Cousy was a bad defender", and I fail to see much evidence for that other than his coach having called him out early in his career to play harder on defense, something that has had to be said about other guys too who were either the most active offensive player in the league or close to it.

I.e., Cousy's alleged lack of defense is a close-to-baseless narrative

So in other words, testimony of peers who were there at the time and teammates who played with him mean nothing when it doesn't fit in with whatever point one wants to make. I'll keep that in mind.

Shooting efficiency and shot selection? Sure, and they raise doubts about him, although the evidence about mitigating factors is thin enough to allow for substantial disagreement about them.

I cited Jason Kidd as a poor-shooting, distributing point guard (who also happened to excel on the break) who was an MVP candidate in the modern era. Evidently that was ignored.

supposed bad defense from a PG on a supposedly great defensive team?

What are the "supposed"s for? The greatest defensive dynasty of the modern era (second greatest ever) did not have a great defender at the point. Again, this is recent. So the two are unrelated. The two greatest defensive dynasties in league history were led by their big men, not their points. Cousy wasn't a good defender. So talk about what his strengths were instead of trying to revise history. He had the GOAT defender on his team who specifically covered for his weakness, so it wasn't a problem. I recall ElGee making the point about Steve Nash:

The greatest defensive dynasty of our time, the San Antonio Spurs, started Tony Parker. […] I don't see why Nash couldn't play on a great defensive team.

Every member of a team does not have to be a good/great individual defender in order for the team to be a great defensive team.

I'm only aware of the testimony of one peer, namely his coach, and like most good coaches Auerbach is not necessarily to be taken literally about things like that.

Anyhow, he got voted in, which is a relief to me, as I feel as if I've been carrying the Cousy torch for a long time.

[ThaRegul8r]

I'm only aware of the testimony of one peer, namely his coach, and like most good coaches Auerbach is not necessarily to be taken literally about things like that.

Well, that's a problem with your awareness then. The limitations of one's knowledge has nothing to do with actuality. As I said, people only want to know whatever fits into their particular agenda of the moment.

Anyhow, he got voted in, which is a relief to me, as I feel as if I've been carrying the Cousy torch for a long time.

I have no issue with Cousy getting in. My issue is with inaccuracy when- and wherever I happen to see it, when people speak about that which they have no knowledge. Hence the posts I have made on this board in the past which were designed to raise the level of knowledge.

[Fencer reregistered]

I'm only aware of the testimony of one peer, namely his coach, and like most good coaches Auerbach is not necessarily to be taken literally about things like that.

Well, that's a problem with your awareness then. The limitations of one's knowledge has nothing to do with actuality. As I said, people only want to know whatever fits into their particular agenda of the moment.

Anyhow, he got voted in, which is a relief to me, as I feel as if I've been carrying the Cousy torch for a long time.

I have no issue with Cousy getting in. My issue is with inaccuracy when- and wherever I happen to see it, when people speak about that which they have no knowledge. Hence the posts I have made on this board in the past which were designed to raise the level of knowledge.

Which other peer of Cousy's criticized his defense?

[Fencer reregistered]

Necro-ing this because, without me around, you guys seem to be forgetting about Cousy a bit.

To recap quickly:

I hold Cousy to have been hugely influential on the game, as per my comments below.

I further hold him to have been hugely influential as a racial pioneer -- other than Auerbach himself, he was the white guy who made the Celtics' embrace of black guys possible or at least much easier. Cousy was passionate about racial justice back in the day, calmed Russell down when the attacks on him got almost too severe to bear, etc. By way of contrast, Heinsohn is somebody who was casually racist but overcame it as all serious sports professionals must.

And finally, I discount some of the apparent offensive inefficiency issues, because it was the Celtics' strategy to turn games into track meets that exhausted both teams.

My argument, as I've copied and pasted a few times, is that Cousy had GOAT-level impact on the course of the game. Mikan, Russell, or Jordan ahead of him? Easy to justify, although personally I only agree with Russell. Anybody else? I'd disagree pretty emphastically.

It's true you have. My reaction is more toward seeing people en masse vote for Cousy without any mention of Schayes in the nomination spot (with the exception of Laimbeer). I'm just not convinced people have coherent mindsets here.

Since you're asking me what I think about GOAT influencers, I'm going to get into stuff a little bit. I want to say up front I think you've been a solid and open minded contributor to the project, and I'm not the one running this show so I don't get to say "You're doing it wrong" with any authority.

But have you thought about what it said that Mikan was removed from this project? Do you really think it makes any kind of sense to give Cousy a boost for treading new ground early on in what many would call "The George Mikan Era" when we've specifically been told not to consider this an all-NBA history project?

I would also note that the other stars of that era I've mentioned to put Cousy in perspective certainly have had spearheading influence as well. How could they not? They were the NBA's first stars? In terms of influence, I really don't know if Cousy warrants more esteem than Arizin. Arizin pioneered the jump shot, which became the standard by the time he retired. That's a pretty big deal. You say Cousy invented the point guard position, but what does that mean exactly? Modern players who behave like Cousy did (shoot a lot at poor efficiency) get called combo or zero guards. If Cousy doesn't even qualify as much of a point guard by modern standards, how much influence did he actually have?

First of all, I don't recall any exhortations to ignore history, either in your phrasing or any other.

Second, Mikan was removed in essence because we agreed we didn't know how to evaluate him, and didn't want to try to reach a (sufficient) consensus on how to do so. By way of contrast, we implicitly agreed to rank Cousy, Arizin, & Schayes.

However, you're welcome to propose a second rule change that would effectively leave them out, if you wish to.

Third, part of my influence argument has nothing to do with his play on court -- I'm also giving Cousy credit for being a MAJOR racial pioneer.

Fourth, I'm giving him a small excuse for being locked into flashy play, because he was the marquee star of his era, having to make the tricksy pass just like Jordan later had to go for the tongue-flopping dunk. (But yes, that's a small excuse only, because "had to" is an overstatement.)

All that said, you're right that I'm putting a lot of weight on Cousy innovating a kind of play. In essence, Cousy taught that basketball world that passing and dribbling could be honed skills, not just routine tasks, distinguished only by speed and timing. This took a long time to fully sink in -- in PE class in 1966, I still learned that the right technique was a 2-handed chest pass in the air. But piecing together the scanty evidence, I think Cousy indeed gets a huge amount of the credit for influencing other people.

By way of analogy, I think Russell gets huge credit for shotblocking, mobile defense, perhaps shared with Mikan, and Mikan gets huge credit for post scoring. And, albeit less significantly, I think Isiah's drive-and-dish was more important than the sweet crossovers that came after him.

I think that nobody should get any similar credit for any particular aspect of shooting and scoring, because it's always been obvious that one should refine one's skills in that area, and players have always worked hard on doing so. (That includes the high-flyers, but anyway we've already voted in all of Baylor, Erving, Jordan, and even 'Nique.) E.g., jump shots seem to have been independently invented by a whole lot of different people, various of whom were influential on successors. (Even so, I plan to give Arizin an influence bonus for jump shooting as the project progresses; as the first major star to feast off of that technique, he surely had disproportionate influence in its adoption.)