Walton vs. Kareem 77 (Updated with Game 2)

[colts18]

Does anyone have insight on this series? I rewatched game 4 of that series and it looked clear to me that Kareem dominated Walton. I tracked the stats in the game.

FG when kareem/Walton was guarding each other:
Walton: 6-20 FG, drew 1 shooting foul
Kareem: 8-14 FG, drew 2 shooting fouls (made 1 one of them), 4 of them doubled teamed (3-4 FG)

# of possessions where teammate passed the ball to them with both in game:
Walton: 35 (24 in post), 2 double teams
Kareem: 31 (28 of them in the post), 16 double teams (1 triple team)

Amazing thing is not once was Walton doubled in the post. There wasn't a time where even 1 one of the Lakers players made a move towards Walton in the post. They let Kareem handle him 1 on 1. The only doubles came late in the shot clock. While Kareem was doubled 15 times in the post in 28 post possessions. Most of the non double teams came because Kareem threw it back quickly. When he dribbled, more often than not, he was doubled.

In case you were wondering, Kareem was 6-9 in hook shots vs. Walton (made 2 of them with Walton out of the game too). Walton was 1 out of 6 in hook shots. Kareem's hook shot was unstoppable. I'm not sure how anyone can guard that shot if Kareem is within 10 feet of the basket.

+/-:
Walton: +5 in, -1 out
Kareem: +5 in, -9 out

As far as passing, Walton did beat out Kareem in that category. Most of his possessions came in a faceup where he could shoot or pass it. He threw a lot of passes to cutting teammates. Kareem mostly passed when he was doubled. He was surprisingly slow on those passes and made quite a few sloppy passes that were deflected/stolen.


Overall, Kareem was more dominant IMO. His scoring ability was marvelous. As far as defense goes, Kareem played quite well in help defense. He had about 6 blocks by my count with most of them in help defense. He also drew 1 charge where he didn't fall down and/or flop (that would never get called in today's NBA). Walton's passing was as good as advertised, but not good enough to overcome Kareem especially when you consider that Kareem was doubled about half the time while Walton was always being single covered.


UPDATE:

I just went over Game 2 of that series and here are the stats for that game.

FG when kareem/Walton was guarding each other:
Walton: 6-13 FG, 2 O Reb allowed, 1 blocked attempt
Kareem: 15-19 FG, 2 O reb allowed, 1 blocked attempt

# of possessions where teammate passed the ball to them with both in game:
Walton: 33 possessions, 1 double
Kareem: 37 possessions, 23 times doubled (2 triple teams)

Walton was doubled on the 1st possession, but then was never doubled after that. The Lakers had complete confidence in Kareem which is why

Hook shots:
Kareem 7-9 FG (1 made not vs Walton)
Walton 3-5 FG

+/-:
Kareem: in +0, -2 out
Walton: in +0, +2 out

Both of them came out the same time during the 1st quarters and 3rd and came back in the same time. In the time they were out, Walton's team outscored Kareem's by 15-13.


Combined stats for the 2 games I tracked:
Kareem: 23-33 (.697) FG
Walton: 12-33 (.364) FG

Possessions touching the ball when guarding each other:
Kareem: 68 possessions, 39 double teams (3 triple teams), 33 FGA
Walton: 68 possessions, 3 double teams (0 triple teams), 33 FGA

So they both touched the ball equally in the halfcourt, but Kareem got 13x more double teams. They both shot it in 48.5% of their possessions they touched the ball. Kareem got doubled on 57.4% of his possessions while Walton was doubled 4.4%.

+/-:
Kareem: +5 in, -11 out
Walton: +5 in, +1 out

Overall Kareem manhandled Walton in the post, especially when he got single coverage. For as good as Walton was, they had no answers for Kareem's hook shot (13-18 in hook shots). Walton's passing did beat out Kareem's. Walton was smooth and could make the pass to the cutting man. Kareem mostly passed when he got doubled.

[Johnlac1]

Except Walton's team won and A-jabbar's didn't. So who was the better player dismissing Walton's short career and just going by the players at the peak of their abilities? Curiously enough, this is similar to the Russell-Chamberlain who-was-better arguments. Chamberlain always had the better stats, but the Celtics, and Russell, almost always won the battle. So the Walton-A-Jabbar comparison features one player (Walton) who had excellent overall stats but didn't score a lot of points compared to a player (A-Jabbar) who led the league in scoring and was capable of having that giant scoring game while playing excellent defense. So who do I think was a better player? Depends on what kind of team I had. The Trailblazers were built around Walton's talents like the Celtics were built around Russell's. A-jabbar's teammates didn't complement his as much (or he didn't complement them). It's a shame Walton's career was so shortened. By the way, the Blazers were on their way to another championship when Walton got injured late in the '78 season. A-Jabbar would have to wait until Magic arrived before he started winning championships again. And even so, he didn't play in the '80 final game which featured perhaps the greatest 7th game performance of all time by Magic. But A-Jabbar was a great, great player and had a fantastic finals series up to the last game. I might have to flip a coin between choosing him or Walton. With the assurance of course that Walton would play at least ten years injury-free.

[colts18]

Except Walton's team won and A-jabbar's didn't. So who was the better player dismissing Walton's short career and just going by the players at the peak of their abilities? Curiously enough, this is similar to the Russell-Chamberlain who-was-better arguments. Chamberlain always had the better stats, but the Celtics, and Russell, almost always won the battle. So the Walton-A-Jabbar comparison features one player (Walton) who had excellent overall stats but didn't score a lot of points compared to a player (A-Jabbar) who led the league in scoring and was capable of having that giant scoring game while playing excellent defense. So who do I think was a better player? Depends on what kind of team I had. The Trailblazers were built around Walton's talents like the Celtics were built around Russell's. A-jabbar's teammates didn't complement his as much (or he didn't complement them). It's a shame Walton's career was so shortened. By the way, the Blazers were on their way to another championship when Walton got injured late in the '78 season. A-Jabbar would have to wait until Magic arrived before he started winning championships again. And even so, he didn't play in the '80 final game which featured perhaps the greatest 7th game performance of all time by Magic. But A-Jabbar was a great, great player and had a fantastic finals series up to the last game. I might have to flip a coin between choosing him or Walton. With the assurance of course that Walton would play at least ten years injury-free.

Russell and Chamberlain isn't a fair comparison because Russell was much better defensively.


Kareem lost because his guards sucked at ball handling. If you want an example, look at this video from 5:00-8:15. There were 4 careless turnovers in that sequence. That happened all game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4I7iK ... ure=relmfu

[Johnlac1]

Sorry, Russell wasn't much better defensively. Wilt usually outrebounded and blocked as many shots as Russell if not more.

[D.Brasco]

Sorry, Russell wasn't much better defensively. Wilt usually outrebounded and blocked as many shots as Russell if not more.

There's a famous quote about how when wilt switched to a more defense focus playing style he played as bill Russell better than bill Russell did.

The defense gap between wilt and russell was not nearly as big as people like to exaggerate.

[penbeast0]

The gap between Russell and Wilt defensively is BIGGER than generally acknowledged because a lot of people only look at rebounding and shotblocking like the previous poster. Look at the team DRTGs per possession then look at the personnel around them -- early on Russell had some of those guys as reserves plus a few one year defensive specialists like Jim Lotscutoff but generally had very weak defensive reps around him early (Cousy, Heinsohn, Sharman, Ramsey) while later he had mixed reps around him (Havlicek, Sanders, KC Jones very good; Bailey Howell very bad, Sam Jones mediocre). And yet Russell's defensive teams were consistently on the GOAT list for most of his career despite the whole rotation changing over -- to contrast, Hakeem only has a couple of seasons that would match up to Russell's top 10.

Similarly, while Kareem was a good defender, he wasn't a great one; Walton was significantly better as is shown by his getting 1st team All-D over Kareem in both the years where he played over 60 games (barely) as a starter. It wasn't just his passing which the system Ramsey designed features.

[colts18]

I'm going to show off a few defensive plays:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIDn1niGCag[/youtube]

5:50: Kareem uses his help defense to anticipate the dunk and he blocks it.

7:20: Kareem recovers well and makes a solid block on another dunk attempt

6:50: Walton helps out but he doesn't have enough height to make the block. Kareem would make that block.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usDqCrm0r_w&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

3:55: Walton helps off of Kareem and makes a good block on the layup attempt

5:05: Walton tips the entry pass away, then makes the block


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu4I7iKt8r4&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

7:50: Kareem helps off of walton and draws the charge. On this charge, Kareem gets barely moved and the ref still calls the charge. In today's NBA, thats a blocking foul easily

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag_0wcB_opU&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

3:37: Kareem steals the ball and goes the basket, but Walton takes him head on and blocks his shot attempt.


Based on what I watched, both guys were good help defenders. You can't be a bad help defender like Kareem and block 4 or 5 shots per game. Not possible. It's too bad Kareem didn't apply this defensive effort for his whole career.

[colts18]

More defensive clips:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0Up8OvJHxI&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

3:00: Kareem helps off of Walton and blocks yet another dunk attempt. I don't think I've ever seen a player block 3 dunks 1 game.

7:40: Kareem's shows off his great recognition skills and goes from the FT line to the basket for the block. I doubt many big men can make that play in today's game


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPOCgAnJbvo&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

5:43: Kareem blocks Walton's layup attempt. Walton has to go for the pump fake there. Kareem got that easily

7:13: Kareem makes another block, this time in transition. That is an easy block for Kareem. I'm sure most big men make that play.


By my count, that's 6 blocks plus 1 charge and 1 steal for Kareem. Great defensive game. I wish youtube had the other games so I could go over them. If I based everything on this game, Kareem might be right up there on my GOAT list. It's sad that Kareem didn't play this way for the whole 70's and his teammates were garbage. I highlighted before a 3 minute span where Kareem's guards had 4 careless turnovers that cost them.

[Johnlac1]

A-Jabbar hardly had a lousy career, but the knock on him is that he didn't play as hard as could all the time. That was never a question with Walton, Russell, or Chamberlain. He had a stretch of years including his last year in Milwaukee and his first three or four years in L.A. where his teams underperformed to put it mildly. But against another great player, Walton, he rose to the occasion. Curiously enough, his last trip to the finals with the Bucks was also Robertson's last year. Did Oscar make that much of a difference? Oscar's last year was mediocre for him at best, although he did direct the team and lead it in assists. But it wasn't until Magic arrived in L.A.that A-jabbar started winning championships again. So the question is: did he need a great point guard to win championships, and did he make his teammates better? I don't know if he needed a great point guard to win championships but yes, he did make his teammates better. However, maybe not quite as well as Russell and Walton made their teammates.

[Johnlac1]

The gap between Russell and Wilt defensively is BIGGER than generally acknowledged because a lot of people only look at rebounding and shotblocking like the previous poster. Look at the team DRTGs per possession then look at the personnel around them -- early on Russell had some of those guys as reserves plus a few one year defensive specialists like Jim Lotscutoff but generally had very weak defensive reps around him early (Cousy, Heinsohn, Sharman, Ramsey) while later he had mixed reps around him (Havlicek, Sanders, KC Jones very good; Bailey Howell very bad, Sam Jones mediocre). And yet Russell's defensive teams were consistently on the GOAT list for most of his career despite the whole rotation changing over -- to contrast, Hakeem only has a couple of seasons that would match up to Russell's top 10.

Similarly, while Kareem was a good defender, he wasn't a great one; Walton was significantly better as is shown by his getting 1st team All-D over Kareem in both the years where he played over 60 games (barely) as a starter. It wasn't just his passing which the system Ramsey designed features.

Sorry, I saw a lot of those games. Wilt and Bill were almost equals defensively.

[colts18]

Sorry, I saw a lot of those games. Wilt and Bill were almost equals defensively.

Just curious, how old are you and how did you see a lot of those games? I would love to know the answer to that question.

Based on what I saw and read, Wilt wasn't a good PnR defender and not on Russell's level when it came to help defense. Wilt could have been better than Russell defensively if he focused on that.

[colts18]

I'm bumping this up since I tracked another game in that 77 series. I tracked Game 2 where Kareem overall went 15-19 FG against Walton. The data for that game, and the 2 games combined is in the OP where I put UPDATE: in the OP.

[lukekarts]

Impressive analysis, thanks colts18.

I've always thought Kareem gets unfair criticism levelled against him for his defensive ability... most people judge him from his Lakers stint with Magic in the 80's.. forgetting he was past his prime then. He was a great player in the 70's but only got the chance to win one title in the only year he had a good 2nd option (Oscar). Showtime was obviously more successful.

[Johnlac1]

Sorry, I saw a lot of those games. Wilt and Bill were almost equals defensively.

Just curious, how old are you and how did you see a lot of those games? I would love to know the answer to that question.

Based on what I saw and read, Wilt wasn't a good PnR defender and not on Russell's level when it came to help defense. Wilt could have been better than Russell defensively if he focused on that.

Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I'm in my sixties. You're right, Chamberlain didn't like to come away from the basket. That's why some centers with good jump shots could have big games on him occasionally. Willis Reed and Dave Cowens for example. Although Reed was a better shooter than Cowens. Was Russell a smarter player than Chamberlain? Probably a little smarter, but Wilt's bb IQ was vastly underrated. And I'll mention again that Wilt's teams came very close to beating Boston a number of times in the playoffs. There was three times Philly took Boston to seven games but lost in the seventh game by a bucket or two. And Wilt's rookie year, if Wilt hadn't' been deliberately provoked and didn't punch Tom Heinsohn injuring this shooting hand and making it almost useless for two games (both which the Warriors lost), his Warriors might have beaten Boston. Wilt had games of 50 and 42 pts. in that series head to head against Russell. But Boston had the better team until '66-67 when Philly was superior and crushed Boston in the eastern conference playoffs. And Philly was the better team the next year but fell victim to injuries to a number of key players in the playoffs. Boston came back from a 3-1 deficit and beat Philly in seven games. That remains my biggest playoff disappointment. In that seventh game Russell plainly outplayed Chamberlain holding hm to 14 pts.

[lorak]

Good stuff colts. These stats kind of confirms what we see from with/without: Walton wasn't great defensive center.

[colts18]

Good stuff colts. These stats kind of confirms what we see from with/without: Walton wasn't great defensive center.

That's not what I was saying at all. All I said was that Walton wasn't good at defending Kareem (very few were). It's like saying Bill Russell is not a good defender since he can't guard Shaq. Against everyone else, Walton was great. He made a few plays on the other Lakers that were amazing. He had pretty good timing on his blocks and was a solid help defender, though he couldn't show that off much since it wouldn't make sense to help off of Kareem.

[lorak]

Great team defenders are usually also great as individual defenders: Thurmond played very good D versus KAJ or Wilt; Russell against Wilt; Hakeem vs DRob and Ewing.

Besides we have another data source (with/without) and it also shows that Walton wasn't as good on D as other great defensive centers.

[Doctor MJ]

Does anyone have insight on this series?

I think it's pretty hard to watch that series and not come away thinking Kareem was more impressive. Kareem's scoring ability compared to Walton is just vastly superior. It has to be noted though that that is just one part of the game and it's hard for me to give Kareem an edge elsewhere, while Walton is clearly superior in some aspects (passing & motor).

I think that it's oversimplistic and wrong to use this series as proof Walton was better relating to what I mentioned above as well as the issues with Kareem's supporting cast. However at the same time, over the course of several years, the on/off data favors Walton by ton. One doesn't have to decide this based on the on/off data, but if it's not clear to you how Walton got the on/off edge based on what you see when you watch them play, I'd be careful jumping on the Kareem > Walton bandwagon.

There's a part of me that wants to say that bizarrely enough, Kareem was the one playing out-of-the-ordinary good in this series at a time when his teammates were playing out-of-the-ordinary bad, and it's largely coincidence and nothing more to it. This would allow me to say Kareem was better here, but not necessarily better over the course of those seasons. Tough to say, but what I can say is that Kareem does not normally shoot this kind of volume & efficiency and the defense against him here seems quite good to me. If that's not an illusion, then clearly the Kareem we're watching is not average-Kareem even by peak standards.

[Doctor MJ]

Sorry, I saw a lot of those games. Wilt and Bill were almost equals defensively.

John, obviously it's hard to know how well any other anonymous avatar on the internet can watch a basketball game. I read your posts about ball back then and I really like seeing them. I give them some credence, but I'm always cautious even if that means sometimes not giving as much as someone deserves.

When you jump into quoting blocking & rebounding stats and then go toward saying essentially "sorry but I watched them and you didn't" what this does is just make me more cautious trusting your accounts for anything subjective. The stats in question are things that we are now well aware of how they can not correlate strongly with actual impact while the statement of watching is something used by fans of all levels of discernment and thus can't really sway anyone on its own.

What I see with Wilt is that there's basically no debate that the relationship between his stats and his impact was not strictly causal. More glaringly was '64-65 when we all know he was hurt and not helping his team much at all yet still put up stats roughly on part with his norm. And by his "norm", I'm making an implicit statement that there were times when he had quite a bit more impact. His GOAT-candidate peak is not typically what is in question, it's the ebb and flow of the impact over time, and that unfortunately cannot be proven or disproven based on stats like rebounds and blocks.

If you'd care to speak more on this and perhaps expand and clarify, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

[penbeast0]

Sorry, I saw a lot of those games. Wilt and Bill were almost equals defensively.

Just curious, how old are you and how did you see a lot of those games? I would love to know the answer to that question.

Based on what I saw and read, Wilt wasn't a good PnR defender and not on Russell's level when it came to help defense. Wilt could have been better than Russell defensively if he focused on that.

With all due respect, there's more to defense than natural ability and ever there, while Wilt may have been faster end to end when he sprinted, Russell was quicker. Wilt was superior athletically to Russell and a very intelligent player but particularly defensively you can see Wilt had to gather himself to jump while Russell was a quick jumper (insert Dennis Rodman quote here about it's not how high you jump but you quickly you get to the ball). I would also say, though I was too young to analyze much when I was watching, that Wilt's slamming the ball 10 rows into the seats was less valuable than Russell's tapping blocks to his teammates. Finally, although Wilt was highly intelligent, it never seemed he was that instinctual. He seemed to think a lot out there but that slows you down a little over instinctual reactions; that and he would set goals like getting lots of assists and force them rather than taking them in the flow of the game. That he did what he did is just a tribute to the fact that he (or Shaq) was the most incredible physical specimen in the history of the game.