Spoiler:
Overall SRS: My combo-SRS from the regular season and playoffs as discussed in the master thread
Standard Deviations: Standard Deviations of Overall SRS from the league mean.
When I post the roster makeup of the team, I try and do it by playoff minutes. The numbers are age, regular season BPM and Playoff BPM (basketball-reference's BPM is being used here).
So if I say: "C: Vlade Divac (22), +2.3 / +4.3" I mean that Vlade Divac was their center, he was 22, he had a BPM of +2.3 in the regular season and a +4.3 in the playoffs. Yes, BPM misses out on a lot of subtle stuff but I thought it a good quick-hits indicator of the skills of the players.
I also list the playoff players (20+ MPG) in order of OLoad (which is usage that integrates assists) and it has everyone's per game average for minutes, points, rebounds, assists and stocks (steals plus blocks), but all of those (including minutes) are adjusted for pace.
I then cover the three highest players in scoring per 100 (with their true shooting relative to league average) and the three highest players in Assists per 100. I realize that these are arbitrary, but I wanted a quick-hits reference for how these teams' offenses ran.
I then talk about Heliocentrism, Wingmen and Depth. Basically I add up all of the team's VORP (again, basketball-reference) and then figure out what percentage of that VORP comes from the #1 player (Heliocentrism), from the #2 and 3 players combined (Wingmen) and Depth (everyone else). I include the ranking among the top 100 for reference. There are only 82 of these rankings, because 18 teams pre-date BPM/VORP, so I only have 82 to work with. I'm not saying that these are particularly meaningful, I just thought they were cool.
Playoff Offensive Rating: Amount by which your playoff offensive rating exceeds the offensive rating you'd expect given the regular season defensive rating of your playoff opponents. If you would be expected to post a 99 given your opponents but you post a 104, that's graded as +5. This way we can compare across eras.
Playoff Defensive Rating is the same as Offensive Rating, just the opposite.
Playoff SRS: Is SRS measured *only* in the playoffs. Overall SRS is a mix of both playoffs and regular season.
Total SRS Increase Through Playoffs: Basically their Overall SRS minus their Regular Season SRS. This is basically how much better a team did in the playoffs than you'd guess, relative to their regular season performance.
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: The average regular season offensive rating of your playoff opponents.
Average Playoff Opponent Defense: The average regular season defensive rating of your playoff opponents.
Rankings of any kind are out of my list. So if I say that the '91 Lakers had the 42nd best regular season offense, I don't mean "42nd best of All-Time", I mean "42nd best of my Top 100 Teams of All_Time". Which will be pretty comparable, but I want to be clear about this.
I also walk through the playoffs at each round, covering their opponent their SRS (at that time), how many games the series was, the margin of victory (and a "+" is always in the favor of the discussed team; losing a series by +2.0 means that you outscored the other team by two points a game on average despite losing) and for reference I put in an SRS equivalency (beat a +5 SRS team by 5 points a game, that's an equivalent +10 SRS series).
In later entries I also add the Offensive and Defensive Ratings for each playoff series. This is just how well the team did, adjusted by the opponent's regular season average (if you play a team with an average Defensive Rating of 102, and you play them with an offensive rating of 106, you get credited with a +4). Pace for teams below 1973 or so is estimated based on regular season numbers, so it could easily be wrong by some.
In writeups, if I ever say a player shot at "-8%" or something, that means "his true shooting was 8% lower than the league average that year". Any time I say "a player shot" and follow it by a percent, I am *always* using true shooting percentage unless otherwise indicated.
I also have a modern comps section for any teams pre-2011. It's basically me weighting each statistical characteristic and feeding each player's stats into the BackPicks database and choosing the best-rated comp from the list. I might list something like this:
PG: 2017 LeBron James (worse rebounding, better passing, way fewer shots)
What I mean is, "This team's point guard was basically 2017 LeBron James, but make his passing better, make his rebounding worse and make him take way fewer shots).
Anyhow. I don't know how clear any of this will be, so please let me know what does and doesn't work from these writeups. And thanks for reading!
Standard Deviations: Standard Deviations of Overall SRS from the league mean.
When I post the roster makeup of the team, I try and do it by playoff minutes. The numbers are age, regular season BPM and Playoff BPM (basketball-reference's BPM is being used here).
So if I say: "C: Vlade Divac (22), +2.3 / +4.3" I mean that Vlade Divac was their center, he was 22, he had a BPM of +2.3 in the regular season and a +4.3 in the playoffs. Yes, BPM misses out on a lot of subtle stuff but I thought it a good quick-hits indicator of the skills of the players.
I also list the playoff players (20+ MPG) in order of OLoad (which is usage that integrates assists) and it has everyone's per game average for minutes, points, rebounds, assists and stocks (steals plus blocks), but all of those (including minutes) are adjusted for pace.
I then cover the three highest players in scoring per 100 (with their true shooting relative to league average) and the three highest players in Assists per 100. I realize that these are arbitrary, but I wanted a quick-hits reference for how these teams' offenses ran.
I then talk about Heliocentrism, Wingmen and Depth. Basically I add up all of the team's VORP (again, basketball-reference) and then figure out what percentage of that VORP comes from the #1 player (Heliocentrism), from the #2 and 3 players combined (Wingmen) and Depth (everyone else). I include the ranking among the top 100 for reference. There are only 82 of these rankings, because 18 teams pre-date BPM/VORP, so I only have 82 to work with. I'm not saying that these are particularly meaningful, I just thought they were cool.
Playoff Offensive Rating: Amount by which your playoff offensive rating exceeds the offensive rating you'd expect given the regular season defensive rating of your playoff opponents. If you would be expected to post a 99 given your opponents but you post a 104, that's graded as +5. This way we can compare across eras.
Playoff Defensive Rating is the same as Offensive Rating, just the opposite.
Playoff SRS: Is SRS measured *only* in the playoffs. Overall SRS is a mix of both playoffs and regular season.
Total SRS Increase Through Playoffs: Basically their Overall SRS minus their Regular Season SRS. This is basically how much better a team did in the playoffs than you'd guess, relative to their regular season performance.
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: The average regular season offensive rating of your playoff opponents.
Average Playoff Opponent Defense: The average regular season defensive rating of your playoff opponents.
Rankings of any kind are out of my list. So if I say that the '91 Lakers had the 42nd best regular season offense, I don't mean "42nd best of All-Time", I mean "42nd best of my Top 100 Teams of All_Time". Which will be pretty comparable, but I want to be clear about this.
I also walk through the playoffs at each round, covering their opponent their SRS (at that time), how many games the series was, the margin of victory (and a "+" is always in the favor of the discussed team; losing a series by +2.0 means that you outscored the other team by two points a game on average despite losing) and for reference I put in an SRS equivalency (beat a +5 SRS team by 5 points a game, that's an equivalent +10 SRS series).
In later entries I also add the Offensive and Defensive Ratings for each playoff series. This is just how well the team did, adjusted by the opponent's regular season average (if you play a team with an average Defensive Rating of 102, and you play them with an offensive rating of 106, you get credited with a +4). Pace for teams below 1973 or so is estimated based on regular season numbers, so it could easily be wrong by some.
In writeups, if I ever say a player shot at "-8%" or something, that means "his true shooting was 8% lower than the league average that year". Any time I say "a player shot" and follow it by a percent, I am *always* using true shooting percentage unless otherwise indicated.
I also have a modern comps section for any teams pre-2011. It's basically me weighting each statistical characteristic and feeding each player's stats into the BackPicks database and choosing the best-rated comp from the list. I might list something like this:
PG: 2017 LeBron James (worse rebounding, better passing, way fewer shots)
What I mean is, "This team's point guard was basically 2017 LeBron James, but make his passing better, make his rebounding worse and make him take way fewer shots).
Anyhow. I don't know how clear any of this will be, so please let me know what does and doesn't work from these writeups. And thanks for reading!
#6. The 1986 Boston Celtics
Spoiler:
Overall SRS: +12.55, Standard Deviations: +2.53, Won NBA Finals (Preseason 2nd)
PG: Dennis Johnson, +0.5 / +0.5
SG: Danny Ainge, +0.9 / +5.3
SF: Larry Bird, +8.7 / +9.9
PF: Kevin McHale, +4.4 / +5.1
C: Robert Parish, +2.1 / -1.8
6th: Bill Walton, +3.0 / +3.1
Regular Season Metrics:
Regular Season Record: 67-15, Regular Season SRS: +9.06 (12th), Earned the 1 Seed
Regular Season Offensive Rating: +4.6 (37th), Regular Season Defensive Rating: -5.0 (26th)
Shooting Advantage: +5.4%, Possession Advantage: -1.5 shooting possessions per game
Larry Bird (SF, 29): 38 MPPG, 28% OLoad, 26 / 10 / 7 / 3 on +3.9%
Dennis Johnson (PG, 31): 35 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 15 / 3 / 6 / 2 on -3.2%
Kevin McHale (PF, 28): 35 MPPG, 21% OLoad, 21 / 8 / 3 / 2 on +8.2%
Robert Parish (C, 32): 31 MPPG, 19% OLoad, 16 / 9 / 2 / 2 on +4.5%
Bill Walton (C, 33): 19 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 8 / 7 / 2 / 2 on +6.5%
Danny Ainge (SG, 26): 30 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 11 / 3 / 5 / 1 on +2.1%
Scoring/100: Larry Bird (32.2 / +3.9%), Kevin McHale (28.7 / +8.2%), Robert Parish (24.1 / +4.5%)
Assists/100: Larry Bird (8.5), Danny Ainge (8.0), Dennis Johnson (7.9)
Heliocentrism: 41.6% (26th of 84 teams) - Bird
Wingmen: 32.2% (66th) - McHale & Parish
Depth: 26.2% (42nd)
Playoff Metrics:
Playoff Offensive Rating: +8.24 (17th), Playoff Defensive Rating: -4.93 (51st)
Playoff SRS: +14.82 (7th), Total SRS Increase through Playoffs: +3.49 (30th)
Shooting Advantage: +6.4%, Possession Advantage: -2.5 shooting possessions per game
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: +2.33 (52nd), Average Playoff Opponent Defense: -0.44 (84th)
Larry Bird (SF, 29): 43 MPPG, 24% OLoad, 26 / 9 / 8 / 3 on +7.4%
Kevin McHale (PF, 28): 40 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 25 / 9 / 3 / 3 on +9.5%
Dennis Johnson (PG, 31): 40 MPPG, 21% OLoad, 16 / 4 / 6 / 3 on -2.5%
Robert Parish (C, 32): 33 MPPG, 20% OLoad, 15 / 9 / 1 / 2 on -3.0%
Bill Walton (C, 33): 18 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 8 / 7 / 2 / 1 on +7.5%
Danny Ainge (SG, 26): 37 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 16 / 4 / 5 / 2 on +9.7%
Scoring/100: Kevin McHale (30.6 / +9.5%), Larry Bird (29.5 / +7.4%), Robert Parish (22.3 / -3.0%)
Assists/100: Larry Bird (9.4), Dennis Johnson (7.3), Danny Ainge (7.0)
Playoff Heliocentrism: 42.6% (18th of 84 teams) - Bird
Playoff Wingmen: 46.3% (16th) - McHale & Ainge
Playoff Depth: 11.1% (79th)
Round 1: Chicago Bulls (-3.1), won 3-0, by +13.7 points per game (+10.6 SRS eq)
Round 2: Atlanta Hawks (+3.7), won 4-1, by +9.6 points per game (+13.3 SRS eq)
Round 3: Milwaukee Bucks (+6.7), won 4-0, by +15.0 points per game (+21.7 SRS eq)
Round 4: Houston Rockets (+7.4), won 4-2, by +6.2 points per game (+13.6 SRS eq)
Offensive / Defensive Ratings from Opposition Regular Season Average:
Chicago Bulls: +9.0 / -0.3
Atlanta Hawks: +8.6 / -3.5
Milwaukee Bucks: +14.2 / -9.3
Houston Rockets: +4.3 / -4.6
Shooting Advantage / Possession Advantage per game (unadjusted):
Chicago Bulls: +7.7% / -2.3
Atlanta Hawks: +4.7% / +0.5
Milwaukee Bucks: +8.2% / -1.4
Houston Rockets: +6.1% / -5.8
Postseason Usage/Efficiency Change adjusted for Opposition:
Dennis Johnson: -0.9% / +0.9%
Danny Ainge: +1.0% / +7.8%
Larry Bird: -4.3% / +3.7%
Kevin McHale: +1.3% / +1.5%
Robert Parish: +1.2% / -7.3%
Bill Walton: +0.8% / +1.2%
Where the heck did the ‘86 Celtics come from? It’s easy to paint them as simply the best team of a dynasty, that the Celtics were really good through the 80s and 1986 happened to be their best year. I don’t buy it. That argument fits more with the ‘85 and ‘87 Lakers. The Lakers were really good very consistently, and they happened to have two stronger years. The jumps up *to* those years weren’t that big, and the drops *from* those years weren’t that big either. But the Celtics? The ‘87 Celtics didn’t even make this list, the ‘84 Celtics were #50, the ‘85 Celtics were team #86 on this list. The best other Bird-era Celtics team here is the ‘81 version, which finished 46th. Contrast those (respectable teams, but nothing earth-shaking) to how freaking dominant the ‘86 Celtics were. 12th best regular season SRS ever, 7th best postseason SRS ever? That’s an insane leap.
To consider how rare a team like the ‘86 Celtics are (considering the seasons before and after them) I want to compare them to other dynasties using my OSRS (which has plenty of flaws, the lord knows, but it’s the best regular season and postseason blended rating I have).
Boston Celtics (‘84 to ‘88):
+7.48 | +7.72 | +12.55 | +5.66 | +5.37
That’s a pretty big jump and fall in the middle there. Check out this next one:
+5.13 | +5.46 | +12.9 | +11.16 | +8.6
That’s Chicago, with the ‘91 season as the +12.9. Massive, massive jump from ‘90 to ‘91 (bigger than the jump for the Celtics from ‘85 to ‘86). And this wasn’t caused by a roster addition; it was just Grant and Pippen (and some others) making the leap at the same time and suddenly giving Jordan a legitimate supporting cast. But unlike the Celtics they maintained around this level for several years. Here’s another:
+7.65 | +11.36 | +8.54 | +11.26 | +6.02
That’s the mid-80s Lakers, with ‘85 and ‘87 as the big seasons. Definitely volatile (jumping 3-4 up or down consistently) but never big swings like the Celtics had. How about:
+2.4 | +8.0 | +12.2 | +9.06 | +3.62
Those are the Shaq Lakers. Big jump from ‘99 to ‘00, but then they got better and maintained kind of for a year before dropping. Definitely more stable than the Celtics. Next:
-0.77 | +8.04 | +11.84 | +8.7 | +3.98
That’s a huge jump between the first two years, but after that it seems fairly slow to change. This is the Kobe Lakers, with the big jump being between ‘07 and ‘08, marked by the addition of Pau Gasol. Another:
-5.07 | +4.58 | +14.68 | +12.34 | +7.09
Check out how big those first two jumps are! These are the Kareem Bucks, starting in 1969. Between ‘69 and ‘70 they added rookie Kareem and Bob Dandridge, and between ‘70 and ‘71 those rookie grew and they added veteran Oscar Robertson. Here’s another:
+4.26 | +12.09 | +10.98 | +16.15 | +12.17
Those are the ‘14-’18 Warriors. That jump in the first year wasn’t adding any new players, it was simply switching to Kerr’s system and everybody staying healthy. And the next big jump was adding Durant. Another:
+9.09 | +10.78 | +12.32 | +6.66 | +12.22
These are the ‘12-’16 Spurs. Those first three years are a steady buildup, 2015 was a weird disappointment and 2016 was outstanding, if spoiled by other super-teams. Another:
+5.04 | +3.72 | +11.77 | +8.86 | -1.02
These are the ‘70-’74 Lakers. The first was a bit low because Wilt missed most of the season, the second was a bit low because West missed the playoffs. Then they explode in ‘72, diminish slightly in ‘73 and in ‘74 Wilt leaves and West plays less than half a season.
Well, I’ll admit, based on all of those samples, maybe the ‘86 Celtics aren’t as much of an aberration as I thought. Here are the top ten jumps from these teams (not exhaustive, just the teams I looked at):
1970 -> 1971 Milwaukee Bucks, +10.1
1969 -> 1970 Milwaukee Bucks, +9.65
2007 -> 2008 Los Angeles Lakers, +8.81
1971 -> 1972 Los Angeles Lakers, +8.05
2014 -> 2015 Golden State Warriors, +7.83
1990 -> 1991 Chicago Bulls, +7.44
1999 -> 2000 Los Angeles Lakers, +5.60
2015 -> 2016 San Antonio Spurs, +5.56
2016 -> 2017 Golden State Warriors, +5.17
1985 -> 1986 Boston Celtics, +4.83
Most of these are driven by player additions (whether that be acquisitions or merely getting players healthy. Of the nine non-Celtics seasons, I’d peg five as being of that sort (Kareem, Oscar, Pau, West being healthy and Durant). Another two are coaching changes (Kerr and Phil Jackson). Player development shows up as a lot of these; the ‘91 Bulls are the biggest example, but the ‘71 Bucks, ‘00 Lakers and ‘16 Spurs all show up. The ‘16 Spurs are a weird example, given that the rating of the ‘15 Spurs is tanked by a first-round exit against strong competition (the Clippers) and Tony Parker being injured for the playoffs.
So where does this leave the ‘86 Celtics? Well, they acquired Bill Walton, so that’s definitely a thing. K.C. Jones was the coach for the whole stretch, so coaching change doesn’t apply. And player development seems unlikely, since their core was all 28 or older except for Danny Ainge (26). But it’s weird to imagine that adding a player that only played 19 minutes a game (Walton) really transformed the team by that much. Let’s look at team drops:
1973 -> 1974 Los Angeles Lakers, -9.88
1986 -> 1987 Boston Celtics, -6.89
2014 -> 2015 San Antonio Spurs, -5.66
2002 -> 2003 Los Angeles Lakers, -5.44
1987 -> 1988 Los Angeles Lakers, -5.24
2011 -> 2012 Los Angeles Lakers, -4.72
2017 -> 2018 Golden State Warriors, -3.98
2010 -> 2011 Los Angeles Lakers, -3.14
2001 -> 2002 Los Angeles Lakers, -3.14
1972 -> 1973 Los Angeles Lakers, -2.91
Note that these drops are almost all smaller than the corresponding jumps. Great teams often get better suddenly, but they get worse more slowly. Some of these are driven by player loss, but many more are driven simply by aging, or a decreased effort. I know that the ‘87 Celtics lost Walton, but I can’t imagine that they gave decreased effort. And their core was all getting older . . . It keeps coming back to Walton. But it’s hard to imagine . . . As a last look, let’s check out the most aberrant seasons, basically seasons that jumped a lot from the year before and then fell the next year:
1971 Milwaukee Bucks, 12.44 swing (+10.1 up, -2.34 down)
1986 Boston Celtics, 11.72 swing (+4.83 up, -6.89 down)
1972 Los Angeles Lakers, 10.96 swing (+8.05 up, -2.91 down)
1991 Chicago Bulls, 9.18 swing (+7.44 up, -1.74 down)
2017 Golden State Warriors, 9.15 swing (+5.17 up, -3.98 down)
2015 Golden State Warriors, 8.94 swing (+7.83 up, -1.11 down)
Many of these are actually big jumps and small falls after a peak year. I think we can actually say that the Celtics’ 1986 season is historically unusual here. You may note that the ‘86 Celtics are the only team to be in the top ten of both rises and subsequent falls. So interesting. Let’s start looking at some possible causes:
Was it the way they used Larry Bird? Bird’s usage dropped in the ‘86 Playoffs, but his efficiency exploded. Maybe other iterations of the Celtics relied on him too much? Let’s check the numbers (from ‘80 to ‘88, regular season to playoff change in usage / true shooting, not opponent adjusted):
1980: -0.1 / -1.8
1981: -1.1 / +1.6
1982: -3.3 / -6.5
1983: +0.8 / -6.1
1984: -0.8 / +6.6
1985: -1.7 / -4.4
1986: -4.3 / +3.7
1987: -1.6 / -2.6
1988: -4.3 / -6.6
The numbers don’t really back this up. If you’re looking for a year that Bird put the team on his back by taking more shots in the playoffs, keep looking. Bird’s usage never jumped by more than a percent, and more often dropped. His only two big jumps in efficiency were ‘84 and ‘86. On average his usage and shooting dropped by almost 2% each (remember, this isn’t opponent adjusted, so dropping by 1.8% shooting is still probably a drop, but smaller than you think). So giving Bird fewer shots doesn’t seem to help too much. So we can cross that off.
Let’s get more granular (different team metrics from ‘84-88, all measured from league average):
Offensive Rating: +3.3 | +4.9 | +4.6 | +5.2 | +7.4
Wow! ‘86 was actually a slightly down year for their offense; it kept getting better in the late 80s.
Offensive eFG%: +0.9% | +1.9% | +2.5% | +4.4% | +5.2%
Yup, definitely driven by shooting. Well, we know that McHale’s peak was around the later years of these five, so that could be part of it. How about passing (Percent of FGM assisted):
Regular Season Passing: 58.6% | 61.5% | 64.2% | 66.4% | 68.0%
Playoff Passing: 55.8% | 62.9% | 65.1% | 63.6% | 70.6%
Wow. That’s very resilient passing; most teams’ A/FGM drops in the postseason, some by a lot (5-6% isn’t crazy). But notice how this keeps going up through the years, as their offensive rating goes up. It’s not crazy that Bird’s passing was improving (cerebral players often improve past their athletic prime) but let’s keep looking . . .
Offensive Rebounding: +1.2% | -0.1% | -1.1% | -4.4% | -3.0%
Huh. The Celtics, despite being an obviously strong rebounding team (when Bird is your 3, you probably should be) they weren’t that good on the offensive glass.
Hey, wait a minute. Increased offensive efficiency, but dropping offensive rebounding, increasing A/FGM . . .
3PA/FGA: 3.2% | 4.2% | 5.4% | 8.0% | 10.2%
Rank in 3PA/FGA: 8th | 6th | 5th | 2nd | 1st
The Celtics’ offense had always shot a fair amount of threes, but by ‘87 it was becoming a major part of their offense. Three pointers are more assisted shots than two pointers, so that explains much of the A/FGM trend, and it also explains much of the drop in offensive rebounding while shooting and offensive efficiency improved. Don’t get it twisted; in ‘88 the league-leading Celtics were shooting only 8.6 threes a game. But it undoubtedly boosted their shooting and spacing more than the rest of the league, which counts. The scary thing about the ‘86 Celtics is that their offense probably could have been even better if they’d moved their playstyle forward several years . . .
That said, this doesn’t address the initial question. Nothing about that trend suggests how the ‘86 Celtics really jumped up in an unsustainable way. If anything, the ‘86 Celtics’ offense was a slightly down year for them; we can’t explain their year that way.
Defensive Efficiency: -3.2 | -1.6 | -4.6 | -1.5 | +1.4
Whoa. Well, pretty sure that’s it. Wait, what happened in ‘84? Well, first off, McHale was coming off the bench and Maxwell was starting. Gerald Henderson was starting and Ainge was coming off the bench. Bird was 27, DJ was 29 and Parish was 30. So the starters were still close to their athletic peaks, Ainge’s minutes were going to a better ball-hawk and McHale . . . I don’t know if him coming off the bench or not helped. In ‘85 all of the core get older, and we lose Maxwell and Henderson. And in ‘86 they get Walton and he magically stays healthy. Sure he’s only playing 19 minutes a night, but he’s the only major change. And the Celtics jump from being a good defense to being the best defense in the league. And is it that crazy? If a healthy Walton can swing a defense by 5 points a game over a season (hypothetical, but not unreasonable) then why can’t Walton swing a defense 3 points a game over a season playing 60% of those minutes? I don’t really see another explanation.
And in ‘87? Walton’s out for the year and their entire bench struggles. Here’s a breakdown of the VORP from each VORP ranked slot (the #1 VORP, etc):
#1: 7.3 | 8.7 | 8.4 | 8.6 | 8.1
#2: 2.8 | 3.0 | 3.9 | 5.5 | 3.3
#3: 2.8 | 2.0 | 2.6 | 2.4 | 3.3
#4: 1.6 | 1.8 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.6
#5: 1.5 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 1.4
#6: 1.4 | 0.9 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 0.2
Others: -0.5 | -1.0 | -0.3 | -2.3 | -0.9
1987 was notable for two things: McHale posting an unusually good year and the bench falling apart. The Celtics had always been fairly top-heavy, but after ‘86 their bench was pretty weak. Walton was out, Wedman missed almost the entire year, Parish sprained his ankle and kept playing and McHale broke his foot (hairline, but still).
So, if I’m summarizing, the ‘86 Celtics made the leap by adding Walton (and by him staying healthy), and injuries to pretty much everyone brought the Celtics right back down to merely being very good.
Let's talk about the roster overall.
It’s impossible not to start with Larry Bird. Bird was 6’9” but . . . How to explain Bird? As a scorer he was really good . . . but underwhelming if pitched as an ATG in that area. The guy was a knock-down shooter (90% from the line and 40% from three once he started taking them more often). And his fadeaway, whether from the post or otherwise, had incredible precision and a surprisingly quick release time. He could sustain usages in the high 20s on efficiency around +4%. Combine these and you get around 24-25 points per 75. Twenty-five points per 75 and +4% efficiency are quite good . . . but not historically great. The problem was that he had a limited vertical and not a lot of lateral explosiveness. He struggled to take people off the dribble and create his own shot. Instead he relied on his fadeaway, lots of up-fakes, crazy rim dexterity and freeing up off-ball by sending his man through screens. His first several years in the league his shooting struggled when transitioning to the playoffs (-3.2% shooting below regular season), though from ‘84-88 he demonstrated respectable levels of resiliency (only -0.7% from the regular season). Given his athletic limitations he couldn't will shots into existence, and through his whole playoff career his usage level *fell* in the playoffs. So he was a really good scorer, but that wasn’t what made him special.
Bird was an epic passer. But the hard part was that he lacked the athleticism and handle to attack off the dribble. So his passing was mostly limited to being the second passer of a possession, which capped his assist numbers (high 20s assist%). The thing was, Bird had a crazy level of intuition and basketball IQ. Setting up open threes wasn’t really a thing in the 80s; Bird hooked people up at the rim. Cutters, post-players, whatever, Bird could find them. And yet, despite being a very aggressive passer he turned the ball over comparably little. Furthermore he was an excellent rebounder, especially on defense. Speaking of defense, his lack of athleticism hurt there, but his hoops IQ showed up just fine on that end. As far as motor . . . you know that thing about late-career regular season LeBron where people complained that he took possessions off?
Nobody *ever* said that about Larry Bird.
If anything they worried about the converse; that Larry Bird played so hard and with so much passion that his body simply couldn’t handle the abuse (a concern that would later prove to be well-justified). The thing about Bird was that he was banging and running nonstop every possession. On offense he was constantly fighting for position, running around screens, tirelessly working to find a chink in the defense’s armor. On defense he was constantly bouncing from assignment to assignment and jumped passing lanes with great success (of players at 6’9” or higher averaging 2.2% steals or higher, Hakeem has 9 such seasons, LeBron 8 and Bird has 7 - it’s a good group). Some people (Ben Taylor leaps to mind) think that Bird was an outstanding defender, one small step below the Pippens and McMillans. Some people think that Bird’s hustle and IQ made him a positive on that end, but that his lack of athleticism capped his value to merely above average. But they all agree that he put it all out there every single play.
You may be thinking “Hmm, deadly shooter, great floor-spacer, couldn’t create his own shot, strong rebounder, amazing passer, pure hustle on defense . . . this guy doesn’t really sound like a #1 option at all”. He wasn’t, or at least, that wasn't the optimal fit for his skills. Like Kevin Garnett, like David Robinson and like many others, Larry Bird had the literal perfect skillset to be a second option. And like those players, he never got that chance. Bird would be the highest usage and OLoad player on his team almost his entire career. But Bird always had a diverse enough array of scorers around him to outsource some of his load in the playoffs (compared to Garnett whose usage always went up, or Robinson who had to maintain). I don’t want to overplay it; it’s not like he was playing on the ‘17 Warriors. His guard support early on was fairly bad. He started off with old Tiny Archibald and Chris Ford; by the mid-80s he had Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge (not a massive upgrade but it counted). But Bird (after ‘81) always had Robert Parish (who by the mid-80s wasn’t a great offensive player anymore but he’d always been quite good on that end). And he always had one of the best low-post scorers in the league, whether it be Cedric Maxwell at the beginning of the decade or Kevin McHale later. There's no question in my mind that if he'd been allowed to be a little more selective with his shots that his efficiency would have gone up considerably, and I am equally sure that a worse supporting cast on offense would have strained his shot creation abilities in unflattering ways. It worked out; he had a strong and diverse supporting cast and made the most of it.
And perhaps some of his ability to outsource scoring successfully was built around his passing. The Celtics always posted very resilient assist/FGM numbers in the playoffs (normally they drop a good bit as playoff defenses disrupt the normal flow of offense). But in the 1986 playoffs Bird acted almost as a second banana to the entire team, dropping his usage a whopping four percent while almost everyone else jumped. But this transition made Bird’s efficiency jump and every other shooter saw improvement in the playoffs (besides Parish). This is all a very long way of saying that Bird was *not* a “put the team on his back and carry them with scoring” star. To perform at his best he needed a strong enough supporting cast to take more shots while he focused on the things he was great at: spacing the floor, setting up teammates for easy looks and hustling his butt off. Even in the ‘86 playoffs he posted the highest OLoad on the team, but it was only at 24%, pretty low for a #1 player. And yet, despite dropping his usage that far his Heliocentrism score actually went up; he ended up adding more to the team by shooting less.
Bird’s scoring game was great, but not ATG great. It was the complete package of what he brought to the table (and having weak teammates expose his shot-creation limitations) that made him a strong floor-raiser, but an even better ceiling raiser.
Whew, we’ve been talking forever about Bird, but I guess that’s appropriate. Kevin McHale was 28 for the 1986 season. McHale was a fantastically efficient scorer, shooting *way* above league average pretty much every year. He had a nearly unstoppable array of post moves that actually seemed to get better even as he went past his athletic peak. He wasn’t much of a passer nor did he need to be; McHale was primarily a finisher. And while he was a strong scorer, he never posted usage rates above the low 20s. He was ideally suited for being the #2 scorer on a team with other scorers and an ATG distributor (in quality, if not necessarily quantity). So that part worked out for him pretty well. On defense McHale never posted great box score metrics, but was generally accounted an excellent man defender.
Robert Parish was the veteran center. He’d started his career (‘77-80) playing for the Warriors who were often average but never good. Parish was something of a mixed bag; a Top 5 rebounder in the league, Top 10 in blocks and capable of high-usage (high 20s) scoring, but only around league average efficiency with little ability to distribute without turning the ball over. So substantial defensive impact, but his offense wasn’t so great. He gets traded to Boston in ‘81 and *suddenly* his turnovers drop and his efficiency jumped by 3-5%. Playing alongside Bird (and Maxwell) transformed Parish from a mediocre to a strong scorer, while not sacrificing his defense at all. And for the ‘81-83 years Parish was the clear second-best player on the team (and in ‘81 may have been comparable to Bird on a per-minute basis). As the 80s continued Parish started to slow. His blocks started dropping, his rebounds dropped down to the ‘Top 20’ level and his scoring receded to good efficiency on average usage. He was still a good player in ‘86 (one of the better centers in the league) but his heyday was considerably behind him.
Their point guard was Dennis Johnson. This may seem non-sequitarian because, for most of his career before Boston he didn’t play that position. That he was a shooting guard for most of his pre-Celtic days may also seem strange, because DJ couldn’t really shoot. He wasn’t atrocious or anything, but it simply wasn’t a strength. He shot below league average most of his career, and his usage peaked in the low 20s with Phoenix. He was a shooting guard that wasn’t a good shooter. And, frankly, his passing pre-1986 doesn’t look very impressive (Assist% below 20% most years). So was a point guard that didn’t pass too well and a shooting guard that didn’t shoot too well. But he could guard. He could *really* guard. He was 6’4” but weirdly strong. In his youth he’d post quite high offensive rebounding numbers (his rookie season was almost Drexlerian) and he posted steal and block numbers that were quite high for a guard. He distinguished himself as a defensive wrecking ball in the playoffs several years (notably for the ‘79 Sonics). But as he aged his athleticism trailed off somewhat; his block numbers fell and his offensive rebounding fell to unremarkable levels. When he joined the Celtics in ‘84 he was a massive upgrade, less because DJ was so good and more because Tiny Archibald was way, way over the hill. Johnson provided strong defense, but not a whole lot more. So Dennis Johnson in ‘86 was a strong defender (definitely one of the better defensive point guards in the league) but didn’t add a lot on the offensive end. He would go on to sort of reinvent himself as a strong passer in the tail-end of the decade as the Celtics’ offense took off and they started shooting more threes, but that hadn’t happened yet. As it was DJ ranked 3rd on the ‘86 Celtics in Assists/100 (though not by much).
Danny Ainge . . . I’ve always quietly liked Ainge. In ‘85 and ‘86 his role on the team was pretty limited (15ish% usage) and his efficiency, while solid, wasn’t great (+3%). I liked Ainge because, for a shooting guard, he was a really solid passer. In many ways he was kind of Hornacek-lite, in that he spaced the floor, passed well and didn’t do anything stupid. Ainge would go on to post several quite strong seasons toward the end of the decade as the team started taking more threes, but in ‘86 he was merely a strong role playing floor spacer that passed well.
And last, but not least, Bill Walton. Walton exploded into the NBA as the best college player since (or perhaps including) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He grew into a super-efficient scoring big, who rebounded a ton, passed really well (not in volume, but in quality) and was as formidable a defensive presence as there was in the 70s. He was the driving force behind two excellent teams, the champion ‘77 Blazers, and the even better ‘78 Blazers that fell apart when Walton got injured. Walton would spend the next decade bouncing around teams and struggling to stay on the floor. In 1986 he ended up on the Celtics and, for reasons that may or may not have something to do with divine providence, he stayed healthy through the season. I don’t want to overplay it, Walton only played 17 minutes a game in the regular season, and only 18 a game in the playoffs. That sounds underwhelming, but here’s some context. Walton didn’t take a ton of shots, but he made them at rates only a few percent behind McHale (quite an accomplishment since McHale was one of the most efficient scorers ever). He also posted one of the Top 5 rebounding percentages in the league (2nd defensive) and also posted a particularly high block percentage. Walton, when he played, was easily one of the better big men in the league, certainly better than Parish and possibly comparable to McHale once his defense was taken into account. He didn’t play a lot of minutes . . . but the Celtics in the 80s never had a particularly good bench. Imagine upgrading a below league average big to one of the top ten bigs in the league. Huge upgrade, right? Now drop that upgrade by half (because it’s only for 17 mpg) and . . . that’s still a big upgrade. Here’s the list of the Celtics’ defensive ratings from ‘84 to ‘88:
Defensive Efficiency: -3.2 | -1.6 | -4.6 | -1.5 | +1.4
That middle figure really sticks out. For that one year only, the Larry Bird Celtics were able to combine their consistently excellent offense with the best defense in the league. And Walton at this stage was the perfect ceiling raiser. He didn’t need the ball to generate value. He didn’t take a lot of shots (but he made the ones he took at a high rate), he rebounded a ton, he passed well and he was a monster defender. And thanks to his joining the team (and staying healthy), he raised the Celtics from a great team to one of the greatest teams ever.
In 1985 the Celtics (as defending champions) had been given excellent odds to win another championship at +200 (more like +260 in the modern league), tied with the Lakers and just ahead of the Sixers at +250. Well, the Celtics had edged out the Sixers by five wins, 2.3 SRS and when push came to shove the Celtics took them down in the Conference Finals in five games, by five points a game, demonstrating some pretty comprehensive superiority. But the Celtics fell to the Lakers in the Finals, somewhere between the Lakers have a really good year and Larry Bird breaking his hand in a barfight.
“But,” you may say, “adding Bill Walton was obviously a game changer. The Celtics were pretty clearly the favorite going into 1986, right?”
Lakers +160
Celtics +250
Sixers +350
I think it’s safe to say that nobody took the Walton addition very seriously (and let’s face it, his healthy wasn’t particularly reliable). Bird and McHale had already peaked (or so it seemed), Ainge was still developing, DJ didn’t have his old athleticism and Parish was only two-thirds of the player he had been. And now the Celtics were doubling down by adding . . . an old injury-riddled big? You have to admit, it didn’t sound like a great plan.
The 1986 Celtics absolutely wrecked everybody in the regular season. They won 67 games, which at that time was the 4th most games ever. And the teams before them breaking that mark were the ‘67 Sixers and two teams from the over-expanded ‘71-73 era. It was a really impressive win total. Likewise, they posted the 4th highest SRS ever at the time of +9.06, and the three teams before them were all in the ‘71 and ‘72 seasons. And the NBA in 1986 had far less of a soft underbelly than it did in the early 70s. It’s not a reach to say that the ‘86 Celtics posted what was, at the time, possibly the best regular season ever.
It’s easy to look at their lineup and figure that they won by controlling possession. After Walton, Bird and Parish were all outstanding rebounders. Funny story, they were actually *below average* in controlling possessions. Their rebounding was definitely excellent but they didn’t actually force many turnovers at all (22nd out 23 teams) and the rebounding didn’t make up for it. But they were really, really hard to shoot against (1st in the league) and shot better than any team besides the Lakers. Like the Lakers the Celtics won by outshooting the other team (by a ton); it’s just that the Celtics did it by being excellent on both sides while the Lakers did it mostly by scoring at ridiculous rates.
Anyhow, the Celtics posted an ATG regular season. The Sixers crumbled, winning 54 games and posting only a +2.46 SRS. There were two challengers who could hope to stop the Celtics: the Lakers (of course) and the Milwaukee Bucks, who had quietly posted a 57-win +8.69 SRS season. The Bucks had imploded the prior year against the Sixers in the semis and often struggled with injuries, but their regular season was outstanding. But there was no way that the ‘86 Celtics weren’t the team to beat going into the playoffs.
In the first round the Celtics faced the -3.1 Chicago Bulls. The Bulls by every normal indicator were awful. But there was a catch. Their second-year phenom, young guard Michael Jordan, had missed most of the year with a bad injury and was coming to the playoffs fairly fresh. There was no reason to think that the Bulls, under any circumstances, were going to challenge the Celtics, but the Bulls were almost certainly better than their regular season suggested. And against the best defense in the NBA Michael Jordan went absolutely nuts. Over the series he averaged a 44/6/6 on +4.3%. The Celtics afterwards were in awe, with none less than Larry Bird quipping “That wasn’t Michael Jordan. That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.” Instead of a cakewalk, the ‘86 Celtics got matched up against the best guard ever playing one of his best series ever. They just couldn’t catch a break.
Also, they swept the Bulls by 13.7 points a game. Thought I’d mention that.
That’s how good the ‘86 Celtics were. That going up against ‘something to prove’ Jordan putting up an historic shooting series, they still absolutely vaporized the Bulls. Bird averaged a 28/8/8 on +10.1% and McHale averaged a 28/10/4 on +17.9%. Jordan may have scored well (and the Celtics only just held them to their regular season average, which is better than it sounds because Jordan wasn’t playing much of the regular season) but the Celtics completely went through the Bulls’ defense without any challenge at all. One down.
In the second round they faced a team with another dynamic scorer, the +3.7 Atlanta Hawks with Dominique Wilkins. Wilkins fell short of Jordan’s performance (considerably), averaging a 24/6/4 on -4.7%, and the Celtics were not seriously challenged. Bird averaged a 27/10/7 on +5.8% and McHale averaged a 24/8/3 on +7.7%. The Celtics won in five, by 9.6 points a game. It wasn’t a ZOMG performance, but it was comfortably +10 SRS eq, which is still pretty good.
And in the Conference Finals were the +6.7 Milwaukee Bucks. And yet . . . the Bucks hadn’t been obliterated by injuries (as happened some years) but their stud guard Sydney Moncrief was struggling to stay on the court. In the semifinals the Bucks *barely* made it past the underwhelming Sixers, getting outscored by 0.7 points a game and winning the series in the full seven games. And if you can barely beat the ‘86 Sixers . . . the ‘86 Celtics are probably not going to be an ideal matchup for you. And word came out that Moncrief would have to miss Game 1. But the Bucks were still a strong team; even without Moncrief they could surely keep it close.
The Celtics won Game 1 by 32 points.
Moncrief came back to play the rest of the series and the Celtics won by 11, 4 and 13 points. It was a clean sweep, by 15 points a game. Were the Bucks a little slowed by injuries? Definitely. Still. Beating even a good team by 15 points a game is an incredible achievement. Bird shined with a 25/10/8 on +13% shooting and the Celtics went on to face the Lakers . . .
Wait, what? The Rockets? How the heck did that happen? GinGER!
Okay sports fans, I’m just now getting word from our reporters at the scene. Apparently the 23 year-old Akeem Olajuwon averaged a 31/11/2 on +4.3% (2.2 steals and 4 blocks a game) against the Lakers, while the Lakers were held to only +0.7% shooting. Can our intrepid heroes in green face the menace of Akeem and the Rockets?
Just as a clarifying point, the Rockets hadn’t been that good in the regular season (+2.1 RSRS). But their playoffs had been:
Sacramento Kings (-3.2), won 3-0, by +14.3 points per game (+11.1 SRS eq)
Denver Nuggets (+2.1), won 4-2, by +8.8 points per game (+10.9 SRS eq)
Los Angeles Lakers (+10.0), won 4-1, by +3.6 points per game (+13.6 SRS eq)
So that’s a pretty nuts run. Obviously the first two matchups weren’t tough, but the Rockets still cleaned them out pretty easily. And the ‘86 Lakers were actually quite good, and the Rockets took them decisively. OSRS has the Rockets at +7.4 going into the Finals, which is to say, between a decent regular season and excellent postseason they were considered quite good.
And the Rockets controlled possession. They outrebounded the Celtics (Olawjuwon, Ralph Sampson and Jim Peterson combined for 12 offensive boards a game) and committed fewer turnovers (Olajuwon almost had more steals than his next two closest teammates). And it gave the Rockets 5.6 extra shots per game, a considerable though hardly overwhelming advantage. But the Celtics really clamped down on Houston’s shooting. Hakeem, who would develop into an unusually resilient playoff scorer, averaged a 25/12/2 but on only -1.5% (still averaging 2.3 steals and 3.2 blocks a game). And the Rockets overall shot at -4.9%, which is really, really low. The Celtics didn’t score super-well; Parish was held to 13/7/1 on -10.8% and the team overall shot at +1.2%. But McHale feasted on 26/9/2 at +8.8% and Bird averaged an all-around excellent 24/10/10 on +3.7% with 2.7 steals a game. The Celtics won in six by 6.2 points per game, which was an excellent win given the Rockets’ postseason performance.
Do you know how many players in the first six games of the NBA Finals have averaged a 24/10/10? Just Larry Bird.
I just want to say that I really, really, really love it that Larry Bird’s Finals series with his best team ever was so . . . non-scoring. Don’t get me wrong, he scored fine. But for a player remembered so often for his scoring (and less for all the little things he did so well) I truly love that the ‘86 Finals were a series where he wasn’t even the highest scorer on his own team, but where he led the team in steals, rebounds and assists (the assists by quite a lot) as a small forward. For me, that’s my favorite Larry Bird moment. One of the greatest teams ever whipping some excellent opposition, with Larry showing off how complete his non-scoring game was capable of being.
12 | Celtics
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 | Lakers
7 | Rockets
6 |
5 |
4 | 76ers, Bucks
3 |
2 | Hawks, Mavericks
1 |
0 | Pistons, Nuggets
-0 | Blazers, Sonics
-1 | Bullets, Nets, Jazz
-2 | Cavs, Pacers
-3 | Bulls, Suns, Warriors
-4 | Knicks
-5 | Kings
-6 | Spurs, Clippers
-7 |
-8 |
-9 |
-10|
Any list that doesn’t have the ‘86 Celtics in the Top Ten is simply wrong. The 12th best regular season ever, the 7th best postseason ever . . . their resume is damned good. You could complain that they never faced any dominant team in the playoffs, but then, most great teams didn’t. You could argue that they lucked out by not facing the Lakers, but given the Rockets’ postseason performance, I’m not convinced that the Lakers were a harder matchup.
Would I be okay putting them higher? If I were making a subjective list? Yes. Above us we have two Warriors teams and two Bulls teams. In the name of not clustering iterations of the same franchise together I’d be fine with them moving up to #4. Higher than that? I’m not . . . really convinced. They are *clearly* the best team of the 80s. But . . . compared with the absolutely monstrous performances of the teams above them, I’m not super sold.
Do you know what makes me sad? That the Celtics played in a low three-point era. Don’t get me wrong, only Ainge and Bird could shoot threes on that team. But Bird was *perfect* for the stretched floor era, and most of his peak was in a time when threes just weren’t a thing. Have Bird and Ainge take 4x as many threes and the Celtics’ offense becomes even better and the ‘86 Celtics suddenly have an even stronger argument. The ‘86 Celtics boasted incredibly resilient passing (with three strong distributors on the roster). Them not taking more threes really left a ton of points on the board. Not their fault obviously. But rarely has a team so good had such an opportunity to be even better. And in ‘87 they nearly had that chance . . . except that Walton got injured, Len Bias died and Parish kept declining (and their bench was weirdly awful). But for one beautiful season Bird got his hard-nosed all-around perfect team, and Walton got to shine on one more great team.
PG: Dennis Johnson, +0.5 / +0.5
SG: Danny Ainge, +0.9 / +5.3
SF: Larry Bird, +8.7 / +9.9
PF: Kevin McHale, +4.4 / +5.1
C: Robert Parish, +2.1 / -1.8
6th: Bill Walton, +3.0 / +3.1
Regular Season Metrics:
Regular Season Record: 67-15, Regular Season SRS: +9.06 (12th), Earned the 1 Seed
Regular Season Offensive Rating: +4.6 (37th), Regular Season Defensive Rating: -5.0 (26th)
Shooting Advantage: +5.4%, Possession Advantage: -1.5 shooting possessions per game
Larry Bird (SF, 29): 38 MPPG, 28% OLoad, 26 / 10 / 7 / 3 on +3.9%
Dennis Johnson (PG, 31): 35 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 15 / 3 / 6 / 2 on -3.2%
Kevin McHale (PF, 28): 35 MPPG, 21% OLoad, 21 / 8 / 3 / 2 on +8.2%
Robert Parish (C, 32): 31 MPPG, 19% OLoad, 16 / 9 / 2 / 2 on +4.5%
Bill Walton (C, 33): 19 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 8 / 7 / 2 / 2 on +6.5%
Danny Ainge (SG, 26): 30 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 11 / 3 / 5 / 1 on +2.1%
Scoring/100: Larry Bird (32.2 / +3.9%), Kevin McHale (28.7 / +8.2%), Robert Parish (24.1 / +4.5%)
Assists/100: Larry Bird (8.5), Danny Ainge (8.0), Dennis Johnson (7.9)
Heliocentrism: 41.6% (26th of 84 teams) - Bird
Wingmen: 32.2% (66th) - McHale & Parish
Depth: 26.2% (42nd)
Playoff Metrics:
Playoff Offensive Rating: +8.24 (17th), Playoff Defensive Rating: -4.93 (51st)
Playoff SRS: +14.82 (7th), Total SRS Increase through Playoffs: +3.49 (30th)
Shooting Advantage: +6.4%, Possession Advantage: -2.5 shooting possessions per game
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: +2.33 (52nd), Average Playoff Opponent Defense: -0.44 (84th)
Larry Bird (SF, 29): 43 MPPG, 24% OLoad, 26 / 9 / 8 / 3 on +7.4%
Kevin McHale (PF, 28): 40 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 25 / 9 / 3 / 3 on +9.5%
Dennis Johnson (PG, 31): 40 MPPG, 21% OLoad, 16 / 4 / 6 / 3 on -2.5%
Robert Parish (C, 32): 33 MPPG, 20% OLoad, 15 / 9 / 1 / 2 on -3.0%
Bill Walton (C, 33): 18 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 8 / 7 / 2 / 1 on +7.5%
Danny Ainge (SG, 26): 37 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 16 / 4 / 5 / 2 on +9.7%
Scoring/100: Kevin McHale (30.6 / +9.5%), Larry Bird (29.5 / +7.4%), Robert Parish (22.3 / -3.0%)
Assists/100: Larry Bird (9.4), Dennis Johnson (7.3), Danny Ainge (7.0)
Playoff Heliocentrism: 42.6% (18th of 84 teams) - Bird
Playoff Wingmen: 46.3% (16th) - McHale & Ainge
Playoff Depth: 11.1% (79th)
Round 1: Chicago Bulls (-3.1), won 3-0, by +13.7 points per game (+10.6 SRS eq)
Round 2: Atlanta Hawks (+3.7), won 4-1, by +9.6 points per game (+13.3 SRS eq)
Round 3: Milwaukee Bucks (+6.7), won 4-0, by +15.0 points per game (+21.7 SRS eq)
Round 4: Houston Rockets (+7.4), won 4-2, by +6.2 points per game (+13.6 SRS eq)
Offensive / Defensive Ratings from Opposition Regular Season Average:
Chicago Bulls: +9.0 / -0.3
Atlanta Hawks: +8.6 / -3.5
Milwaukee Bucks: +14.2 / -9.3
Houston Rockets: +4.3 / -4.6
Shooting Advantage / Possession Advantage per game (unadjusted):
Chicago Bulls: +7.7% / -2.3
Atlanta Hawks: +4.7% / +0.5
Milwaukee Bucks: +8.2% / -1.4
Houston Rockets: +6.1% / -5.8
Postseason Usage/Efficiency Change adjusted for Opposition:
Dennis Johnson: -0.9% / +0.9%
Danny Ainge: +1.0% / +7.8%
Larry Bird: -4.3% / +3.7%
Kevin McHale: +1.3% / +1.5%
Robert Parish: +1.2% / -7.3%
Bill Walton: +0.8% / +1.2%
Where the heck did the ‘86 Celtics come from? It’s easy to paint them as simply the best team of a dynasty, that the Celtics were really good through the 80s and 1986 happened to be their best year. I don’t buy it. That argument fits more with the ‘85 and ‘87 Lakers. The Lakers were really good very consistently, and they happened to have two stronger years. The jumps up *to* those years weren’t that big, and the drops *from* those years weren’t that big either. But the Celtics? The ‘87 Celtics didn’t even make this list, the ‘84 Celtics were #50, the ‘85 Celtics were team #86 on this list. The best other Bird-era Celtics team here is the ‘81 version, which finished 46th. Contrast those (respectable teams, but nothing earth-shaking) to how freaking dominant the ‘86 Celtics were. 12th best regular season SRS ever, 7th best postseason SRS ever? That’s an insane leap.
To consider how rare a team like the ‘86 Celtics are (considering the seasons before and after them) I want to compare them to other dynasties using my OSRS (which has plenty of flaws, the lord knows, but it’s the best regular season and postseason blended rating I have).
Boston Celtics (‘84 to ‘88):
+7.48 | +7.72 | +12.55 | +5.66 | +5.37
That’s a pretty big jump and fall in the middle there. Check out this next one:
+5.13 | +5.46 | +12.9 | +11.16 | +8.6
That’s Chicago, with the ‘91 season as the +12.9. Massive, massive jump from ‘90 to ‘91 (bigger than the jump for the Celtics from ‘85 to ‘86). And this wasn’t caused by a roster addition; it was just Grant and Pippen (and some others) making the leap at the same time and suddenly giving Jordan a legitimate supporting cast. But unlike the Celtics they maintained around this level for several years. Here’s another:
+7.65 | +11.36 | +8.54 | +11.26 | +6.02
That’s the mid-80s Lakers, with ‘85 and ‘87 as the big seasons. Definitely volatile (jumping 3-4 up or down consistently) but never big swings like the Celtics had. How about:
+2.4 | +8.0 | +12.2 | +9.06 | +3.62
Those are the Shaq Lakers. Big jump from ‘99 to ‘00, but then they got better and maintained kind of for a year before dropping. Definitely more stable than the Celtics. Next:
-0.77 | +8.04 | +11.84 | +8.7 | +3.98
That’s a huge jump between the first two years, but after that it seems fairly slow to change. This is the Kobe Lakers, with the big jump being between ‘07 and ‘08, marked by the addition of Pau Gasol. Another:
-5.07 | +4.58 | +14.68 | +12.34 | +7.09
Check out how big those first two jumps are! These are the Kareem Bucks, starting in 1969. Between ‘69 and ‘70 they added rookie Kareem and Bob Dandridge, and between ‘70 and ‘71 those rookie grew and they added veteran Oscar Robertson. Here’s another:
+4.26 | +12.09 | +10.98 | +16.15 | +12.17
Those are the ‘14-’18 Warriors. That jump in the first year wasn’t adding any new players, it was simply switching to Kerr’s system and everybody staying healthy. And the next big jump was adding Durant. Another:
+9.09 | +10.78 | +12.32 | +6.66 | +12.22
These are the ‘12-’16 Spurs. Those first three years are a steady buildup, 2015 was a weird disappointment and 2016 was outstanding, if spoiled by other super-teams. Another:
+5.04 | +3.72 | +11.77 | +8.86 | -1.02
These are the ‘70-’74 Lakers. The first was a bit low because Wilt missed most of the season, the second was a bit low because West missed the playoffs. Then they explode in ‘72, diminish slightly in ‘73 and in ‘74 Wilt leaves and West plays less than half a season.
Well, I’ll admit, based on all of those samples, maybe the ‘86 Celtics aren’t as much of an aberration as I thought. Here are the top ten jumps from these teams (not exhaustive, just the teams I looked at):
1970 -> 1971 Milwaukee Bucks, +10.1
1969 -> 1970 Milwaukee Bucks, +9.65
2007 -> 2008 Los Angeles Lakers, +8.81
1971 -> 1972 Los Angeles Lakers, +8.05
2014 -> 2015 Golden State Warriors, +7.83
1990 -> 1991 Chicago Bulls, +7.44
1999 -> 2000 Los Angeles Lakers, +5.60
2015 -> 2016 San Antonio Spurs, +5.56
2016 -> 2017 Golden State Warriors, +5.17
1985 -> 1986 Boston Celtics, +4.83
Most of these are driven by player additions (whether that be acquisitions or merely getting players healthy. Of the nine non-Celtics seasons, I’d peg five as being of that sort (Kareem, Oscar, Pau, West being healthy and Durant). Another two are coaching changes (Kerr and Phil Jackson). Player development shows up as a lot of these; the ‘91 Bulls are the biggest example, but the ‘71 Bucks, ‘00 Lakers and ‘16 Spurs all show up. The ‘16 Spurs are a weird example, given that the rating of the ‘15 Spurs is tanked by a first-round exit against strong competition (the Clippers) and Tony Parker being injured for the playoffs.
So where does this leave the ‘86 Celtics? Well, they acquired Bill Walton, so that’s definitely a thing. K.C. Jones was the coach for the whole stretch, so coaching change doesn’t apply. And player development seems unlikely, since their core was all 28 or older except for Danny Ainge (26). But it’s weird to imagine that adding a player that only played 19 minutes a game (Walton) really transformed the team by that much. Let’s look at team drops:
1973 -> 1974 Los Angeles Lakers, -9.88
1986 -> 1987 Boston Celtics, -6.89
2014 -> 2015 San Antonio Spurs, -5.66
2002 -> 2003 Los Angeles Lakers, -5.44
1987 -> 1988 Los Angeles Lakers, -5.24
2011 -> 2012 Los Angeles Lakers, -4.72
2017 -> 2018 Golden State Warriors, -3.98
2010 -> 2011 Los Angeles Lakers, -3.14
2001 -> 2002 Los Angeles Lakers, -3.14
1972 -> 1973 Los Angeles Lakers, -2.91
Note that these drops are almost all smaller than the corresponding jumps. Great teams often get better suddenly, but they get worse more slowly. Some of these are driven by player loss, but many more are driven simply by aging, or a decreased effort. I know that the ‘87 Celtics lost Walton, but I can’t imagine that they gave decreased effort. And their core was all getting older . . . It keeps coming back to Walton. But it’s hard to imagine . . . As a last look, let’s check out the most aberrant seasons, basically seasons that jumped a lot from the year before and then fell the next year:
1971 Milwaukee Bucks, 12.44 swing (+10.1 up, -2.34 down)
1986 Boston Celtics, 11.72 swing (+4.83 up, -6.89 down)
1972 Los Angeles Lakers, 10.96 swing (+8.05 up, -2.91 down)
1991 Chicago Bulls, 9.18 swing (+7.44 up, -1.74 down)
2017 Golden State Warriors, 9.15 swing (+5.17 up, -3.98 down)
2015 Golden State Warriors, 8.94 swing (+7.83 up, -1.11 down)
Many of these are actually big jumps and small falls after a peak year. I think we can actually say that the Celtics’ 1986 season is historically unusual here. You may note that the ‘86 Celtics are the only team to be in the top ten of both rises and subsequent falls. So interesting. Let’s start looking at some possible causes:
Was it the way they used Larry Bird? Bird’s usage dropped in the ‘86 Playoffs, but his efficiency exploded. Maybe other iterations of the Celtics relied on him too much? Let’s check the numbers (from ‘80 to ‘88, regular season to playoff change in usage / true shooting, not opponent adjusted):
1980: -0.1 / -1.8
1981: -1.1 / +1.6
1982: -3.3 / -6.5
1983: +0.8 / -6.1
1984: -0.8 / +6.6
1985: -1.7 / -4.4
1986: -4.3 / +3.7
1987: -1.6 / -2.6
1988: -4.3 / -6.6
The numbers don’t really back this up. If you’re looking for a year that Bird put the team on his back by taking more shots in the playoffs, keep looking. Bird’s usage never jumped by more than a percent, and more often dropped. His only two big jumps in efficiency were ‘84 and ‘86. On average his usage and shooting dropped by almost 2% each (remember, this isn’t opponent adjusted, so dropping by 1.8% shooting is still probably a drop, but smaller than you think). So giving Bird fewer shots doesn’t seem to help too much. So we can cross that off.
Let’s get more granular (different team metrics from ‘84-88, all measured from league average):
Offensive Rating: +3.3 | +4.9 | +4.6 | +5.2 | +7.4
Wow! ‘86 was actually a slightly down year for their offense; it kept getting better in the late 80s.
Offensive eFG%: +0.9% | +1.9% | +2.5% | +4.4% | +5.2%
Yup, definitely driven by shooting. Well, we know that McHale’s peak was around the later years of these five, so that could be part of it. How about passing (Percent of FGM assisted):
Regular Season Passing: 58.6% | 61.5% | 64.2% | 66.4% | 68.0%
Playoff Passing: 55.8% | 62.9% | 65.1% | 63.6% | 70.6%
Wow. That’s very resilient passing; most teams’ A/FGM drops in the postseason, some by a lot (5-6% isn’t crazy). But notice how this keeps going up through the years, as their offensive rating goes up. It’s not crazy that Bird’s passing was improving (cerebral players often improve past their athletic prime) but let’s keep looking . . .
Offensive Rebounding: +1.2% | -0.1% | -1.1% | -4.4% | -3.0%
Huh. The Celtics, despite being an obviously strong rebounding team (when Bird is your 3, you probably should be) they weren’t that good on the offensive glass.
Hey, wait a minute. Increased offensive efficiency, but dropping offensive rebounding, increasing A/FGM . . .
3PA/FGA: 3.2% | 4.2% | 5.4% | 8.0% | 10.2%
Rank in 3PA/FGA: 8th | 6th | 5th | 2nd | 1st
The Celtics’ offense had always shot a fair amount of threes, but by ‘87 it was becoming a major part of their offense. Three pointers are more assisted shots than two pointers, so that explains much of the A/FGM trend, and it also explains much of the drop in offensive rebounding while shooting and offensive efficiency improved. Don’t get it twisted; in ‘88 the league-leading Celtics were shooting only 8.6 threes a game. But it undoubtedly boosted their shooting and spacing more than the rest of the league, which counts. The scary thing about the ‘86 Celtics is that their offense probably could have been even better if they’d moved their playstyle forward several years . . .
That said, this doesn’t address the initial question. Nothing about that trend suggests how the ‘86 Celtics really jumped up in an unsustainable way. If anything, the ‘86 Celtics’ offense was a slightly down year for them; we can’t explain their year that way.
Defensive Efficiency: -3.2 | -1.6 | -4.6 | -1.5 | +1.4
Whoa. Well, pretty sure that’s it. Wait, what happened in ‘84? Well, first off, McHale was coming off the bench and Maxwell was starting. Gerald Henderson was starting and Ainge was coming off the bench. Bird was 27, DJ was 29 and Parish was 30. So the starters were still close to their athletic peaks, Ainge’s minutes were going to a better ball-hawk and McHale . . . I don’t know if him coming off the bench or not helped. In ‘85 all of the core get older, and we lose Maxwell and Henderson. And in ‘86 they get Walton and he magically stays healthy. Sure he’s only playing 19 minutes a night, but he’s the only major change. And the Celtics jump from being a good defense to being the best defense in the league. And is it that crazy? If a healthy Walton can swing a defense by 5 points a game over a season (hypothetical, but not unreasonable) then why can’t Walton swing a defense 3 points a game over a season playing 60% of those minutes? I don’t really see another explanation.
And in ‘87? Walton’s out for the year and their entire bench struggles. Here’s a breakdown of the VORP from each VORP ranked slot (the #1 VORP, etc):
#1: 7.3 | 8.7 | 8.4 | 8.6 | 8.1
#2: 2.8 | 3.0 | 3.9 | 5.5 | 3.3
#3: 2.8 | 2.0 | 2.6 | 2.4 | 3.3
#4: 1.6 | 1.8 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.6
#5: 1.5 | 1.8 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 1.4
#6: 1.4 | 0.9 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 0.2
Others: -0.5 | -1.0 | -0.3 | -2.3 | -0.9
1987 was notable for two things: McHale posting an unusually good year and the bench falling apart. The Celtics had always been fairly top-heavy, but after ‘86 their bench was pretty weak. Walton was out, Wedman missed almost the entire year, Parish sprained his ankle and kept playing and McHale broke his foot (hairline, but still).
So, if I’m summarizing, the ‘86 Celtics made the leap by adding Walton (and by him staying healthy), and injuries to pretty much everyone brought the Celtics right back down to merely being very good.
Let's talk about the roster overall.
It’s impossible not to start with Larry Bird. Bird was 6’9” but . . . How to explain Bird? As a scorer he was really good . . . but underwhelming if pitched as an ATG in that area. The guy was a knock-down shooter (90% from the line and 40% from three once he started taking them more often). And his fadeaway, whether from the post or otherwise, had incredible precision and a surprisingly quick release time. He could sustain usages in the high 20s on efficiency around +4%. Combine these and you get around 24-25 points per 75. Twenty-five points per 75 and +4% efficiency are quite good . . . but not historically great. The problem was that he had a limited vertical and not a lot of lateral explosiveness. He struggled to take people off the dribble and create his own shot. Instead he relied on his fadeaway, lots of up-fakes, crazy rim dexterity and freeing up off-ball by sending his man through screens. His first several years in the league his shooting struggled when transitioning to the playoffs (-3.2% shooting below regular season), though from ‘84-88 he demonstrated respectable levels of resiliency (only -0.7% from the regular season). Given his athletic limitations he couldn't will shots into existence, and through his whole playoff career his usage level *fell* in the playoffs. So he was a really good scorer, but that wasn’t what made him special.
Bird was an epic passer. But the hard part was that he lacked the athleticism and handle to attack off the dribble. So his passing was mostly limited to being the second passer of a possession, which capped his assist numbers (high 20s assist%). The thing was, Bird had a crazy level of intuition and basketball IQ. Setting up open threes wasn’t really a thing in the 80s; Bird hooked people up at the rim. Cutters, post-players, whatever, Bird could find them. And yet, despite being a very aggressive passer he turned the ball over comparably little. Furthermore he was an excellent rebounder, especially on defense. Speaking of defense, his lack of athleticism hurt there, but his hoops IQ showed up just fine on that end. As far as motor . . . you know that thing about late-career regular season LeBron where people complained that he took possessions off?
Nobody *ever* said that about Larry Bird.
If anything they worried about the converse; that Larry Bird played so hard and with so much passion that his body simply couldn’t handle the abuse (a concern that would later prove to be well-justified). The thing about Bird was that he was banging and running nonstop every possession. On offense he was constantly fighting for position, running around screens, tirelessly working to find a chink in the defense’s armor. On defense he was constantly bouncing from assignment to assignment and jumped passing lanes with great success (of players at 6’9” or higher averaging 2.2% steals or higher, Hakeem has 9 such seasons, LeBron 8 and Bird has 7 - it’s a good group). Some people (Ben Taylor leaps to mind) think that Bird was an outstanding defender, one small step below the Pippens and McMillans. Some people think that Bird’s hustle and IQ made him a positive on that end, but that his lack of athleticism capped his value to merely above average. But they all agree that he put it all out there every single play.
You may be thinking “Hmm, deadly shooter, great floor-spacer, couldn’t create his own shot, strong rebounder, amazing passer, pure hustle on defense . . . this guy doesn’t really sound like a #1 option at all”. He wasn’t, or at least, that wasn't the optimal fit for his skills. Like Kevin Garnett, like David Robinson and like many others, Larry Bird had the literal perfect skillset to be a second option. And like those players, he never got that chance. Bird would be the highest usage and OLoad player on his team almost his entire career. But Bird always had a diverse enough array of scorers around him to outsource some of his load in the playoffs (compared to Garnett whose usage always went up, or Robinson who had to maintain). I don’t want to overplay it; it’s not like he was playing on the ‘17 Warriors. His guard support early on was fairly bad. He started off with old Tiny Archibald and Chris Ford; by the mid-80s he had Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge (not a massive upgrade but it counted). But Bird (after ‘81) always had Robert Parish (who by the mid-80s wasn’t a great offensive player anymore but he’d always been quite good on that end). And he always had one of the best low-post scorers in the league, whether it be Cedric Maxwell at the beginning of the decade or Kevin McHale later. There's no question in my mind that if he'd been allowed to be a little more selective with his shots that his efficiency would have gone up considerably, and I am equally sure that a worse supporting cast on offense would have strained his shot creation abilities in unflattering ways. It worked out; he had a strong and diverse supporting cast and made the most of it.
And perhaps some of his ability to outsource scoring successfully was built around his passing. The Celtics always posted very resilient assist/FGM numbers in the playoffs (normally they drop a good bit as playoff defenses disrupt the normal flow of offense). But in the 1986 playoffs Bird acted almost as a second banana to the entire team, dropping his usage a whopping four percent while almost everyone else jumped. But this transition made Bird’s efficiency jump and every other shooter saw improvement in the playoffs (besides Parish). This is all a very long way of saying that Bird was *not* a “put the team on his back and carry them with scoring” star. To perform at his best he needed a strong enough supporting cast to take more shots while he focused on the things he was great at: spacing the floor, setting up teammates for easy looks and hustling his butt off. Even in the ‘86 playoffs he posted the highest OLoad on the team, but it was only at 24%, pretty low for a #1 player. And yet, despite dropping his usage that far his Heliocentrism score actually went up; he ended up adding more to the team by shooting less.
Bird’s scoring game was great, but not ATG great. It was the complete package of what he brought to the table (and having weak teammates expose his shot-creation limitations) that made him a strong floor-raiser, but an even better ceiling raiser.
Whew, we’ve been talking forever about Bird, but I guess that’s appropriate. Kevin McHale was 28 for the 1986 season. McHale was a fantastically efficient scorer, shooting *way* above league average pretty much every year. He had a nearly unstoppable array of post moves that actually seemed to get better even as he went past his athletic peak. He wasn’t much of a passer nor did he need to be; McHale was primarily a finisher. And while he was a strong scorer, he never posted usage rates above the low 20s. He was ideally suited for being the #2 scorer on a team with other scorers and an ATG distributor (in quality, if not necessarily quantity). So that part worked out for him pretty well. On defense McHale never posted great box score metrics, but was generally accounted an excellent man defender.
Robert Parish was the veteran center. He’d started his career (‘77-80) playing for the Warriors who were often average but never good. Parish was something of a mixed bag; a Top 5 rebounder in the league, Top 10 in blocks and capable of high-usage (high 20s) scoring, but only around league average efficiency with little ability to distribute without turning the ball over. So substantial defensive impact, but his offense wasn’t so great. He gets traded to Boston in ‘81 and *suddenly* his turnovers drop and his efficiency jumped by 3-5%. Playing alongside Bird (and Maxwell) transformed Parish from a mediocre to a strong scorer, while not sacrificing his defense at all. And for the ‘81-83 years Parish was the clear second-best player on the team (and in ‘81 may have been comparable to Bird on a per-minute basis). As the 80s continued Parish started to slow. His blocks started dropping, his rebounds dropped down to the ‘Top 20’ level and his scoring receded to good efficiency on average usage. He was still a good player in ‘86 (one of the better centers in the league) but his heyday was considerably behind him.
Their point guard was Dennis Johnson. This may seem non-sequitarian because, for most of his career before Boston he didn’t play that position. That he was a shooting guard for most of his pre-Celtic days may also seem strange, because DJ couldn’t really shoot. He wasn’t atrocious or anything, but it simply wasn’t a strength. He shot below league average most of his career, and his usage peaked in the low 20s with Phoenix. He was a shooting guard that wasn’t a good shooter. And, frankly, his passing pre-1986 doesn’t look very impressive (Assist% below 20% most years). So was a point guard that didn’t pass too well and a shooting guard that didn’t shoot too well. But he could guard. He could *really* guard. He was 6’4” but weirdly strong. In his youth he’d post quite high offensive rebounding numbers (his rookie season was almost Drexlerian) and he posted steal and block numbers that were quite high for a guard. He distinguished himself as a defensive wrecking ball in the playoffs several years (notably for the ‘79 Sonics). But as he aged his athleticism trailed off somewhat; his block numbers fell and his offensive rebounding fell to unremarkable levels. When he joined the Celtics in ‘84 he was a massive upgrade, less because DJ was so good and more because Tiny Archibald was way, way over the hill. Johnson provided strong defense, but not a whole lot more. So Dennis Johnson in ‘86 was a strong defender (definitely one of the better defensive point guards in the league) but didn’t add a lot on the offensive end. He would go on to sort of reinvent himself as a strong passer in the tail-end of the decade as the Celtics’ offense took off and they started shooting more threes, but that hadn’t happened yet. As it was DJ ranked 3rd on the ‘86 Celtics in Assists/100 (though not by much).
Danny Ainge . . . I’ve always quietly liked Ainge. In ‘85 and ‘86 his role on the team was pretty limited (15ish% usage) and his efficiency, while solid, wasn’t great (+3%). I liked Ainge because, for a shooting guard, he was a really solid passer. In many ways he was kind of Hornacek-lite, in that he spaced the floor, passed well and didn’t do anything stupid. Ainge would go on to post several quite strong seasons toward the end of the decade as the team started taking more threes, but in ‘86 he was merely a strong role playing floor spacer that passed well.
And last, but not least, Bill Walton. Walton exploded into the NBA as the best college player since (or perhaps including) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He grew into a super-efficient scoring big, who rebounded a ton, passed really well (not in volume, but in quality) and was as formidable a defensive presence as there was in the 70s. He was the driving force behind two excellent teams, the champion ‘77 Blazers, and the even better ‘78 Blazers that fell apart when Walton got injured. Walton would spend the next decade bouncing around teams and struggling to stay on the floor. In 1986 he ended up on the Celtics and, for reasons that may or may not have something to do with divine providence, he stayed healthy through the season. I don’t want to overplay it, Walton only played 17 minutes a game in the regular season, and only 18 a game in the playoffs. That sounds underwhelming, but here’s some context. Walton didn’t take a ton of shots, but he made them at rates only a few percent behind McHale (quite an accomplishment since McHale was one of the most efficient scorers ever). He also posted one of the Top 5 rebounding percentages in the league (2nd defensive) and also posted a particularly high block percentage. Walton, when he played, was easily one of the better big men in the league, certainly better than Parish and possibly comparable to McHale once his defense was taken into account. He didn’t play a lot of minutes . . . but the Celtics in the 80s never had a particularly good bench. Imagine upgrading a below league average big to one of the top ten bigs in the league. Huge upgrade, right? Now drop that upgrade by half (because it’s only for 17 mpg) and . . . that’s still a big upgrade. Here’s the list of the Celtics’ defensive ratings from ‘84 to ‘88:
Defensive Efficiency: -3.2 | -1.6 | -4.6 | -1.5 | +1.4
That middle figure really sticks out. For that one year only, the Larry Bird Celtics were able to combine their consistently excellent offense with the best defense in the league. And Walton at this stage was the perfect ceiling raiser. He didn’t need the ball to generate value. He didn’t take a lot of shots (but he made the ones he took at a high rate), he rebounded a ton, he passed well and he was a monster defender. And thanks to his joining the team (and staying healthy), he raised the Celtics from a great team to one of the greatest teams ever.
In 1985 the Celtics (as defending champions) had been given excellent odds to win another championship at +200 (more like +260 in the modern league), tied with the Lakers and just ahead of the Sixers at +250. Well, the Celtics had edged out the Sixers by five wins, 2.3 SRS and when push came to shove the Celtics took them down in the Conference Finals in five games, by five points a game, demonstrating some pretty comprehensive superiority. But the Celtics fell to the Lakers in the Finals, somewhere between the Lakers have a really good year and Larry Bird breaking his hand in a barfight.
“But,” you may say, “adding Bill Walton was obviously a game changer. The Celtics were pretty clearly the favorite going into 1986, right?”
Lakers +160
Celtics +250
Sixers +350
I think it’s safe to say that nobody took the Walton addition very seriously (and let’s face it, his healthy wasn’t particularly reliable). Bird and McHale had already peaked (or so it seemed), Ainge was still developing, DJ didn’t have his old athleticism and Parish was only two-thirds of the player he had been. And now the Celtics were doubling down by adding . . . an old injury-riddled big? You have to admit, it didn’t sound like a great plan.
The 1986 Celtics absolutely wrecked everybody in the regular season. They won 67 games, which at that time was the 4th most games ever. And the teams before them breaking that mark were the ‘67 Sixers and two teams from the over-expanded ‘71-73 era. It was a really impressive win total. Likewise, they posted the 4th highest SRS ever at the time of +9.06, and the three teams before them were all in the ‘71 and ‘72 seasons. And the NBA in 1986 had far less of a soft underbelly than it did in the early 70s. It’s not a reach to say that the ‘86 Celtics posted what was, at the time, possibly the best regular season ever.
It’s easy to look at their lineup and figure that they won by controlling possession. After Walton, Bird and Parish were all outstanding rebounders. Funny story, they were actually *below average* in controlling possessions. Their rebounding was definitely excellent but they didn’t actually force many turnovers at all (22nd out 23 teams) and the rebounding didn’t make up for it. But they were really, really hard to shoot against (1st in the league) and shot better than any team besides the Lakers. Like the Lakers the Celtics won by outshooting the other team (by a ton); it’s just that the Celtics did it by being excellent on both sides while the Lakers did it mostly by scoring at ridiculous rates.
Anyhow, the Celtics posted an ATG regular season. The Sixers crumbled, winning 54 games and posting only a +2.46 SRS. There were two challengers who could hope to stop the Celtics: the Lakers (of course) and the Milwaukee Bucks, who had quietly posted a 57-win +8.69 SRS season. The Bucks had imploded the prior year against the Sixers in the semis and often struggled with injuries, but their regular season was outstanding. But there was no way that the ‘86 Celtics weren’t the team to beat going into the playoffs.
In the first round the Celtics faced the -3.1 Chicago Bulls. The Bulls by every normal indicator were awful. But there was a catch. Their second-year phenom, young guard Michael Jordan, had missed most of the year with a bad injury and was coming to the playoffs fairly fresh. There was no reason to think that the Bulls, under any circumstances, were going to challenge the Celtics, but the Bulls were almost certainly better than their regular season suggested. And against the best defense in the NBA Michael Jordan went absolutely nuts. Over the series he averaged a 44/6/6 on +4.3%. The Celtics afterwards were in awe, with none less than Larry Bird quipping “That wasn’t Michael Jordan. That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.” Instead of a cakewalk, the ‘86 Celtics got matched up against the best guard ever playing one of his best series ever. They just couldn’t catch a break.
Also, they swept the Bulls by 13.7 points a game. Thought I’d mention that.
That’s how good the ‘86 Celtics were. That going up against ‘something to prove’ Jordan putting up an historic shooting series, they still absolutely vaporized the Bulls. Bird averaged a 28/8/8 on +10.1% and McHale averaged a 28/10/4 on +17.9%. Jordan may have scored well (and the Celtics only just held them to their regular season average, which is better than it sounds because Jordan wasn’t playing much of the regular season) but the Celtics completely went through the Bulls’ defense without any challenge at all. One down.
In the second round they faced a team with another dynamic scorer, the +3.7 Atlanta Hawks with Dominique Wilkins. Wilkins fell short of Jordan’s performance (considerably), averaging a 24/6/4 on -4.7%, and the Celtics were not seriously challenged. Bird averaged a 27/10/7 on +5.8% and McHale averaged a 24/8/3 on +7.7%. The Celtics won in five, by 9.6 points a game. It wasn’t a ZOMG performance, but it was comfortably +10 SRS eq, which is still pretty good.
And in the Conference Finals were the +6.7 Milwaukee Bucks. And yet . . . the Bucks hadn’t been obliterated by injuries (as happened some years) but their stud guard Sydney Moncrief was struggling to stay on the court. In the semifinals the Bucks *barely* made it past the underwhelming Sixers, getting outscored by 0.7 points a game and winning the series in the full seven games. And if you can barely beat the ‘86 Sixers . . . the ‘86 Celtics are probably not going to be an ideal matchup for you. And word came out that Moncrief would have to miss Game 1. But the Bucks were still a strong team; even without Moncrief they could surely keep it close.
The Celtics won Game 1 by 32 points.
Moncrief came back to play the rest of the series and the Celtics won by 11, 4 and 13 points. It was a clean sweep, by 15 points a game. Were the Bucks a little slowed by injuries? Definitely. Still. Beating even a good team by 15 points a game is an incredible achievement. Bird shined with a 25/10/8 on +13% shooting and the Celtics went on to face the Lakers . . .
Wait, what? The Rockets? How the heck did that happen? GinGER!
Okay sports fans, I’m just now getting word from our reporters at the scene. Apparently the 23 year-old Akeem Olajuwon averaged a 31/11/2 on +4.3% (2.2 steals and 4 blocks a game) against the Lakers, while the Lakers were held to only +0.7% shooting. Can our intrepid heroes in green face the menace of Akeem and the Rockets?
Just as a clarifying point, the Rockets hadn’t been that good in the regular season (+2.1 RSRS). But their playoffs had been:
Sacramento Kings (-3.2), won 3-0, by +14.3 points per game (+11.1 SRS eq)
Denver Nuggets (+2.1), won 4-2, by +8.8 points per game (+10.9 SRS eq)
Los Angeles Lakers (+10.0), won 4-1, by +3.6 points per game (+13.6 SRS eq)
So that’s a pretty nuts run. Obviously the first two matchups weren’t tough, but the Rockets still cleaned them out pretty easily. And the ‘86 Lakers were actually quite good, and the Rockets took them decisively. OSRS has the Rockets at +7.4 going into the Finals, which is to say, between a decent regular season and excellent postseason they were considered quite good.
And the Rockets controlled possession. They outrebounded the Celtics (Olawjuwon, Ralph Sampson and Jim Peterson combined for 12 offensive boards a game) and committed fewer turnovers (Olajuwon almost had more steals than his next two closest teammates). And it gave the Rockets 5.6 extra shots per game, a considerable though hardly overwhelming advantage. But the Celtics really clamped down on Houston’s shooting. Hakeem, who would develop into an unusually resilient playoff scorer, averaged a 25/12/2 but on only -1.5% (still averaging 2.3 steals and 3.2 blocks a game). And the Rockets overall shot at -4.9%, which is really, really low. The Celtics didn’t score super-well; Parish was held to 13/7/1 on -10.8% and the team overall shot at +1.2%. But McHale feasted on 26/9/2 at +8.8% and Bird averaged an all-around excellent 24/10/10 on +3.7% with 2.7 steals a game. The Celtics won in six by 6.2 points per game, which was an excellent win given the Rockets’ postseason performance.
Do you know how many players in the first six games of the NBA Finals have averaged a 24/10/10? Just Larry Bird.
I just want to say that I really, really, really love it that Larry Bird’s Finals series with his best team ever was so . . . non-scoring. Don’t get me wrong, he scored fine. But for a player remembered so often for his scoring (and less for all the little things he did so well) I truly love that the ‘86 Finals were a series where he wasn’t even the highest scorer on his own team, but where he led the team in steals, rebounds and assists (the assists by quite a lot) as a small forward. For me, that’s my favorite Larry Bird moment. One of the greatest teams ever whipping some excellent opposition, with Larry showing off how complete his non-scoring game was capable of being.
12 | Celtics
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 | Lakers
7 | Rockets
6 |
5 |
4 | 76ers, Bucks
3 |
2 | Hawks, Mavericks
1 |
0 | Pistons, Nuggets
-0 | Blazers, Sonics
-1 | Bullets, Nets, Jazz
-2 | Cavs, Pacers
-3 | Bulls, Suns, Warriors
-4 | Knicks
-5 | Kings
-6 | Spurs, Clippers
-7 |
-8 |
-9 |
-10|
Any list that doesn’t have the ‘86 Celtics in the Top Ten is simply wrong. The 12th best regular season ever, the 7th best postseason ever . . . their resume is damned good. You could complain that they never faced any dominant team in the playoffs, but then, most great teams didn’t. You could argue that they lucked out by not facing the Lakers, but given the Rockets’ postseason performance, I’m not convinced that the Lakers were a harder matchup.
Would I be okay putting them higher? If I were making a subjective list? Yes. Above us we have two Warriors teams and two Bulls teams. In the name of not clustering iterations of the same franchise together I’d be fine with them moving up to #4. Higher than that? I’m not . . . really convinced. They are *clearly* the best team of the 80s. But . . . compared with the absolutely monstrous performances of the teams above them, I’m not super sold.
Do you know what makes me sad? That the Celtics played in a low three-point era. Don’t get me wrong, only Ainge and Bird could shoot threes on that team. But Bird was *perfect* for the stretched floor era, and most of his peak was in a time when threes just weren’t a thing. Have Bird and Ainge take 4x as many threes and the Celtics’ offense becomes even better and the ‘86 Celtics suddenly have an even stronger argument. The ‘86 Celtics boasted incredibly resilient passing (with three strong distributors on the roster). Them not taking more threes really left a ton of points on the board. Not their fault obviously. But rarely has a team so good had such an opportunity to be even better. And in ‘87 they nearly had that chance . . . except that Walton got injured, Len Bias died and Parish kept declining (and their bench was weirdly awful). But for one beautiful season Bird got his hard-nosed all-around perfect team, and Walton got to shine on one more great team.
Back to the Main Thread
