Spoiler:
Overall SRS: +14.68, Standard Deviations: +2.52, Won NBA Finals (Preseason ?)
PG: Oscar Robertson, 0,186 / 0.213
SG: Jon McGlocklin, 0.147 / 0.174
SF: Bob Dandridge, 0.160 / 0.157
PF: Greg Smith, 0.134 / 0.184
C: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 0.326 / 0.271
Regular Season Metrics:
Regular Season Record: 66-16, Regular Season SRS: +11.91 (1st), Earned the 1 Seed
Regular Season Offensive Rating: +6.7 (10th), Regular Season Defensive Rating: -4.1 (40th)
Shooting Advantage: +7.8%, Possession Advantage: -4.8 shooting possessions per game
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (C, 23): 35 MPPG, 27% OLoad, 28 / 14 / 3 on +10.6%
Oscar Robertson (PG, 32): 35 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 17 / 5 / 7 on +6.3%
Bob Dandridge (SF, 23): 32 MPPG, 20% OLoad, 16 / 7 / 3 on +4.5%
Jon McGlocklin (SG, 27): 31 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 14 / 2 / 3 on +6.3%
Greg Smith (PF, 24): 26 MPPG, 16% OLoad, 10 / 6 / 2 on +3.7%
Scoring/100: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33.4 / +10.6%), Bob Dandridge (21.5 / +4.5%), Oscar Robertson (20.8 / +6.3%)
Assists/100: Oscar Robertson (8.9), Jon McGlocklin (4.5), Bob Dandridge (4.1)
Playoff Metrics:
Playoff Offensive Rating: +1.99 (82nd), Playoff Defensive Rating: -11.65 (3rd)
Playoff SRS: +16.98 (3rd), Total SRS Increase through Playoffs: +2.76 (44th)
Shooting Advantage: +10.0%, Possession Advantage: -6.8 shooting possessions per game
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: -0.79 (100th), Average Playoff Opponent Defense: -1.43 (65th)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (C, 23): 37 MPPG, 26% OLoad, 24 / 15 / 2 on +4.8%
Oscar Robertson (PG, 32): 33 MPPG, 25% OLoad, 17 / 5 / 8 on +3.3%
Bob Dandridge (SF, 23): 34 MPPG, 23% OLoad, 17 / 9 / 3 on +0.1%
Jon McGlocklin (SG, 27): 32 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 13 / 2 / 2 on +7.0%
Greg Smith (PF, 24): 29 MPPG, 15% OLoad, 10 / 8 / 2 on +5.6%
Scoring/100: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (27.8 / +4.8%), Bob Dandridge (21.7 / +0.1%), Oscar Robertson (21.3 / +3.3%)
Assists/100: Oscar Robertson (10.3), Bob Dandridge (3.9), Greg Smith (3.4)
Round 1:
Round 2: San Francisco Warriors (-0.8), won 4-1, by +16.0 points per game (+15.2 SRS eq)
Round 3: Los Angeles Lakers (+5.0), won 4-1, by +13.8 points per game (+18.8 SRS eq)
Round 4: Baltimore Bullets (+4.7), won 4-0, by +12.3 points per game (+17.0 SRS eq)
Offensive / Defensive Ratings from Opposition Regular Season Average:
San Francisco Warriors: +7.6 / -6.6
Los Angeles Lakers: +0.0 / -15.0
Baltimore Bullets: -1.2 / -12.6
Shooting Advantage / Possession Advantage per game (unadjusted):
San Francisco Warriors: +7.2% / +1.5
Los Angeles Lakers: +9.7% / -6.4
Baltimore Bullets: +13.9% / -17.8
Postseason ShotShare/Efficiency Change adjusted for Opposition:
Oscar Robertson: +2.3% / -1.4%
Jon McGlocklin: -0.1% / +2.3%
Bob Dandridge: +2.9% / -2.8%
Greg Smith: -1.3% / +3.5%
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: -1.4% / -4.2%
In 1969 the NBA expanded. Two teams were added: the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns. Both teams were pretty bad. The Bucks won 27 games and posted a -5.07 SRS, the Suns won a measly 16 games and posted a -8.26 SRS. In 1969 the NBA didn’t have a draft lottery; the two teams that finished at the bottom of their respective conferences were considered tied and flipped a coin between them. The Bucks, the better team, won the coin toss.
The Bucks weren’t actually thaaaaat bad. -5.07 SRS isn’t terrible (though it sure ain’t good). They did have a few decent players. Jon McGlocklin was their 25 year-old shooting guard. He only averaged 19.6 points a game, and he probably wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted as the best player on your team. But his metrics (22% of his team’s shots, +3.7% shooting, about 8 Win Shares) are pretty respectable. Looking for historical comps, probably the closest I could find was young Hersey Hawkins (age 25 specifically), except that in the comparable seasons Hawkins was paired with Charles Barkley and McGlocklin had nobody. In other words, McGlocklin wasn’t a great player, but he looked as though he might be a strong complimentary player to a stronger team. There was another notable player on that team; a 6’5” rookie power forward named Greg Smith. As a rookie he struggled to score, shooting below league average, but grabbing a surprising number of rebounds. His comp as a rookie looks loosely like a young Al-Farouq Aminu. Nothing about Smith looked particularly remarkable, but like McGlocklin he’d play an important role in the years ahead. They also had a surprisingly good point guard in Flynn Robinson. They’d acquired the 27 year-old Robinson mid-year, and he’d proven himself to be not only a solid passer (23.6% AST) but a serious volume scorer by the standards of the era (26.6% of his team’s shots on +2.2% shooting). Those don’t sound like world-beating results, but the comps in that range of age, volume, decent efficiency and passing are pretty respectable: 27 year-old Clyde Drexler, 26 year-old Marques Johnson and 27 year-old World B. Free.
I realize that doesn’t sound like a bad team. A combination of young Hersey Hawkins, young Al-Farouq Aminu and a Drexler/Johnson/Free blend actually sounds decent . . . if they have enough supporting help.
They didn’t.
I just named every single player on the ‘69 Bucks that could shoot above league average. Which is not good. Furthermore, that the 6’5” Greg Smith was the team’s leading rebounder was a pretty big red flag.
So anyhow; the Bucks weren’t awful, but still managed to get the #1 pick in the draft. Normally, that’d be pretty nice. But in 1969 . . . there happened to be a college player who was as good as they come. Lew Alcindor (hereafter referred to as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) played at UCLA. In that time his team had gone 88-1 with him playing, he’d won two player of the year awards, UCLA had won three tournaments and in each Kareem had been named the best player. He was 7’1” but quick, and he dunked so often that the NCAA actually outlawed dunking to slow him down (this is a real thing that happened). When a player is so good that the league is changing the rules to make him slightly less dominant . . . that’s a pretty good indicator that he’s worth having. The Bucks selected Kareem with the #1 overall and felt, rightly, that they had just transformed their team.
And with their pick in the fourth round they took an unheralded small forward from Norfolk State named Bob Dandridge. And with that pick, 80% of the 1971 Bucks had been assembled. And the Bucks’ 1970 season would be totally different. Here are their numbers, from ‘69 to ‘70:
Wins: 27 -> 56
SRS: -5.07 -> +4.25
O-Rating: -1.6 -> +3.1
D-Rating: +2.7 -> -0.9
Playoffs: Missed by 21 games -> 2 seed, lost in Conference Finals to the ‘70 Knicks
So. In one season the team jumped 29 wins, 9 points a game, 4.7 offensive rating and 3.6 defensive rating. All told they went from being the 2nd worst team in the league to almost certainly the second best team. I’m not going to say that this was the biggest single-season turnaround ever (it wasn’t), but it was pretty nuts. And it was all thanks to the additions of Kareem and Dandridge. How did the roster perform in 1970?
I’d love to say that Kareem was the best rookie the league had ever seen. I probably can’t say that. In terms of Win Shares since 1960, Wilt, Walt Bellamy, David Robinson and Michael Jordan all had better rookie seasons. Let’s break his rookie season down:
3500 minutes, 25.9% Shot-Share on +4.1% shooting, 13.9 REBpX, 13.1% AST
Wanna hear a stat-line that this is eerily similar to?
3200 minutes, 26.0% Usage, +5.3% shooting, 16.6 REBpX, 13.7% AST
Kareem has more minutes, identical usage, slightly lower efficiency, comparable assists but definitely lower rebounds.
That’s Tim Duncan’s rookie year.
So Kareem came into the league and out of the gate was one of the best rookies ever, with a performance comparable to that of one of the most polished rookie big men ever. Not . . . insanely great, but certainly ATG-level. As it was he led the league in points, was 3rd in rebounds and 4th in Win Shares (Jerry West, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed finished ahead of him). And while we have no defensive stats, we can infer that the massive defensive improvement upon his being added to the team can be credited largely to him. It was a great year.
Rookie Bob Dandridge provided a surprising amount of value for a fourth round pick. While 17.6% of the team’s shots was nothing to write home about, his shooting at +1.7% was a boon to a team that had shot below league average the year before. Players with comparable rookie seasons (specifically on offense) are Michael Finley, Ron Brewer and Mike Miller. In other words, it wasn’t a great season, but for a rookie it was a season that augured pretty well.
Jon McGlocklin saw his role on the offense shrink (from 22% of shots to 18.7% of shots) and his efficiency improved, if not by a ton (+3.7% to +4.8%). Second-year forward Greg Smith saw his role on the offense change. He didn’t take any more shots, but he was suddenly shooting comfortably above league average at +3.1% (probably a mix of second-year improvement and playing next to a big that constantly commanded double-teams. It’s worth mentioning that when Smith was eventually traded in ‘72 his shooting efficiency dropped 5% when he stopped playing with Kareem). His impressive rebounding dropped considerably (by about 2 or 3 rebounds per 100) but that’s not surprising given that the aging Wayne Embry was replaced at center with Kareem. Flynn Robinson’s passing dropped slightly, as did his shooting volume, but his efficiency improved (total package, 24.9% shots, +3.8% shooting and 21.6% AST).
So. The ‘70 Bucks had just shown that they were a team to be reckoned with. They had the biggest and best prospect in the league (Kareem), a solid shooting threat (McGlocklin), a suddenly capable finisher/rebounding 4 (Greg Smith), a strong scoring point guard (Flynn Robinson) and a surprisingly decent young forward in Dandridge. There was every reason to think that they’d be a team to beat for the next several years as long as they didn’t change anything.
So going into the ‘71 season they traded Flynn Robinson (the scoring Drexler/Johnson/Free comp).
Were they out of their minds? After all, they’d seen one of the bigger single-season jumps in league history. And they had rookie Kareem and Dandridge, both who were likely to improve.
But this was an opportunity they couldn’t refuse.
Because they were able to trade Flynn Robinson for Oscar Robertson.
Oscar Robertson? Let’s talk about him.
He was taken first overall by the Cincinnati Royals in the 1960 NBA draft. At the time the Royals had gone 19-56, their roster pretty much Jack Twyman and some of those lucky waving cat figurines you see at Japanese restaurants. Oscar coming on board transformed them into . . . a 33-win team, that was him, Twyman and the waving cats. Oscar would go on to become the best point guard in the league, taking the mantle from Bob Cousy and improving upon it. He would lead the league in assists six times in the decade. He would also finish in the top three of points scored seven times in that stretch, while finishing in the top 20 of rebounds five times. His having averaged a triple-double is a testament to how capable he was in all three areas (even if the actual achievement was considerably influenced by how fast teams played). With the understanding that Win Shares aren’t a great stat, he led the league in offensive win shares four different times in the decade (and that’s in a league with Wilt Chamberlain). He put up efficiencies that were insane for the era, shooting mostly in the +8% and +9% range; only Jerry West could challenge those numbers. And he wasn’t a low-usage specialist either, he was routinely taking 25-26% of his team’s shots.
You may be assembling these numbers in your head (35% AST, 25.5% Usage estimated, +8.5% shooting) and going “Holy balls, Oscar Robertson was stupid good!” Yes, yes he was. I’d love to say that I have comps for him, but I don’t. Charles Barkley when he was 28 put together 25.1% usage at +8.1%. In terms of shooting we’ve got ‘87 Magic Johnson, Barkley, ‘82 Alex English, ‘14 Goran Dragic, ‘02 Ray Allen, ‘92 and ‘93 Mark Price . . . Basically, guys that took a lot of shots (but never broke the 30% volume mark) and shot at crazy efficiency. Except combine those with being the best passer in the league and playing 3400 minutes a season and rebounding a ton for a guard. Magic is an interesting comp for him; once Magic hit his stride in the mid-80s he was hitting Oscar-level efficiency, but only in ‘87 did he shoot at Oscareque volume. Oscar was a better scorer than Magic by a respectable amount. But Magic was in another league with his passing, while Oscar was merely a very good distributor (his era didn’t help; being the best distributor from before 1980 was like being the best mainstream martial-arts film before the Matrix; the environment just wasn’t conducive to that sort of thing).
“So, wait,” you may say, “Oscar Robertson was basically one of the better scorers ever, maybe the best scorer in his era, and he also passed and rebounded a ton. How the heck did he end up in a trade for Flynn Robinson who, while decent in his own right, would only have the right to carry Oscar’s jockstrap if he made low-key heavenly choir sounds while he did it?”
Great question. Here were how the Royals did from 1958 to 1970:
1959: 22 wins, -7.89 SRS, No Playoffs
1960: 21 wins, -5.92 SRS, No Playoffs
** Oscar is drafted **
1961: 34 wins, -3.04 SRS, No Playoffs
1962: 44 wins, +1.28 SRS, Lost Semis
1963: 43 wins, +1.24 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1964: 56 wins, +4.43 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1965: 49 wins, +2.04 SRS, Lost Semis
1966: 46 wins, +1.03 SRS, Lost Semis
1967: 39 wins, -0.23 SRS, Lost Semis
1968: 39 wins, -0.64 SRS, No Playoffs
1969: 41 wins, -0.83 SRS, No Playoffs
1970: 36 wins, -2.55 SRS, No Playoffs
Well, if we’re just going by team success (who would do that, right?) it doesn’t look particularly impressive. Sure, they were a 20-win bottom-feeder, and he lifted them up to respectability for several years. But I can’t help but notice not a single Finals appearance, and that’s with 8 and 9 team leagues. There’s a pretty obvious explanation: Oscar wasn’t a winner. Just didn’t have that killer instinct. Didn’t have that Serpent Certainty (err, Mamba Mentality). Didn’t have that swagger. I’m sure he was good and all, but there’s more to the game than counting stats. It’s called counting wins, and by that stat he clearly was good but not thaaaaaat good.
And yet there are weird signs to the contrary.
In Ben Taylor’s WOWYR (of which there are many formulations) Oscar Robertson shows up in the Top Ten of players . . . ever. Those numbers are never perfect, but they suggest an alarming dependence on Oscar. Here are three different instances where he missed times and their effects (courtesy of BackPicks):
1961: Missed 9 games, went from 36 win pace to 9 win pace (-27)
1968: Missed 10 games, went from 46 win pace to 17 win pace (-29)
1970: Missed 12 games, went from 42 win pace to 18 win pace (-24)
So Oscar may have been a Grade A choker/loser . . . and yet whenever he missed time his teams went from being average to being Chernobyl. Is it possible that his teammates were bad? Like, really bad? Like, really, really, really bad? It strains credulity that anyone that good could have teammates that bad . . . right? I mean, any remotely competent organization would realize that they had one of the best players of all-time and try and build around them, wouldn’t they?
I normally use a stat called Heliocentrism for this sort of thing, which is basically what share of their team’s VORP comes from that player. You have to take it with a grain of salt, because lower numbers don’t necessarily mean worse, just less dependent. Stephen Curry on the 2017 Warriors has a relatively low Helio score for a stud, but it’s less because he wasn’t that good and more because his teammates were historically great.
Now we don’t have VORP in Oscar’s day, so we’re using Win Shares to calculate it (which tends to generate smaller percentages, so Win Share Helio and VORP Helio are not comparable). Here are Oscar’s Helio scores with Cincinnati:
Yr 1: 43.7% (34 wins)
Yr 2: 37.6% (44 wins)
Yr 3: 40.8% (43 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (56 wins)
Yr 5: 39.1% (49 wins)
Yr 6: 40.4% (46 wins)
Yr 7: 44.4% (39 wins)
Yr 8: 33.1% (39 wins)
Yr 9: 35.5% (41 wins)
Yr 10: 32.9% (36 wins)
Well, it’s been a while since I did any Win Shares Helio, but 40% is really high from what I remember. Let’s compare Oscar’s numbers to those of another historically under-supported stud:
Yr 2: 31.4% (35 wins)
Yr 3: 33.7% (42 wins)
Yr 4: 26.1% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 35.4% (50 wins)
Yr 6: 29.9% (45 wins)
Huh. LeBron James has fairly high scores, and yet his highest Helio scores are comparable to Oscar’s worst. Of course, James had a tendency to make his teammates look better (Oscar was a distributor as well, but in that era it was less effective). What about another stud with bad support?
Yr 1: 35.4% (38 wins)
Yr 2: Out with Injury
Yr 3: 37.9% (40 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 43.3% (47 wins)
Yr 6: 37.2% (55 wins)
Ahhh. That’s what we’re looking for. If you didn’t guess, those are Michael Jordan’s first six years with the Bulls. And, let’s be honest, they look *really* similar to Oscar’s peak seasons in terms of how good his team was and what share of his team’s success he was credited for. Am I saying that Oscar Robertson at his peak was as good as Jordan? It’s an argument, but not the one I’m trying to make. And I’ll be the first to admit that Win Shares is a very imperfect stat, and that in Oscar’s era they didn’t have defensive stats (not that blocks and steals are great, but they’re better than literally nothing). So take this with a grain of salt. But that Oscar’s WS Helio scores look so comparable to early Jordan scores at comparable win levels basically suggests that, as far as Win Shares is concerned, attacking Oscar for the Royals losing would have been about as fair as attacking Jordan for the Bulls losing. Except that we got to see Jordan eventually get good teammates and win. We never got to see that for Oscar . . . in Cincinnati.
By the latter half of the decade Oscar was frustrated with Cincinnati, and Cincinnati was frustrated with him.
And that’s how Oscar Robertson ended up on the trade market. And that’s how the Bucks were able to snag him for Flynn Robinson.
“Now,” you may say, “we can all agree that Oscar was great, but he was 31 in 1970, and in this era 31 was like 35 is in the modern game. And the Royals had clearly gotten worse. And Robinson (from what must be 15 pages ago) actually put up pretty decent stats. Was Oscar really that much of an upgrade?”
Good question. The following per-game stats are adjusted to a pace of 100:
Oscar Robertson: 21 / 5 / 7 over 69 games, 22.1% ShotShare, +6.6% shooting, 11.4 Win Shares
Flynn Robinson: 19 / 3 / 5 over 81 games, 25.1% ShotShare, +3.8% shooting, 9.3 Win Shares
What would the Bucks like about the trade? Well, everything. Oscar plays more minutes per game, he rebounds better, he passes better, he shoots better, the lower scoring load matters less on a team with Kareem and he’s a veteran presence (if not a winning one) on a team with a lot of young players.
From the Royals’ point of view, there were some things to like the other way. Oscar was getting older, and didn’t seem able to carry the scoring load he once had (which would be valuable for a mediocre team like the Royals). Also, Oscar was three years older, and had missed 10+ games in two of the last three years. Robinson may well have been younger, healthier and his ability to carry larger scoring loads was better for Cincinnati. And if you really wanted to go lowest common denominator with it, Robinson was a guard from a winning team and Oscar was not. Also, Oscar and Cincinnati coach Bob Cousy were feuding hard, and it was getting increasingly hard to imagine the whole thing working out well.
So the trade happened.
Ultimately it worked out reasonably well for Cincinnati. They did get worse, but not by much, buoyed by the arrival of rookie Nate Archibald and the development of Norm Van Lier. I don’t want to pretend that the Royals went on to great things or anything, but neither did they implode. The only real drawback was that their feud with Oscar ensured that they’d get about 40 cents on the dollar for him.
So. The 1971 season approached. The NBA had added three expansion teams (Portland, Cleveland and Buffalo). The ABA continued to be successful, ensuring that the talent density of the league would be thinned out even more. In the West, the Lakers were clearly the team to beat. In the prior year they’d been the only team in the Conference that posted an SRS above +1, and that was with Wilt missing 60+ regular season games. With a healthy roster there was every reason to think that the Lakers would be a serious contender. In the East the Knicks were coming off a dominant championship season. Neither Clyde Frazier nor Willis Reed were past 27, and the rest of the roster seemed to be holding up. There was no real reason to pick against a Knicks - Lakers rematch.
Except . . .
In Milwaukee you had a pretty scary roster. Jon McGlocklin and Greg Smith weren’t All-Stars, but I think that Wilt have happily given up 5000 of the women he allegedly slept with to have players like that as the 3rd and 5th best players on his Warrior’ teams (so would Elgin Baylor in the early 60s, or Oscar for that matter). Bob Dandridge was coming off a surprisingly good rookie year. Despite being a fourth round pick, between the advent of the shot clock and 1970 there had only been six players listed at 6’6” or lower to post higher Win Shares in their rookie years: Oscar, Elgin, Earl Monroe, Jerry West, Tom Gola and John Havlicek. Even if Dandridge didn’t set the world on fire, his debut season was certainly auspicious. With another year of development (and with Kareem and Oscar taking defensive attention) there was every reason to think that Dandridge might improve. Kareem was one of the best rookies ever and with Oscar added he would likely get even better. And Oscar . . . nobody was quite sure what Oscar still had in the tank, but even if the rest of the roster didn’t improve (unlikely given their youth) it was still pretty clear that going from Flynn Robinson to Oscar was an upgrade.
So I don’t know if the Bucks were favored to win the title (because bettors like to go with repeat champions, and there was little reason not to like the Knicks or Lakers) . . . but the Bucks were unquestionably a team with a lot of potential. But even the Bucks’ biggest booster would likely not have picked the team to be the greatest the NBA had ever seen to that point.
The 1971 Bucks went 66-16 in the regular season (the 2nd best record the NBA had seen to that point, behind the ‘67 Sixers who won 68) but posted an SRS of +11.92, almost three points higher than the previous highest at the time and a mark that has still never been broken.
Milwaukee had the best offense in the league. By a lot. The top of the team offenses leaderboard:
Milwaukee: +6.7
Chicago: +3.3
Los Angeles: +1.6
Not even remotely close. And on defense?
Milwaukee: -4.1
New York: -3.9
Boston: -1.9
So they basically had a slightly better defense than the Knicks (who themselves had by far the best other defense in the league) and an offense that was farther ahead of the #2 team than the #2 team was above average. The year before the Bucks had a +3.1 offense; how the heck did they add 3.6 points per 100 to their offense? Was it just Oscar?
Let’s talk about it. Here’s a position by position breakdown, with the ShotShare change and shooting efficiency change from ‘70 to ‘71:
Flynn -> Oscar: -5.6% / +2.5%
Jon McGlocklin: -1.1% / +1.5%
Bob Dandridge: +3.1% / +2.8%
Greg Smith: +2.9% / +0.5%
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: +3.0% / +6.5%
So. The point guard dropped a lot of usage and added some efficiency (but not as much as you’d guess. McGlocklin dropped a little usage and gained a little efficiency. Greg Smith added a lot of usage without losing efficiency. Dandridge came out of nowhere, jumping in both usage and efficiency by respectable margins. And Kareem . . . that is a massive improvement.
But it’s pretty obvious what caused it right? Oscar was an ATG point guard, he joins an already strong offense and it becomes great . . . it’s passing, right? Let’s check:
1970: 55.3% of field goals were assisted
1971: 56.6% of field goals were assisted
Okay, so if it was passing, it doesn’t have much to do with more of their shots being assisted.
Well, a lot of that improvement is Kareem. Surely ATG bigs should expect something like that a bump like that their second year, right?
Shaq: +2.0% / +2.1%
Hakeem: +2.1% / -0.4%
Duncan: +1.2% / -3.6%
Okay, so that second-year jump isn’t a thing, or at least, certainly not on the +3%/+6% scale that Kareem had.
Maybe Oscar just made his big men better? Let’s check on Johnny Green and Connie Dierking going from Oscar in ‘70 to not-Oscar in ‘71:
Green: +2.7% shooting
Dierking: -3.1% shooting
Those players were turning 37 and 34 respectively . . . so I don’t see a huge pattern there.
Maybe it’s that 1971 was so watered down that all big men jumped in scoring?
Wilt: +0.4%
Thurmond: +1.8%
Reed: -3.3%
Hayes: -2.4%
Unseld: -1.6%
Love: -2.2%
Okay, so there’s pretty much zero evidence for the “big men scoring numbers jumped with expansion” theory.
So where does that leave us?
First, that Kareem was a phenomenal scorer, even in his second year. 29% usage on +10% shooting? If I feed that into StatHead I get some monster scorers: Barkley, Durant, Curry, Dantley, Amar’e and KAT. He was probably going to take a huge leap no matter what. But a leap this big? Most of it was Kareem, but some of it was the fact that, somehow, he was a #1 pick that was drafted by the second worst team in the league, but by his second year the team around him was actually awesome.
It’s hard to overstate: if you search the 1971 NBA by true shooting (minimum 2000 player minutes), the Bucks rank as follows:
Kareem 2nd
McGlocklin 5th
Oscar 6th
Dandridge 10th
Smith 15th
In a league with 17 teams, one team had 5 of the top 15 shooters. That shouldn’t happen. It almost beggars the imagination. How could a team so bad two years before be so good?
McGlocklin had already demonstrated that he was capable of being a good scorer even without help, so with a better team his efficiency got quite good. Smith hadn’t been a good shooter when young, but he proved that, assuming he could pick his spots and with Kareem sharing the frontcourt, he could convert at a good rate. Oscar was an ATG scorer for the era (though having lost a step at this point). And Dandridge?
Dandridge can be described as nothing more than a gift from God to the city of Milwaukee. It’s like he looked down and said “Hmm, good shooting guard. Arguably the best scoring big ever. A power forward who is quite solid when paired with the ATG center. And looking into the future, I can see that they’re going to pick up veteran Oscar. Hoooo-wee! That offense is gonna hum!
And yet.
It’s Milwaukee. Surely they need all the breaks they can get.
OMG, wouldn’t it be hilarious if I slid them a strong small forward in the draft on the down-low? Hmm, but they already spent their first . . . Let’s put him in the fourth round. That’ll really mess with people. I love it!”
I don’t want to make it sound like Dandridge was a proto-Elgin or Kawhi. He wasn’t. But his second season (by Win Shares) was above that of Earl Monroe, Jack Twyman, John Havlicek, Manu Ginobili, Allen Iverson, Chris Paul, Baron Davis . . . Landing Kareem with the #1 was luck, but the kind of luck that happens to terrible teams once a decade. Picking up Oscar for Flynn Robinson was skill and opportunity. But having your fourth-round pick develop into a solid volume-scorer with efficiency? That was another level of luck (and probably skill, but if they’d known Dandridge would become Dandridge, they sure as heck wouldn’t have waited until the 4th round to draft him).
And so, in two years the sad sack ‘69 Bucks had transformed into a five deep roster of absolutely monsters, the 1971 Bucks that completely torched everything. It was some skill and some luck. But their regular season dominance (by SRS) is something that is historically unmatched. They won 14 more games than the 2nd best team in the league, and posted an SRS that was 6.87 points higher than the 2nd best team in the league. The second best team in the league was closer to average than they were to the ‘71 Bucks. It’s a level of complete domination over the league that no team has come near since (aided of course by a smaller league of 17 teams).
But wait, what happened to the Knicks and Lakers? Weren’t they supposed to be the contenders this year?
The Knicks took a step back from the year before. Here are their relative offensive and defensive ratings from ‘69 (when they were quite good), ‘70 (when they were formidable) and ‘71 (when they were only pretty good):
Offensive Rating: +2.9 -> +1.3 -> +0.6
Defensive Rating: -2.2 -> -6.6 -> -3.9
SRS: +5.48 -> +8.42 -> +5.05
The defense-for-offense drop from ‘69 to ‘70 was the Knicks trading Walt Bellamy for Dave Debusschere. But in ‘71 everything took a step back. Willis Reed didn’t seem quite the same after his infamous injury in the ‘70 postseason, with his shooting efficiency four points lower. And the team's outstanding defense had waned to merely strong. I won’t go into too much detail here, suffice to say that the ‘71 Knicks were not the same level of team as the ‘70 Knicks by a long shot.
And the ‘71 Lakers? They just weren’t that good. Granted that West got knocked out for the year, but that was after playing 69 games. As weird as it is to say, all the talent explosions that would happen for the ‘72 Lakers hadn’t happened yet. Gail Goodrich in ‘71 was only a sufficient scorer, a less effective version of McGlocklin (though certainly in a worse offensive environment). The ‘71 Lakers only won 48 games and posted a +3.27 SRS. And with West out for the playoffs they had no real shot at competing.
So the ‘71 Bucks were stupidly, ridiculously, dominant and they also existed in a league with almost no legitimate challengers. It’d be like if the ‘96 Bulls waxed everyone in the regular season, but Shawn Kemp broke his leg, Karl Malone got hit by a fruit truck and Hakeem retired early. The ‘96 Bulls didn’t *need* that kind of situation to win . . . but if they had it you can sure bet they’d stomp through the playoffs in short order.
In the semifinals (the first round back then) the Bucks drew the Jerry Lucas/Nate Thurmond San Francisco Warriors (-0.8). The Bucks smoked them in five by 17 points a game. They shut down the Warriors’ offense (holding them to -5.0% shooting) while shooting at +2.2% themselves. Kareem averaged a 28/16/1 on +2.8% for the series.
In the Conference Finals they faced the no-West Lakers (+5.0). The Bucks smoked them in five by 13.8 points a game. The Lakers’ offense was absolutely brought to a halt; as a team they shot -6.3% (which is stupid low) and Wilt averaged a 22/19/2 on -1.1%. Kareem was definitely slowed in the series, averaging a 25/17/4 on +1.0% but the rest of the Bucks shot well (+3.4% as a team, with McGlocklin averaging 17 on +7.8% and Smith a 13 on +13.0%. Not close.
In the NBA Finals they ran into a surprise. The Baltimore Bullets (+4.7) had upset the Knicks and were representing the East. The Bullets did a pretty good job slowing the Bucks’ offense, specifically by obliterating them in possessions (an almost 18 possession advantage per game). The Bucks still won, sweeping the Bullets by 12.3 points a game. Kareem averaged a 27/19/3 on +13.4%.
The ‘71 Bucks had won it all. And they hadn’t won any series by less than 12 points a game.
I realize that I blew by those pretty quick. There wasn’t much to talk about. It would be like writing a blow by blow of a fox raiding a chicken coop. Not that exciting things didn’t happen, but it was ugly, not fair, and enhanced the dignity of no parties involved.
And Oscar had proven that he 100% was a championship-level player. And pundits would never again confuse having bad teammates for a player not being great . . .
I wish.
14 | Bucks
13 |
12 |
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 | Bullets
3 | Bulls, Lakers
2 | Knicks, Celtics, Suns
1 |
0 | 76ers
-0 | Pistons, Rockets
-1 | Hawks, Warriors, Sonics
-2 | Royals
-3 |
-4 |
-5 |
-6 | Blazers
-7 |
-8 | Braves
-9 |
-10|
-11|
-12| Cavs
Holy cow. This iteration of OSRS gives the ‘71 Bucks a massive ten point lead on the next closest team in the league. I guarantee you that there is no other team with anything close to that lead. That’s some domination for ya.
But do the expansion teams inflate their numbers (I’m not gonna tell you which three teams were expansion teams, it’s a secret
)? Yeah, probably. But it also inflated all the other good teams in the league too. So the Bucks’ highest-ever RSRS and 3rd highest ever OSRS? Definitely benefits from the expansion. But their dominance over their league? Had nothing to do with expansion.
It was a perfect storm. One of the best players ever taking a big leap and posting an ATG-level season, a fourth-round pick developing into a strong scorer out of nowhere, having two strong contributors besides them and adding a veteran ATG guard. And at the same time, the only two remotely possible contenders either slowed with age or injury.
Does the Bucks’ weak set of playoff opponents hurt their ranking? Some would argue that, and the Bucks have a *stupid* low playoff SoS. Only the ‘57 Celtics, ‘65 Celtics and ‘76 Warriors on this list are ranked lower. But it’s not like we’re rewarding them for winning their matchups, we’re rewarding the Bucks for completely obliterating them. Vaporizing the Warriors? Meh, blowing out average teams isn’t a terribly strong indicator of championship contenders. But blowing out teams in the +5 range? That’s actually pretty rare, and not easy to do. Here are all the teams that have blown out the opposition by double digits where the opponent had an OSRS of +4 or higher at the time (sorted by opponent rating):
2016: Cavs over Raptors (+4.0), by +15.5 -> Champions
1991: Bulls over Pistons (+4.0), by +11.5 -> Champions
2001: Lakers over Blazers (+4.5), by +14.7 -> Champions
2017: Warriors over Jazz (+4.6), by +15.0 -> Champions
2014: Spurs over Blazers (+4.6), by +13.4 -> Champions
1989: Pistons over Bucks (+4.6), by +11.8 -> Champions
2010: Magic over Hawks (+4.7), by +25.3 -> Conf Finals
1971: Bucks over Bullets (+4.7), by +12.3 -> Champions
2015: Cavs over Hawks (+4.8), by +13.3 -> Lost in Finals (to ‘15 Warriors)
1969: Celtics over Sixers (+4.8), by +10.4 -> Champions
1971: Bucks over Lakers (+5.0), by +13.8 -> Champions
2018: Rockets over Jazz (+5.6), by +10.0 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘18 Warriors)
2018: Cavs over Raptors (+5.7), by +14.0 -> Lost in Finals (to ‘18 Warriors)
1983: Bucks over Celtics (+5.8), by +11.8 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘83 Sixers)
2001: Spurs over Mavericks (+6.0), by +11.6 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘01 Lakers)
1998: Lakers over Sonics (+6.2), by +11.6 -> Conf Finals
1985: Sixers over Bucks (+6.3), by +10.0 -> Conf Finals
2016: Cavs over Hawks (+6.3), by +12.5 -> Champions
2014: Spurs over Heat (+6.4), by +14.0 -> Champions
1991: Jazz over Suns (+6.5), by +11.5 -> SemiFinals
1986: Celtics over Bucks (+6.7), by +15.0 -> Champions
2011: Mavericks over Lakers (+6.9), by +14.0 -> Champions
1967: Sixers over Celtics (+6.9), by +10.0 -> Champions
1999: Spurs over Blazers (+6.9), by +10.3 -> Champions
1970: Knicks over Bucks (+7.1), by +10.4 -> Champions
1983: Sixers over Lakers (+7.2), by +10.0 -> Champions
1996: Jazz over Spurs (+7.3), by +11.7 -> Conf Finals
2014: Spurs over Thunder (+7.5), by +10.5 -> Champions
1972: Lakers over Bulls (+7.9), by +10.0 -> Champions
2013: Spurs over Grizzlies (+8.3), by +11.0 -> Lost in Finals (but probably shouldn’t have)
2017: Warriors over Spurs (+8.9), by +16.0 -> Champions
2001: Lakers over Spurs (+9.0), by +18.2 -> Champions
Of the 32 teams that fit that criteria, only 11 didn’t win a championship. That’s pretty impressive; a 10+ point per game win over a team that’s +4 OSRS or better predicts a champion about two-thirds of the time. And of the eleven teams that lost, five of them lost to an ATG team. So it’s not a crazy stretch to say that this is a feat that means that you’ll either win a championship (or lose to an ATG team) 4 times out of 5.
The ‘71 Bucks had two of those. So even if they didn’t play great teams, they distinguished themselves in historically great ways.
Frankly, I think any list that doesn’t have the 1971 Bucks in the Top 5 is an obvious joke and needs to be thrown out. I honestly don’t see how to have them lower than third (unless you’re really obsessed with playing borderline Top 100 team somewhere in the playoffs). It’s not their fault that there were no legit challengers that year. In every way they played like a Top 3 all-time team should have.
But I can’t put them above the remaining two teams. I just can’t.
PG: Oscar Robertson, 0,186 / 0.213
SG: Jon McGlocklin, 0.147 / 0.174
SF: Bob Dandridge, 0.160 / 0.157
PF: Greg Smith, 0.134 / 0.184
C: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 0.326 / 0.271
Regular Season Metrics:
Regular Season Record: 66-16, Regular Season SRS: +11.91 (1st), Earned the 1 Seed
Regular Season Offensive Rating: +6.7 (10th), Regular Season Defensive Rating: -4.1 (40th)
Shooting Advantage: +7.8%, Possession Advantage: -4.8 shooting possessions per game
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (C, 23): 35 MPPG, 27% OLoad, 28 / 14 / 3 on +10.6%
Oscar Robertson (PG, 32): 35 MPPG, 22% OLoad, 17 / 5 / 7 on +6.3%
Bob Dandridge (SF, 23): 32 MPPG, 20% OLoad, 16 / 7 / 3 on +4.5%
Jon McGlocklin (SG, 27): 31 MPPG, 18% OLoad, 14 / 2 / 3 on +6.3%
Greg Smith (PF, 24): 26 MPPG, 16% OLoad, 10 / 6 / 2 on +3.7%
Scoring/100: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (33.4 / +10.6%), Bob Dandridge (21.5 / +4.5%), Oscar Robertson (20.8 / +6.3%)
Assists/100: Oscar Robertson (8.9), Jon McGlocklin (4.5), Bob Dandridge (4.1)
Playoff Metrics:
Playoff Offensive Rating: +1.99 (82nd), Playoff Defensive Rating: -11.65 (3rd)
Playoff SRS: +16.98 (3rd), Total SRS Increase through Playoffs: +2.76 (44th)
Shooting Advantage: +10.0%, Possession Advantage: -6.8 shooting possessions per game
Average Playoff Opponent Offense: -0.79 (100th), Average Playoff Opponent Defense: -1.43 (65th)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (C, 23): 37 MPPG, 26% OLoad, 24 / 15 / 2 on +4.8%
Oscar Robertson (PG, 32): 33 MPPG, 25% OLoad, 17 / 5 / 8 on +3.3%
Bob Dandridge (SF, 23): 34 MPPG, 23% OLoad, 17 / 9 / 3 on +0.1%
Jon McGlocklin (SG, 27): 32 MPPG, 17% OLoad, 13 / 2 / 2 on +7.0%
Greg Smith (PF, 24): 29 MPPG, 15% OLoad, 10 / 8 / 2 on +5.6%
Scoring/100: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (27.8 / +4.8%), Bob Dandridge (21.7 / +0.1%), Oscar Robertson (21.3 / +3.3%)
Assists/100: Oscar Robertson (10.3), Bob Dandridge (3.9), Greg Smith (3.4)
Round 1:
Round 2: San Francisco Warriors (-0.8), won 4-1, by +16.0 points per game (+15.2 SRS eq)
Round 3: Los Angeles Lakers (+5.0), won 4-1, by +13.8 points per game (+18.8 SRS eq)
Round 4: Baltimore Bullets (+4.7), won 4-0, by +12.3 points per game (+17.0 SRS eq)
Offensive / Defensive Ratings from Opposition Regular Season Average:
San Francisco Warriors: +7.6 / -6.6
Los Angeles Lakers: +0.0 / -15.0
Baltimore Bullets: -1.2 / -12.6
Shooting Advantage / Possession Advantage per game (unadjusted):
San Francisco Warriors: +7.2% / +1.5
Los Angeles Lakers: +9.7% / -6.4
Baltimore Bullets: +13.9% / -17.8
Postseason ShotShare/Efficiency Change adjusted for Opposition:
Oscar Robertson: +2.3% / -1.4%
Jon McGlocklin: -0.1% / +2.3%
Bob Dandridge: +2.9% / -2.8%
Greg Smith: -1.3% / +3.5%
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: -1.4% / -4.2%
In 1969 the NBA expanded. Two teams were added: the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns. Both teams were pretty bad. The Bucks won 27 games and posted a -5.07 SRS, the Suns won a measly 16 games and posted a -8.26 SRS. In 1969 the NBA didn’t have a draft lottery; the two teams that finished at the bottom of their respective conferences were considered tied and flipped a coin between them. The Bucks, the better team, won the coin toss.
The Bucks weren’t actually thaaaaat bad. -5.07 SRS isn’t terrible (though it sure ain’t good). They did have a few decent players. Jon McGlocklin was their 25 year-old shooting guard. He only averaged 19.6 points a game, and he probably wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted as the best player on your team. But his metrics (22% of his team’s shots, +3.7% shooting, about 8 Win Shares) are pretty respectable. Looking for historical comps, probably the closest I could find was young Hersey Hawkins (age 25 specifically), except that in the comparable seasons Hawkins was paired with Charles Barkley and McGlocklin had nobody. In other words, McGlocklin wasn’t a great player, but he looked as though he might be a strong complimentary player to a stronger team. There was another notable player on that team; a 6’5” rookie power forward named Greg Smith. As a rookie he struggled to score, shooting below league average, but grabbing a surprising number of rebounds. His comp as a rookie looks loosely like a young Al-Farouq Aminu. Nothing about Smith looked particularly remarkable, but like McGlocklin he’d play an important role in the years ahead. They also had a surprisingly good point guard in Flynn Robinson. They’d acquired the 27 year-old Robinson mid-year, and he’d proven himself to be not only a solid passer (23.6% AST) but a serious volume scorer by the standards of the era (26.6% of his team’s shots on +2.2% shooting). Those don’t sound like world-beating results, but the comps in that range of age, volume, decent efficiency and passing are pretty respectable: 27 year-old Clyde Drexler, 26 year-old Marques Johnson and 27 year-old World B. Free.
I realize that doesn’t sound like a bad team. A combination of young Hersey Hawkins, young Al-Farouq Aminu and a Drexler/Johnson/Free blend actually sounds decent . . . if they have enough supporting help.
They didn’t.
I just named every single player on the ‘69 Bucks that could shoot above league average. Which is not good. Furthermore, that the 6’5” Greg Smith was the team’s leading rebounder was a pretty big red flag.
So anyhow; the Bucks weren’t awful, but still managed to get the #1 pick in the draft. Normally, that’d be pretty nice. But in 1969 . . . there happened to be a college player who was as good as they come. Lew Alcindor (hereafter referred to as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) played at UCLA. In that time his team had gone 88-1 with him playing, he’d won two player of the year awards, UCLA had won three tournaments and in each Kareem had been named the best player. He was 7’1” but quick, and he dunked so often that the NCAA actually outlawed dunking to slow him down (this is a real thing that happened). When a player is so good that the league is changing the rules to make him slightly less dominant . . . that’s a pretty good indicator that he’s worth having. The Bucks selected Kareem with the #1 overall and felt, rightly, that they had just transformed their team.
And with their pick in the fourth round they took an unheralded small forward from Norfolk State named Bob Dandridge. And with that pick, 80% of the 1971 Bucks had been assembled. And the Bucks’ 1970 season would be totally different. Here are their numbers, from ‘69 to ‘70:
Wins: 27 -> 56
SRS: -5.07 -> +4.25
O-Rating: -1.6 -> +3.1
D-Rating: +2.7 -> -0.9
Playoffs: Missed by 21 games -> 2 seed, lost in Conference Finals to the ‘70 Knicks
So. In one season the team jumped 29 wins, 9 points a game, 4.7 offensive rating and 3.6 defensive rating. All told they went from being the 2nd worst team in the league to almost certainly the second best team. I’m not going to say that this was the biggest single-season turnaround ever (it wasn’t), but it was pretty nuts. And it was all thanks to the additions of Kareem and Dandridge. How did the roster perform in 1970?
I’d love to say that Kareem was the best rookie the league had ever seen. I probably can’t say that. In terms of Win Shares since 1960, Wilt, Walt Bellamy, David Robinson and Michael Jordan all had better rookie seasons. Let’s break his rookie season down:
3500 minutes, 25.9% Shot-Share on +4.1% shooting, 13.9 REBpX, 13.1% AST
Wanna hear a stat-line that this is eerily similar to?
3200 minutes, 26.0% Usage, +5.3% shooting, 16.6 REBpX, 13.7% AST
Kareem has more minutes, identical usage, slightly lower efficiency, comparable assists but definitely lower rebounds.
That’s Tim Duncan’s rookie year.
So Kareem came into the league and out of the gate was one of the best rookies ever, with a performance comparable to that of one of the most polished rookie big men ever. Not . . . insanely great, but certainly ATG-level. As it was he led the league in points, was 3rd in rebounds and 4th in Win Shares (Jerry West, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed finished ahead of him). And while we have no defensive stats, we can infer that the massive defensive improvement upon his being added to the team can be credited largely to him. It was a great year.
Rookie Bob Dandridge provided a surprising amount of value for a fourth round pick. While 17.6% of the team’s shots was nothing to write home about, his shooting at +1.7% was a boon to a team that had shot below league average the year before. Players with comparable rookie seasons (specifically on offense) are Michael Finley, Ron Brewer and Mike Miller. In other words, it wasn’t a great season, but for a rookie it was a season that augured pretty well.
Jon McGlocklin saw his role on the offense shrink (from 22% of shots to 18.7% of shots) and his efficiency improved, if not by a ton (+3.7% to +4.8%). Second-year forward Greg Smith saw his role on the offense change. He didn’t take any more shots, but he was suddenly shooting comfortably above league average at +3.1% (probably a mix of second-year improvement and playing next to a big that constantly commanded double-teams. It’s worth mentioning that when Smith was eventually traded in ‘72 his shooting efficiency dropped 5% when he stopped playing with Kareem). His impressive rebounding dropped considerably (by about 2 or 3 rebounds per 100) but that’s not surprising given that the aging Wayne Embry was replaced at center with Kareem. Flynn Robinson’s passing dropped slightly, as did his shooting volume, but his efficiency improved (total package, 24.9% shots, +3.8% shooting and 21.6% AST).
So. The ‘70 Bucks had just shown that they were a team to be reckoned with. They had the biggest and best prospect in the league (Kareem), a solid shooting threat (McGlocklin), a suddenly capable finisher/rebounding 4 (Greg Smith), a strong scoring point guard (Flynn Robinson) and a surprisingly decent young forward in Dandridge. There was every reason to think that they’d be a team to beat for the next several years as long as they didn’t change anything.
So going into the ‘71 season they traded Flynn Robinson (the scoring Drexler/Johnson/Free comp).
Were they out of their minds? After all, they’d seen one of the bigger single-season jumps in league history. And they had rookie Kareem and Dandridge, both who were likely to improve.
But this was an opportunity they couldn’t refuse.
Because they were able to trade Flynn Robinson for Oscar Robertson.
Oscar Robertson? Let’s talk about him.
He was taken first overall by the Cincinnati Royals in the 1960 NBA draft. At the time the Royals had gone 19-56, their roster pretty much Jack Twyman and some of those lucky waving cat figurines you see at Japanese restaurants. Oscar coming on board transformed them into . . . a 33-win team, that was him, Twyman and the waving cats. Oscar would go on to become the best point guard in the league, taking the mantle from Bob Cousy and improving upon it. He would lead the league in assists six times in the decade. He would also finish in the top three of points scored seven times in that stretch, while finishing in the top 20 of rebounds five times. His having averaged a triple-double is a testament to how capable he was in all three areas (even if the actual achievement was considerably influenced by how fast teams played). With the understanding that Win Shares aren’t a great stat, he led the league in offensive win shares four different times in the decade (and that’s in a league with Wilt Chamberlain). He put up efficiencies that were insane for the era, shooting mostly in the +8% and +9% range; only Jerry West could challenge those numbers. And he wasn’t a low-usage specialist either, he was routinely taking 25-26% of his team’s shots.
You may be assembling these numbers in your head (35% AST, 25.5% Usage estimated, +8.5% shooting) and going “Holy balls, Oscar Robertson was stupid good!” Yes, yes he was. I’d love to say that I have comps for him, but I don’t. Charles Barkley when he was 28 put together 25.1% usage at +8.1%. In terms of shooting we’ve got ‘87 Magic Johnson, Barkley, ‘82 Alex English, ‘14 Goran Dragic, ‘02 Ray Allen, ‘92 and ‘93 Mark Price . . . Basically, guys that took a lot of shots (but never broke the 30% volume mark) and shot at crazy efficiency. Except combine those with being the best passer in the league and playing 3400 minutes a season and rebounding a ton for a guard. Magic is an interesting comp for him; once Magic hit his stride in the mid-80s he was hitting Oscar-level efficiency, but only in ‘87 did he shoot at Oscareque volume. Oscar was a better scorer than Magic by a respectable amount. But Magic was in another league with his passing, while Oscar was merely a very good distributor (his era didn’t help; being the best distributor from before 1980 was like being the best mainstream martial-arts film before the Matrix; the environment just wasn’t conducive to that sort of thing).
“So, wait,” you may say, “Oscar Robertson was basically one of the better scorers ever, maybe the best scorer in his era, and he also passed and rebounded a ton. How the heck did he end up in a trade for Flynn Robinson who, while decent in his own right, would only have the right to carry Oscar’s jockstrap if he made low-key heavenly choir sounds while he did it?”
Great question. Here were how the Royals did from 1958 to 1970:
1959: 22 wins, -7.89 SRS, No Playoffs
1960: 21 wins, -5.92 SRS, No Playoffs
** Oscar is drafted **
1961: 34 wins, -3.04 SRS, No Playoffs
1962: 44 wins, +1.28 SRS, Lost Semis
1963: 43 wins, +1.24 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1964: 56 wins, +4.43 SRS, Lost Conf Finals
1965: 49 wins, +2.04 SRS, Lost Semis
1966: 46 wins, +1.03 SRS, Lost Semis
1967: 39 wins, -0.23 SRS, Lost Semis
1968: 39 wins, -0.64 SRS, No Playoffs
1969: 41 wins, -0.83 SRS, No Playoffs
1970: 36 wins, -2.55 SRS, No Playoffs
Well, if we’re just going by team success (who would do that, right?) it doesn’t look particularly impressive. Sure, they were a 20-win bottom-feeder, and he lifted them up to respectability for several years. But I can’t help but notice not a single Finals appearance, and that’s with 8 and 9 team leagues. There’s a pretty obvious explanation: Oscar wasn’t a winner. Just didn’t have that killer instinct. Didn’t have that Serpent Certainty (err, Mamba Mentality). Didn’t have that swagger. I’m sure he was good and all, but there’s more to the game than counting stats. It’s called counting wins, and by that stat he clearly was good but not thaaaaaat good.
And yet there are weird signs to the contrary.
In Ben Taylor’s WOWYR (of which there are many formulations) Oscar Robertson shows up in the Top Ten of players . . . ever. Those numbers are never perfect, but they suggest an alarming dependence on Oscar. Here are three different instances where he missed times and their effects (courtesy of BackPicks):
1961: Missed 9 games, went from 36 win pace to 9 win pace (-27)
1968: Missed 10 games, went from 46 win pace to 17 win pace (-29)
1970: Missed 12 games, went from 42 win pace to 18 win pace (-24)
So Oscar may have been a Grade A choker/loser . . . and yet whenever he missed time his teams went from being average to being Chernobyl. Is it possible that his teammates were bad? Like, really bad? Like, really, really, really bad? It strains credulity that anyone that good could have teammates that bad . . . right? I mean, any remotely competent organization would realize that they had one of the best players of all-time and try and build around them, wouldn’t they?
I normally use a stat called Heliocentrism for this sort of thing, which is basically what share of their team’s VORP comes from that player. You have to take it with a grain of salt, because lower numbers don’t necessarily mean worse, just less dependent. Stephen Curry on the 2017 Warriors has a relatively low Helio score for a stud, but it’s less because he wasn’t that good and more because his teammates were historically great.
Now we don’t have VORP in Oscar’s day, so we’re using Win Shares to calculate it (which tends to generate smaller percentages, so Win Share Helio and VORP Helio are not comparable). Here are Oscar’s Helio scores with Cincinnati:
Yr 1: 43.7% (34 wins)
Yr 2: 37.6% (44 wins)
Yr 3: 40.8% (43 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (56 wins)
Yr 5: 39.1% (49 wins)
Yr 6: 40.4% (46 wins)
Yr 7: 44.4% (39 wins)
Yr 8: 33.1% (39 wins)
Yr 9: 35.5% (41 wins)
Yr 10: 32.9% (36 wins)
Well, it’s been a while since I did any Win Shares Helio, but 40% is really high from what I remember. Let’s compare Oscar’s numbers to those of another historically under-supported stud:
Yr 2: 31.4% (35 wins)
Yr 3: 33.7% (42 wins)
Yr 4: 26.1% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 35.4% (50 wins)
Yr 6: 29.9% (45 wins)
Huh. LeBron James has fairly high scores, and yet his highest Helio scores are comparable to Oscar’s worst. Of course, James had a tendency to make his teammates look better (Oscar was a distributor as well, but in that era it was less effective). What about another stud with bad support?
Yr 1: 35.4% (38 wins)
Yr 2: Out with Injury
Yr 3: 37.9% (40 wins)
Yr 4: 40.9% (50 wins)
Yr 5: 43.3% (47 wins)
Yr 6: 37.2% (55 wins)
Ahhh. That’s what we’re looking for. If you didn’t guess, those are Michael Jordan’s first six years with the Bulls. And, let’s be honest, they look *really* similar to Oscar’s peak seasons in terms of how good his team was and what share of his team’s success he was credited for. Am I saying that Oscar Robertson at his peak was as good as Jordan? It’s an argument, but not the one I’m trying to make. And I’ll be the first to admit that Win Shares is a very imperfect stat, and that in Oscar’s era they didn’t have defensive stats (not that blocks and steals are great, but they’re better than literally nothing). So take this with a grain of salt. But that Oscar’s WS Helio scores look so comparable to early Jordan scores at comparable win levels basically suggests that, as far as Win Shares is concerned, attacking Oscar for the Royals losing would have been about as fair as attacking Jordan for the Bulls losing. Except that we got to see Jordan eventually get good teammates and win. We never got to see that for Oscar . . . in Cincinnati.
By the latter half of the decade Oscar was frustrated with Cincinnati, and Cincinnati was frustrated with him.
And that’s how Oscar Robertson ended up on the trade market. And that’s how the Bucks were able to snag him for Flynn Robinson.
“Now,” you may say, “we can all agree that Oscar was great, but he was 31 in 1970, and in this era 31 was like 35 is in the modern game. And the Royals had clearly gotten worse. And Robinson (from what must be 15 pages ago) actually put up pretty decent stats. Was Oscar really that much of an upgrade?”
Good question. The following per-game stats are adjusted to a pace of 100:
Oscar Robertson: 21 / 5 / 7 over 69 games, 22.1% ShotShare, +6.6% shooting, 11.4 Win Shares
Flynn Robinson: 19 / 3 / 5 over 81 games, 25.1% ShotShare, +3.8% shooting, 9.3 Win Shares
What would the Bucks like about the trade? Well, everything. Oscar plays more minutes per game, he rebounds better, he passes better, he shoots better, the lower scoring load matters less on a team with Kareem and he’s a veteran presence (if not a winning one) on a team with a lot of young players.
From the Royals’ point of view, there were some things to like the other way. Oscar was getting older, and didn’t seem able to carry the scoring load he once had (which would be valuable for a mediocre team like the Royals). Also, Oscar was three years older, and had missed 10+ games in two of the last three years. Robinson may well have been younger, healthier and his ability to carry larger scoring loads was better for Cincinnati. And if you really wanted to go lowest common denominator with it, Robinson was a guard from a winning team and Oscar was not. Also, Oscar and Cincinnati coach Bob Cousy were feuding hard, and it was getting increasingly hard to imagine the whole thing working out well.
So the trade happened.
Ultimately it worked out reasonably well for Cincinnati. They did get worse, but not by much, buoyed by the arrival of rookie Nate Archibald and the development of Norm Van Lier. I don’t want to pretend that the Royals went on to great things or anything, but neither did they implode. The only real drawback was that their feud with Oscar ensured that they’d get about 40 cents on the dollar for him.
So. The 1971 season approached. The NBA had added three expansion teams (Portland, Cleveland and Buffalo). The ABA continued to be successful, ensuring that the talent density of the league would be thinned out even more. In the West, the Lakers were clearly the team to beat. In the prior year they’d been the only team in the Conference that posted an SRS above +1, and that was with Wilt missing 60+ regular season games. With a healthy roster there was every reason to think that the Lakers would be a serious contender. In the East the Knicks were coming off a dominant championship season. Neither Clyde Frazier nor Willis Reed were past 27, and the rest of the roster seemed to be holding up. There was no real reason to pick against a Knicks - Lakers rematch.
Except . . .
In Milwaukee you had a pretty scary roster. Jon McGlocklin and Greg Smith weren’t All-Stars, but I think that Wilt have happily given up 5000 of the women he allegedly slept with to have players like that as the 3rd and 5th best players on his Warrior’ teams (so would Elgin Baylor in the early 60s, or Oscar for that matter). Bob Dandridge was coming off a surprisingly good rookie year. Despite being a fourth round pick, between the advent of the shot clock and 1970 there had only been six players listed at 6’6” or lower to post higher Win Shares in their rookie years: Oscar, Elgin, Earl Monroe, Jerry West, Tom Gola and John Havlicek. Even if Dandridge didn’t set the world on fire, his debut season was certainly auspicious. With another year of development (and with Kareem and Oscar taking defensive attention) there was every reason to think that Dandridge might improve. Kareem was one of the best rookies ever and with Oscar added he would likely get even better. And Oscar . . . nobody was quite sure what Oscar still had in the tank, but even if the rest of the roster didn’t improve (unlikely given their youth) it was still pretty clear that going from Flynn Robinson to Oscar was an upgrade.
So I don’t know if the Bucks were favored to win the title (because bettors like to go with repeat champions, and there was little reason not to like the Knicks or Lakers) . . . but the Bucks were unquestionably a team with a lot of potential. But even the Bucks’ biggest booster would likely not have picked the team to be the greatest the NBA had ever seen to that point.
The 1971 Bucks went 66-16 in the regular season (the 2nd best record the NBA had seen to that point, behind the ‘67 Sixers who won 68) but posted an SRS of +11.92, almost three points higher than the previous highest at the time and a mark that has still never been broken.
Milwaukee had the best offense in the league. By a lot. The top of the team offenses leaderboard:
Milwaukee: +6.7
Chicago: +3.3
Los Angeles: +1.6
Not even remotely close. And on defense?
Milwaukee: -4.1
New York: -3.9
Boston: -1.9
So they basically had a slightly better defense than the Knicks (who themselves had by far the best other defense in the league) and an offense that was farther ahead of the #2 team than the #2 team was above average. The year before the Bucks had a +3.1 offense; how the heck did they add 3.6 points per 100 to their offense? Was it just Oscar?
Let’s talk about it. Here’s a position by position breakdown, with the ShotShare change and shooting efficiency change from ‘70 to ‘71:
Flynn -> Oscar: -5.6% / +2.5%
Jon McGlocklin: -1.1% / +1.5%
Bob Dandridge: +3.1% / +2.8%
Greg Smith: +2.9% / +0.5%
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: +3.0% / +6.5%
So. The point guard dropped a lot of usage and added some efficiency (but not as much as you’d guess. McGlocklin dropped a little usage and gained a little efficiency. Greg Smith added a lot of usage without losing efficiency. Dandridge came out of nowhere, jumping in both usage and efficiency by respectable margins. And Kareem . . . that is a massive improvement.
But it’s pretty obvious what caused it right? Oscar was an ATG point guard, he joins an already strong offense and it becomes great . . . it’s passing, right? Let’s check:
1970: 55.3% of field goals were assisted
1971: 56.6% of field goals were assisted
Okay, so if it was passing, it doesn’t have much to do with more of their shots being assisted.
Well, a lot of that improvement is Kareem. Surely ATG bigs should expect something like that a bump like that their second year, right?
Shaq: +2.0% / +2.1%
Hakeem: +2.1% / -0.4%
Duncan: +1.2% / -3.6%
Okay, so that second-year jump isn’t a thing, or at least, certainly not on the +3%/+6% scale that Kareem had.
Maybe Oscar just made his big men better? Let’s check on Johnny Green and Connie Dierking going from Oscar in ‘70 to not-Oscar in ‘71:
Green: +2.7% shooting
Dierking: -3.1% shooting
Those players were turning 37 and 34 respectively . . . so I don’t see a huge pattern there.
Maybe it’s that 1971 was so watered down that all big men jumped in scoring?
Wilt: +0.4%
Thurmond: +1.8%
Reed: -3.3%
Hayes: -2.4%
Unseld: -1.6%
Love: -2.2%
Okay, so there’s pretty much zero evidence for the “big men scoring numbers jumped with expansion” theory.
So where does that leave us?
First, that Kareem was a phenomenal scorer, even in his second year. 29% usage on +10% shooting? If I feed that into StatHead I get some monster scorers: Barkley, Durant, Curry, Dantley, Amar’e and KAT. He was probably going to take a huge leap no matter what. But a leap this big? Most of it was Kareem, but some of it was the fact that, somehow, he was a #1 pick that was drafted by the second worst team in the league, but by his second year the team around him was actually awesome.
It’s hard to overstate: if you search the 1971 NBA by true shooting (minimum 2000 player minutes), the Bucks rank as follows:
Kareem 2nd
McGlocklin 5th
Oscar 6th
Dandridge 10th
Smith 15th
In a league with 17 teams, one team had 5 of the top 15 shooters. That shouldn’t happen. It almost beggars the imagination. How could a team so bad two years before be so good?
McGlocklin had already demonstrated that he was capable of being a good scorer even without help, so with a better team his efficiency got quite good. Smith hadn’t been a good shooter when young, but he proved that, assuming he could pick his spots and with Kareem sharing the frontcourt, he could convert at a good rate. Oscar was an ATG scorer for the era (though having lost a step at this point). And Dandridge?
Dandridge can be described as nothing more than a gift from God to the city of Milwaukee. It’s like he looked down and said “Hmm, good shooting guard. Arguably the best scoring big ever. A power forward who is quite solid when paired with the ATG center. And looking into the future, I can see that they’re going to pick up veteran Oscar. Hoooo-wee! That offense is gonna hum!
And yet.
It’s Milwaukee. Surely they need all the breaks they can get.
OMG, wouldn’t it be hilarious if I slid them a strong small forward in the draft on the down-low? Hmm, but they already spent their first . . . Let’s put him in the fourth round. That’ll really mess with people. I love it!”
I don’t want to make it sound like Dandridge was a proto-Elgin or Kawhi. He wasn’t. But his second season (by Win Shares) was above that of Earl Monroe, Jack Twyman, John Havlicek, Manu Ginobili, Allen Iverson, Chris Paul, Baron Davis . . . Landing Kareem with the #1 was luck, but the kind of luck that happens to terrible teams once a decade. Picking up Oscar for Flynn Robinson was skill and opportunity. But having your fourth-round pick develop into a solid volume-scorer with efficiency? That was another level of luck (and probably skill, but if they’d known Dandridge would become Dandridge, they sure as heck wouldn’t have waited until the 4th round to draft him).
And so, in two years the sad sack ‘69 Bucks had transformed into a five deep roster of absolutely monsters, the 1971 Bucks that completely torched everything. It was some skill and some luck. But their regular season dominance (by SRS) is something that is historically unmatched. They won 14 more games than the 2nd best team in the league, and posted an SRS that was 6.87 points higher than the 2nd best team in the league. The second best team in the league was closer to average than they were to the ‘71 Bucks. It’s a level of complete domination over the league that no team has come near since (aided of course by a smaller league of 17 teams).
But wait, what happened to the Knicks and Lakers? Weren’t they supposed to be the contenders this year?
The Knicks took a step back from the year before. Here are their relative offensive and defensive ratings from ‘69 (when they were quite good), ‘70 (when they were formidable) and ‘71 (when they were only pretty good):
Offensive Rating: +2.9 -> +1.3 -> +0.6
Defensive Rating: -2.2 -> -6.6 -> -3.9
SRS: +5.48 -> +8.42 -> +5.05
The defense-for-offense drop from ‘69 to ‘70 was the Knicks trading Walt Bellamy for Dave Debusschere. But in ‘71 everything took a step back. Willis Reed didn’t seem quite the same after his infamous injury in the ‘70 postseason, with his shooting efficiency four points lower. And the team's outstanding defense had waned to merely strong. I won’t go into too much detail here, suffice to say that the ‘71 Knicks were not the same level of team as the ‘70 Knicks by a long shot.
And the ‘71 Lakers? They just weren’t that good. Granted that West got knocked out for the year, but that was after playing 69 games. As weird as it is to say, all the talent explosions that would happen for the ‘72 Lakers hadn’t happened yet. Gail Goodrich in ‘71 was only a sufficient scorer, a less effective version of McGlocklin (though certainly in a worse offensive environment). The ‘71 Lakers only won 48 games and posted a +3.27 SRS. And with West out for the playoffs they had no real shot at competing.
So the ‘71 Bucks were stupidly, ridiculously, dominant and they also existed in a league with almost no legitimate challengers. It’d be like if the ‘96 Bulls waxed everyone in the regular season, but Shawn Kemp broke his leg, Karl Malone got hit by a fruit truck and Hakeem retired early. The ‘96 Bulls didn’t *need* that kind of situation to win . . . but if they had it you can sure bet they’d stomp through the playoffs in short order.
In the semifinals (the first round back then) the Bucks drew the Jerry Lucas/Nate Thurmond San Francisco Warriors (-0.8). The Bucks smoked them in five by 17 points a game. They shut down the Warriors’ offense (holding them to -5.0% shooting) while shooting at +2.2% themselves. Kareem averaged a 28/16/1 on +2.8% for the series.
In the Conference Finals they faced the no-West Lakers (+5.0). The Bucks smoked them in five by 13.8 points a game. The Lakers’ offense was absolutely brought to a halt; as a team they shot -6.3% (which is stupid low) and Wilt averaged a 22/19/2 on -1.1%. Kareem was definitely slowed in the series, averaging a 25/17/4 on +1.0% but the rest of the Bucks shot well (+3.4% as a team, with McGlocklin averaging 17 on +7.8% and Smith a 13 on +13.0%. Not close.
In the NBA Finals they ran into a surprise. The Baltimore Bullets (+4.7) had upset the Knicks and were representing the East. The Bullets did a pretty good job slowing the Bucks’ offense, specifically by obliterating them in possessions (an almost 18 possession advantage per game). The Bucks still won, sweeping the Bullets by 12.3 points a game. Kareem averaged a 27/19/3 on +13.4%.
The ‘71 Bucks had won it all. And they hadn’t won any series by less than 12 points a game.
I realize that I blew by those pretty quick. There wasn’t much to talk about. It would be like writing a blow by blow of a fox raiding a chicken coop. Not that exciting things didn’t happen, but it was ugly, not fair, and enhanced the dignity of no parties involved.
And Oscar had proven that he 100% was a championship-level player. And pundits would never again confuse having bad teammates for a player not being great . . .
I wish.
14 | Bucks
13 |
12 |
11 |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 | Bullets
3 | Bulls, Lakers
2 | Knicks, Celtics, Suns
1 |
0 | 76ers
-0 | Pistons, Rockets
-1 | Hawks, Warriors, Sonics
-2 | Royals
-3 |
-4 |
-5 |
-6 | Blazers
-7 |
-8 | Braves
-9 |
-10|
-11|
-12| Cavs
Holy cow. This iteration of OSRS gives the ‘71 Bucks a massive ten point lead on the next closest team in the league. I guarantee you that there is no other team with anything close to that lead. That’s some domination for ya.
But do the expansion teams inflate their numbers (I’m not gonna tell you which three teams were expansion teams, it’s a secret
)? Yeah, probably. But it also inflated all the other good teams in the league too. So the Bucks’ highest-ever RSRS and 3rd highest ever OSRS? Definitely benefits from the expansion. But their dominance over their league? Had nothing to do with expansion.It was a perfect storm. One of the best players ever taking a big leap and posting an ATG-level season, a fourth-round pick developing into a strong scorer out of nowhere, having two strong contributors besides them and adding a veteran ATG guard. And at the same time, the only two remotely possible contenders either slowed with age or injury.
Does the Bucks’ weak set of playoff opponents hurt their ranking? Some would argue that, and the Bucks have a *stupid* low playoff SoS. Only the ‘57 Celtics, ‘65 Celtics and ‘76 Warriors on this list are ranked lower. But it’s not like we’re rewarding them for winning their matchups, we’re rewarding the Bucks for completely obliterating them. Vaporizing the Warriors? Meh, blowing out average teams isn’t a terribly strong indicator of championship contenders. But blowing out teams in the +5 range? That’s actually pretty rare, and not easy to do. Here are all the teams that have blown out the opposition by double digits where the opponent had an OSRS of +4 or higher at the time (sorted by opponent rating):
2016: Cavs over Raptors (+4.0), by +15.5 -> Champions
1991: Bulls over Pistons (+4.0), by +11.5 -> Champions
2001: Lakers over Blazers (+4.5), by +14.7 -> Champions
2017: Warriors over Jazz (+4.6), by +15.0 -> Champions
2014: Spurs over Blazers (+4.6), by +13.4 -> Champions
1989: Pistons over Bucks (+4.6), by +11.8 -> Champions
2010: Magic over Hawks (+4.7), by +25.3 -> Conf Finals
1971: Bucks over Bullets (+4.7), by +12.3 -> Champions
2015: Cavs over Hawks (+4.8), by +13.3 -> Lost in Finals (to ‘15 Warriors)
1969: Celtics over Sixers (+4.8), by +10.4 -> Champions
1971: Bucks over Lakers (+5.0), by +13.8 -> Champions
2018: Rockets over Jazz (+5.6), by +10.0 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘18 Warriors)
2018: Cavs over Raptors (+5.7), by +14.0 -> Lost in Finals (to ‘18 Warriors)
1983: Bucks over Celtics (+5.8), by +11.8 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘83 Sixers)
2001: Spurs over Mavericks (+6.0), by +11.6 -> Conf Finals (lost to ‘01 Lakers)
1998: Lakers over Sonics (+6.2), by +11.6 -> Conf Finals
1985: Sixers over Bucks (+6.3), by +10.0 -> Conf Finals
2016: Cavs over Hawks (+6.3), by +12.5 -> Champions
2014: Spurs over Heat (+6.4), by +14.0 -> Champions
1991: Jazz over Suns (+6.5), by +11.5 -> SemiFinals
1986: Celtics over Bucks (+6.7), by +15.0 -> Champions
2011: Mavericks over Lakers (+6.9), by +14.0 -> Champions
1967: Sixers over Celtics (+6.9), by +10.0 -> Champions
1999: Spurs over Blazers (+6.9), by +10.3 -> Champions
1970: Knicks over Bucks (+7.1), by +10.4 -> Champions
1983: Sixers over Lakers (+7.2), by +10.0 -> Champions
1996: Jazz over Spurs (+7.3), by +11.7 -> Conf Finals
2014: Spurs over Thunder (+7.5), by +10.5 -> Champions
1972: Lakers over Bulls (+7.9), by +10.0 -> Champions
2013: Spurs over Grizzlies (+8.3), by +11.0 -> Lost in Finals (but probably shouldn’t have)
2017: Warriors over Spurs (+8.9), by +16.0 -> Champions
2001: Lakers over Spurs (+9.0), by +18.2 -> Champions
Of the 32 teams that fit that criteria, only 11 didn’t win a championship. That’s pretty impressive; a 10+ point per game win over a team that’s +4 OSRS or better predicts a champion about two-thirds of the time. And of the eleven teams that lost, five of them lost to an ATG team. So it’s not a crazy stretch to say that this is a feat that means that you’ll either win a championship (or lose to an ATG team) 4 times out of 5.
The ‘71 Bucks had two of those. So even if they didn’t play great teams, they distinguished themselves in historically great ways.
Frankly, I think any list that doesn’t have the 1971 Bucks in the Top 5 is an obvious joke and needs to be thrown out. I honestly don’t see how to have them lower than third (unless you’re really obsessed with playing borderline Top 100 team somewhere in the playoffs). It’s not their fault that there were no legit challengers that year. In every way they played like a Top 3 all-time team should have.
But I can’t put them above the remaining two teams. I just can’t.
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