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Don't forget, the home team for the series only benefits from that designation for Game 7. The rankings for these teams are out of 37 (because their are 37 teams in the 1970s tourney). The player stats are SS (ShotShare, percentage of team's shots taken when on the court), and the slash stats are rebounds per game, assists per game and stocks per game (if applicable), all adjusted to a Pace of 100.

The 1971 Baltimore Bullets (#33) @ The 1974 Chicago Bulls (#32)

Overall:

Record: '74 Bulls, 54 wins (21st) > '71 Bullets, 42 wins (37th)
RSRS: '74 Bulls, +3.20 (27th) > '71 Bullets, +0.91 (36th)
PSRS: '71 Bullets, +6.61 (17th) > '74 Bulls, -0.62 (37th, 11 games)

When the '71 Bullets have Possession:

Overall Comparison, '71 Bullets' offense vs '74 Bulls' defense:

Regular Season: -1.0 Offensive Rating (35th) vs -4.1 Defensive Rating (11th): -5.1 expected
Playoffs: +0.4 Offensive Rating (30th) vs +4.7 Defensive Rating (37th): +5.1 expected

Lineup:

PG: Earl Monroe, 25.5% SS on +0.2% rTS, 2.2 / 3.8
SG: Fred Carter, 22.0% SS on -5.4% rTS, 2.8 / 1.8
SF: Jack Marin, 21.7% SS on +1.0% rTS, 5.4 / 2.2
PF: Gus Johnson, 20.1% SS on -0.6% rTS, 14.7 / 2.5 (plays only 4 of the 7 games)
C: Wes Unseld, 14.2% SS on +4.6% rTS, 14.5 / 3.4
6th: Kevin Loughery, 24.9% SS on -3.8% rTS, 2.3 / 3.2
Backup PF: John Tresvant, 14.1% SS on +2.1% rTS, 4.6 / 0.9

When the '74 Bulls have Possession:

Overall Comparison, '74 Bulls' offense vs '71 Bullets' defense:

Regular Season: -1.0 Offensive Rating (34th) vs -1.5 Defensive Rating (29th): -2.5 expected
Playoffs: +3.1 Offensive Rating (10th) vs -5.1 Defensive Rating (11th): -2.0 expected

Lineup:

PG: Norm Van Lier, 20.0% SS on -3.3% rTS, 4.5 / 6.6/ 2.0
SG: Jerry Sloan, 17.2% SS on -1.4% rTS, 6.9 / 1.8 / 2.4 (plays only 4 of the 7 games)
SF: Chet Walker, 24.8% SS on +6.3% rTS, 4.8 / 2.3 / 0.8
PF: Bob Love, 27.6% SS on -4.0% rTS, 5.7 / 1.5 / 1.2
C: Clifford Ray, 12.5% SS on +3.1% rTS, 11.6 / 3.0 / 2.8
6th: Bob Weiss, 17.6% SS on +2.0% rTS, 1.2 / 3.6 / 1.4

Questions:

1) How seriously do we take the Bulls' defensive implosion in the playoffs? My instinct is to be cautious about it - much of that is Kareem ripping them apart with 66% FG and averaging a 35/20 for the series. First off, '74 Kareem was a monster. But second off, it's pretty clear that the Bullets have no big-man scorer even remotely comparable. The Bullets' offense volume comes from the guards, not the bigs.
2) The Bulls' defense were better at generating turnovers than any other team in this tournament. How effective might this be against the Bullets? I don't know; Monroe is known more for scoring than passing (and the Bullets posted really, really low assist numbers overall).
3) Can the Bullets' front-court defense (Unseld and Johnson/Tresvant) exploit the fact that the Bulls' possessions disproportionately end up being taken by the inefficient Bob Love?

I'm not going to post a timeline on how long these are up; the first time I generate these stats it takes a fair amount of time. Once I've done this for every team, the write-ups are the only real time-suck.

Post with who you would pick to win this series, ideally with the number of games. And if you have any insight into these players or matchups beyond what is above please don't hesitate to post; the goal (as always) is for us all to walk away with more knowledge than we started with. Lord knows I don't know a ton about these teams

Key injuries -- if only first round used, both teams are at full. If the whole playoff used, Gus Johnson and Jerry Sloan are out half the playoffs which is key for both teams as these are arguably each team's best rebounder and man defender.

Key matchup is Earl Monroe v. Jerry Sloan (or Norm Van Lier) and whether the Bullets other guards Carter and Shue, who were very streaky and frenetic, go hot or cold. Unseld is the best player out there, Walker v. Marin would be fun too though both were too solid to take down.

I lean to the Bullets in a close series as I think Unseld/Gus Johnson give them a nice rebounding advantage and both teams will play strong defense.

I feel the league was a bit stronger in '71 than '74, but still feel the RS play leans towards the Bulls. For playoffs I tend to prefer looking at individual series vs averaged stats.

'71 Bullets
1st round - 4-3 vs Sixers - Johnson is healthy for the series, team goes up 3-1 on a decent Sixers team and they come back to force a game 7. Pretty good all-around effort from the Bullets, seemed to struggle a bit to contain Cunningham/Clark. Sixers outshot them, so won the series on the boards/line.
Conference Finals - 4-3 vs Knicks - Johnson misses most of the series, but they still clutch it out, down 2-0 and 3-2 at points. They get to the line more, shoot better, and win on the boards, suggesting to me that the Knicks won the turnover battle pretty cleanly to send it to 7. Jack Marin had a pretty good series after a meh opening round. Frazier was efficient against them, though not huge volume. Really a very nice win over a +5 Knicks squad.
Finals - 0-4 vs Bucks - Got absolutely smacked by an all-time Bucks squad. Johnson is still largely out. Don't appear to have done much of anything successfully on D, Oscar/KAJ/Dandridge were all very effective. Failed to get to the line in this series like they did in their first two rounds. Still solid on the boards (considering the massive shooting % gap).

'74 Bulls
1st round - 4-3 vs Pistons - Outscored for the series, but won the close ones. Pistons outshot them throughout, so I suspect the Bulls won the turnover battle. Lanier seemed to have a pretty strong series against them.
Conference Finals - 0-4 vs Bucks - Another massacre at the hands of the Bucks. Kareem is even more dominant. Sloan misses the series. Bulls have a huge advantage at the FT line and still get worked. Oscar/Dandridge both look solid.

I'll have to think about it some more and come back with my vote, it's a close series. Interested to hear others thoughts. I lean towards Bulls over Bullets when both are healthy, but Bullets over Bulls when Sloan/Johnson are out, that win over the Knicks mostly without Johnson is quite impressive to me.

Random thoughts -
surprised to see Loughery down as sub; it does look like Carter did start in the Finals, but Loughery did start all the games in the first round, and did play more minutes.

The Bullets had a great playoff run; they beat the Knicks, which was really key for the Bucks, as the Knicks did very well against the Bucks in 70 and 71 - they might have beaten the Bucks in the 71 Finals - they just matched up better.
But the Knicks and Bullets matched up so well
- Monroe and Frazier, Loughery and Barnett, Marin and Bradley, Johnson and DeBusschere, Unseld and Reed

All 10 guys were at least above average starters. Every matchup could go either way as to who was better. I dont know if there was ever a rivalry that could match this.

The Bulls in the early-mid 70s had a weird team in that Sloan & Van Lier outrebounded Love and Walker. Chet was a great one on one player; a little like Adrian Dantley with a lot of head and shoulder fakes and a decent mid range shot. Love held the ball high, was mostly a jump shooter. The team was tough and played good defense, part of their problem in the playoffs is they really didnt have a top go-to scorer.

I am from Chicago, and was in high school during most of this time. The Bulls were always a team that couldnt beat a better team in the playoffs. Usually the Lakers, once the Bucks, once the Hawks, once the Warriors.

As an official ruling, Gus Johnson and Jerry Sloan are both missing games 5, 6 and 7 for the purposes of this series.

I will try to make some points tomorrow and I'll bring footage for each team.

Let's start with 1971 Bullets. There is not a lot of footage available, but I think it's enough to get a rough estimation of how they played.

Games available



Since there wasn't massive difference between 1971 and 1970 rosters, I'll also include clips from 1970 season:



Bullets teams was built around Johnson/Unseld duo on defensive end and shooters around Earl Monroe, their main volume scorer.

On defense, they usually tried to play solid man defense without a lot of help. Their best defenders (Johnson and Wes) were perfectly suited to that role - Unseld was a smart team defender that could put his wide body between the driver and the basket when necessary and healthy Gus created a havoc on passing lanes. Their defense wasn't dominant because of two things:

- they lacked size (especially after Johnson's injury),
- their wing rotation isn't the strongest (Monroe and Marin was around average, Carter was quite decent, very athletic and Loughrey was probably below average).

These two facts were visible in playoffs. In the first round, they struggled to deal with Cunningham (big, athletic forward who played on perimeter) and Clark (quick and tricky guard). In the second round, they also had problems with Frazier, but they did very good job on Knicks frontcourt (with Willis injury in mind). This was the kind of matchup that suited Bullets - Knicks relied a lot on movement and shooting, Baltimore players didn't try to help too much on drivers which caused Frazier to be efficient, but Knicks as a whole struggling. In the finals, they lost healthy Johnson and with Kareem in the middle, Unseld was outtmatched.

Offensively, Bullets don't bring a lot to the table. They had fairly well-rounded style, but it relied heavily on Monroe taking and making tough shots. Earl didn't have his best scoring season unfortunately, which hurt his team. Outside of that, they run a lot of off-ball actions around Unseld's passing in the high post. With Marin and Carter, they had enough spacing and shooting to give Unseld and Earl the space to work with. Gus Johnson also ate some transition and isolation opportunities, but he wasn't efficient in doing so. Fred Carter is a wildcard, he had a deep shooting range and could get hot but wasn't reliable enough to be the second option.

Now, let's move on 1974 Bulls. I have only one (incomplete) Bulls game from that season, but this team was roughly the same in 1971-75 period (with the exception of changing Ray for Thurmond in 1975):



Bulls team was built around their defense. They were by far the best at creating turnovers and it was closely related to their identity - the pair of Norm van Lier and Jerry Sloan. Norm was a pesky defender who sticked to his man like a glue and applied full-court press for most of the game. Sloan was more of a help defender and the master of drawing charges. He was very physical and crafty man defender as well and he gave Bulls a lot of help on the glass. Their bigs (Ray and Boerwinkle) were solid post defenders and excellent at boxing out opponents. They didn't bring much rim protection though, which is why Bulls usually didn't have strong defensive FG%. Bob Love and Chet Walker were also both solid defenders, though neither was spectacular. Love struggled with bigger forwards because of his lanky built and Chet didn't have the quickness he used to have anymore.

Offensively, Bulls also relied heavily on off-ball actions with Tom/Ray finding open men from the high post. They were a bit more versatile with Walker and Love iso skills, though Bob wasn't particulary efficient scorer (he hated contact and loved shooting contested jumpshots). Sloan was solid offensive player, but he couldn't create his shots well outside of quick fadeaways. Norm gave them intensity and driving threat, but he wasn't much of a scorer or shooter either. I think they missed Boerwinkle (who missed half of the season) a lot on that end, Ray wasn't even close to him as a post playmaker.

Matchups - this is where it's getting interesting.

The combination of Norm and Sloan were usually very effective against Monroe. In 1971, Earl averaged only 18 ppg on 45 TS%. I see Monroe having a very rough shooting series against such a good defensive backcourt.

On the contrary, Walker would probably have a field day. Gus Johnson would have to defend one of Walker/Love duo, I take a guess that he'd take bigger, higher volume Love (and he'd turn Bob's shooting to miserable efficiency) but then Chet would be guarded by Marin, who wouldn't be able to deal with him well.

On top of that, Unseld would have to wrestle two big guys on the board and he'd have to pay the attention to quick hands of van Lier and Sloan.

All in all, I think that Bulls team was simply more versatile and better suited to this matchup. It would be a long, defensive minded series but I think that Bulls would take it in 6 or 7 games. I'm open to discussion if anyone disagrees with me or has different opinon, but for now I feel pretty comfortable with my choice.

70sFan wrote:All in all, I think that Bulls team was simply more versatile and better suited to this matchup. It would be a long, defensive minded series but I think that Bulls would take it in 6 or 7 games. I'm open to discussion if anyone disagrees with me or has different opinon, but for now I feel pretty comfortable with my choice.

A very good write-up on both teams; I live in Chicago, and maybe saw 100 games; much much fewer of the Bullets, but you did a great job in analyzing and describing both teams.
A few additional points -
Boerwinkle was a very good passer, more so than Ray; but Ray was definitely more athletic. Ray also (at least seemed to) miss more dunks than anyone. Walker was definitely the Bulls best one-on-one player, Van Lier was a great hustler who would pressure guys as well as almost anyone, but his shooting his probably worse than you describe.
Probably a 80% plus chance Johnson guards Love; I dont think they would put Marin on a 6-8 guy, even a non rebounder like Love. You probably see that Carter was nicknamed "Mad Dog"; pretty good odds he and Van Lier would get into at least one fight.

Both teams were together for a couple of years at this point, and both were really trying to prove themselves in the playoffs; kind of like the Bucks this year - they really didn't have to concentrate on the regular season; their whole definition of success was the playoffs.

And that said, the Bullets beat two pretty good teams, including a Knick team that won 2 championships and lost a final. The Bulls got swept by Milwaukee that showed its weaknesses in the Finals.

Based on the playoff runs and their playoff history, I'm going with the Bullets in 6 over the Bulls, but am rooting for the Bulls.

70sFan wrote:...Walker would probably have a field day. Gus Johnson would have to defend one of Walker/Love duo, I take a guess that he'd take bigger, higher volume Love (and he'd turn Bob's shooting to miserable efficiency) but then Chet would be guarded by Marin, who wouldn't be able to deal with him well.

On top of that, Unseld would have to wrestle two big guys on the board and he'd have to pay the attention to quick hands of van Lier and Sloan....

I think y'all are sleeping on Jack Marin a bit. He was a tall (Topps had him at 6-8, BB-Ref at 6-7), though skinny 3, with constant hustle and good defensive effort who could get you a consistent 15-20 with good range (master of the corner 3 back when it was only worth 2). That's an inch or two taller than Gus Johnson though without the massive physical strength and leaping ability (Gus was the first real backboard breaker that I remember in the NBA). Houston thought enough of Marin to trade Elvin Hayes even up for him before he broke down. I'd guess that if they were both healthy, he's be on Love the jump shooter and Gus on Walker who was the bigger leaper and inside threat.

As for Boerwinkle, he was hurt all year and played almost no time during the playoffs (2 games for a total of 7 minutes). Ray was a solid banger and decent but unspectacular passer (Boerwinkle was much more of a passing hub) but they were using Dennis Awtrey (who was the classic big white awkward guy of the era) as a backup center in the playoffs that year.

One thing I want to add is that when Sloan and Gus go out FOR ALMOST HALF THE SERIES, their backups were not that good. Chicago was using Bobby Weiss who was the classic coach on the floor guys (31 and balding) with decent passing skills but poor shooting (4.7 ppg on .311 shooting for the playoffs in 23 mpg). Washington brought in their own aging vet in John Tresvant who had been a 11 point/7 rebound rotation guy for years but didn't exactly light it up either (8.3ppg on .409 shooting in 27 minutes) though a bit better than Weiss. I think Tresvant gives you a little more but then Gus gave you a little more as a starter too so he has more to replace.

Vote: '71 Bullets in 7

Very close matchup, favor the Bulls 60-40 when healthy and the Bullets 70-30 when they're missing Sloan/Johnson. In short just quite impressed with the Bullets win over the Knicks largely without Johnson.

Personally, I'm going with the Bulls in 6 here. They're clearly the better regular season team, their major playoff struggles were against '74 Kareem and that's something the '71 Bullets can't really exploit. That the Bulls historically did a solid job restraining Monroe (who generally shows up as being pretty resilient) and that the Bulls have home-court for Game 7 push me over the edge.

Obviously everyone has their own standards, but for me the Bullets' win over the '71 Knicks is impressive but still needs to be taken with a grain of salt for sample size reasons (since their regular season was distressingly mediocre).

So far for votes I'm seeing:

70sFan: Bulls
Sansterre: Bulls

DQuinn: Bullets
eminence: Bullets
HomeCourtLoss: Bullets

I'm guaranteeing voting being open for another 24 hours - great discussion everybody! I'm already learning a lot about these players and teams from the great contributions here!

I'm going with the Bulls in here because Unseld's presence is kind of underwhelming in here.
One of the issues with players like Unseld, they lose some value against low usage / efficient scoring defensive bigs and that's exactly what the Bulls have in Clifford Ray.

Also Gus Johnson missing 3 games is more important than Jerry Sloan missing 3 games.

Vote: 1974 Bulls in 6.

(Kind of sad I had to go with the Bulls because Earl Monroe is one my favourites from the '70s)

penbeast0 wrote:

Giving it 24 more hours for PenBeast and anyone else who wants to cast a vote. Currently tied 3-3.

penbeast0 wrote:I think y'all are sleeping on Jack Marin a bit. He was a tall (Topps had him at 6-8, BB-Ref at 6-7), though skinny 3, with constant hustle and good defensive effort who could get you a consistent 15-20 with good range (master of the corner 3 back when it was only worth 2). That's an inch or two taller than Gus Johnson though without the massive physical strength and leaping ability (Gus was the first real backboard breaker that I remember in the NBA). Houston thought enough of Marin to trade Elvin Hayes even up for him before he broke down. I'd guess that if they were both healthy, he's be on Love the jump shooter and Gus on Walker who was the bigger leaper and inside threat.

I definitely could be wrong on this part. I always viewed Marin as a very fundamentally sound player on both ends of the floor and he'd probably do a fair job on Love.

As for Boerwinkle, he was hurt all year and played almost no time during the playoffs (2 games for a total of 7 minutes). Ray was a solid banger and decent but unspectacular passer (Boerwinkle was much more of a passing hub) but they were using Dennis Awtrey (who was the classic big white awkward guy of the era) as a backup center in the playoffs that year.

Yeah, I didn't know if Tom was injured in the playoffs as well. That puts Bulls into disadvantage on the glass, though again - without Johnson, Wes would be outmatched alone.

One thing I want to add is that when Sloan and Gus go out FOR ALMOST HALF THE SERIES, their backups were not that good. Chicago was using Bobby Weiss who was the classic coach on the floor guys (31 and balding) with decent passing skills but poor shooting (4.7 ppg on .311 shooting for the playoffs in 23 mpg). Washington brought in their own aging vet in John Tresvant who had been a 11 point/7 rebound rotation guy for years but didn't exactly light it up either (8.3ppg on .409 shooting in 27 minutes) though a bit better than Weiss. I think Tresvant gives you a little more but then Gus gave you a little more as a starter too so he has more to replace.

I simply think that Gus was more essential for the Bullets than Sloan for the Bulls, though both were very valuable. For some reason, I always saw quality in Weiss - he seemed to be smart player and good shooter (though, certainly not in 1974 playoffs).

Thank you for these points, you made me take a second look at some things.

sansterre wrote:

penbeast0 wrote:

Giving it 24 more hours for PenBeast and anyone else who wants to cast a vote. Currently tied 3-3.

I voted in the second post in the thread, though I rewrote the post a couple of times to try to make it more coherent.

penbeast0 wrote:

sansterre wrote:

penbeast0 wrote:

Giving it 24 more hours for PenBeast and anyone else who wants to cast a vote. Currently tied 3-3.

I voted in the second post in the thread, though I rewrote the post a couple of times to try to make it more coherent.

Ah so! I read "I lean" to be less committal than an official vote.

Okay. Barring any new votes, I'll mark this as a win for the '71 Bullets and I'll have the next matchup posted tomorrow morning.

And hey. Maybe the '71 Bullets will have a shot against the #1 seed . . .

sansterre wrote:And hey. Maybe the '71 Bullets will have a shot against the #1 seed . . .

I have a sneaking suspicions that they do not, lol.

eminence wrote:

sansterre wrote:And hey. Maybe the '71 Bullets will have a shot against the #1 seed . . .

I have a sneaking suspicions that they do not, lol.

Yeah. We literally got to see this matchup play out in real life and it wasn't pretty.

It was pretty if you were a Bucks fan. ;-(