RealGM

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 Chicago Bulls (#36) @ The 1977 Los Angeles Lakers (#29)

Overall:

Record: '77 Lakers, 53 wins (22nd) > ‘71 Bulls, 51 wins (26th)
RSRS: ‘71 Bulls, +5.47 (14th) > ‘77 Lakers, +2.64 (31st)
PSRS: '77 Lakers, +4.20 (25th) > ‘71 Bulls, +0.97 (35th)

When the '71 Bulls have Possession:

Overall Comparison, '71 Bulls' offense vs '77 Lakers’' defense:

Regular Season: +3.3 Offensive Rating (9th) vs -0.6 Defensive Rating (35th): +2.7 expected
Playoffs: +2.0 Offensive Rating (21st) vs -2.1 Defensive Rating (26th): -0.1 expected

Lineup:

PG: Bob Weiss, 15.5% SS on +0.3% rTS, 2.1 / 4.3
SG: Jerry Sloan, 21.5% SS on -1.7% rTS, 8.0 / 3.2
SF: Chet Walker, 25.1% SS on +4.1% rTS, 6.7 / 2.0
PF: Bob Love, 25.4% SS on +1.5% rTS, 7.7 / 2.1
C: Tom Boerwinkle, 15.8% SS on +2.6% rTS, 12.6 / 4.4
6th: Jim Fox, 20.6% SS on +3.1% rTS, 6.7 / 2.2

When the '77 Lakers have Possession:

Overall Comparison, '77 Lakers' offense vs '71 Bulls' defense:

Regular Season: +1.9 Offensive Rating (18th) vs -1.5 Defensive Rating (28th): +0.4 expected
Playoffs: +0.8 Offensive Rating (27th) vs +1.5 Defensive Rating (33rd): +2.3 expected

Lineup:

PG: Lucius Allen, 21.5% SS on -1.4% rTS, 3.1 / 5.0 / 1.6 (plays only 4 of the 7 games)
SG: Don Chaney, 10.9% SS on -7.1% rTS, 3.9 / 3.6 / 2.0
SF: Cazzie Russell, 23.0% SS on +1.6% rTS, 3.4 / 2.5 / 1.1
PF: Don Ford, 16.1% SS on -2.6% rTS, 4.1 / 1.5 / 1.0
C: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 27.3% SS on +9.7% rTS, 12.7 / 3.7 / 4.2
6th: Earl Tatum, 24.3% SS on -2.1% rTS, 3.3 / 1.6 / 1.5

Discussion Questions:

1. Injuries: Lucius Allen will be missing games 2, 4 and 6. This will exacerbate the Lakers' already paper-thin roster issues.
2. In 1974 Kareem completely ripped the Bulls’ excellent defense apart. 1977 Kareem is comparably good. But the ‘71 Bulls are a different team . . . right? So the question is, exactly how much does ‘77 Kareem torch the Bulls?
3. Look at everyone on the ‘77 Lakers not named Kareem. With the exception of Cazzie Russell, they all shot below average (some more than others). If the Bulls can hold Kareem to being merely excellent, can the rest of the Lakers do enough to bring home a win?
4. Once again, the Bulls appear to be the superior team in the regular season. And once again the Bulls fell flat in the playoffs. The Lakers, in contrast, did pretty well. Exactly how seriously should we see the Bulls’ dropoff in the playoffs?
5. 1971 was in the middle of some serious expansion which unquestionably watered things down some. So can we take the Bulls’ superior regular season SRS at face value?


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



MasterThread

Interesting research note:

In the '77 Playoffs over 11 games, the Lakers were 3-3 when Kareem scored 35+ points. They were 1-4 when he scored less. In games where he got more than 5 offensive rebounds they were 3-0. In games where he did not they were 1-7. It's a small sample, but it underscores just how dependent the Lakers were on Kareem having great games to remain competitive against good teams.

Agree with everyone else, Bulls have the advantage 1-4, Kareem owns Boerwinkle who wasn't the quickest or most athletic center (good size and passing though). The question is whether Kareem can do a carry job over a superior team. I generally prefer the good team so I will go with Chicago here but it's very very iffy. Kareem is certainly capable of winning this series. If Lucius Allen were fully healthy, I might go LA here.

At first thought, you should take clearly a better team which was 1971 Bulls. At the same time though, were 1971 Bulls superior to 1977 Warriors? The do seem to look better based on RS performance, but we should remember that the league was considerably stronger in 1977 than 1971. In terms of actual talent perspective, I find these two quite close.

Kareem would dominate Boerwinkle and Fox, no question about that. He dominated Ray/Parish pair and Walton to such a degree that I don't see any reason to believe that Boerwinkle would fare much better. On top of that, it seems that Wilt gave Bulls a lot of problems on defense and Kareem was more mobile and quicker defender than 1971 Wilt, with comparable intimidation factor.

With healthy Allen, I'd take Kareem... I mean Lakers to beat the Bulls in 7 games. With Allen missing games it'd be incredibly hard though. So the question is - is Allen available for this series?

Also, some 1977 Lakers footage that are not available online:

70sFan wrote:At first thought, you should take clearly a better team which was 1971 Bulls. At the same time though, were 1971 Bulls superior to 1977 Warriors? The do seem to look better based on RS performance, but we should remember that the league was considerably stronger in 1977 than 1971. In terms of actual talent perspective, I find these two quite close.

Kareem would dominate Boerwinkle and Fox, no question about that. He dominated Ray/Parish pair and Walton to such a degree that I don't see any reason to believe that Boerwinkle would fare much better. On top of that, it seems that Wilt gave Bulls a lot of problems on defense and Kareem was more mobile and quicker defender than 1971 Wilt, with comparable intimidation factor.

With healthy Allen, I'd take Kareem... I mean Lakers to beat the Bulls in 7 games. With Allen missing games it'd be incredibly hard though. So the question is - is Allen available for this series?

Allen is playing in 4 of the 7 games.

I indicated that in the lineup listing, but I get enough questions about these injuries that I feel like I need to put it somewhere else as well. Would adding them to the "discussion questions" be useful?

This is really interesting because the Bulls are certainly the better overall team, BUT this is also possibly peak Kareem and defeating peak Kareem in a playoff series...I don’t know. 1977 Warriors were also better overall and lost in 7 with Kareem going wild, so I see possibly the same thing happening here. Out of every player ever, I see the least amount of variance in what a player could do offensively at peak levels because you know what he’s going to do, as does the opposition, but he does it anyway in the pretty much same exact way.

I’m going to have to go Lakers in 7 even though Chicago has home court in that game 7.

For me personally, I am certain that '77 Kareem would light up the Bulls. But between Allen's injury and the rest of the Lakers being so weak . . . I feel like I should go with the better team. I feel like Kareem averages a 30+/12+/3+ and the Lakers lose in 6.

sansterre wrote:

70sFan wrote:At first thought, you should take clearly a better team which was 1971 Bulls. At the same time though, were 1971 Bulls superior to 1977 Warriors? The do seem to look better based on RS performance, but we should remember that the league was considerably stronger in 1977 than 1971. In terms of actual talent perspective, I find these two quite close.

Kareem would dominate Boerwinkle and Fox, no question about that. He dominated Ray/Parish pair and Walton to such a degree that I don't see any reason to believe that Boerwinkle would fare much better. On top of that, it seems that Wilt gave Bulls a lot of problems on defense and Kareem was more mobile and quicker defender than 1971 Wilt, with comparable intimidation factor.

With healthy Allen, I'd take Kareem... I mean Lakers to beat the Bulls in 7 games. With Allen missing games it'd be incredibly hard though. So the question is - is Allen available for this series?

Allen is playing in 4 of the 7 games.

I indicated that in the lineup listing, but I get enough questions about these injuries that I feel like I need to put it somewhere else as well. Would adding them to the "discussion questions" be useful?

Yes, listing injuries in "discussion questions" would be very helpful.

70sFan wrote:At first thought, you should take clearly a better team which was 1971 Bulls. At the same time though, were 1971 Bulls superior to 1977 Warriors? The do seem to look better based on RS performance, but we should remember that the league was considerably stronger in 1977 than 1971. In terms of actual talent perspective, I find these two quite close.

Kareem would dominate Boerwinkle and Fox, no question about that. He dominated Ray/Parish pair and Walton to such a degree that I don't see any reason to believe that Boerwinkle would fare much better. On top of that, it seems that Wilt gave Bulls a lot of problems on defense and Kareem was more mobile and quicker defender than 1971 Wilt, with comparable intimidation factor.

With healthy Allen, I'd take Kareem... I mean Lakers to beat the Bulls in 7 games. With Allen missing games it'd be incredibly hard though. So the question is - is Allen available for this series?

With Allen out for 3 of the 7 games, who would you like to pick?

Right now the voting is 2-1, with PenBeast0 and myself voting for the Bulls and HCL voting for the Lakers. I'm holding this open for another 24 hours.

sansterre wrote:

70sFan wrote:At first thought, you should take clearly a better team which was 1971 Bulls. At the same time though, were 1971 Bulls superior to 1977 Warriors? The do seem to look better based on RS performance, but we should remember that the league was considerably stronger in 1977 than 1971. In terms of actual talent perspective, I find these two quite close.

Kareem would dominate Boerwinkle and Fox, no question about that. He dominated Ray/Parish pair and Walton to such a degree that I don't see any reason to believe that Boerwinkle would fare much better. On top of that, it seems that Wilt gave Bulls a lot of problems on defense and Kareem was more mobile and quicker defender than 1971 Wilt, with comparable intimidation factor.

With healthy Allen, I'd take Kareem... I mean Lakers to beat the Bulls in 7 games. With Allen missing games it'd be incredibly hard though. So the question is - is Allen available for this series?

With Allen out for 3 of the 7 games, who would you like to pick?

Right now the voting is 2-1, with PenBeast0 and myself voting for the Bulls and HCL voting for the Lakers. I'm holding this open for another 24 hours.

I think that him playing 4 games would be enough to squeeze 3 wins and Kareem would do enough to win one game without him. I'm staying with Lakers win in 7 games.

Okay. Keeping this open for another 21 hours. I'm hoping for a tie-breaker (we're locked 2-2) though if I don't get one I'll give it to the Bulls on account of them getting a "win in 6" vote vs the two "win in 7" votes for the Lakers.

Definitely think the Lakers beat the Bulls. The 70s Bulls were both a poor playoff team and were owned by Jabbar.

Definitely think the Lakers beat the Bulls. The 70s Bulls were both a poor playoff team and were owned by Jabbar.

Okay, I'm declaring this matchup won by the '77 Lakers; they get the dubious honor of advancing to face the 1973 New York Knicks.

Next matchup will be posted shortly.