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Say Hakeem grew up in in the generation of Bill Russell, and vice versa, how would their respective teams fare?

Hakeem in place of Bill Russell:
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969

Bill Russell in place of Hakeem:
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002

The Celtics most likely still win 9 to 10 titles with Hakeem as they were utterly stacked plus Hakeem could do Russell's role in his sleep.

Plus if we Select three random years to take a glimpse at the other playoff teams and their supporting casts- 1957, 1963 and 1967, and comparing them to what Hakeem would have


1957 Celtics: Hakeem MVP Cousy, Prime Sharman, Rookie Heinsohn as the "star" core

1957 Nationals: Dolph Schayes and.... Red Kerr? Ed Conlin? Old Paul Seymour? Not close to the Celtics level.

1957 Warriors: Fresh off a championship, but lost Tom Gola, and with that any sort of a defensive identity. left with still VERY good Neil Johnston and Paul Arizin, but this team consistently flopped at doing anything before and after their championship, while Johnston was arguably a product of the antiquated mid 50's game.

1957 Hawks: Hakeem's first rival would be Bob Pettit who was legit and probably top 3, Ed Macauley was good but washed (notably, the Celtics did nothing with the Cousy-Macauley-Sharman big three) and Slater Martin was still very good but old.

Pretty good team, as indicated by four finals in five years (this was before they got Lovellette and Hagan was still young!) but still behind the Celtics.

1957 Lakers: Old Vern Mikkelsen and young Dick Garmaker

1957 Pistons: Yardley, Foust, and Hutchins. Good team but a bit past its prime.

Conclusion: Celtics pretty clearly had the most talent, with their prime hall of fame back court, the immediately impactful rookie Hakeem and impactful rookie Heinsohn.


1963 Celtics: Hakeem Heinsohn and Sam Jones in their primes, older Cousy, very good rookie Havlicek.

Havlicek and Cousy weren't on their primes yet, but this is a tremendous starting five, not gonna touch their still good bench.

1963 Nationals: Hal Greer, young but maybe a shade before his prime, Red Kerr, rookie Chet Walker, Larry Costello, Lee Shaffer. Good team with three hall of fame starters, the very good Kerr, and Shaffer who retired in the middle of his prime.

Don't see much of an argument for it being better than the level of talent on the Celtics team- there's no transcendent star here.

1963 Royals: Another very good team, this time with that star in Oscar Robertson.

Two hall of fame teammates in Jack Twyman and Wayne Embry, but in my opinion both are clearly worse than Jones and Heinsohn, and the Celtics have the aforementioned depth advantage.

1963 Lakers: Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. Is that all I have to say? With great secondary players like Rudy LaRusso and Dick Barnett. West and Baylor are without match, but Celtics again have more depth.

1963 Hawks: Older but still great Pettit, past his prime but effective Hagan, rookie Zelmo Beaty, Lenny Wilkens.

Again- top talent worse than the Celtics and doesn't have the depth. Still a great team. Bill Bridges was here too I think and he was rock solid.

1963 Pistons: Bailey Howell, rookie DeBusschere, Don Ohl, Ray Scott. Howell is good and underrated, Ohl is one of the quietest five time all stars out there... but there's no argument lol.

Conclusion: Talent gap has closed since 1957- there were some great teams this year, but the Celtics depth of stars exceeds every other.

1967:

1967 Celtics: Chose a year they didn't win on purpose! Hakeem Sam Jones, Havlicek and Bailey Howell consist of a incredibly good four star core- three twenty ppg scorers to go along with Hakeem.


1967 Sixers: Wilt, Greer, Chet Walker, Billy Cunningham. The team that finally beat the Celtics and one of the greatest teams ever. Has both the star power and the depth to match the Celtics for once, but honestly, this team might not be the most talented by a landslide.

1967 Royals: Oscar, Lucas and other people I don't remember.

The late 60's Royals had a great offense but were physically incapable of playing defense. They ain't better, even with the star duo.

1967 Knicks: Still young, their time is coming! The enigma known as Walt Bellamy, Willis Reed as he hits his stride, then good non stars like Howie Komives and Dick Van Arsdale.

1967 Warriors: Rick Barry and Nate Thurmond is another grand duo, but not enough depth to compare to the Celtics.

1967 Hawks: Pre-ABA Zelmo, old Guerin, Wilkens, Bridges, young Lou Hudson. Sounds on paper very good but also was under .500. Who do you know. Regardless, still not the Celtics.

1967 Lakers: Elgin, Jerry, Rudy, pre prime Goodrich. This time had even less wins than the Hawks

1967 Bulls: Bob Boozer lol

Conclusion: The Celtics, in terms of top end talent, compared favorably to the legendary 67 Sixers, who are probably the consensus best non Celtics team of the 60's.

Again, the breadth of their elite talent around Hakeem makes them stick out compared to the others, who are too top heavy. Unless you want to make the case that pre-ABA Zelmo and Bailey Howell are the same tier, which... sure? But all in all, I don't think any team quite stacks up to them in this what if.

In a year such as 1967 for example in which Russell lost.

Hakeem would be surrounded by three twenty ppg scorers and I even as a massive Wilt fan know.

There is zero chance that Wilt dominates that version of Hakeem as much as he did to Russell as this is what he did to Russell in that series.

1967 ECF vs Celtics.

Game 1:

Wilt - 24 points, 32 rebounds, 12 assists, 12 blocks, 69% FG

Game 2:

Wilt - 15 points, 29 rebounds, 5 assists, 5 blocks, 45% FG

Game 3:

Wilt - 20 points, 41 rebounds, 9 assists, 5 blocks, 57% FG


Game 4

Wilt - 20 points, 22 rebounds, 10 assists, at least 4 blocks, 44% FG


Game 5:

Wilt - 29 points, 36 rebounds, 13 assists, 7 blocks, 63% FG

Series average

Wilt - 21.6 ppg, 32.0 rpg, 10.0 apg, 6+ bpg, 56% FG


Despite Wilt utterly destroying Russell in that series.


Boston still kept it close and it easily could have been a split after the first four games as they only lost by 5 in game two.


Plus Boston had 4 guys who averaged over 15 PPG in that series.


Now add Hakeem's elite two way play in the equation and Boston would have made Wilt work much harder on both sides of the ball.

In my view Hakeem most likely would be considered as the undisputed goat nowadays

The difference would be that rings+high scoring = more valid GOAT argument, at least going by the logic of modern fans.

People constantly use Russell's low scoring as a slight against him, so as not to have him as a valid GOAT candidate and it is a valid view.

They wouldn't be able to do this against Hakeem and it wouldn't matter even if Hakeem won a little less than 11 titles, because very few would dare assume that anyone else would be able to win more in Hakeem's place.

So therefore they would have to bring Wilt's and Hakeem's era even lower than they already try to.

It would literally be their only constant argument, especially since Boston's main adversary in the Finals was a team that wasn't that good at the C position and Russell was having huge series against them.

Hakeem would utterly feast on the Lakers and that would be a Finals resume, the Holy Grail of modern fans arguments.

Their second best argument would be if Hakeem's Boston happened to lose some Finals' series and there might appear some "6/6 > 10/11" crap here and there, but that's totally ridiculous and even most casual fans would try to find something better to come up with.


The fact is that had any other Goat player besides Russell.

Had close to his rings.

the Goat debate would be dead and buried.

As imagine trying to argue with a straight face against Wilt or Kareem with 8 to 9 rings or Lebron with 7 rings.


As Here are the major polls taken in 1999.

Associated Press Sports 100( top 100 athletes in all sports for century)

I'm only listing basketball players in the Top 50.

Jordan(2)
Wilt(10)
Russell(16)
Bird(24)
Oscar(26)
Kareem(31)
Magic(32)

Here's ESPN's Sports Century picks for the Top 100 athletes from all sports.

These are just the basketball players in the Top 50.

Jordan(1)
Wilt(13)
Magic(17)
Russell(18)
Kareem(26)
Bird(30)
Oscar(36)
DR J((43)


SI's 25 GREATEST ATHLETES of the 20th CENTURY(bbok)

jordan(2)
Wilt(4)
Russell(11)
Bird(15)
Magic(19)




Some one such as Wilt with 8 rings would be considered as the undisputed Goat nowadays.

as remember more rings .

plus high scoring = more valid GOAT argument

Therefore I assume the same argument would apply to Hakeem in this what if as he only has to get close to Russell's total.

To become the Goat.

I may be the outlier but I think the Celtics get worse; to keep this post of manageable length I will focus only on that end of the question though I may return to the other half later. Yes, Hakeem is a much better scorer but relative to his time, his efficiency is not great (better than Nate Thurmond but not that good for a post player) so his scoring won't be as big an outlier as you might think. And remember that Russell learned his game and started in the NBA about 2 years before Wilt and 4 before Oscar and West changed the total league efficiency charts significantly.
Hakeem with the offensive game of a 50s big like Russell, playing in the 60s, might not be that good an offensive player though again, clearly better than Russell. And, the Celtics were never short on scorers except maybe in 69.

Where the Celtics would be hurt is in two, maybe 3, areas. First, rebounding. Russell, along with Wilt and Dennis Rodman, is one of the legitimate GOAT rebounders (once you filter out the Mark Landsberger type role players) in an era where rebounding is significantly more important. Hakeem was a very good rebounder, but not in the GOAT category. Second, passing. Russell developed into a very good passing high post center which was needed on the Celtics once Cousy got replaced by a non-playmaking point in KC Jones. Hakeem was never a terribly good passing center; Russell started as more of a finisher but developed his passing as his scoring fell behind the league's improvement. Maybe Hakeem would have too but he didn't seem to in his career.

Finally, Russell was a revolutionary player who changed the game. Would Hakeem have had the mental willingness to go against the accepted norms of a flat footed post scoring big, especially since he would have been more successful at that role? Maybe, he was a soccer goalie before he came to the NBA. He played more like Russell defensively than any other big I can remember with his ability to run the floor, come out and challenge, and his quick hands knocking away post passes, so he's a good substitute on that end. But Russell didn't have a role model for that role; so Hakeem might not have developed that style without Russell as a model.

Finally, would Hakeem have been better against Wilt's teams? Better against Wilt, probably. He had more lower body strength it seemed and that could hold post position more. Seeing them together, Russell was a little taller and, despite weight work being discouraged in his day, probably a little thicker through the torso. Wilt tended to have great playoffs against Russell. But, it always seemed that Wilt's teammates had terrible performances against Boston. Russell's style was always to play the whole floor rather than focus on his one on one matchup so I tend to credit a lot of this overall team problem to Russell's influence. You may not as it is impossible to prove without more matchups and maybe a way to see into opponent's heads to see how much Russell affected them.

Finally, for whatever reason, Russell had luck/destiny/clutch gene from hell, winning every game 7 throughout his career. That outlier, if strategy or ability rather than luck, gives him an advantage that no other player in NBA history has ever matched. Fwiw.

duplicate

What made that Rockets team in 94 and 95 so good was Hakeem his defense was outstanding, and he was the centerpiece of the offense.

Could Russell have replaced Hakeem as the centerpiece of that Rocket offense while playing elite defence and offence at the same time.


I don't think so as Hakeem destroyed Ewing offensively and defensively in that series which went seven games.

As he was held to 36% shooting from the field.

furthermore in that same playoff run

Hakeem’s Stats were

28.9/11/4.3 with 1.7 steals and 4 Blocks

Hakeem was the only Rocket averaging over 14 points

Hakeem lead the team in Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals and Blocks

The Rockets starting lineup was: Kenny Smith/Vernon Maxwell/Robert Horry/Otis Thorpe/Hakeem Olajuwon

I think that this run of his is the greatest carry job ever.

It becomes crazier when you think about how he followed it up the next year

talking purely on the court hard to see hakeem not being an improvement peak for peak. Should be almost as good as Russell defensively and massive offensive improvement. However, I could still see Hakeem winning less on the basis of off-court factors(hakeem probably isn't stepping up to be player-coach or telling his teammates how to counter the best attacks/attackers of the era) and health. Then again, Hakeem does have a raw longetvity advantage and some of his "weak" years coincide with the portion of russell's career where the celtics were unfair. Maybe he can make up the gap anyway.

Hakeem would be a strong GOAT candidate in the mix with Jordan, Lebron and Kareem. Russell would probably drop out of the top 10.

I don’t know how many titles Hakeem wins, but Russell definitely doesn’t win any in Houston. He couldn’t have provided enough offensively.

penbeast0 wrote:duplicate

How about Russell in Houston? Maybe it's too difficult to speculate, but I imagine the front-office would need to be built a different type of team around Russell than for Hakeem. Would building around Russell be easier and lead to more team success?

No-more-rings wrote:I don’t know how many titles Hakeem wins, but Russell definitely doesn’t win any in Houston. He couldn’t have provided enough offensively.

I don't know, 1997 to me sounds like a very doable thing for 1969 Russell, without even going deeper with other years.

penbeast0 wrote:Finally, for whatever reason, Russell had luck/destiny/clutch gene from hell, winning every game 7 throughout his career. That outlier, if strategy or ability rather than luck, gives him an advantage that no other player in NBA history has ever matched. Fwiw.

there's no doubt it's hard to match russell because of this, at least in terms of discrete things like titles. you could replace bill russell with bill russell himself and play it back 100 times and not end up with 11 titles again. 7 game 7's went to double OT, OT, OT or were decided in regulation by 1, 2, 2, and 2.

on the other hand, if anyone is close, it would be hakeem and his 8-0 in elimination games record in his 2 titles. 10-1 going back to the previous year in 1993. also 4-1 in game 7's in his career. but still, not as lucky as russell.

hakeem certainly seems like he gets a whole bunch of the celtics pre-'67 titles when they were too stacked for it to matter. and for what it's worth, they probably shouldn't have even been in 3 or 4 of their game 7's, given how far ahead of the other team they were in some series. maybe hakeem even picks up the '58 title (1986 hakeem) since he's healthy, though the celtics didn't necessarily play that much worse in the games russell missed. real question is can he win the '68 and '69 titles? '69 was basically the 1995 run of its time with 3 road series, though the celtics were #2 in SRS so not quite the underdogs the 1995 rockets were in each series. it's year 13 for russell and year 13 for hakeem is 1997, with a very good playoff run. definitely more offense and less defense than russell at that point. if you want to adjust longevity for era, even 1998 hakeem, an injured-all-season hakeem, was holding the the #1 offense jazz to a -9 rDRtg in the 1st round with matt bullard and matt maloney and 35 year old drexler and willis as the other 4 starters. he was just also being asked to be 1995 hakeem on offense instead of scoring like 9 ppg like old man russell so he looks worse. you could convince me 1998 hakeem pulls off 1969 with enough offensive help. but not very likely obviously.


as for swapping russell into hakeem's situation. i'm thinking the only way russell gets to the finals is if he buys some tickets.

70sFan wrote:

No-more-rings wrote:I don’t know how many titles Hakeem wins, but Russell definitely doesn’t win any in Houston. He couldn’t have provided enough offensively.

I don't know, 1997 to me sounds like a very doable thing for 1969 Russell, without even going deeper with other years.

1997 is a tough lift just from a competition perspective, before even going into them as players.

the rockets, a +3.9 SRS team, had homecourt in the 2nd round but faced a +6.9 SRS sonics team. then faced a +8.0 jazz team that finished the season 36-5 in the 2nd half (a record at the time). and then they would have had to beat a +10.7 bulls team. that +25.6 SRS total for opponents in just 3 rounds would beat the 1995 rockets for highest combined SRS in a title win for 4 rounds.

and this is with a bill russell who put up decidedly worse playoff numbers from 1967-69 than anything before that in his career. and put up 11 ppg on 45 TS% for the 1969 playoffs. 1997 hakeem had an incredible offensive playoffs shooting 59% from the field. in the conference finals he put up 27/9/4/3/2 on 59% shooting (64 TS%), and just going by something like game score, easily led the series. so someone is going to have to replace all of that high volume/high efficiency offense if hakeem isn't playing because obviously russell isn't doing it.

and that gets to the next issue. barkley and drexler got injured in the regular season and didn't come back looking like barkley and drexler. drexler was shooting something like 47% from the field before missing a month and a half, then came back and shot something like 43% from the field in the regular season and 43.6% in the playoffs (43.5% in the WCF). barkley after getting kneed by shawn bradley, went from shooting 49% to 44% in the regular season, then 43.4% in the playoffs and 42.9% in the WCF. hakeem almost out-game scored them combined in the WCF (24.6 to 26.7).

and there's not really any hope against the 1997 bulls. russell played one team like that in his career and got beat pretty badly 4-1.

f4p wrote:

70sFan wrote:

No-more-rings wrote:I don’t know how many titles Hakeem wins, but Russell definitely doesn’t win any in Houston. He couldn’t have provided enough offensively.

I don't know, 1997 to me sounds like a very doable thing for 1969 Russell, without even going deeper with other years.

1997 is a tough lift just from a competition perspective, before even going into them as players.

the rockets, a +3.9 SRS team, had homecourt in the 2nd round but faced a +6.9 SRS sonics team. then faced a +8.0 jazz team that finished the season 36-5 in the 2nd half (a record at the time). and then they would have had to beat a +10.7 bulls team. that +25.6 SRS total for opponents in just 3 rounds would beat the 1995 rockets for highest combined SRS in a title win for 4 rounds.

and this is with a bill russell who put up decidedly worse playoff numbers from 1967-69 than anything before that in his career. and put up 11 ppg on 45 TS% for the 1969 playoffs. 1997 hakeem had an incredible offensive playoffs shooting 59% from the field. in the conference finals he put up 27/9/4/3/2 on 59% shooting (64 TS%), and just going by something like game score, easily led the series. so someone is going to have to replace all of that high volume/high efficiency offense if hakeem isn't playing because obviously russell isn't doing it.

and that gets to the next issue. barkley and drexler got injured in the regular season and didn't come back looking like barkley and drexler. drexler was shooting something like 47% from the field before missing a month and a half, then came back and shot something like 43% from the field in the regular season and 43.6% in the playoffs (43.5% in the WCF). barkley after getting kneed by shawn bradley, went from shooting 49% to 44% in the regular season, then 43.4% in the playoffs and 42.9% in the WCF. hakeem almost out-game scored them combined in the WCF (24.6 to 26.7).

and there's not really any hope against the 1997 bulls. russell played one team like that in his career and got beat pretty badly 4-1.

Based on what we have seen, I am quite convinced that the Rockets would finish with better record than that with Russell in Hakeem's place. They wouldn't likely match the Jazz, so overall they'd have to beat Sonics in the 2nd round still.

You look at scoring, but keep in mind that Russell was significantly better defender than 1997 Hakeem and he fits much better with Barkley and even Drexler on offensive end. This team was very odd fit-wise, but it wouldn't be a problem here. Barkley was still capable of carrying the load that season and he'd thrive next to Russell. Keep in mind that although Hakeem had a very strong scoring postseason, Rockets were actually slightly below average defensively during that run. Russell wouldn't need to replicate Hakeem scoring output to win these series and all of them were winnable.

I forgot about Barkley injury to be honest, assuming everything stays the same then I guess it would be harder, though still doable. If Barkley stays helathy, then I think Russell's defensive edge could be enough to go past Jazz.

About Chicago - you can't just look at the raw SRS to conclude that Russell faced such team only once in his career. The league was very watered down by expansion in the late 1990s and 1997 Bulls likely weren't nearly as strong as their numbers indicate in absolute sense (which is also true for Sonics and Jazz by the way). I'd say that 1968 Sixers were on similar level. Also, based on what we know I think post DeBusschere-Bellamy trade, 1969 Knicks were at least reasonably close.

I get that it's easy to believe that Russell can't win without stacked offensive talent, but he proved it wrong multiple times in his career. I mean, 1969 is literally the season when he carried Celtics without much help outside of Havlicek (who was great, but doesn't equal Drexler and Barkley alone). It's the thing people always struggle with - Russell could impact the game on that level without scoring. He wouldn't need good scoring on that 1997 Rockets team.

70sFan wrote:

f4p wrote:

70sFan wrote:I don't know, 1997 to me sounds like a very doable thing for 1969 Russell, without even going deeper with other years.

1997 is a tough lift just from a competition perspective, before even going into them as players.

the rockets, a +3.9 SRS team, had homecourt in the 2nd round but faced a +6.9 SRS sonics team. then faced a +8.0 jazz team that finished the season 36-5 in the 2nd half (a record at the time). and then they would have had to beat a +10.7 bulls team. that +25.6 SRS total for opponents in just 3 rounds would beat the 1995 rockets for highest combined SRS in a title win for 4 rounds.

and this is with a bill russell who put up decidedly worse playoff numbers from 1967-69 than anything before that in his career. and put up 11 ppg on 45 TS% for the 1969 playoffs. 1997 hakeem had an incredible offensive playoffs shooting 59% from the field. in the conference finals he put up 27/9/4/3/2 on 59% shooting (64 TS%), and just going by something like game score, easily led the series. so someone is going to have to replace all of that high volume/high efficiency offense if hakeem isn't playing because obviously russell isn't doing it.

and that gets to the next issue. barkley and drexler got injured in the regular season and didn't come back looking like barkley and drexler. drexler was shooting something like 47% from the field before missing a month and a half, then came back and shot something like 43% from the field in the regular season and 43.6% in the playoffs (43.5% in the WCF). barkley after getting kneed by shawn bradley, went from shooting 49% to 44% in the regular season, then 43.4% in the playoffs and 42.9% in the WCF. hakeem almost out-game scored them combined in the WCF (24.6 to 26.7).

and there's not really any hope against the 1997 bulls. russell played one team like that in his career and got beat pretty badly 4-1.

Based on what we have seen, I am quite convinced that the Rockets would finish with better record than that with Russell in Hakeem's place. They wouldn't likely match the Jazz, so overall they'd have to beat Sonics in the 2nd round still.

why though? russell didn't even make the 1969 celtics win that much, with only 48 wins (though a good SRS). 1997 was still a very strong hakeem season.

You look at scoring, but keep in mind that Russell was significantly better defender than 1997 Hakeem and he fits much better with Barkley and even Drexler on offensive end. This team was very odd fit-wise, but it wouldn't be a problem here.

this often gets said about the 1997 rockets, but it doesn't really seem to be the case. the team started out the season healthy and was 21-2. the fit was basically perfect. hakeem gave barkley some post touches, barkley focused more on rebounding, clyde was the do everything swiss-army knife. emanual davis had the greatest 13 games ever before tearing his ACL (might be a slight exaggeration). it came together perfectly. then barkley got hurt and 21-2 became 21-6. then he came back and we won. then more injuries. then clyde out for a month and a half. then barkley out for a month, some of it overlapping with clyde (though actually surviving the non-barkley games this time).

hakeem basically played the whole season at 78 games, but in the 49 games hakeem and barkley played together, the rockets were 38-11. far from struggling to fit together, they played like a 64 win team. health was the problem, something russell isn't fixing. i can't see 1969 russell, on his last legs offensively and certainly not at his peak defensively, outperforming 1997 hakeem to such an extent that he's making the rockets way better than a 64 win team when healthy. we'd have to basically play like some of the greatest teams ever for that to be the case.

Barkley was still capable of carrying the load that season and he'd thrive next to Russell. Keep in mind that although Hakeem had a very strong scoring postseason, Rockets were actually slightly below average defensively during that run. Russell wouldn't need to replicate Hakeem scoring output to win these series and all of them were winnable.

I forgot about Barkley injury to be honest, assuming everything stays the same then I guess it would be harder, though still doable. If Barkley stays helathy, then I think Russell's defensive edge could be enough to go past Jazz.

maybe he was before the injuries, but again he was at 44% to end the regular season after the injury. then down to 43.4% in the playoffs. then down to 16.8 ppg and 42.9% in the WCF. clyde gave us 17/4/4 on 43.5% shooting in the WCF. that's not a team that can just slot in what is functionally a non-scorer like russell was by 1969. the level of the defense needed against the #2 offense in the league would be unbelievable to overcome how horrible the offense would be. hakeem's 27 ppg and 4 apg on 64 TS% is doing a lot of the work for that offense.

About Chicago - you can't just look at the raw SRS to conclude that Russell faced such team only once in his career. The league was very watered down by expansion in the late 1990s and 1997 Bulls likely weren't nearly as strong as their numbers indicate in absolute sense (which is also true for Sonics and Jazz by the way). I'd say that 1968 Sixers were on similar level. Also, based on what we know I think post DeBusschere-Bellamy trade, 1969 Knicks were at least reasonably close.

well the 1967 76ers benefited from a 9 to 10 team expansion during that season, which in a relative sense beats adding TOR/VAN to a 27 team league (though is a little better when factoring in the earlier 90's expansion). which saw the top 2 teams go from 55 and 54 wins to 68 and 60.

even so, the bulls were at 10.7 SRS and the 76ers were at 8.5. so even ignoring the 1967 expansion, i'd be hard pressed to say expansion was worth more than 2 points.

and by just 2 years later in 1969, that 9 to 10 team expansion was now a 9 to 14 team expansion with an 11 team ABA siphoning off even more talent. this dwarfs the 1990's expansion for those 1969 teams. so all those 5 SRS 1969 teams would seem to be more like 3 SRS teams if we're only applying the same penalty as to the 1997 teams. back to the normal level of a top russell opponent in the 1960's outside of wilt's 76ers.

I get that it's easy to believe that Russell can't win without stacked offensive talent, but he proved it wrong multiple times in his career. I mean, 1969 is literally the season when he carried Celtics without much help outside of Havlicek (who was great, but doesn't equal Drexler and Barkley alone). It's the thing people always struggle with - Russell could impact the game on that level without scoring. He wouldn't need good scoring on that 1997 Rockets team.

but he would need good scoring. his two best teammates were averaging 17 ppg on 43% shooting in the WCF. there's no hondo putting up 28 ppg like in the finals. russell was scoring 9% of his team's points by 1969 in the regular season. i don't diminish what russell could do defensively but there's a tendency for the offense to get handwaved with the idea that someone will take care of it somehow while russell focuses on defense. in the celtics 4 finals wins by a combined 19 points, russell averaged 8 ppg on 31% shooting. in the final 3 wins, including 1 point and 2 point wins, 7 ppg on 26% shooting (7-27). even for the 60's, that's like sub-replacement scoring/shooting. that's an awful lot of reliance on everyone else to pick up the offense, and they did it. we can see from the WCF numbers that barkley and clyde are not taking care of the offense to a level that someone else can just focus on defense.

and of course, that's before getting into to what degree is russell's defense less impactful in the world of 1997 than 1969.

Hakeem basically had to be perfect to win his two rings in 1994 and 1995 as they easily could have lost.





Even with Ewing getting utterly dominated by Hakeem.


The Knicks still had a chance to win that series.

had Hakeem not made one of the best blocks of all-time in game six


I don't believe that any version of Russell is capable of taking on that amount of offensive load while still playing his Goat tier defence.

As even in Russell's peak years such as his 1964 playoff run.

He only managed to average 13 PPG on 35% shooting and 55% from the line despite being the fourth option on those teams.


He does that in 1994 and 1995 and the Rockets don't escape from the west.

As it would be just so hard to have a good offense in the 1990's when your center is not that great on that end.


As Hakeem's offensive game is what opened up the other Rockets players for much easier and better shots.

f4p wrote:why though? russell didn't even make the 1969 celtics win that much, with only 48 wins (though a good SRS). 1997 was still a very strong hakeem season.

Well, I can't be sure of course but what we have gives us a strong evidence that Russell was more impactful for the Celtics and he played with weaker supporting cast:

- Rockets went 3-1 in games Hakeem missed,
- Celtics went 2-3 in games Russell missed,

- Rockets played at -0.5 Net Rtg when Hakeem was on the bench, which isn't great but it's far from bad,

- in next season when Rockets team declined all around, they played at 36 pace without Hakeem (he missed 35 games),
- in next season Celtics won 34 games in a full season without Russell, while the rest of the team overall didn't decline.

All of these signals don't show a massive gap in supporting casts, but it gives me a picture of 1969 Celtics without Russell being weaker than 1997 Rockets without Hakeem. 1997 was still a relatively strong Hakeem season, but I don't think it was stronger than 1969 Russell and I believe Russell fits better with Drexler and Barkley.

this often gets said about the 1997 rockets, but it doesn't really seem to be the case. the team started out the season healthy and was 21-2. the fit was basically perfect. hakeem gave barkley some post touches, barkley focused more on rebounding, clyde was the do everything swiss-army knife. emanual davis had the greatest 13 games ever before tearing his ACL (might be a slight exaggeration). it came together perfectly. then barkley got hurt and 21-2 became 21-6. then he came back and we won. then more injuries. then clyde out for a month and a half. then barkley out for a month, some of it overlapping with clyde (though actually surviving the non-barkley games this time).

Good point about the strong start, the thing is that during that stretch they won 4 OT games (which could have change 21-2 into 17-6 suddenly). Their Net Rtg was still strong during that stretch though, so I may agree.

Injuries are always tough to evaluate and I guess if the Rockets got identical injuries then Russell could have struggled just as much as Hakeem to make them relevant.

hakeem basically played the whole season at 78 games, but in the 49 games hakeem and barkley played together, the rockets were 38-11. far from struggling to fit together, they played like a 64 win team. health was the problem, something russell isn't fixing. i can't see 1969 russell, on his last legs offensively and certainly not at his peak defensively, outperforming 1997 hakeem to such an extent that he's making the rockets way better than a 64 win team when healthy. we'd have to basically play like some of the greatest teams ever for that to be the case.

My fit concern was more about postseason setting than RS to be honest.

maybe he was before the injuries, but again he was at 44% to end the regular season after the injury. then down to 43.4% in the playoffs. then down to 16.8 ppg and 42.9% in the WCF.

I guess the question is how much of that was caused by Barkley injuries and how much by Hakeem overlapping skills. I mean, Barkley certainly would have more space to operate with Russell. Point taken though, these health issues are always tough to adjust for.

clyde gave us 17/4/4 on 43.5% shooting in the WCF. that's not a team that can just slot in what is functionally a non-scorer like russell was by 1969. the level of the defense needed against the #2 offense in the league would be unbelievable to overcome how horrible the offense would be. hakeem's 27 ppg and 4 apg on 64 TS% is doing a lot of the work for that offense.

Do you think Russell was incapable of driving such defense? I mean, Rockets were basically +10 on offense and +1 on defense in 1997 playoffs. If your offense goes to +3, then defense has to be -6 - I think it's more than reasonable. If you think that their offense would collapse without Hakeem, then I guess you will disagree, but I don't think Hakeem himself made them so good on offensive end.

well the 1967 76ers benefited from a 9 to 10 team expansion during that season, which in a relative sense beats adding TOR/VAN to a 27 team league (though is a little better when factoring in the earlier 90's expansion). which saw the top 2 teams go from 55 and 54 wins to 68 and 60.

Yes, but it's not just a relative difference in the surrounding seasons. The league in the 1990s had three times more teams than in 1967, while the talent pool wasn't significantly bigger - international players only started to become relevant.

even so, the bulls were at 10.7 SRS and the 76ers were at 8.5. so even ignoring the 1967 expansion, i'd be hard pressed to say expansion was worth more than 2 points.

Then there is a league size - it's harder to be an outlier in a small league compared to big league from statistical standpoint. There is a reason why we never had +10 SRS team in the 1960s, while it's relatively common thing to have them in 30 teams league.

and by just 2 years later in 1969, that 9 to 10 team expansion was now a 9 to 14 team expansion with an 11 team ABA siphoning off even more talent. this dwarfs the 1990's expansion for those 1969 teams. so all those 5 SRS 1969 teams would seem to be more like 3 SRS teams if we're only applying the same penalty as to the 1997 teams. back to the normal level of a top russell opponent in the 1960's outside of wilt's 76ers.

Yeah, 1969 is more extreme and closer to 1997 environment. Statistical profile of outliers still applies, but here an expansion did his things (though the ABA was still relatively minor league at that point).

but he would need good scoring. his two best teammates were averaging 17 ppg on 43% shooting in the WCF. there's no hondo putting up 28 ppg like in the finals.

You see, he didn't really need that scoring from Havlicek to beat elite teams though. In ECF against the Knicks, they won in 6 games with Hondo averaging 20.7 ppg on -0.4 rTS%. If you adjust that for pace, that's worse than Barkley's 20.2 pp75 on +2.3 rTS% he did in 1997 playoffs. In general, I think you overstate the difference between Celtics offensive stars scoring production and Drexler/Barkley:

1997 Barkley: 20.7 pp75 on +2.3 rTS%
1997 Drexler: 20.0 pp75 on +1.4 rTS%

1969 Havlicek: 20.4 pp75 on +4.5 rTS%
1969 Jones: 22.3 pp75 on -0.8 rTS%

Barkley and Drexler underperformed, but they were better scorers than Havlicek and old Jones in first place.

russell was scoring 9% of his team's points by 1969 in the regular season. i don't diminish what russell could do defensively but there's a tendency for the offense to get handwaved with the idea that someone will take care of it somehow while russell focuses on defense.

Yes, I think Barkley would take care of offense.

in the celtics 4 finals wins by a combined 19 points, russell averaged 8 ppg on 31% shooting. in the final 3 wins, including 1 point and 2 point wins, 7 ppg on 26% shooting (7-27). even for the 60's, that's like sub-replacement scoring/shooting. that's an awful lot of reliance on everyone else to pick up the offense, and they did it. we can see from the WCF numbers that barkley and clyde are not taking care of the offense to a level that someone else can just focus on defense.

Again, he arguably contributed more in other aspects than anyone could at scoring, so it doesn't look to much for me to believe he'd be able to do that. I mean, scoring isn't everything.

and of course, that's before getting into to what degree is russell's defense less impactful in the world of 1997 than 1969.

The main question is whether it would be less impactful at all. I guess against a team like Utah who used illegal defense to ridiculous degree, but I still view Russell as the all-time great player by his defense alone in the 1990s. Remember that the majority of top tier shotblockers played in the late 1980s and 1990s - not in the 1970s.

coastalmarker99 wrote:Hakeem basically had to be perfect to win his two rings in 1994 and 1995 as they easily could have lost.

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Even with Ewing getting utterly dominated by Hakeem.


The Knicks still had a chance to win that series.

had Hakeem not made one of the best blocks of all-time in game six


I don't believe that any version of Russell is capable of taking on that amount of offensive load while still playing his Goat tier defence.

As even in Russell's peak years such as his 1964 playoff run.

He only managed to average 13 PPG on 35% shooting and 55% from the line despite being the fourth option on those teams.


He does that in 1994 and 1995 and the Rockets don't escape from the west.

As it would be just so hard to have a good offense in the 1990's when your center is not that great on that end.


As Hakeem's offensive game is what opened up the other Rockets players for much easier and better shots.

Why of all Russell runs you pick 1964 as his offensive peak when he was much better in surrounding years?

f4p wrote:

70sFan wrote:

f4p wrote:
1997 is a tough lift just from a competition perspective, before even going into them as players.

the rockets, a +3.9 SRS team, had homecourt in the 2nd round but faced a +6.9 SRS sonics team. then faced a +8.0 jazz team that finished the season 36-5 in the 2nd half (a record at the time). and then they would have had to beat a +10.7 bulls team. that +25.6 SRS total for opponents in just 3 rounds would beat the 1995 rockets for highest combined SRS in a title win for 4 rounds.

and this is with a bill russell who put up decidedly worse playoff numbers from 1967-69 than anything before that in his career. and put up 11 ppg on 45 TS% for the 1969 playoffs. 1997 hakeem had an incredible offensive playoffs shooting 59% from the field. in the conference finals he put up 27/9/4/3/2 on 59% shooting (64 TS%), and just going by something like game score, easily led the series. so someone is going to have to replace all of that high volume/high efficiency offense if hakeem isn't playing because obviously russell isn't doing it.

and that gets to the next issue. barkley and drexler got injured in the regular season and didn't come back looking like barkley and drexler. drexler was shooting something like 47% from the field before missing a month and a half, then came back and shot something like 43% from the field in the regular season and 43.6% in the playoffs (43.5% in the WCF). barkley after getting kneed by shawn bradley, went from shooting 49% to 44% in the regular season, then 43.4% in the playoffs and 42.9% in the WCF. hakeem almost out-game scored them combined in the WCF (24.6 to 26.7).

and there's not really any hope against the 1997 bulls. russell played one team like that in his career and got beat pretty badly 4-1.

Based on what we have seen, I am quite convinced that the Rockets would finish with better record than that with Russell in Hakeem's place. They wouldn't likely match the Jazz, so overall they'd have to beat Sonics in the 2nd round still.

why though? russell didn't even make the 1969 celtics win that much, with only 48 wins (though a good SRS). 1997 was still a very strong hakeem season.
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55-wins(srs) and even 49 wins translates to legit title contender in 1969(the srs translates to arguably best team)in a year which was unusually strong(to an extreme degree) at the top for the time period. Unless we think absolute win totals are what matters here(as opposed to championships, championship probability, era-relative performance), taking a 35-win team to "best in the league" level is crazy good. Crazier and gooder when we remember this was an especially tough year, and then there was the crazy and good bit where two of the best teams of the era were conquered for the thing that actually matters: the championship