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I know that it's a playoffs time right now, but if you find a bit more time to enjoy even more great basketball, I suggest you to watch this video. It's probably the greatest tribute to the pre-merger era that was ever created.

Enjoy and I hope to see some good discussion here!

What a YouTube return it was from WCA! I think he did a great job combining the receipt-keeping along with factual, film-based evidence

rk2023 wrote:What a YouTube return it was from WCA! I think he did a great job combining the receipt-keeping along with factual, film-based evidence

Yeah, I love how good everything is mixed here. Dan worked a lot on that one and it paid off.

wow incredible mix.shows you the beauty of the game!!! ...and ignorance really has no limits.

Hey thanks for sharing this here Marcin! Again, couldn't have done it without your own tremendous efforts collecting these past few years. Anyone has any questions or thoughts they want to direct towards me I'd also be happy to chime in. Otherwise I just hope anyone who watches it enjoys it

i like what "mister prick" rick barry says about the state of todays game .he has some points i must admit.
besides that its just a flawless mix.many scenes i have never seen or from totally different viewpoint.what oscar does is insane!!!
would have loved to see this man in person controlling the tempo of games.

CumberlandPosey wrote:i like what "mister prick" rick barry says about the state of todays game .he has some points i must admit.
besides that its just a flawless mix.many scenes i have never seen or from totally different viewpoint.what oscar does is insane!!!
would have loved to see this man in person controlling the tempo of games.

As my own mind has matured about the game I've noticed Oscar Robertson has been (and still is) typically difficult to showcase because of a few things:

* He's not particularly fast
* He doesn't jump particularly high or use any kind of athleticism as a crutch to lean on really - other than stability/strength
* He keeps his movements extremely simple
* He has an unorthodox shooting mechanic
* Most footage of him is in slow motion - which doesn't combine well with his stocky frame and simple movements

It's easy to end up with a result that makes people accuse him of being unimpressive if you don't showcase his game with the right combination of testimony/video. But if you get it right, you can capture the key things that made him dominant. Number one, I think it ALWAYS needs pointed out how big or strong he was, because that explains the rest of his simple looking game of basically spreading out and owning his space constantly. I had Elgin mention that in this but even then I wish I could have illustrated that even better, but I'm glad you were able to perceive him as an impressive player so it must have been enough. Oscar was 220lbs with a wide body. 6-4.75 barefoot so identical height to Michael and Kobe who are much thinner framed (closer to 205 was their ideal weights) "6-6" guys. Like I said Oscar always has this wide stance with arms and body just consuming space between the defender to protect the ball. He didn't try to outquick players so much as just wait for them to lose their cool and bite on a fake or just not come up quick enough. Oscar's unorthodox shot was almost behind his head which means defenders had to really reach. And you know, if you reach in basketball on defense you can get burned pretty bad even by slow players. Or they just couldn't reach his shot, he was perfect at waiting to shoot when they were on their way down and unbalanced. So he was extremely methodical and patient. He almost never looked under duress which is unlike more herky jerky (but still effective) players like Jerry West. He's like a Tim Duncan of guards. Just very simple and fundamental, which can be hard to convince skeptics that might want flashy moves to be impressed. LeBron plays a lot like Oscar now I notice, with the wide stance. So maybe that also helps us understand Oscar's game on tape better now.

CavaliersFTW wrote:Hey thanks for sharing this here Marcin! Again, couldn't have done it without your own tremendous efforts collecting these past few years. Anyone has any questions or thoughts they want to direct towards me I'd also be happy to chime in. Otherwise I just hope anyone who watches it enjoys it

At least I could help this way. Unfortunately, I have problems with getting new footage recently, but at least it's more than nothing.

Great vid. Wish there some on underrated greats like Cliff Hagan, Lenny Wilkens, Dave Cowens, etc.

prolific passer wrote:Great vid. Wish there some on underrated greats like Cliff Hagan, Lenny Wilkens, Dave Cowens, etc.

Cliff and Lenny I only had like 1 or 2 clips of that made the cut. Cowens more, but scattered throughout the vid.

One of the limitations I and everyone else has with that era is available content which 70sfan has done a lot for. Even with all that we've got now, it's really just like... 1% of 1% of 1% of that era. Weighted disproportionately very heavily towards the most popular teams and players of that era (Wilt, West and Baylor, Russell's Celtics, then into the early 70's Knicks, Bucks, etc). Guys like Lenny Wilkins just didn't play on big enough markets to be filmed constantly and have the film still laying around for someone to convert 60 years later and Pettit and Hagan's hawks sort of pre-date the higher quality film reels 70sfan has been able to obtain. If we ever get to stage where the NBA can ever share what it has with it's deeper archives we could do so much more. You'd see that even this video was just scratching the surface. I had more clips of those guys in low quality but I really wanted to do this video in high quality so fans can appreciate it better so I had to filter out a lot of the 480p or less stuff.

CavaliersFTW wrote:

prolific passer wrote:Great vid. Wish there some on underrated greats like Cliff Hagan, Lenny Wilkens, Dave Cowens, etc.

Cliff and Lenny I only had like 1 or 2 clips of that made the cut. Cowens more, but scattered throughout the vid.

One of the limitations I and everyone else has with that era is available content which 70sfan has done a lot for. Even with all that we've got now, it's really just like... 1% of 1% of 1% of that era. Weighted disproportionately very heavily towards the most popular teams and players of that era (Wilt, West and Baylor, Russell's Celtics, then into the early 70's Knicks, Bucks, etc). Guys like Lenny Wilkins just didn't play on big enough markets to be filmed constantly and have the film still laying around for someone to convert 60 years later and Pettit and Hagan's hawks sort of pre-date the higher quality film reels 70sfan has been able to obtain. If we ever get to stage where the NBA can ever share what it has with it's deeper archives we could do so much more. You'd see that even this video was just scratching the surface. I had more clips of those guys in low quality but I really wanted to do this video in high quality so fans can appreciate it better so I had to filter out a lot of the 480p or less stuff.

I think those late 50s to early 60s games would be fun to watch. The pace would be hard to keep up. I would like to see some of the 57 finals. Perhaps the greatest NBA finals ever.

prolific passer wrote:

CavaliersFTW wrote:

prolific passer wrote:Great vid. Wish there some on underrated greats like Cliff Hagan, Lenny Wilkens, Dave Cowens, etc.

Cliff and Lenny I only had like 1 or 2 clips of that made the cut. Cowens more, but scattered throughout the vid.

One of the limitations I and everyone else has with that era is available content which 70sfan has done a lot for. Even with all that we've got now, it's really just like... 1% of 1% of 1% of that era. Weighted disproportionately very heavily towards the most popular teams and players of that era (Wilt, West and Baylor, Russell's Celtics, then into the early 70's Knicks, Bucks, etc). Guys like Lenny Wilkins just didn't play on big enough markets to be filmed constantly and have the film still laying around for someone to convert 60 years later and Pettit and Hagan's hawks sort of pre-date the higher quality film reels 70sfan has been able to obtain. If we ever get to stage where the NBA can ever share what it has with it's deeper archives we could do so much more. You'd see that even this video was just scratching the surface. I had more clips of those guys in low quality but I really wanted to do this video in high quality so fans can appreciate it better so I had to filter out a lot of the 480p or less stuff.

I think those late 50s to early 60s games would be fun to watch. The pace would be hard to keep up. I would like to see some of the 57 finals. Perhaps the greatest NBA finals ever.

Russell era has so many classic finals series. 1957 is up there with any other, but then there are also 1960, 1962, 1966 and of course 1969. All of these would be incredible to watch.

I mean, we probably have the most footage from 1964 finals - probably the least interesting series overall - and yet it contains so many spectacular plays and legendary moments...

70sFan wrote:

prolific passer wrote:

CavaliersFTW wrote:Cliff and Lenny I only had like 1 or 2 clips of that made the cut. Cowens more, but scattered throughout the vid.

One of the limitations I and everyone else has with that era is available content which 70sfan has done a lot for. Even with all that we've got now, it's really just like... 1% of 1% of 1% of that era. Weighted disproportionately very heavily towards the most popular teams and players of that era (Wilt, West and Baylor, Russell's Celtics, then into the early 70's Knicks, Bucks, etc). Guys like Lenny Wilkins just didn't play on big enough markets to be filmed constantly and have the film still laying around for someone to convert 60 years later and Pettit and Hagan's hawks sort of pre-date the higher quality film reels 70sfan has been able to obtain. If we ever get to stage where the NBA can ever share what it has with it's deeper archives we could do so much more. You'd see that even this video was just scratching the surface. I had more clips of those guys in low quality but I really wanted to do this video in high quality so fans can appreciate it better so I had to filter out a lot of the 480p or less stuff.

I think those late 50s to early 60s games would be fun to watch. The pace would be hard to keep up. I would like to see some of the 57 finals. Perhaps the greatest NBA finals ever.

Russell era has so many classic finals series. 1957 is up there with any other, but then there are also 1960, 1962, 1966 and of course 1969. All of these would be incredible to watch.

I mean, we probably have the most footage from 1964 finals - probably the least interesting series overall - and yet it contains so many spectacular plays and legendary moments...

Being in the STL area as I am. I would like to see some hawks games from 60-61 with Pettit, Hagan, and Wilkens. When that team inserted Lenny into the starting 5 they really took off on both ends.