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Challenge:

- Make an argument for a post-merger season from a player not named Bill-Russell as as good or better, era-relative, than Bill Russell's 69.

- "Better" is defined here as "increasing championship likelihood"

- This is not intended as a discussion of "when" Bill Russell peaked, the goal is to construct a positive case on the merits of what was achieved and whatever evidence you can muster up

As a refresher, here are some key points for Russell from his last year as a Celtic:

1. Won a championship as a player coach with a team that would proceed to win 35 games without him with a virtually identical roster and went 3-5 without him in the season itself
2. Won a championship over two srs outliers(SUPERTEAMS!) beating the Knicks in 5 and the Lakers in 7
3. Won a final over the 1969 Lakers featuring two of the 4 best players of the era(Wilt and West)
4. Posted a similar regular season SRS as the aforementioned outliers with the weakest cast of his career
5. Won his 11th championship in 13 years with a back-to-back triumph over West and Wilt's Lakers(injuries assisted with the first)

It seems even those who champion era-relativity here are hesitant to put Russell's best years at the top, so I'm curious to see what the counter-cases would look like.

1964 Wilt had a far better peak then 1969 Russell.

As he took a

36.9 PPG (League leader)

22.3 RPG

5.0 APG

52.4% FG

31.6 PER

.325 WS/48 (Career-high and league leader)

14.4 OWS

10.6 DWS (Career-high) *For reference, Olajuwon's career high was 8.7.

In the playoffs

Also in the playoffs for Wilt

Playoffs
-34.7 PPG (playoff leader)
-25.2 RPG
-3.3 APG
-54.3% FG (playoff leader)
-31.3 PER (Career high and playoff leader)
-.323 WS/48 (Career high and playoff leader)
-2.3 OWS (playoff leader)
-1.5 DWS

Wilt Chamberlain vs Hawks 1964 WCF: 38.6/23.4/3.9 on 55.9 FG% and 56.3 TS%




Finals (Against the greatest defender ever, Bill Russell)
-29.2 PPG
-27.6 RPG
-2.4 APG
-51.4% FG

His teammates shot a combined 34.8% and the Warriors lost in 5 through to his credit Wilt did make the games close.

coastalmarker99 wrote:1964 Wilt had a far better peak then 1969 Russell.

36.9 PPG (League leader)

22.3 RPG

5.0 APG

52.4% FG

31.6 PER

.325 WS/48 (Career-high and league leader)

14.4 OWS

10.6 DWS (Career-high) *For reference, Olajuwon's career high was 8.7.

In the playoffs

Also in the playoffs for Wilt

Playoffs
-34.7 PPG (playoff leader)
-25.2 RPG
-3.3 APG
-54.3% FG (playoff leader)
-31.3 PER (Career high and playoff leader)
-.323 WS/48 (Career high and playoff leader)
-2.3 OWS (playoff leader)
-1.5 DWS

Wilt Chamberlain vs Hawks 1964 WCF: 38.6/23.4/3.9 on 55.9 FG% and 56.3 TS%




Finals (Against the greatest defender ever, Bill Russell)
-29.2 PPG
-27.6 RPG
-2.4 APG
-51.4% FG

His teammates shot a combined 34.8% and the Warriors lost in 5 through to his credit Wilt did make the games close.

Box-stuff is pretty useless defensively tho

If it was only about winning Championships when it comes to peaks then Russell would be considered the best.

But most people don't consider him to have the best peak ever

Why? Because individual ability and statistics still have to come into play.

And in this realm, Chamberlain is without a peer.

At his peak and in his prime he is the greatest scorer, rebounder, and shot blocker of all time.

If you told me that I could have the best scorer and the best defender in one player, I'd take him without a second thought.

Now add in things like superlative speed, strength, and athleticism.

An ability to play 48 minutes in a fast paced era.

And never once fouling out while playing dominant inside defense.

What do you get? A guy who basically owns the record book.

Futhermore

I believe it was Hannum who commented on Chamberlain's incredible 1964 season, where he took one of the worst rosters in NBA history, to the Finals...

"He has to play like Russell on the defensive end, and like Wilt on the offensive end."

BTW, even Russell made the comment that Wilt could do a better job in his [Russell's] role, than Russell could do in Wilt's

Wilt is playing better then I used to –passing off, coming out to set up screens, picking up guys outside, and sacrificing himself for team play.’’ –Bill Russell, great moments in pro basketball, (by Sam Goldaper)p.24

coastalmarker99 wrote:If it was only about winning Championships when it comes to peaks then Russell would be considered the best.

But most people don't consider him to have the best peak ever

Why? Because individual ability and statistics still have to come into play.

And in this realm, Chamberlain is without a peer.

At his peak and in his prime he is the greatest scorer, rebounder, and shot blocker of all time.

If you told me that I could have the best scorer and the best defender in one player, I'd take him without a second thought.

Now add in things like superlative speed, strength, and athleticism.

An ability to play 48 minutes in a fast paced era.

And never once fouling out while playing dominant inside defense.

What do you get? A guy who basically owns the record book.

Futhermore

I believe it was Hannum who commented on Chamberlain's incredible 1964 season, where he took one of the worst rosters in NBA history, to the Finals...

"He has to play like Russell on the defensive end, and like Wilt on the offensive end."

BTW, even Russell made the comment that Wilt could do a better job in his [Russell's] role, than Russell could do in Wilt's

Wilt is playing better then I used to –passing off, coming out to set up screens, picking up guys outside, and sacrificing himself for team play.’’ –Bill Russell, great moments in pro basketball, (by Sam Goldaper)p.24

Okay i've edited the toptic to "post-merger". Dont need wilt vs russell(again) but i see ya

Almost all of your arguments are resume based which kind of misses the point if your own definition of who is "better" is who increased championship likelihood more. A player can end up not winning the championship while still improving his team's chances more than 69 Russell did.

Regarding your specific points,
1. 48 to 34 wins isn't a historic dropoff and it's not a "virtually identical roster" when the Celtics also lost Sam Jones along with Russell. Jones was down to 26-29 mpg by his final season but he was still their second highest postseason scorer.
2. Neither Knicks nor Lakers were SRS outliers. Sixers and Bullets were right there with them. Add the Celtics themselves and that makes it 5 out of 12 non expansion teams with a similar SRS. You could point out the 69 Knicks had an +8.1 SRS after DeBusschere trade but they still weren't considered a superteam based on their roster talent.
3. Most wouldn't have Wilt top 4 in 1969 so previous achievements are irrelevant.
4. Again, not outlier SRS. And the weakest cast of Russell's career doesn't say anything about how strong it was compared to other superstar supporting casts.
5. This is just pure ring counting.

Even in the best case scenario for Russell, his 69 season would not be a GOAT level peak. And the arguments you used certainly doesn't prove that he increased championship likelihood more than any other player in history in that particular season.

LA Bird wrote:

Almost all of your arguments are resume based which kind of misses the point if your own definition of who is "better" is who increased championship likelihood more. A player can end up not winning the championship while still improving his team's chances more than 69 Russell did.

I see, then surely you'll come up with a litany of examples where players have taken 35-win casts to...

,
1. 48 to 34 wins

Ohhhhh. I see. Championship probability is not about championships, it's about winning enough regular season games("enough" defined as "the number of wins later teams generally won while also winning championships").

The Celtics SRS(+5.35) was right at the top with the rest of the league in a decade where +4 teams were special:

At the height of their dynasty, the Celtics were comically dominant. From 1962-65, their average margin-of-victory (MOV) was over 8 points per game. During the same time span, only two other teams even eclipsed 4 points per game – the ’64 Royals and the ’64 Warriors. And all of Boston’s separation was created by its historic defense, anchored by Russell:

In a season where 5 such outliers popped up(and per your contribution, a +4 team that was arguably actually a unprecedented(russell excepted) +8.2, the Celtics still won.

But yeah, sure, this doesn't actually say anything about championship probability(never mind the, basically always winning) because they didn't win as many regular season games as true contenders like the 91 Magic and the 15 Hawks.

(paraphrase) sam jones was the second leading scorer

Sam Jones scored 1.8 points more than Bailey Howell while shooting 7-points worse on a mediocre offense. This wasn't 2023. A <30 mpg role player does not suddenly stop becoming a role player because he's "the second highest scorer" on a team that gained the entirety of it's (unrivalled) separation on defense. Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster:

70sfan wrote:True, but at the same time Havlicek improved a lot, so did Don Nelson, Siegfried had a better season, they added a solid rookie JoJo White... Howell losing a step doesn't explain that.

If "but 41 fg% scorer sam jones left!" is your only point here, then I think "basically the same" works just fine:

70sFan wrote:

Heej wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:The 2017 Warriors without Durant made and lost a contentious finals. The Celtics without Russell won 35 games and missed the playoffs. This is a reach me thinks.

Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

That's not true though. Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1968-69 season:

Bill Russell
John Havlicek
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Tom Sanders
Sam Jones
Don Nelson
Em Bryant

Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1969-70 season:

John Havlicek
Don Nelson
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Hank Finkel
Em Bryant
Tom Sanders
JoJo White

The team lost Russell and Jones, while getting rookie White and giving Finkel much more minutes in absence of Russell. The rest of the core remained the same.

If you want to push the narrative that Sam Jones was so important to them, then keep in mind that he played 26 mpg and didn't bring any defensive contribution at that point, yet Celtics didn't get worse relative to the league offensively, but their best defense in the league collapsed to slightly below average.

penbeast0 wrote:

Heej wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:The 2017 Warriors without Durant made and lost a contentious finals. The Celtics without Russell won 35 games and missed the playoffs. This is a reach me thinks.

Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

Actually all their other starters returned plus one of their top 2 reserves. Sam Jones, who was a reserve that season, is the other one to move on. They added Jo Jo White and Don Chaney at guard. This critique is just factually incorrect.

We have an 82 game sample where the Celtics fell from impressive title run and exceptional for the time to subpar.

3. Most wouldn't have Wilt top 4 in 1969 so previous achievements are irrelevant.

Ooh ad-populum. But fine, lets use 1969 POY-voting as our baseline(and disregard Wilt was voted #1 the 3 previous seasons). Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals after winning 4-2 against a knicks team with the 3rd and 8th best player in the league after winning 4-1 against the Sixers headlined by the 5th best player in the league. 2 of those teams crossed the +4 treshold, 1 of those teams crossed the +5 treshold(and maybe secretly was +8!) and the team that merely approached +4 was headlined by two of the four true greats of the era(and 3 of the top 10 players). Using the(rather high) standard estabilished earlier, that makes 2 outliers, and 1 team that statistically wasn't an outlier but came rather close(and veru obviously wasn't going all-in during the regular season.

Since we care about what "most" think, why don't we see how that stacks up to the top-3 peaks of the POY project

1. Micheal Jordan who, with similar support, was struggled just to win a playoff series
2. Lebron, who with better or similar help(40-wins without) faced one opponent on the level of Russell's 3 conquests and just about survived(also struggling strongly against a dramatically weaker conference finalist
3. Shaq, who with better help(45-win without), faced weaker postseason competition and performed significantly worse

4. Again, not outlier SRS. And the weakest cast of Russell's career doesn't say anything about how strong it was compared to other superstar supporting casts.

Well no, that's what the 82 game sample the next year with a virtually identical roster is for. The other indicators(besides a 28-game sample with a dramatically better roster in 1959), are them going 3-in the games they played without russ that season(net-rating was worse), them playing like a 35-win team without russ for his career per WOWY, and them playing like a 40-win team on average per WOWYR. There's also the Celtics falling from "easily the best team in the regular season" to "easily the best team in the regular season" when his teammates missed time. There's also the Celtics contiuing to win as the core from the first championships faded or left and the non-nba signals from the olympics and his college days that echo what pretty much everything else we have suggests:

Russell won, no matter what. If you're trying to assess championship probability, that's a bit more important than whether they won 70 games.

5. This is just pure ring counting.

No, it's replication. Unless, for whatever reason, we assume the Celtics were always stacked(the evidence suggests at least one of those title-winners was actually the opposite), those 11 rings make it rather unlikely that 69 was a matter of simple luck or variance. We know the core from the early superteam had mostly faded and retired by 61. And we know it didn't stop the Celtics from winning 5 more. Pair that with what we have with 69 and the only real counter here is "uncertainity".
Well that and "the celtics didn't win enough regular season games!"

Even in the best case scenario for Russell, his 69 season would not be a GOAT level peak. And the arguments you used certainly doesn't prove that he increased championship likelihood more than any other player in history in that particular season.

Huh? We're not taking "the best case scenario", we're taking "the scenario that most directly follows from the available evidence". If you want me to not go with the most direct interpretation, then I'm going to need something better than "sam jones averaged 16.8 points!"

But since "winning rings with 35-win help" is apparently common place, let's see what "goat-level peaks" you can come up with.

OhayoKD wrote:

LA Bird wrote:

I see, then surely you'll come up with a litany of examples where players have taken 35-win casts to...

,
1. 48 to 34 wins

Ohhhhh. I see. Championship probability is not about championships, it's about winning enough regular season games("enough" defined as "the number of wins later teams generally won while also winning championships").

The Celtics SRS(+5.35) was right at the top with the rest of the league in a decade where +4 teams were special:

At the height of their dynasty, the Celtics were comically dominant. From 1962-65, their average margin-of-victory (MOV) was over 8 points per game. During the same time span, only two other teams even eclipsed 4 points per game – the ’64 Royals and the ’64 Warriors. And all of Boston’s separation was created by its historic defense, anchored by Russell:

In a season where 5 such outliers popped up(and per your contribution, a +4 team that was arguably actually a unprecedented(russell excepted) +8.2, the Celtics still won.

But yeah, sure, this doesn't actually say anything about championship probability(never mind the, basically always winning) because they didn't win as many regular season games as true contenders like the 91 Magic and the 15 Hawks.

Sam Jones scored 1.8 points more than Bailey Howell while shooting 7-points worse on a mediocre offense. This wasn't 2023. A <30 mpg role player does not suddenly stop becoming a role player because he's "the second highest scorer" on a team that gained the entirety of it's (unrivalled) separation on defense. Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster:

70sfan wrote:True, but at the same time Havlicek improved a lot, so did Don Nelson, Siegfried had a better season, they added a solid rookie JoJo White... Howell losing a step doesn't explain that.

If "but 41 fg% scorer sam jones left!" is your only point here, then I think "basically the same" works just fine:

70sFan wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

That's not true though. Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1968-69 season:

Bill Russell
John Havlicek
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Tom Sanders
Sam Jones
Don Nelson
Em Bryant

Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1969-70 season:

John Havlicek
Don Nelson
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Hank Finkel
Em Bryant
Tom Sanders
JoJo White

The team lost Russell and Jones, while getting rookie White and giving Finkel much more minutes in absence of Russell. The rest of the core remained the same.

If you want to push the narrative that Sam Jones was so important to them, then keep in mind that he played 26 mpg and didn't bring any defensive contribution at that point, yet Celtics didn't get worse relative to the league offensively, but their best defense in the league collapsed to slightly below average.

penbeast0 wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

Actually all their other starters returned plus one of their top 2 reserves. Sam Jones, who was a reserve that season, is the other one to move on. They added Jo Jo White and Don Chaney at guard. This critique is just factually incorrect.

We have an 82 game sample where the Celtics fell from impressive title run and exceptional for the time to subpar.

3. Most wouldn't have Wilt top 4 in 1969 so previous achievements are irrelevant.

Ooh ad-populum. But fine, lets use 1969 POY-voting as our baseline(and disregard Wilt was voted #1 the 3 previous seasons). Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals after winning 4-2 against a knicks team with the 3rd and 8th best player in the league after winning 4-1 against the Sixers headlined by the 5th best player in the league. 2 of those teams crossed the +4 treshold, 1 of those teams crossed the +5 treshold(and maybe secretly was +8!) and the team that merely approached +4 was headlined by two of the four true greats of the era(and 3 of the top 10 players). Using the(rather high) standard estabilished earlier, that makes 2 outliers, and 1 team that statistically wasn't an outlier but came rather close(and veru obviously wasn't going all-in during the regular season.

Since we care about what "most" think, why don't we see how that stacks up to the top-3 peaks of the POY project

1. Micheal Jordan who, with similar support, was struggled just to win a playoff series
2. Lebron, who with better or similar help(40-wins without) faced one opponent on the level of Russell's 3 conquests and just about survived(also struggling strongly against a dramatically weaker conference finalist
3. Shaq, who with better help(45-win without), faced weaker postseason competition and performed significantly worse

4. Again, not outlier SRS. And the weakest cast of Russell's career doesn't say anything about how strong it was compared to other superstar supporting casts.

Well no, that's what the 82 game sample the next year with a virtually identical roster is for. The other indicators(besides a 28-game sample with a dramatically better roster in 1959), are them going 3-in the games they played without russ that season(net-rating was worse), them playing like a 35-win team without russ for his career per WOWY, and them playing like a 40-win team on average per WOWYR. There's also the Celtics falling from "easily the best team in the regular season" to "easily the best team in the regular season" when his teammates missed time. There's also the Celtics contiuing to win as the core from the first championships faded or left and the non-nba signals from the olympics and his college days that echo what pretty much everything else we have suggests:

Russell won, no matter what. If you're trying to assess championship probability, that's a bit more important than whether they won 70 games.

5. This is just pure ring counting.

No, it's replication. Unless, for whatever reason, we assume the Celtics were always stacked(the evidence suggests at least one of those title-winners was actually the opposite), those 11 rings make it rather unlikely that 69 was a matter of simple luck or variance. We know the core from the early superteam had mostly faded and retired by 61. And we know it didn't stop the Celtics from winning 5 more. Pair that with what we have with 69 and the only real counter here is "uncertainity".
Well that and "the celtics didn't win enough regular season games!"

Even in the best case scenario for Russell, his 69 season would not be a GOAT level peak. And the arguments you used certainly doesn't prove that he increased championship likelihood more than any other player in history in that particular season.

Huh? We're not taking "the best case scenario", we're taking "the scenario that most directly follows from the available evidence". If you want me to not go with the most direct interpretation, then I'm going to need something better than "sam jones averaged 16.8 points!"

But since "winning rings with 35-win help" is apparently common place, let's see what "goat-level peaks" you can come up with.[/quote]

Readability and engagement (based on the former and ability to accurately quote you) may be better with quotations fixed. If you care. Up to you.

Edit: Posting this illustrated the problem further - apparently my post ends very quickly versus where it should.

Owly wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:

I see, then surely you'll come up with a litany of examples where players have taken 35-win casts to...

,
1. 48 to 34 wins

Ohhhhh. I see. Championship probability is not about championships, it's about winning enough regular season games("enough" defined as "the number of wins later teams generally won while also winning championships").

The Celtics SRS(+5.35) was right at the top with the rest of the league in a decade where +4 teams were special:

At the height of their dynasty, the Celtics were comically dominant. From 1962-65, their average margin-of-victory (MOV) was over 8 points per game. During the same time span, only two other teams even eclipsed 4 points per game – the ’64 Royals and the ’64 Warriors. And all of Boston’s separation was created by its historic defense, anchored by Russell:

In a season where 5 such outliers popped up(and per your contribution, a +4 team that was arguably actually a unprecedented(russell excepted) +8.2, the Celtics still won.

But yeah, sure, this doesn't actually say anything about championship probability(never mind the, basically always winning) because they didn't win as many regular season games as true contenders like the 91 Magic and the 15 Hawks.

Sam Jones scored 1.8 points more than Bailey Howell while shooting 7-points worse on a mediocre offense. This wasn't 2023. A <30 mpg role player does not suddenly stop becoming a role player because he's "the second highest scorer" on a team that gained the entirety of it's (unrivalled) separation on defense. Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster:

70sfan wrote:True, but at the same time Havlicek improved a lot, so did Don Nelson, Siegfried had a better season, they added a solid rookie JoJo White... Howell losing a step doesn't explain that.

If "but 41 fg% scorer sam jones left!" is your only point here, then I think "basically the same" works just fine:

70sFan wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

That's not true though. Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1968-69 season:

Bill Russell
John Havlicek
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Tom Sanders
Sam Jones
Don Nelson
Em Bryant

Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1969-70 season:

John Havlicek
Don Nelson
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Hank Finkel
Em Bryant
Tom Sanders
JoJo White

The team lost Russell and Jones, while getting rookie White and giving Finkel much more minutes in absence of Russell. The rest of the core remained the same.

If you want to push the narrative that Sam Jones was so important to them, then keep in mind that he played 26 mpg and didn't bring any defensive contribution at that point, yet Celtics didn't get worse relative to the league offensively, but their best defense in the league collapsed to slightly below average.

penbeast0 wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

Actually all their other starters returned plus one of their top 2 reserves. Sam Jones, who was a reserve that season, is the other one to move on. They added Jo Jo White and Don Chaney at guard. This critique is just factually incorrect.

We have an 82 game sample where the Celtics fell from impressive title run and exceptional for the time to subpar.

3. Most wouldn't have Wilt top 4 in 1969 so previous achievements are irrelevant.

Ooh ad-populum. But fine, lets use 1969 POY-voting as our baseline(and disregard Wilt was voted #1 the 3 previous seasons). Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals after winning 4-2 against a knicks team with the 3rd and 8th best player in the league after winning 4-1 against the Sixers headlined by the 5th best player in the league. 2 of those teams crossed the +4 treshold, 1 of those teams crossed the +5 treshold(and maybe secretly was +8!) and the team that merely approached +4 was headlined by two of the four true greats of the era(and 3 of the top 10 players). Using the(rather high) standard estabilished earlier, that makes 2 outliers, and 1 team that statistically wasn't an outlier but came rather close(and veru obviously wasn't going all-in during the regular season.

Since we care about what "most" think, why don't we see how that stacks up to the top-3 peaks of the POY project

1. Micheal Jordan who, with similar support, was struggled just to win a playoff series
2. Lebron, who with better or similar help(40-wins without) faced one opponent on the level of Russell's 3 conquests and just about survived(also struggling strongly against a dramatically weaker conference finalist
3. Shaq, who with better help(45-win without), faced weaker postseason competition and performed significantly worse

4. Again, not outlier SRS. And the weakest cast of Russell's career doesn't say anything about how strong it was compared to other superstar supporting casts.

Well no, that's what the 82 game sample the next year with a virtually identical roster is for. The other indicators(besides a 28-game sample with a dramatically better roster in 1959), are them going 3-in the games they played without russ that season(net-rating was worse), them playing like a 35-win team without russ for his career per WOWY, and them playing like a 40-win team on average per WOWYR. There's also the Celtics falling from "easily the best team in the regular season" to "easily the best team in the regular season" when his teammates missed time. There's also the Celtics contiuing to win as the core from the first championships faded or left and the non-nba signals from the olympics and his college days that echo what pretty much everything else we have suggests:

Russell won, no matter what. If you're trying to assess championship probability, that's a bit more important than whether they won 70 games.

5. This is just pure ring counting.

No, it's replication. Unless, for whatever reason, we assume the Celtics were always stacked(the evidence suggests at least one of those title-winners was actually the opposite), those 11 rings make it rather unlikely that 69 was a matter of simple luck or variance. We know the core from the early superteam had mostly faded and retired by 61. And we know it didn't stop the Celtics from winning 5 more. Pair that with what we have with 69 and the only real counter here is "uncertainity".
Well that and "the celtics didn't win enough regular season games!"

Even in the best case scenario for Russell, his 69 season would not be a GOAT level peak. And the arguments you used certainly doesn't prove that he increased championship likelihood more than any other player in history in that particular season.

Huh? We're not taking "the best case scenario", we're taking "the scenario that most directly follows from the available evidence". If you want me to not go with the most direct interpretation, then I'm going to need something better than "sam jones averaged 16.8 points!"

But since "winning rings with 35-win help" is apparently common place, let's see what "goat-level peaks" you can come up with.

Readability and engagement (based on the former and ability to accurately quote you) may be better with quotations fixed. If you care. Up to you.

Edit: Posting this illustrated the problem further - apparently my post ends very quickly versus where it should.[/quote]
Fixed

OhayoKD wrote:Challenge:

- Make an argument for a post-merger season from a player not named Bill-Russell as as good or better, era-relative, than Bill Russell's 69.

- "Better" is defined here as "increasing championship likelihood"

- This is not intended as a discussion of "when" Bill Russell peaked, the goal is to construct a positive case on the merits of what was achieved and whatever evidence you can muster up

As a refresher, here are some key points for Russell from his last year as a Celtic:

1. Won a championship as a player coach with a team that would proceed to win 35 games without him with a virtually identical roster and went 3-5 without him in the season itself
2. Won a championship over two srs outliers(SUPERTEAMS!) beating the Knicks in 5 and the Lakers in 7
3. Won a final over the 1969 Lakers featuring two of the 4 best players of the era(Wilt and West)
4. Posted a similar regular season SRS as the aforementioned outliers with the weakest cast of his career
5. Won his 11th championship in 13 years with a back-to-back triumph over West and Wilt's Lakers(injuries assisted with the first)

It seems even those who champion era-relativity here are hesitant to put Russell's best years at the top, so I'm curious to see what the counter-cases would look like.

Sam Jones retired too.

Russell is maybe as good as bigs like Reed and Unseld in 69. Still a great player but it's not that hard to find better ones.

Dr Positivity wrote:Russell is maybe as good as bigs like Reed and Unseld in 69. Still a great player but it's not that hard to find better ones.

Substantiate that claim

Needless to say, when you replace Bill Russell with Hank Finkel, there is going to be a substantial regression.

ZeppelinPage wrote:Needless to say, when you replace Bill Russell with Hank Finkel, there is going to be a substantial regression.

What is it with old players and having goofy names

Can't get offended I call you a plumber and a seller of car insurance and then tell me your name is Hank Finkel lol.

ZeppelinPage wrote:Needless to say, when you replace Bill Russell with Hank Finkel, there is going to be a substantial regression.

The Bulls replaced the PC Board's #1 peak with Pete Myers. A 35-win team they were not.

OhayoKD wrote:I see, then surely you'll come up with a litany of examples where players have taken 35-win casts to...

,
1. 48 to 34 wins

Ohhhhh. I see. Championship probability is not about championships, it's about winning enough regular season games("enough" defined as "the number of wins later teams generally won while also winning championships").

But yeah, sure, this doesn't actually say anything about championship probability(never mind the, basically always winning) because they didn't win as many regular season games as true contenders like the 91 Magic and the 15 Hawks.

When did I say anything about the 69 Celtics not winning as many RS games as the 15 Hawks or that championship likelihood is about winning a particular number of RS games? I am not going to waste time with someone putting words in my mouth again so quit this basic nonsense. You pointed out the Celtics' wins after Russell retired and I merely gave the full picture by pointing out their number of wins with him for comparison.

The Celtics SRS(+5.35) was right at the top with the rest of the league in a decade where +4 teams were special:

At the height of their dynasty, the Celtics were comically dominant. From 1962-65, their average margin-of-victory (MOV) was over 8 points per game. During the same time span, only two other teams even eclipsed 4 points per game – the ’64 Royals and the ’64 Warriors. And all of Boston’s separation was created by its historic defense, anchored by Russell:

In a season where 5 such outliers popped up(and per your contribution, a +4 team that was arguably actually a unprecedented(russell excepted) +8.2, the Celtics still won.

So your definition of an outlier in 1969 is based on leaguewide distribution during 1962-65? How is that relevant in any way?
That's like saying SGA is the leading scorer in 2023 because he averaged more points than anyone during 2008-13.

Spoiler:

(paraphrase) sam jones was the second leading scorer

Sam Jones scored 1.8 points more than Bailey Howell while shooting 7-points worse on a mediocre offense. This wasn't 2023. A <30 mpg role player does not suddenly stop becoming a role player because he's "the second highest scorer" on a team that gained the entirety of it's (unrivalled) separation on defense. Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster:

70sfan wrote:True, but at the same time Havlicek improved a lot, so did Don Nelson, Siegfried had a better season, they added a solid rookie JoJo White... Howell losing a step doesn't explain that.

If "but 41 fg% scorer sam jones left!" is your only point here, then I think "basically the same" works just fine:

70sFan wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

That's not true though. Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1968-69 season:

Bill Russell
John Havlicek
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Tom Sanders
Sam Jones
Don Nelson
Em Bryant

Here are the top 8 players in minutes played in 1969-70 season:

John Havlicek
Don Nelson
Larry Siegfried
Bailey Howell
Hank Finkel
Em Bryant
Tom Sanders
JoJo White

The team lost Russell and Jones, while getting rookie White and giving Finkel much more minutes in absence of Russell. The rest of the core remained the same.

If you want to push the narrative that Sam Jones was so important to them, then keep in mind that he played 26 mpg and didn't bring any defensive contribution at that point, yet Celtics didn't get worse relative to the league offensively, but their best defense in the league collapsed to slightly below average.

penbeast0 wrote:

Heej wrote:Stop it. The only guy left over from their core in 69-70 was Havlicek. This is extremely disingenuous lmao. This is much more akin to the season where KD left and Curry+Klay got injured and the Warriors tanked so hard they got the #2 pick lol

Actually all their other starters returned plus one of their top 2 reserves. Sam Jones, who was a reserve that season, is the other one to move on. They added Jo Jo White and Don Chaney at guard. This critique is just factually incorrect.

We have an 82 game sample where the Celtics fell from impressive title run and exceptional for the time to subpar.

You quoting two other posters who also pointed out Sam Jones left along with Russell isn't the flex you think it is. Even if you want to call Sam Jones the third highest scorer behind Howell, that's still relevant to point out in terms of roster changes rather than pretending like he never existed.

3. Most wouldn't have Wilt top 4 in 1969 so previous achievements are irrelevant.

Ooh ad-populum. But fine, lets use 1969 POY-voting as our baseline(and disregard Wilt was voted #1 the 3 previous seasons). Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals after winning 4-2 against a knicks team with the 3rd and 8th best player in the league after winning 4-1 against the Sixers headlined by the 5th best player in the league. 2 of those teams crossed the +4 treshold, 1 of those teams crossed the +5 treshold(and maybe secretly was +8!) and the team that merely approached +4 was headlined by two of the four true greats of the era(and 3 of the top 10 players). Using the(rather high) standard estabilished earlier, that makes 2 outliers, and 1 team that statistically wasn't an outlier but came rather close(and veru obviously wasn't going all-in during the regular season.

Ad populum... do you have Wilt top 4 in 1969 yourself? You name dropped him hoping that nobody would catch that 69 Wilt was not the same caliber of player as he was before. "Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals" - was he playing 1 vs 3 by himself? Rather convenient for you to leave out Havlicek's results in POY voting because a team with the 1st and 7th best player beating a team with the 2nd and 6th best player doesn't sound so impressive anymore. And if you are going to trash Sam Jones as a role player, you should do the same for Elgin Baylor too considering his playoffs performance if you are being consistent.

Since we care about what "most" think, why don't we see how that stacks up to the top-3 peaks of the POY project

1. Micheal Jordan who, with similar support, was struggled just to win a playoff series
2. Lebron, who with better or similar help(40-wins without) faced one opponent on the level of Russell's 3 conquests and just about survived(also struggling strongly against a dramatically weaker conference finalist
3. Shaq, who with better help(45-win without), faced weaker postseason competition and performed significantly worse

Why are you trying to get me to guess which seasons of these players you are talking about?
If you want to make the claim that 69 Russell > 88 Jordan, just say it outright instead of being vague about it.

4. Again, not outlier SRS. And the weakest cast of Russell's career doesn't say anything about how strong it was compared to other superstar supporting casts.

Well no, that's what the 82 game sample the next year with a virtually identical roster is for. The other indicators(besides a 28-game sample with a dramatically better roster in 1959), are them going 3-in the games they played without russ that season(net-rating was worse), them playing like a 35-win team without russ for his career per WOWY, and them playing like a 40-win team on average per WOWYR. There's also the Celtics falling from "easily the best team in the regular season" to "easily the best team in the regular season" when his teammates missed time. There's also the Celtics contiuing to win as the core from the first championships faded or left and the non-nba signals from the olympics and his college days that echo what pretty much everything else we have suggests:

Russell won, no matter what. If you're trying to assess championship probability, that's a bit more important than whether they won 70 games.

Yes. Career WOWY, Olympics, college performance are so relevant in a season specific thread. I thought this was about 1969 Russell only or are you just using it as an opportunity to talk about his entire career?

5. This is just pure ring counting.

No, it's replication. Unless, for whatever reason, we assume the Celtics were always stacked(the evidence suggests at least one of those title-winners was actually the opposite), those 11 rings make it rather unlikely that 69 was a matter of simple luck or variance. We know the core from the early superteam had mostly faded and retired by 61. And we know it didn't stop the Celtics from winning 5 more. Pair that with what we have with 69 and the only real counter here is "uncertainity".
Well that and "the celtics didn't win enough regular season games!"

Considering the Finals was a close 7 game series and one of their wins was by 1 point on a last second game winner, yes, there was luck involved. Especially since Russell himself was on the bench during that game winning possession and had nothing to do with it. Just because the Celtics won plenty of rings in the years before does not mean the ring in 1969 was guaranteed. If you want to talk about one of their more dominant playoffs runs like 1964, then you should have made a thread about that season instead.

Even in the best case scenario for Russell, his 69 season would not be a GOAT level peak. And the arguments you used certainly doesn't prove that he increased championship likelihood more than any other player in history in that particular season.

Huh? We're not taking "the best case scenario", we're taking "the scenario that most directly follows from the available evidence". If you want me to not go with the most direct interpretation, then I'm going to need something better than "sam jones averaged 16.8 points!"

I meant best case scenario as in even if I had Russell as my GOAT, the man did not have ten seasons above all the other best peaks in NBA history. I thought that would be obvious but clearly not since you keep equating Russell's 1969 season to his whole career.

But since "winning rings with 35-win help" is apparently common place, let's see what "goat-level peaks" you can come up with.

You're still not getting it. When did I say winning rings with 35-win help is common? Why is it even a necessary benchmark in the first place? Does 69 Russell's impact on his team's championship likelihood decrease if Sam Jones had missed the game winner and the Celtics had lost? Unless you are willing to accept a player can increase championship likelihood more in a season without winning a ring than someone who did, there is no discussion to be had here because you will always just fall back on Russell's 11 rings as the ultimate proof he increased championship likelihood more than anyone. And at that point, why make a thread asking a question you already know the answer to?

OhayoKD wrote:

ZeppelinPage wrote:Needless to say, when you replace Bill Russell with Hank Finkel, there is going to be a substantial regression.

The Bulls replaced the PC Board's #1 peak with Pete Myers. A 35-win team they were not.

They did regress though.

92-93: SRS: 6.19 (4th of 27) Pace: 92.5 (27th of 27)

Off Rtg: 112.9 (2nd of 27) Def Rtg: 106.1 (7th of 27) Net Rtg: +6.8 (2nd of 27)

93-94: SRS: 2.87 (11th of 27) Pace: 91.9 (25th of 27)

Off Rtg: 106.1 (14th of 27) Def Rtg: 102.7 (6th of 27) Net Rtg: +3.3 (11th of 27)

Regression carries over into the playoffs and the PC board didn't vote 93 Jordan as his peak to be fair.

People on this board are always in-depth with examining analytical data, but they only point to the -2 in wins as a sign that the regression was minuscule.

LA Bird wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:I see, then surely you'll come up with a litany of examples where players have taken 35-win casts to...

Ohhhhh. I see. Championship probability is not about championships, it's about winning enough regular season games("enough" defined as "the number of wins later teams generally won while also winning championships").

But yeah, sure, this doesn't actually say anything about championship probability(never mind the, basically always winning) because they didn't win as many regular season games as true contenders like the 91 Magic and the 15 Hawks.

When did I say anything about the 69 Celtics not winning as many RS games as the 15 Hawks or that championship likelihood is about winning a particular number of RS games? I am not going to waste time with someone putting words in my mouth again so quit this basic nonsense. You pointed out the Celtics' wins after Russell retired and I merely gave the full picture by pointing out their number of wins with him for comparison.

Here are the words you yourself put in your own mouth:

48 to 34 wins isn't a historic dropoff

Here is the larger point you are arguing:

if your own definition of who is "better" is who increased championship likelihood more.

You are either
A. applying modern-tresholds to argue that the regular season record did not drop by enough to qualify as a "historic" drop in championship probability
B. making a point that doesn't actually support your larger claim

Additionally, despite specifically using "variance" as a reason to dismiss the fact the Celtics won as evidence, you are using record instead of SRS which places the Celtics as a 55-win team. A 7-point srs drop off is actually "historic" even if you were only concerned with raw srs. In the context of the 60's, 55-wins typically made you a clear-championship favorite. In the context of 1969, it put them right up there with the best teams in the league. Whether you use the macro of "era"(era-relative) or the micro of "1969", going from outlier(macro) or arguably league-best(micro) to below average(-1.5 SRS, 35-wins) is not only "historic", but virtually unheard of

The Celtics SRS(+5.35) was right at the top with the rest of the league in a decade where +4 teams were special:

In a season where 5 such outliers popped up(and per your contribution, a +4 team that was arguably actually a unprecedented(russell excepted) +8.2, the Celtics still won.

So your definition of an outlier in 1969 is based on leaguewide distribution during 1962-65? How is that relevant in any way?
That's like saying SGA is the leading scorer in 2023 because he averaged more points than anyone during 2008-13.

Are you really asking how "outlier relative to era" is relevant to an "era-relative" framing. Are the KD-Warriors as tough as the 2014 spurs because they were both the best teams in the league?

Not that this really helps because, again, the Celtics literally beat the teams that posted the best, 3rd best(excepting the Celtics themselves), and 5th best srs. Based on "league-wide distribution" that still qualifies as an absurdly tough gauntlet(Jordan, Lebron, and Shaq have never faced equivalent competition based on "season-wide team distribution"). The Celtics ran through a gauntlet(absurd to very absurd depending on if we go by season or era) and then fell to below average the next year. Barring a solid case for the Celtics without Russell getting substantially worse as a collective, this would qualify as an unrivalled carry-job(that culmanated in a championship).

[spoiler]
Sam Jones scored 1.8 points more than Bailey Howell while shooting 7-points worse on a mediocre offense. This wasn't 2023. A <30 mpg role player does not suddenly stop becoming a role player because he's "the second highest scorer" on a team that gained the entirety of it's (unrivalled) separation on defense. Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster:

If "but 41 fg% scorer sam jones left!" is your only point here, then I think "basically the same" works just fine:

You quoting two other posters who also pointed out Sam Jones left along with Russell isn't the flex you think it is. Even if you want to call Sam Jones the third highest scorer behind Howell, that's still relevant to point out in terms of roster changes rather than pretending like he never existed.

I said "virtually" identical, as in, the roster didn't change to a degree significant enough to expect a significant drop-off indepdent of Bill. Unless you want to contest that hondo improving dramtically(and whatever other positives are at play) was outweighed by the celtics losing a distant third best scorer for an average offense who was being given role player minute, this doesn't actually function as a counter.

Ad populum... do you have Wilt top 4 in 1969 yourself? You name dropped him hoping that nobody would catch that 69 Wilt was not the same caliber of player as he was before.

I am of the opinion WIlt was still a top 4 player, But I obliged you and referenced the rankings of PC-projects. As Wilt being 2nd best or 6th doesn't matter for my argument I'm not going to waste time challenging that.

"Russell merely beat the 2nd, 6th and 10th best players in the finals" - was he playing 1 vs 3 by himself? Rather convenient for you to leave out Havlicek's results in POY voting because a team with the 1st and 7th best player beating a team with the 2nd and 6th best player doesn't sound so impressive anymore. And if you are going to trash Sam Jones as a role player, you should do the same for Elgin Baylor too considering his playoffs performance if you are being consistent.

What exactly do you think I was pointing out all this for...

We know the core from the early superteam had mostly faded and retired by 61. And we know it didn't stop the Celtics from winning 5 more.

1. Won a championship as a player coach with a team that would proceed to win 35 games without him with a virtually identical roster and went 3-5 without him in the season itself

There's also the Celtics falling from "easily the best team in the regular season" to "easily the best team in the regular season" when his teammates missed time.

Russell's best teammate improving significantly the following year is more note-worthy and it wasn't the only improvement for the roster

Your counter to this was..."they lost their second leading scorer". Hondo saw his efficiency and volume spike the following year as the offense improved by 2-points. What is your basis for Sam Jones's scoring 16ppg on horrific efficiency covering that gap?

Considering the Finals was a close 7 game series and one of their wins was by 1 point on a last second game winner, yes, there was luck involved. Especially since Russell himself was on the bench during that game winning possession and had nothing to do with it. Just because the Celtics won plenty of rings in the years before does not mean the ring in 1969 was guaranteed.

Why do you think the bar here is "100% chance of winning" for Russell to clear everyone else. How often do 35-win teams win championships. How often do 35-win teams plus a superstar win championships? It is not enough to say "variance" because "variance" can go either way. Russell picked up 5 fouls enabling the Lakers near-comeback in the first place(game 7 was previously looking to be a blowout). Jerry west had maybe the best series of his career. When the probability starts at almost zero(barring a case that the 35-wins the next season is not indicative), beating the best, second best, and 5th best opponent to clinch a championship reflects a massive increase in championship likelihood. "It could be variance" is not support for "69 russell was not a goat-level peak" it is support for "i don't know how good it was", and from a probabilistic perspective as things stand Russell being ahead of goat-level peaks is more likely than the reverse(at least based on the evidence both of us have presented).Moreover, if you are questioning what is a historic disparity between cast performance and cast+star performance on the basis of variance then it makes sense to look elsewhere to see if things are replicated. And in this case, it doesn't really matter what relationship you assume between 1969 and the other seasons in terms of goodness..

Yes. Career WOWY, Olympics, college performance are so relevant in a season specific thread

There are three possible scenarios.
1. Bill Russell was better in 1969 than he was for the previous 10 titles(in which case 69 Russell was a good enough season to win 11 championships in 13 years)
2. Bill Russell was as good as he was in 1969(ditto as above)
3. Bill Russell was worse than he was before(which would mean the previous versions of russell were also capable of lifting a 35-win team past an unrivalled gauntlet of competition)

IOW, 69 Russell is either
-> a better version of someone who always won
-> as good a version of someone who always won
-> or a worse version of someone who always won

And at this point, you haven't been able to make an argument against Russell's 69 representing unrivalled championship lift beyond an expression of uncertainty.

That he always won makes it less likely you can dismiss the gigantic gap(unless you think shaq, jordan, and lebron are likely to win a title or at least have a good chance of winning titles against dominant competition in similar situations(what they've actually managed with rosters that performed this way without them suggests otherwise)) simply as a matter of "variance".



It seems like you think it's wrong to assume players are capable of what they were in surrounding years barring a dramatic and discernable change. Fine, but in this case, because Russell has never failed to win when healthy, and 69 represents a gigiantic lift in performance.

If you want to make the claim that 69 Russell > 88 Jordan, just say it outright instead of being vague about it.

I am asking the board for a comparison with literally any season from any player(from after Russell's retirement) not named Bill. Unless you are just assuming drastic year to year changes just coz, what Jordan did in 88-90 with "Limited'(90 not really but whatever) support is relevant yeah, but you are welcome to offer positive arguments(as in reasoning that supports season a is better than season b) with the assumption that only data from the season in question is indicative.

I meant best case scenario as in even if I had Russell as my GOAT, the man did not have ten seasons above all the other best peaks in NBA history. I thought that would be obvious but clearly not since you keep equating Russell's 1969 season to his whole career.

If your assertion is "Obvious" you should have no issue backing it up. Definitive language rings hollow when you don't have anything concrete supporting your position.

TheGOATRises007 wrote:

OhayoKD wrote:The Bulls replaced the PC Board's #1 peak with Pete Myers. A 35-win team they were not.

They did regress though.

Sure. But the gap from championship vs weaker opposition(celtics beat the best, second best, and 5th best possible opponents, all of whom were outliers for the decade) to championship contention is is much smaller than the gap from beating a "most difficult ever?" gauntlet to below average/not even making the playoffs.

92-93: SRS: 6.19 (4th of 27) Pace: 92.5 (27th of 27)

Off Rtg: 112.9 (2nd of 27) Def Rtg: 106.1 (7th of 27) Net Rtg: +6.8 (2nd of 27)

93-94: SRS: 2.87 (11th of 27) Pace: 91.9 (25th of 27)

Off Rtg: 106.1 (14th of 27) Def Rtg: 102.7 (6th of 27) Net Rtg: +3.3 (11th of 27)

Regression carries over into the playoffs and the PC board didn't vote 93 Jordan as his peak to be fair.

Your numbers ignore that the 94 Bulls two best players missed more games than they did during the three-peat years. At full-strength the 94 Bulls were at a +5 team that improved in the postseason(+8 playoffs-only).

91 is not 93, but we're using a full-strength rating derived from the best scoring year from the three-peat(92). Alternatively, you can also use 88-90(remember, the 90 Bulls posted the same offense as the 91 Bulls post ASB and had the same differential until they ran into a much better version of the Pistons) and as I've mentioned before, a generous assumption that all of the Bull's improvement from 84 to 88 was a result of dpoy+scoring title Mike only gets him improving a bad team to fringe contention. The 90 Bulls(led by a version of Jordan that posted comparable box-stuff to 91 MJ against better competition and has better defensive film-tracking, on/off, ect.) did not come close to replicating what the 69 Celtics managed despite facing much weaker opposition(and as we seem to agree, he didn't have weak support).

People on this board are always in-depth with examining analytical data, but they only point to the -2 in wins as a sign that the regression was minuscule.

Okay, but at the moment, the people of the "board"(atm, me)generously replaced the 93 regular season data for the Bulls with their full-strength 92 regular season data(+10) potentially exaggerating the actual drop-off and then generously assumed Jordan was the only reason the Bulls got any better between 84 and 88(Oakley doesn't exist IG).

This extrapolation is skewed towards Mike. He still looks alot worse than Russell.

What's the source for the 94 Bulls being a +5 team that allocates for Pippen and Grant missing games? I mean, we can do that kind of allocation for every team in NBA history though. Injuries are part of the game. They missed some games, but it wasn't significant.

And where are you getting your numbers from that they were a +8 team in the playoffs? Their net rating essentially halved from '93.

TheGOATRises007 wrote:What's the source for the 94 Bulls being a +5 team that allocates for Pippen and Grant missing games? I mean, we can do that kind of allocation for every team in NBA history though. Injuries are part of the game. They missed some games, but it wasn't significant.

:
Well we're doing it with both teams(and using a better full-strength rating than either 91 or 93 of +10), so I think it's fair.

As for the source:

Falcolombardi wrote:So some thinghs here about that +7 number

First that is really weird to use the 93 bulls playoffs improvement as their "real level" cause they improved in the playoffs after coasting. Then not use the 94 bulls playoffs (where they also improved a lot) as their "real level" too

The 94 bulls actually had a +8.9 postseason srs which is almost the same as their 93 seasom +10 post season srs ( +1 difference)

The 94 bulls also missed 20 combined games from their two stars and played a +4.7 srs when healthy in the regular season (+1.5 difference with the 93 bulls with jordan) and in a very generous best case scenario a (+5.3 difference with even the 92 bulls regular season )

If i average the 94 bulls (+4.7 at full strenght in regular season and +8.9 in playoffs) vs the 92 reg season + 93 playoffs combination draymomd used (and please notice i am already picking and choosing the parts that help jordan more) the gap is only 5 points

That is not goat level.

Even by you guys own approach[Draygold and DJoker are the "guys" for context as it is below other all time greats lift in either absolute terms or in "ceiling raising" situations


I also dont get the "improving a good team is harder" part in relation to kareem, who led a goat level team in the 71 bucks so he was not exactly lacking in "ceiling raising" either compared to jordan while also having better "floor raising" lift as evidenced by their 60~ win pace without oscar in 1972

Or 08/09 garnett who had a similar lift from +3.4 to +9 and he is not even among the goat candidatws short list yet matches jordan here

i could also bring up other cases of lift like 2015 lebron cavs +10 postseason srs with a lot less talent and that the 91 bulls (kirye and love hurt) which strikes me as a even more extreme example of "ceiling raising" considering the floor it came off.
Iirc it's +5 if you combine the rs and playoff sample but feel free to take the +4.7

(For the sake of fairness I'll point out 08/09 Garnett played significantly less minutes)

And where are you getting your numbers from that they were a +8 team in the playoffs? Their net rating essentially halved from '93.

[/quote]
Now adjust for competition.

You may be tempted to dismiss it as a fluke but the Bulls played at a 52-win pace without Grant in 95(pre-MJ). As it is, variance arguably swung against the Bulls in the Knicks series:

Parapooper wrote:

Sark wrote:If you switch Pippens shooting percentages against the Knicks in '93 with '94 then the Bulls probably lose with MJ and then win the rematch without MJ.

In fact, keeping everything the same you only have to switch Pippens FG% from both game 5s and the 94 Bulls win 4-2 without MJ while the 93 Bulls with MJ are 3-3 going back to NY where they are 0/2 RS + 0/3 PS. All it takes for that is 3 of Pippens shots bouncing differently.

And if Pippen plays as bad in game 6 in 93 as he did in 94 then the MJ Bulls lose 2-4 while the no-MJ Bulls win in 4-2 against the exact same opponent (who actually improved from SRS 5.9 to SRS 6.5 in '94)

The Knicks trailed in the 4th quarter for the first three games and only narrowly won their two home fixtures. "Should have swept" is a uh, interesting interpretation of events. Kukoc's "miracle shot" was to avoid overtime and the Bulls proceeded to win the next game by double digits.

(before you say "gravity", remember Pippen was more efficient in the 94 playoffs than the 93 run)

Regardless, while +5 to +8 might make a difference in a comparison to 2015 Lebron, 08/09 KG, or rookie Kareem, it's a moot point in a comparison to 69 Russell. The Bulls could literally be a .500 supporting cast and Jordan's "lift" would still fall short.