AEnigma wrote:Roger Murdock, A.K.A. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote:Listen, kid, I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes!
Isiah Thomas wrote:I was having some success in the game early on. I remember coming down the lane, and [Lanier] literally grabbed me out of the air and gently set me down and said, ‘Don’t come down here anymore.’ For the rest of the game, I became a great jump shooter. He was one of the true enforcers in the game. And he patrolled the paint. I remember that moment vividly in my head. That was my rookie night.
Lanier is often lost in the throng of 1970s centres. He did not win an MVP and title like Walton, Reed, Cowens, Gilmore, and I guess technically McAdoo (sixth man titles well past your prime count too). During his prime in Detroit, he won a single (three-game) postseason series, against the 1976 no-more-Kareem Bucks. He never even made an all-NBA team, which is more a reflection of position in an era where the league’s third best centre may as well be its third best player, but that does still mean voters never saw him as a top two centre. And despite a generally productive career, Lanier never made one of those NBA all-time teams. For quite a few people, that paragraph may be an automatic non-starter for Lanier.
His 1974 season at least might occasionally grab people’s attention, if we try to move past accolades. The Pistons had the league’s second-best SRS (well behind the Bucks). Lanier finished second that season in both PIPM and BPM (and PIPM wins added and VORP), closely behind Kareem and well ahead of anyone else. That PIPM score is top 75 all-time, and in the pre-databall era, every higher peak option was admitted long ago (for reference, that score is higher than Ewing’s, KMalone’s, Barkley’s, Moses’s, etc.).
He also led the league in BBR’s individual defensive rating and finished third in defensive win shares (Hayes and Kareem), which you would expect from anchoring the league’s third best defence without the strong defensive support you see on the Bullets or Celtics or Bulls. The Pistons did go on to lose to that Bulls team, but against the league’s top defence Lanier elevated his already impressive regular season scoring level, and the Pistons actually outscored the Bulls over the course of that seven-game road series. Unfortunately for the Pistons, it turns out winning four games matters more than outscoring in aggregate, and total wins matters more for seeding than total SRS; in a seventh game decided by two points, that Chicago home advantage may well have been the difference.
Anyway, postseason elevation was not unusual for Lanier, who was quietly one of the top playoff risers in league history.
1974-78 Lanier regular season: 21/11/3.5/2 per 75 possessions on 56.6% efficiency (~+6 rTS), playing 38 minutes per game.
1974-77 Lanier postseason (22 games): 22.5/12/3/2 per 75 possessions on 58.6% efficiency (~+8 rTS), playing 41 minutes per game. 13/22 games were against that season’s #1 defence.
Most people recognise that as all-time offence at the centre position, so then the attention shifts to his defence. The 1974 Pistons were a -4 defence. They never were never above average in any other year. Can
part of that collapse be attributed to Lanier? Absolutely. He had career high marks in block rates and steal rates, and nearly in rebounding rate, and this was by all accounts the healthiest season of his career. 1974 was his peak defensive season, by a distance which I think comfortably secures it as his overall peak season. However, an individual’s decline in defence tends not to lead to a six point swing in team defence… which brings us to the tortured history of the Detroit Pistons.
Keith Black Trudeau wrote:From the outset of Lanier’s rookie season, he was plagued by his bad knee. Despite not missing a single game, his contributions were limited and he played fewer than 30 minutes in at least 55 of them. Nevertheless, the Pistons, 31-51 the year prior, were transformed almost instantly. They won their first nine games of the 1970-71 season, a team record that stands to this day. Detroit ran their fast start to 12-1 before coming back to earth, but the point was proven. Led by their rookie big man, the Pistons were no longer a pushover. There was, unfortunately, another big change to the NBA that season. In an effort to streamline scheduling, the league broke its East and West divisions up into conferences, with playoff seeds awarded to the top two teams in each of the four divisions. The Pistons, to make things even, were banished to the Western Conference, and into the Midwest Divison with contenders Chicago, Phoenix, and a Milwaukee Bucks team that already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and acquired Oscar Robertson to form one of the greatest 1-2 combos in NBA history.
The Pistons, despite winning 45 games, finished dead last in their division and were disqualified, while three teams with worse records made it, including the top two teams in the Eastern Conference’s Central Division. Bob Lanier’s on-the-job rehabilitation was cut short, and he once again had to watch from home as Dave Cowens accepted the Rookie of the Year award on behalf of a Celtics team that had actually won fewer games than the Pistons.
Drafting Lanier was hardly the cure for all of Detroit’s problems. They were still very much a circus act, which reared its ugly face in Lanier’s second season.
Point guard Dave Bing, on the cusp of superstardom, suffered a detached retina in the 1971-72 season opener that cost him 37 games and marked the start of his own physical decline. Head coach Butch Van Breda Koff quit his job just nine games later, shortly after signing a 2-year contract extension. Van Breda Koff was replaced on an interim basis by Terry Dischinger, who doubled as one of the team’s small forwards. Dischinger was eventually succeeded by Earl Lloyd, a scout/assistant coach that had been loyally waiting in the wings for almost a decade for a head coaching opportunity, repeatedly denied only because he was a black man. Howard Komives, of the few white players on the team, staged an attempted coup after being DNP’d, implying Lloyd was racist. The attempt failed and Komives was forced to apologize before being traded out of Detroit, but the stigma remained and Lloyd was fired shortly after the start of the following season.
I spotlight all of this because Bob Lanier still managed to arrive as a superstar in this cesspool, averaging a career-best 25.7 points to go with 14.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists. The 1972 season would be his first of seven trips to the All-Star game over the next eight seasons. The Pistons finished 26-56.
This changed in 1974:
Sports Illustrated wrote:Detroit has won 10 of its 15 most recent games against .500-plus clubs, and in one heady burst clobbered the NBA's two most successful clubs, Milwaukee (twice) and Boston. These winning ways continued last week as the Pistons swept three weak opponents at Cobo before losing at Chicago 109-91. That defeat prevented Detroit from moving ahead of the Bulls into second place in the Midwest Division, easily the league's toughest, but hardly tarnished the Pistons' 33-19 record, fourth-best in the NBA.
It is defense in its many forms—trap presses, switching man-to-man and occasionally a thinly disguised zone of the sort used by most good pro teams—that has turned the Detroit Pistons, for 16 seasons one of the NBA's most persistent losers, into insistent winners. Last year Detroit ranked 10th in defense, allowing 110 points per game—and that was a six-point improvement over 1971-72. Now the Pistons have a 98.9 defensive average and are getting better with almost every game; only three of their last 13 opponents have scored as many as 100 points.
Bob Lanier was accused of having too much gut and not enough guts. Today, he is no worse than the third-best NBA center and may well be named the NBA's Most Valuable Player.
According to Lanier, it has only been in the last year that he has overcome the physical and psychological effects of the knee injury that ended his college career in 1970 when he was playing in the NCAA regionals for St. Bonaventure and fell over Villanova's (now, ironically, the Pistons') Chris Ford… The most versatile shooter among pro centers, Lanier is grinding down opponents with his inside game and wearing them out with his defense. He averages 23.9 points and 14 rebounds per game, but impressive as those numbers are, his best statistic is the Pistons' defensive average, for which he is most responsible.
Lanier is not only clogging the middle with his immense frame, but is using his unexpected quickness to move away from the basket and help Detroit's switching defense in much the same manner that last year's MVP, Dave Cowens, does for the Celtics. Twice in the Pistons' 93-89 win over Houston last week, Lanier switched onto Rocket Calvin Murphy, the smallest (5'9") and perhaps the fastest man in the league. Both times Murphy attempted to drive past Lanier, only to end up passing off in frustration when he could not get by. The next night Lanier put together one of the tidiest performances of the season as Detroit beat Seattle 94-83. He scored 27 points, grabbed 19 rebounds, had five assists, stole the ball three times and blocked seven shots. He said of that night's work: "I've had quite a few games like this so far this year, and I expect I'm going to have even more of them in the future."
Then, the series against the Bulls:
Greg Eno wrote:The Pistons lost a brutal, angry seven-game series to the Chicago Bulls in the first round. The Pistons weren't done until the final inbounds pass of Game 7, with just seconds to play and the Pistons trailing by one. But David Bing's throw-in was batted away by Dennis Awtrey. Game over. Series over. Season over.
And the tears flowed; not just for 10 year-old Greg Eno, but for Ray Scott's grown-up Pistons players.
"Yeah, we cried, too," Scott said when I told him of my crying jag. "Bob was a spartan; he did everything that we could possibly get him to do… We got beat by Clifford Ray.” Clifford Ray was a big, long-armed shot-blocker and rebounder. He was not, by any stretch, an offensive threat. Kind of like Ben Wallace that way. But, Scott said, Ray was able to match Bob Lanier's offensive production in Game 7 -- a matchup that hadn't worked in the Bulls favor in the previous six games.
The team started to slide in 1975 as health issues and contract disputes ravaged their lineups:
Pat Putnam wrote:After using up 13 coaches since 1948, the Pistons came upon Ray Scott almost two years ago and suddenly, instead of a bunch of people playing one-on-one, there was cohesion. Instead of individual stars, the Pistons became a galaxy. Just as important, Scott convinced Lanier not only that he was a premier center but that anyone who is 6'11" and weighs in at 260 pounds just naturally ought to be an assassin. "More elbows," ordered Scott. By nature a gentle man, Lanier became an enforcer, and the Pistons, a team at last, began to win. Only a two-point loss to Chicago kept them from the Western Conference final against Milwaukee. [SI: Forwards Love and Walker provided their usual exemplary shooting, averaging 45.1 points per game between them, but the rest of the Bulls seemed cowed by the Piston defense, particularly by Lanier whenever any of them moved into his area near the basket.]
When the season opened the consensus was that Detroit would sprint ahead of its Midwest rivals... But the Pistons had problems of their own, although some of them were not quite visible. Bing and Don Adams, the brilliant defensive forward, had been preseason holdouts, and for Adams, at best a slow starter, the delay was costly. And Scott sensed that the holdouts had disrupted the team unity that by the end of last season had lifted the Pistons out of perennial mediocrity.
Then came the injuries. Bing hurt a foot and had to have half of his right big toenail removed. For the first two weeks of the season he wore a size 14 shoe on his right foot, where normally he wears a 12. Later he sprained an ankle. Two weeks into the season Adams injured an Achilles tendon, missed eight games and then needed another month to play himself back into shape. Then almost the entire forward corps collapsed. Willie Norwood started the first seven games and was shooting at 54% when he complained of extreme pain in his left knee. A few days later he had an operation to remove a bone spur and still is out. Curtis Rowe came down with near pneumonia, lost 15 pounds but continued to play, though he was not as effective. After 20 games the Pistons had won but 10. They bumped along, finally reaching 16-17, taking turns with the Bulls and the Kings in first place.
"That was enough," says Scott. "We thought in the beginning we could run and shoot. We found out we couldn't. And so we went back to the things we do best: tough defense and more patience on offense. That's what won for us last year."
The move suited the 6'11", 260-pound Lanier, who was having a fine year and at that point became even better. In an attempt to determine the NBA's most complete player, statistics were fed into a computer. They included total scoring, assists, rebounds, blocked shots and field-goal scoring. Lanier came out No. 1. After 40 games he was averaging 24.7 points and playing tremendous defense. And he was doing it with a left knee wracked by tendinitis and arthritis. Every few days the knee has to be drained, and after every game he packs it in ice to reduce the pain and swelling.
"He's our savior," says Rowe.
"Our healer," says Adams.
"Our leader," says Bing.
"Listen to those guys," says Lanier. "They think I'm Moses."
Returning to their old style of play and healthy again, the Pistons ran off six straight victories. In November they played 14 games and gave up an average of 102.4 points per game. In 21 games since then they have allowed but 91.8 points a game and lowered their season average to 97.4, second best in the NBA.
The Pistons went on to lose to the Sonics in a three-game series. Bing was traded. After a rough start, Coach Ray was fired in front of the team. Bad vibes all-around.
I am not the biggest fan of Dave Bing — utter joke he has consistently made all-time NBA teams over Lanier — but he did at least occupy defensive attention. Many games have been scrubbed from Youtube over the years, but in what 1976 postseason games are available (either from searching or from the list that 70sFan provided in Peak #29 of this project), you can see Lanier getting legitimately triple-teamed and hear commentators saying, “Guard Lanier, and you stop [Detroit’s] offence.” All the same, the Pistons managed to give the #1 SRS Warriors a strong push, falling just short in overtime of Game 6.
1977 was even more internally disastrous, but thanks to what was probably Lanier’s second best season, the Pistons stayed relatively steady.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1977/02/28/moaning-and-winning-in-motownI am not quoting this one because it is not overly relevant to Lanier’s play, but it is a good read if you want to learn about maybe the most dysfunctional playoff team in league history.
After this last gasp, the Pistons ran out of juice. Two and a half years without postseason play. One and a half years spent in utter irrelevance. And then… Milwaukee.
Barry McDermott wrote:Only the Pacific Division champion Lakers (23-6) had a better record [than the Bucks] after the [1980] All-Star break.
It was then that the Bucks got Center Bob Lanier, trading Kent Benson and their 1980 first-round draft pick to Detroit, and Lanier proved to be the anchor that stopped the team's drifting. With the 6'11" 250-pounder on court, Milwaukee has demonstrated that it can compete with the best—even world champion Seattle, its probable opponent in the Western Conference semifinals. After Lanier arrived, the Bucks closed with a 20-6 rush, and the losses were by a total of only 16 points.
Nelson says Milwaukee could have won 62 games if Lanier had been with the team from the start, which the big fellow would have welcomed. Over the years, during the good times—the Pistons won 52 games in 1973-74—and the more recent bad ones, Lanier was Detroit's workhorse, a 22.8 career scorer and 11.9 rebounder. With the Bucks he isn't expected to carry the team on his broad back. "I don't have the emotional burden," he says. "Here I help on defense, set picks and pass the ball, things I do well anyway. It makes life easier. My playing time has gone down but the Ws are up."
"I'm happy for him," says Dave Bing, Lanier's former teammate. "It gives him a chance to go out a winner. He would have died in Detroit." Bing was a candidate for the Pistons' coaching job when Dick Vitale was fired earlier this season, and Lanier supported his candidacy, but Richie Adubato was given the position. It was the straw that broke Lanier's back. He told management he wanted out.
The deal with Milwaukee would have been made six weeks earlier except that Lanier broke the little finger on his left hand, and while recuperating he worried about his reputation as a loser who was injury prone. He previously had had two knee operations, a broken right hand, a bad toe, a sore back and a chronic shoulder problem. Lanier, who is from Buffalo, also fretted because Kent Benson, for whom it was rumored he would be traded, was Milwaukee's kind of guy: a hard-working, diligent Midwesterner. At the All-Star Game, Lanier approached Marques Johnson and asked him how the Bucks would view him. "Come on aboard," Johnson said.
With Lanier aboard, the floor looks a little bigger and less congested to Marques. Says Buckner, "Before, we would go to our guns down the stretch, and Marques was being forced so far from the basket that everything was long distance." Johnson points out, "When we take the floor now, you can just see the respect in the opposing center's eyes."
Lanier's importance was demonstrated in his very first game with the Bucks on Feb. 6. That night, Brian Winters made a game-ending 20-foot jump shot for a 111-109 win over Cleveland. Later Winters explained how he had gotten free: "Everybody was going to Bob as if he were a magnet." And at first Lanier thought Winters had missed; he was so conditioned to losing he had forgotten all about game-winning shots.
When Lanier joined up, Milwaukee trailed Kansas City by five games; it won 11 of its next 13. On March 16 the Bucks beat the Kings 128-121 and took the division lead for good. They had defeated Seattle twice, including a two-point victory in The Kingdome. The Bucks began calling Lanier "Coach" in deference to his age, 31, and stature. Because there weren't so many hands in their faces anymore, they began shooting better; at the All-Star break Milwaukee was shooting 47%; since then it has been 51%.
Anthony Cotton wrote:By the start of last season it was thought that all Milwaukee needed to make a run at the championship was a dominating center. That shortcoming was remedied right after last season's All-Star break when the Bucks traded Kent Benson and their 1980 first-round draft choice to the Pistons for Lanier. Milwaukee was 29-27 at the time, but with Lanier they went 20-6 for the remainder of the regular season before losing a tense seven-game playoff series to defending champion Seattle. Without Lanier, Detroit won two of its last 28 games.
Milwaukee has continued at that pace in 1980-81 despite what has been a depressing season for Lanier. In October his father was killed by a hit-and-run driver, and recently his wife filed for divorce. On the court Lanier, 32, has endured a broken nose, pain in his shoulders, neck and back, and floating bone chips in his left knee. At least five times this season the knee has locked.
"I guess you could say this hasn't been one of the grandest years of my life," says Lanier. "I've struggled, and there has been a lot of unrest in my mind—right now because of the knee. Some days I can play, some days I can't."
When he does play, Lanier still has his feathery touch from the outside. On the inside he's still 6'10", 250 pounds, which means he takes up a lot of room in the lane.
Nelson has sometimes held Lanier out of entire games to rest the knee. When he's not in the lineup, the Bucks seem to rise to the occasion—witness a 113-103 win over Boston on Feb. 5—but Nelson and everyone else know that a reasonably healthy Lanier is essential if Milwaukee is to seriously challenge for the NBA title. So, with Lanier's knee continuing to give him problems, Nelson has of late tried reducing the strain on it by limiting Lanier's playing time to short spurts. Lanier, however, balks at that treatment, saying he needs more playing time to loosen up the knee, which stiffens during rest periods on the bench. "People have started to dismiss us because they don't think Bob will be able to go full speed in the playoffs," says Nelson, "but I know he'll be tough." Says Lanier, "I haven't had the opportunity to get my game on track this year with all that's gone on, but my teammates have carried me. I'm not where I want to be yet, but if I can get there, I'll be doing the carrying."
Lanier has played in the NBA for 11 seasons but never made it to the championship series. Now he feels he may finally get there. "What makes this year so important to me is that I've had a full season with a good team," he says. "I know the system and I know the players. And, for me, there's no promise that there'll be a next year."
Marques Johnson is optimistic about the playoffs, but he's well aware that Lanier's soundness is crucial to Milwaukee's hopes. "Our strength is our flexibility," he says. "Whatever matchup we meet, we have a lineup to counter it. That Seattle series last year and the experience of taking the Sonics to seven games is our biggest plus. Not having handled that kind of pressure before was our downfall then. What I remember most is the Sonics' saying that it was their experience that helped them win. Now I guess you could say we're an experienced club. But without Bob we're not strong inside, and teams like Philadelphia. Boston and Chicago can take advantage of us on the boards."
Lanier continued to decline and retired in 1984. The Bucks hung his jersey in their rafters just a couple of months later. Only four and a half seasons with the team, but he sure made an impression.
Different RealGMers have sought to quantify Lanier’s “impact” on these teams.
Owly wrote:The Hollander handbooks remain pretty constantly positive after '74 (when he lost some weight), not really just a couple of years.
In large samples Lanier was having a substantial impact in '76-'78. The difference with him to without him (per game in points diff) was ...
'76: 5.2
team points differential over the year -86 over 82 games, -1.05 per game
team points differential over 18 games without Lanier -92 over 18 games, -5.1 per game
team points differential over 64 games with Lanier +6 over 64 games, 0.1 per game
'77: 6.3
team points differential over the year -85 over 82 games, -1.04 per game
team points differential over 18 games without Lanier -107 over 18 games, -5.95 per game
team points differential over 64 games with Lanier 22 over 64 games, 0.35 per game
'78: 4.3
team points differential over the year -102 over 82 games, -1.24 per game
team points differential over 19 games without Lanier -100 over 19 games, -4.35 per game
team points differential over 63 games with Lanier -2 over 63 games, -0.05 per game
This is from a guy hitting his apex in '74. In '75 still more or less as healthy as he ever was (he was injured late in his NCAA career and the Pistons hurried him back in his rookie year, which may have altered his career trajectory, but I digress), he's still blocking more than two shots a game, and I think for those first two years of my span ('74, '75) he's having a larger impact overall and a larger impact on D (than for ’76-’78). But even if it were just at these levels, I just don't buy that his impact was exclusively offensive, and in later Pistons years I don't think Lanier was put in a position to look good in terms of turnover, coaching turnover, coaching quality and teammates.
The Bucks in net in year improvement upon Lanier's arrival is huge suggesting at worst non-harmful at that point on that end. Those games with Lanier, and Lanier played in them all, they go +287, or +11.04 per game. Before that point, over 56 games they had been +36 or 0.64 per game.
I can't think really of another angle to analyse this from. I'd guess he's portable as he can score from the post, he space the floor and shoot the J, and it seems like at his best (anecdotally) he could defend guys out on the floor as well as play a more conventional anchor, and his assist % is pretty strong for a big man
Short-version:
- Mid-70s boxscore composite "advanced" metrics not too far off Kareem (on a per-minute basis).
- Despite missing time in his prime, above metrics were at a high level for a long time.
- With-without splits from when injured during prime indicates significant impact.
- Post-prime splits after trade for the more stable team (Milwaukee) suggest (on a small, but non-trivial sample) huge impact.
- From '74 on, a prominent yearly publication far more bullish on Lanier's D
His absence from All-NBA is very explainable, 2 teams, Kareem and various others as very strong competition often with better teams and so better team success and - a more genuine negative, though one that illustrated his net value in WoWY metrics - an inability to get to 70 games in many of his best years.
I think the most I can say on Lanier is the more I got into (1) the numbers and (2) the year by year history rather than the big, broad strokes, after the fact histories (and related rankings), the more I thought "Isn't he better than much more fabled 70s centers (Reed, Unseld, Cowens)?" Instinctively I'd say maybe in Ewing's ballpark.
Elgee wrote:Bob Lanier's defense I've argued repeatedly wasn't that bad, as evidenced by 4 things:
(1) Ability to be part of an elite defensive team
(2) The reputation of his Detroit teams as being absolutely god awful on defense at the other positions
(3) His individual praise in old articles for defending elite centers well (at times)
(4) His defensive role/impact in Milwaukee
Lanier had the following team DRtg's (estimated before 1974)
Det 70 +4.3 (pre Lanier)
Det 71 +1.7
Det 72 +4.4
Det 73 +1.6
Det 74 -3.9
Det 75 +2.0
Det 76 +1.9 (64g)
Det 77 +0.8 (64g)
Det 78 +0.6 (63g)
Det 79 +0.8 (53g)
Det 80 +3.5 (Lanier plays 37 games before trade)
--
Mil 80 -2.4 (26g post trade at +11 MOV)
Mil 81 -3.7 (67g)
Mil 82 -4.6
I've always argued he wasn't as bad as made out to be...maybe average or even slightly above average. That's what he looks like on film to me. Yes, Curtis Rowe looks like a decent defender...but how can you say some of these teams are decent defensively? There was an SI (I think) article I read discussing their lack of effort on that end...
https://vault.si.com/vault/1974/02/04/great-scott-he-did-some-ring-jobLanier was on 7 teams between 0.6 and 2.0 points worse than league average...that's not "significantly worse than league average." And he's considered the meat of the Milwaukee interior after the trade... That's based on quotes from his teammates and opponents when he came to Mil in the early 80s. You can call him aging but the team was monstrous when he arrived. It almost reminds me of a lite version of Kevin Garnett from Minny to Boston the way he is talked about. Not equating their defensive value, but KG has showed us how powerful a role like that can be, even post-prime. (Of course the Bucks were 6th in DRtg in 83 w Lanier out half the year...but the C's were 2nd with KG missing 25 games in 09.)
Remember, Lanier's value is primarily on offense, which is why in 74 and 77 he finished top-4 in MVP voting. Over and over we see the value in that high-post big who can pass and stretch the defense with shooting, and that was Bob Lanier. The 75 Pistons were a top-5 offense. As were the 76 Pistons...which is interesting because there was no more Dave Bing.
Then we look at Mutombo, and here were his team DRtg's
Den 91 +6.8 (pre Deke)
Den 92 +0.6
Den 93 -1.7
Den 94 -4.0
Den 95 -0.1
Den 96 +0.5
Den 97 +4.5 (post)
--
Atl 96 +0.4 (pre)
Atl 97 -4.4
Atl 98 -0.7
Atl 99 -5.1
Atl 00 +3.8
Atl 01 +1.3 (leaves post AS)
Without delving any further into scheme and roster, we can see Mutombo joins a bad defensive team, has them around average , with one elite defensive team he anchors in 1994. Again in Atlanta, he joins an average defensive team from the year before, has another impact (this time to elite) and anchors 2 elite defensive teams. He also is part of a horrible defensive team in 2000 (with the same coach.)
We can see when Deke misses 11 games in 1992 (rookie year) the team is -13.1 (!) without him and -7.1 with him...with all the change being in ppg against. In 96 he misses 8 more games and this time, theoretically around his peak as a player, they are -1.4 without him and -2.9 with him. Small sample, but negligible change at a cursory glance on both sides of the ball. In 01, we can see the difference in Atlanta and Philly pre/post trade, and in Atlanta they were -8.7 post trade (-2.8 pre), but in Philadelphia, the 76ers closed the year +1.6 while going +5.5 without Mutombo. (ppg against almost identical.)
Huh? So even a 4-time DPOY and block master has:
(1) evidence of little to no defensive impact in certain situations
(2) has been part of many average defensive teams
(3) has even been part of a bad defensive team
So Lanier "anchored" an elite team in 74 (he blocked a career best 3.0 per game that year w/1.4 steals). We know there is in/out evidence of him having little effect, like Mutombo, and him having considerable defensive effect. He is part of a horrible team in 72. He also has many average defensive teams. I said it reminded me of Kevin Garnett, who without PM data wouldn't have the reputation in the community as being as damn impressive as he's been defensively because he played on so many bad defensive teams in Minnesota and as an aging part of Boston's team, he's been surrounded by so many notable defenders on paper (Perkins, Posey, Rondo, etc.) And even with that, it still takes extensive analysis by people like drza to separate exactly how impressive KG's defense is.
TLDR: Lanier shows similar trends to Mutombo ITO of defensive teams, so we shouldn't be quick to dismiss him as a bad defender.
Relatedly, Lanier fares extremely well in WOWYR and its various iterations:
https://backpicks.com/metrics/wowyr/In my own film watched of Lanier, I have always been impressed by his overall play, and his defence at least seems like something you could clearly build around. The 1974 postseason section which 70sFan linked was maybe the worst stretch of Pistons play you could find in that series — Pistons end the video down 34-14! — but even there you can see Lanier switching onto Van Lier and switching onto multiple players in one possession and clearly pushing the Bulls to take jumpshots (which unfortunately for Lanier and the Pistons they made at a disproportionately high rate), with the commentators highlighting how Detroit is switching everything and asking a lot of Lanier. Here we have an impact giant who
can anchor a good defence, is one of the best ever big man scorers, elevates in the postseason, has great range, has good passing vision and instincts for his position (a few steps behind guys like KMalone or Walton, but well ahead of anything you see from Ewing or Gilmore or Mourning or McAdoo or Moses), fits well with a variety of teammates because of that passing and that range… Oh, and had his biggest outlier season perfectly coincide with the only year he could claim a reasonably normal level of health. That all just screams top 40 peak to me, but it is not as if I am alone on this assessment.
TrueLAFan wrote:Lanier. Imagine if Patrick Ewing was about an inch or two taller, and stronger, and had a little more range on his jumper. Take away a little of his defense—maybe 10%--but double his assist numbers. And make him the nicest, most respected guy in the league off the court, and one of the great fighters on it. I've always felt that, all in all, Peak Lanier was (at least) comparable to Peak Ewing. This is Peak Bob Lanier. Think of it like this; Clifford Ray got all the juice for being such a great defender in the 1975 playoffs. And Ray was a very good defender. Lanier averaged 26 and 15 with 3 assists and 2 blocks in the playoff series where they were matched up.
sansterre wrote:Lanier in the playoffs from '74 to '81 averaged a 118 offensive rating on 21.1% usage rate. Julius Erving in the playoffs in the same timeframe (including the ABA) averaged a 112 offensive rating on 27.4% usage. Using Neil Payne's Usage->ORating conversion (https://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/index9e74.html?p=5500) he assigns a value of 0.833 for each usage percent that a high-usage player goes up or down. Dropping Erving to Lanier's level (a drop of 6.3% would be worth an estimated amount of 5.2 ORating. So, in theory, Erving's ORating with Lanier's usage would go up to about 117.2, still below Lanier's 118. I'm serious, Bob Lanier might well have been the 2nd best offensive player in the playoffs in the late 70s (besides Kareem obviously).
Quotatious wrote:Lanier and Reed emerged as great candidates because of their excellent all-around skill-set, and the fact they are centers, which earns a few points in my book, too- I give Lanier a slight edge, but it's basically a toss-up. Both were great offensively and defensively at their peaks, very good rebounders, too. Excellent in the playoffs, as well (and against #1 rated defenses, at that). It was an extremely tough choice to give Lanier the edge, but he looks marginally better, statistically, and that playmaking Lanier provided, is the thing that made me give it to him. Both guys really impressed me based on eye-test, too. Great post game for that era, good shooting touch, both really physical, but capable of finesse moves, as well. Especially Lanier's post game (that hook shot he had, was effective out to about 13-15 feet - that's awesome range for a hook shot or jump hook) was textbook perfect.
For whatever additional value it is worth, he was also voted securely as the top Detroit Pistons peak.
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2088158&start=20#p91463240 
) on 56.65% efficiency with a +0.7 plus/minus (team went 16-10 in that stretch) in 37 minutes per game.
)
) but I have the next group of centers clearly ahead of him.