Do you think a peak Wilt and Russell duo could drag the 1973 76ers who only won 9 games in reality to a title.

[coastalmarker99]

In this hypothetical scenario.

67 Wilt and 64 Russell are put on the 1973 76ers roster who only won 9 games in reality.

Do you think that duo is good enough to drag that 76ers roster all the way to the title?

If you think not.

What hypothetical duo in NBA History could you see winning the 1973 76ers a title.

[Owly]

Short, otoh, version, no.

4 good teams (assume Lakers still have actual timeline Wilt). Lakers and Mil possibly not maxing RS as recent and dominant champs.
SRS swing to get even with the average of those 4 (and say, to oversimplify, have 1/5 chance, though irl they'd (hope to) be a third contender in the conference and likely have a tougher route) is 18.855. That's a lot.

Wilt and Russell aren't complementary figures. Neither has shooting range. Both are dominant rim-protectors (Wilt when motivated, dedicated to that end) and rebounders. Wilt and (young) Thurmond didn't seem optimal as a related concept trial.

There can be more nuance as to how things got this way, what's changed to get to this point, what are we holding constant (e.g. injuries), coaching etc.


Fwiw there are teams from the NBL in major league era with worse win percentages as well as the '12 Bobcats (though all on a smaller sample) and (through 2019) 4 with worse SRSes, Bobcats and '92 Mavs clearly so.

As to who does, it get's too much into time machine struff (and needs better knowledge of the baseline 76ers roster and how those players were playing at that time) but you'd want a better fit than the pair offered here.

[OhayoKD]

Short, otoh, version, no.

4 good teams (assume Lakers still have actual timeline Wilt). Lakers and Mil possibly not maxing RS as recent and dominant champs.
SRS swing to get even with the average of those 4 (and say, to oversimplify, have 1/5 chance, though irl they'd (hope to) be a third contender in the conference and likely have a tougher route) is 18.855. That's a lot.

Wilt and Russell aren't complementary figures. Neither has shooting range. Both are dominant rim-protectors (Wilt when motivated, dedicated to that end) and rebounders. Wilt and (young) Thurmond didn't seem optimal as a related concept trial.

There can be more nuance as to how things got this way, what's changed to get to this point, what are we holding constant (e.g. injuries), coaching etc.


Fwiw there are teams from the NBL in major league era with worse win percentages as well as the '12 Bobcats (though all on a smaller sample) and (through 2019) 4 with worse SRSes, Bobcats and '92 Mavs clearly so.

As to who does, it get's too much into time machine struff (and needs better knowledge of the baseline 76ers roster and how those players were playing at that time) but you'd want a better fit than the pair offered here.

Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.

Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?

[Owly]

Short, otoh, version, no.

4 good teams (assume Lakers still have actual timeline Wilt). Lakers and Mil possibly not maxing RS as recent and dominant champs.
SRS swing to get even with the average of those 4 (and say, to oversimplify, have 1/5 chance, though irl they'd (hope to) be a third contender in the conference and likely have a tougher route) is 18.855. That's a lot.

Wilt and Russell aren't complementary figures. Neither has shooting range. Both are dominant rim-protectors (Wilt when motivated, dedicated to that end) and rebounders. Wilt and (young) Thurmond didn't seem optimal as a related concept trial.

There can be more nuance as to how things got this way, what's changed to get to this point, what are we holding constant (e.g. injuries), coaching etc.


Fwiw there are teams from the NBL in major league era with worse win percentages as well as the '12 Bobcats (though all on a smaller sample) and (through 2019) 4 with worse SRSes, Bobcats and '92 Mavs clearly so.

As to who does, it get's too much into time machine struff (and needs better knowledge of the baseline 76ers roster and how those players were playing at that time) but you'd want a better fit than the pair offered here.

Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.

Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?

Okay in principle:

Either you didn’t read the title (subject is 1973) or seem to be making assumptions that aren’t stated or justifiably assumed as implicit (e.g. “I estimate ’64 Russell’s impact on the Celtics to be X SRS and it remains constant to ’73 except now we adjust for different team contexts”). What's stated is that to get even with the top tier in '73 requires a "18.855" swing and that "that's a lot." Feel free to engage with or dispute this.

Fwiw, though I'll engage as I think there's other stuff that has issues here.

Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.

…
I guess it depends what you mean by “did okay”. In a small sample in a small league pedestrian teams could advance and a team could be underrated due to health changes, but lets dig in.

For the 60s (60-69)
19 such teams made the playoffs
No negative SRS team won a title.
No negative SRS team made the finals, won 2 series (later not always required for former)
7 teams made the conference finals/2nd round (1 east, 6 west [weaker]). This goes down to 3 of 13 (all west) if looking at -1 or worse teams.
’65 Bullets: 6 of 9 teams make playoffs. Upset Hawks in first to 3 series. Played a slightly weaker (than Hawks) Lakers side okay but outscored and lost 4-2.
’62 Pistons. 6 of 8. Upset Royals in first to 3. Played a similar Lakers side, clearly outscored, lost 4-2.
’67 Hawks. 8 of 10. Beat on paper weaker expansion Bulls (-3.37). Someone had to win. Lost to and outscored by Warriors,
The rest are within 0.66 of 0 SRS
’68 Warriors defeat Hawks. 8 of 12. SRS underrates Warriors. ElGee’s WoWY, with two different filters, called Warriors slightly positive with Thurmond healthy and much worse with him out. Warriors advance whilst being outscored in best of 5, first to 3. Then swept by clearly better Lakers.
’66 Hawks best Bullets. 6 of 9. Bullets slightly worse SRS. Someone had to win. Hawks do play Lakers pretty well, goes 7.
Within 0.13 of 0.
First eastern team. ’65 Philly 76ers. 6 of 9. Significant turnover/acquisition within season. Some injuries. ’65 76ers with Chamberlain and Greer and Costello in given by Elgee as 2.6 SRS (if accurate, narrow favorites).
’61 Lakers. 6 of 8. Beat worse Pistons team (3-2). Play Hawks close (3-4, even points dif).

So in summary. No teams win the title. No teams win 2 series. Of the seven teams that win a series the vast majority are in the clearly weaker conference. Of the 7, 3 defeat outright worse teams. 2 teams seem not to be negative SRS teams with something like their final playoff roster and in at least one case may not even be underdogs. And two actual, outright clear upsets in best of 5 series.

I would therefore question the assertion that they “did okay”. I would suggest they did as expected in small samples. Where RS and playoff roster key members consistent (i.e. actual sub-zero teams) more so. Typically lost. Wins often versus inferior opposition. Occasional upset. I don’t think there’s a win over a championship caliber team in there.

Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?

The ’70 Celtics won 34 with a 36 pythag wins, without Jones and with Howell vastly diminished, whilst Sanders misses time and may be diminished by a knee injury. I don’t think these are insignificant. Perhaps you have WoWY for ’69 Russell? Still a larger sample suggests with a pretty pedestrian replacement (Hank Finkel) and further losses/diminutions they were not a 30 win team so it would seem very harsh to say they would have been in ’69.

Regarding the dragging specifically to the title I’ve seen smart posters (not to say I always agree with them) posit Hondo as the Celtics ’69 FMVP (e.g. multiple voices here viewtopic.php?t=1328508). This does not fit with the implication of a single player “dragging”.

On why fit matters see above. Skillsets may not mesh. You can’t just stack say +5 in that context and +5 in that context and assume +10 elsewhere. It’s a team game. People can go too far with it or get fit wrong and I think I’ve seen smart people do it. But bad fit can nuke a player’s impact.
1) Because fit always matters. See above re Thurmond.
2) Floor raising and ceiling raising whilst related aren’t the same thing (the asserted lift from Chamberlain [inconsistent in any case] doesn’t necessarily scale though, fwiw the specifics here may be somewhat moot because the Chamberlain selected is different from the one you are talking of with bad casts.
3) Feel free to illustrate what you mean but I’m pretty confident Wilt’s teams never had any kind of parity with Celtics until the 76ers. Feel free to show any specific horrible records without where his team is better than or super close Boston’s in SRS, or won a series or outscored Boston in a series and were merely unlucky. If however you mean “they played a series fairly close” I’d say, yeah, that can happen in a small sample.

Regarding 3 or 4 SRS “sufficient to be the best team” it’s unclear what you mean.
I guess if you mean the actual best team could have secured first whilst easing off to that level, perhaps but then other teams SRS go up, so perhaps not, we can’t really say.
If, however we’re not eliminating what the actual best team did, and assuming they are relevant (it's unclear why they wouldn't be)…
Top SRS (note with a dynastic champ leading into and throughout this decade they may not actually maximize for RS consistently) from 1960
7.62
4.94
8.25
6.38
6.93
7.46
4.34
8.5
7.96
5.48
A new team playing at the level of 3 SRS (level in the existing league) would have led the league 0 of 10 times.
A new team playing at the level of 4 SRS would have led the league 0 of 10 times.

As per original post, this was an at a glance rather than an absolute statement. But your response gives no actual case for the contrary and is often unclear and I would argue misleading or inaccurate.

[OhayoKD]

Short, otoh, version, no.

4 good teams (assume Lakers still have actual timeline Wilt). Lakers and Mil possibly not maxing RS as recent and dominant champs.
SRS swing to get even with the average of those 4 (and say, to oversimplify, have 1/5 chance, though irl they'd (hope to) be a third contender in the conference and likely have a tougher route) is 18.855. That's a lot.

Wilt and Russell aren't complementary figures. Neither has shooting range. Both are dominant rim-protectors (Wilt when motivated, dedicated to that end) and rebounders. Wilt and (young) Thurmond didn't seem optimal as a related concept trial.

There can be more nuance as to how things got this way, what's changed to get to this point, what are we holding constant (e.g. injuries), coaching etc.


Fwiw there are teams from the NBL in major league era with worse win percentages as well as the '12 Bobcats (though all on a smaller sample) and (through 2019) 4 with worse SRSes, Bobcats and '92 Mavs clearly so.

As to who does, it get's too much into time machine struff (and needs better knowledge of the baseline 76ers roster and how those players were playing at that time) but you'd want a better fit than the pair offered here.

Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.

Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?

Okay in principle:

Either you didn’t read the title (subject is 1973) or seem to be making assumptions that aren’t stated or justifiably assumed as implicit (e.g. “I estimate ’64 Russell’s impact on the Celtics to be X SRS and it remains constant to ’73 except now we adjust for different team contexts”). What's stated is that to get even with the top tier in '73 requires a "18.855" swing and that "that's a lot." Feel free to engage with or dispute this.

Fwiw, though I'll engage as I think there's other stuff that has issues here.

[/quote]


I think I was assuming you were talking about srs and championship likelihood in the entirety of nba history and using that as a guideline. That was bad on my part.

As for the thread..eh? I only see one person claiming hondo should have without elaboration and people pushing for west based on box-score numbers. Given the dating, this is also probably before people started thinking about russell in terms of impact as opposed to his box-production.

the big red flag for "hondo ~ russell in 69" imo is that the following year hondo's production went up massively and the offense improved and the celtics still fell off a cliff.

wilt's warrior sides were able to put up similar postseasons to the celtics at point and played them to near ties. Which was kind of the other thing i was getting at here. Multiple instances of the celtics being taken to 6 or 7 by nuetral/negative srs teams. Even if it doesn't wing to +18 srs, i don't actually think you need that level of swing to win a title in the 60's. Wilt basically got within touching distance of titles with nuetral/marginal positive srs teams.

Fit cetainly can diminish value, but it's kind of just a random shot in the dark off what we've covered how much of that value is negated and how much value is needed.

[Owly]

Focusing on srs swing when the srs treshold for winning titles was vastly lower in the 60's is misguided. +3 or +4 is suffecient to be the best team in many years in that era. Teams with nuetral and negative srs did okay in the playoffs multiple times.

Russell dragged a 30 win team to a title on his last legs and wilt dragged teams with horrible records without wilt to relative parity with russell's celtics when bill had more help. Why do they need to be complimentary to do this?

Okay in principle:

Either you didn’t read the title (subject is 1973) or seem to be making assumptions that aren’t stated or justifiably assumed as implicit (e.g. “I estimate ’64 Russell’s impact on the Celtics to be X SRS and it remains constant to ’73 except now we adjust for different team contexts”). What's stated is that to get even with the top tier in '73 requires a "18.855" swing and that "that's a lot." Feel free to engage with or dispute this.

Fwiw, though I'll engage as I think there's other stuff that has issues here.

I think I was assuming you were talking about srs and championship likelihood in the entirety of nba history and using that as a guideline. That was bad on my part.

Okay. Thanks for acknowledging.

As for the thread..eh? I only see one person claiming hondo should have without elaboration and people pushing for west based on box-score numbers.

Not sure what warrants "eh" here or confuses you.
Fwiw,
post 4 says "it's Havlicek" if from the winning team. Same poster says he "would have" won in post 8.
post 26 "Uh West beat out Havlicek, who probably would have won the FMVP if a Boston guy had won it"
Now had I said, "this thread gives a full reasoning for preferring Havlicek" it might have been confusing. Go back to what I said though ... " I’ve seen smart posters (not to say I always agree with them) posit Hondo as the Celtics ’69 FMVP" and ... yeah, there are smart posters giving Hondo as the FMVP. One can get more into the weeds as to what that's worth and how much this is "would" versus "should" and limitations on information. Nevertheless ... it would see to indicate that the narrative of an individual dragging (implying dead weight, needing to be dragged) the team to the title seems surprising as an assumption. And that's two (plus one other poster) versus I think none assuming/advocating Russell.

Given the dating, this is also probably before people started thinking about russell in terms of impact as opposed to his box-production.

Russell was never thought of as about his box production. And google a screaming comes across the court and you might revise the assumption that they were not au fait with "impact".

the big red flag for "hondo ~ russell in 69" imo is that the following year hondo's production went up massively and the offense improved and the celtics still fell off a cliff.

Well for one there hasn't been a general case for Hondo over Russell. It's a case that Hondo being better in the finals is plausible, which, if true, gives the lie to the notion/framing that Russell "dragged" the team to the title.

Though fwiw, per above whilst Russell was undoubtedly a high impact player there are also other factors at play in that drop off and one player becoming more box productive/efficient (possibly related to system changes) is quite a few steps from overall assumed team level improvement.

wilt's warrior sides were able to put up similar postseasons to the celtics at point and played them to near ties. Which was kind of the other thing i was getting at here. Multiple instances of the celtics being taken to 6 or 7 by nuetral/negative srs teams. Even if it doesn't wing to +18 srs, i don't actually think you need that level of swing to win a title in the 60's. Wilt basically got within touching distance of titles with nuetral/marginal positive srs teams.

I mean Boston won 9 of 10 titles and otoh, I don't think they were outscored in a series apart from '67. The claim then that Chamberlain in general got his team to any wort of "parity" with the Celtics would seem to require extraordinary evidence. But the claim that he did so with "teams with horrible records without wilt" would seem to require greater supporting evidence and specifics.

I'd already be cautious at narrowing it just to postseasons if it were just a series comparison.

But the reasserertion that they "put up similar postseasons" (more generally) when one side was (I think, otoh) never outscored in a series bar '67 (and thus, granting the exception, of course never in an overall postseason, and won the title each year)
60: outscored by Boston
61: outscored by Nats and overall
62: outscored by Celtics and overall
63: Did not qualify for playoffs
64: outscored by Celtics
and fwiw in '65 the with Wilt spell seemed to be heading towards another did not qualify, though the medical situation might be thought to mitigate that.

As such this parity seems to be, at their best, being beaten by at least 3 points a game on average and losing the series each time. Could they have lucked their way past Boston in one of those series given the smaller samples if somehow we held the points diff constant ... it's possible. If replayed though in any given series the probability is probably towards another, greater Boston won. I don't see this ... acceptable losing performance as any kind of parity with the dynastic force that was the Celtics.

Re Celtics being taken to 6 or 7 games. Yeah that'll happen in a short series, where results are binary rather than aggregate score. Think (very otoh here) home advantage was greater then too, giving series underdogs a better shot at holding out a defense of their home court. Were the Celtics lucky to never be unlucky and outscore opponents and still lose? Perhaps, from one angle. On the other they were always the best team and also happened to always win as well, which probably isn't a bad thing.

Fit cetainly can diminish value, but it's kind of just a random shot in the dark off what we've covered how much of that value is negated and how much value is needed.

Don't know that I fully understand what is being stated/argued here other than perhaps "this exercise is fuzzy" which given we're transplanting two players to a different year and a wildly different outlier (low) quality team ... I think is a given.

That said thinking two 5s will be sub-optimal doesn't seem a radical take. That it has already been illustrated with Chamberlain has already further been noted (and other double 5 lineups of that era e.g. Bellamy, Reed could be noted). More so given the already noted areas of skillset (and lack of skill) overlap.

[penbeast0]

I'm not sure even adding Russell (the GOAT defender) and Magic (the GOAT playmaker), two guys who played their career with a lot of scorers around them, could drag that team to a title though Boston's scorers weren't always efficient either.

Russell
Manny Leaks
John Block (more a PF. Magic could play here too)
Freddie Carter
Magic Johnson

Bench: Freddie Boyd, Leroy Ellis, Tom Van Arsdale

I would think era adjusted LeBron and MJ might do it as that fits better positionally and skillwise plus both are better as floor raisers which this absolutely is. And I'm one that has Russell as GOAT.

[HeartBreakKid]

They'd be a very threatening team but two great players and scrubs really can't win the championship, despite what people say.

A lot of the two man punches and "one man" championship teams actually did have good roleplayers. It's very easy to overlook players who never had all-star selections or other awards like 6MOY and all-defense, but there are levels to roleplayers.

For a team to win only 9 games must mean they are REALLY bad. This is almost like asking would the Heat win championships if it was Wade and James but no Bosh, and the answer is probably not. And that's keeping in mind the Heat signed some decent roleplayers looking to get rings.

Going up against the Knicks, Lakers and Celtics seems like a very tall task.