AEnigma wrote:I suspect most people — including Eminence — are not looking at the 1980 SRS jump, and the subsequent failure to ever replicate it without Bill Walton, as some serious suggestion that Bird had a historic defensive peak as a rookie that never again manifested.
However, since we are discussing that year specifically…- Bill Fitch is a marked coaching upgrade from twelve games with Tom Sanders and the rest of the season with player-coach Dave Cowens
It is an impressive turnaround all the same, but that all seems like pretty relevant context to “omg 12-SRS change!”
- An extra thousand minutes of backup centre Rick Robey is also a marked upgrade defensively
- Relatedly to the prior two points, I think it likely served Dave Cowens well to not be a player-coach and to play fewer minutes a game (and I say this with the acknowledgment that the team played fine without him)
- Gerald Henderson and M.L. Carr are good defensive additions to replace Billy Knight and JoJo White
- Bird, to his credit, is a near perfect connective figure for that team, to the point that 1980 may well be his singular “impact” high point, and had better versions of him being placed on similarly structured teams, those teams may also be capable of outperforming his average rosters with McHale and Parish in the regular season.
- Of course, the reason most people do not take this outlier SRS too seriously is because we know it was not representative of their postseason quality, and regardless of the regular season SRS values, the team was much better primed to compete for a title pretty much every subsequent year of Bird’s prime (possibly excepting 1983).
I've responded to all this in more depth in other threads, but most of those non-Bird changes are not significant or didn't move the needle much. Cowens for example was a year older and a worse player compared to 79. As you admit, the team was unaffected by his absence, and he literally retired after the season. The Rockets just made far more significant upgrades this offseason... and everyone expects them to be one of the worst teams again, because none if those things will move the needle that much without a star.
The problem wasn't coaching in 79, it was lack of talent. Fitch was a fine coach, but coaches came and went on Bird's Celtics. Bird was the real coach of that team.
As I've explained, the law of diminishing returns applies here. The Celtics were not gunning it to try and max their SRS every year in the RS.
By far the biggest driver of the 80 Celtics improvement was Bird.
the touch passes will always be so cool to watch.
