trex_8063 wrote:I want to provide some thoughts [for whatever they may be worth] on George Mikan's era, as it's been one of the most-featured topics in the last thread (maybe this one so far, too, idk).
Opening disclaimer: I am not supporting George Mikan here. Even were we a dozen places further along I would still likely not be supporting him. Part of that is my lean toward longevity. Part of that is concerns over strength of era.
That said, I had rather hoped we were past the point [on this forum] of having to speak to the "Mikan dominated a bunch of white midgets" type of narratives [myths]. While I don't think anyone used that specific line, there have been one or two that weren't far off that sentiment: referring to everyone in the league as "plumbers", saying that Mikan ONLY dominated because "he was bigger than everyone else", and so on.
"White"......yeah, ok, more or less. The pro leagues of his time were close enough to being entirely white that to argue that one is basically splitting hairs (there were no Black players in the leagues in '50 and earlier; the NBA was about 8% black at the end of Mikan's career).
As to the height thing.....
As has already been pointed out, the average pro player in Mikan's time [at least by '52 and later] was only about 2" shorter than the average NBA player of the 21st century. Is it shorter? Yes. Is it a lot shorter? No.
And we further might speculate that Mikan (and his contemporaries) would be a pinch taller if born ~60-70 years later, most likely as result of generally better perinatal nutrition and not being exposed to as much secondhand smoke at a young age (both known to influence early growth rate). i.e. same genetic pool [of those circa-1950 players], but slightly different result [in average height], based on EXTERNAL influences that would be different in the modern era.
As evidence that there has been SOME change in men's heights:
*An American insurance study performed in 1912 (looking at the heights of male policy-holders between 1885 and 1908 [i.e. turn of the century]) found the average adult male to be 5'8.5" in shoes. I would estimate that most policy-holders surveyed were White, fwiw, though I don't know the demographic details of the study.
*Research for the Society of Actuaries published in 1959 found the average 20-29 yr old male (NOTE: these would be males born in the 1930's) to be 5'9.5" in shoes. A 1965 report by the National Center for Health Statistics more or less concurred (suggests just slightly taller), reporting the average 25-34 yr old male (AGAIN: men born in the 1930s) to be just a hair over 5'9" barefoot.
So roughly two generations later (than the first dataset), men were [on average] about 1" [or slightly more] taller.
Interestingly, from there the average height (barefoot) for young men in the U.S. hasn't really changed here in the present day. Well, that's not true: it DID go up to 5'9.75" in the early 00s, then dwindled back toward where it was in those circa-1960 studies. The trend appears to MOSTLY relate to immigration, however, and the higher proportion of Hispanic (+/- Asian) men, who tend to skew a little shorter.
The average WHITE male in the U.S. has been about 5'10" in the 21st century (with the YOUNGER grown men among them trending even a hair over). [NOTE: this data from the CDC's National Health Statistics Reports, btw]
Mikan was born in 1924: between the first dataset and the second [though closer to the 2nd], in a time where average [mostly white] males were coming to be probably just a little UNDER 5'9". Whereas nowadays they come closer to 5'10".
idk, I look at the above data, and don't necessarily think it would be cherry-picking or intellectually dishonest to suggest that Mikan---if born 60 or so years later---would have been a half-inch or so taller; and his contemporaries might have averaged 6'4.5" or 6'5", too.
None of this is Earth-shattering stuff, but----if disparaging the league/era for being short----it bears considering that heights in general have changed as a result of EXTRINSIC factors......and those same factors would affect Mikan and his peers, too.
And with this in mind, it begins to look like the height difference between then and now is not all that much. And Mikan is legit "center-sized" in either era.
Which is to say he was tall; taller than most players in the league. But he didn't TOWER over them to an unusual degree, as has arguably been implied.
Mikan had the same basic height advantage over his competition [in his own era] as guys like Alex Len, JaVale McGee, Neemias Queta, Evan Mobley, and Nick Richards have over theirs in the modern era.
And where it was stated somewhere that he "was taller than everyone else"........just as that wouldn't be a true statement for the names I listed above, it is not a true statement wrt Mikan. Even as early as '52, in a 10-team league, there were THREE players a little TALLER than George Mikan. And seven of nine opposing teams had at least one guy on their roster who was [at least] within 1" of Mikan. In '54 [in a 9-team league] there were three guys listed as taller, plus a fourth listed as the same height as Mikan that appeared [however briefly, in one case] in the league, and numerous others within 1-2" of him.
And it was [I believe] also said that his prodigious size was the "only" reason he dominated. However, that begs the question: if all it takes to dominate this era is being big, why didn't these other giants dominate? Why didn't a single one of them come even remotely close to Mikan's level of domination?
The gap between Mikan and the CLOSEST of these other 6'10+" bigs of the day [who was actually 1" taller than Mikan] was similar to the gap between........maybe Nikola Jokic and Steven Adams. Pretty big, in other words. And one other 6'10" giant appears to have washed out of that mid-50s league in the shortest span I've ever seen.
And fwiw, just to speak to the race component: there were even Black big men [each 1-2" taller than Mikan, actually] in the NBA toward the end of his career......and neither of them dominated to Mikan's degree (I speak of Ray Felix and Walter Dukes, btw).
How could this be if Mikan only dominated because he was "bigger than everyone else"? The obvious answer, of course, is that George Mikan was more than simply a big guy.
We can still be skeptical of his era without going to such hyperbolic lengths as suggesting his success is entirely explained by his size.
As to the skillsets of the time period: yeah, they appear sort of "embryonic", relatively. However, when people say "so and so [modern player] would dribble circles around them, or so and so would do this, and so and so would do that...."
No, "so and so" WOULDN'T do this and that. "So and so" would actually have skillsets somewhat similar [at least in terms of foundational technique] as everyone else: because THAT'S what he would have been taught, THAT'S the only thing he would have seen tried, THAT was conventional wisdom.
You can "time-machine" a modern player back to 1954, but what's the point of such a thought exercise? To hammer home that the game has evolved? Duh, obviously.
But that modern player wouldn't have that modern skillset that's so dazzling if he was born in 1927. Gimme a break, it's not like he invented all the things he's doing. He had visual role models for his game from the modern era, he had modern coaching/training, modern skills to improvise or improve upon, he had modern competition to temper his development, and so on.
He didn't have the embryonic starting point that the players of the early 50s had.
We [as a species] don't go from inventing the wheel to flying to the moon in one step; not in ANY field of study or practice. People build on what they know, in small increments. Baby steps, not quantum leaps.
Further, some of those "modern skills" don't even translate to that era. For instance, Steph Curry or Chris Paul, transported back [time-machine] are not going to dribble circles around everyone there in the way you might imagine......because they'll get tired of committing 12 "carries" turnovers per half, and soon adopt a style of dribbling that the rules of the time period ACTUALLY PERMIT. But I digress.....
The point I'm driving at here is two-fold:
1) George Mikan [or whoever] is not going to be the same player circa-2020 as he was circa-1950 (if he was born 60-70 years later). He'd have had far different mentoring and visual models, as well as coaching. So his game would look nowhere near as "embryonic".
How good would he be? idk, that's stupendously speculative.
But that he would be a very different player today is once again: like duh, obviously.
2) The whole era translation is not a one-way door. Older players moved forward in time probably mostly get worse in more recent eras (though there may be a few exceptions). However, modern players do NOT always get better going back.
Take Steph Curry as an example. Say he's born 1925......to name a few things: his shot mechanics are now all jacked by what was taught at the time, he can't dribble circles around everyone for reasons already stated, AND there's now no 3pt line to potentiate his value. This is before we even get to things like the quality of the shoes, the floors, the ball being used, etc.
I would say Curry gets notably worse in the league of the 1950s, actually, despite it being generally lesser competition.
It's just not as cut-n-dry as some people make it out to be. As for such and such modern big guy who people "have no doubt would dominate like Mikan" in that time period........HOW DO YOU KNOW?
How do you KNOW they wouldn't be like the Chuck Shares and Don Ottens of that time? That is: pretty good, but not dominating, and regularly having their asses handed to them by George Mikan. And maybe they'd even be worse than that.
It's far from a given to suggest that any 6'11" stiff from today would dominate back then, IF BORN BACK THEN; because we SAW other guys back then who were as big as Mikan…….and none of them approached what he was doing.
Moving forward in time, I won’t try to suggest that Mikan would for sure stay “ahead of the curve” [relative to his peers] in terms of skillset, in the same manner that he did circa-1950. It doesn’t work that way; some people sort of hit their own personal ceiling.
But nor can we just assume his skillset will max out at an infantile level relative to modern players. That’s no more fair [even less, I would say] than assuming any 6’11” guy would dominate back then (when we have SEVERAL examples where they just didn’t).
Fwiw, we’ve seen a number of guys with similar physical tools as George Mikan succeed in the modern era (including one who DOMINATES it: Nikola Jokic). But there are also guys like Jusuf Nurkic, Kevin Love, Jonas Valanciunas, the aforementioned Plumlee’s, Al Horford is only slightly more athletically inclined (though also 1-2” shorter than a modern Mikan would be).
Stephen Adams is even MORE physically limited than Mikan, imo, but has nonetheless had a nice NBA career. Other guys are pretty much no more athletic and a little shorter to boot, yet carved out nice NBA careers in the modern day (e.g. Joe Ingles and Kyle Anderson).
So we cannot pretend that the physical tools he brings to the table are inadequate to be a decent modern NBA player. They very clearly are sufficient.
And again: I say ALL of this as someone who has no intention of supporting George Mikan at this stage.
As to how much bigger the player pool is now......
I agree this is the biggest factor in assessing competitiveness. One thing I'd looked at in the past to gauge this are measures which might be suggestive of the game's popularity. Such as attendance and TV contracts.
Far from a perfect system, obviously. And I think it eventually falls apart in the David Stern era--->because he was so remarkably better about promoting and marketing his product than his predecessors, that afterwards I'm skeptical they provide a remotely accurate means of gauging global popularity/interest (if ever they did in the first place).
Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I'll provide some suggestions of the game's popularity over time.....
Here are eight early franchises, and the change in their average attendance from ‘55 to ‘67:
Nationals (Sixers) - 4,539 [in '56]; 8,224 in '67 (81.2% increase in 11 years)
Hawks - 3,588 in '55; 6,829 in '67 (increase of 90.3% in 12 years)
Celtics - 7,027 in '55; 10,409 in '67 (increase of 48.1% in 12 years)
Pistons - 3,717 in '55; 6,459 in '67 (increase 73.8% in 12 years)
Warriors - 5,878 in '55; 7,727 in '67 (increase of 31.5% in 12 years)
Lakers - 5,388 in '51; 4,494 in '56 (decrease of 16.6% in 5 years; note '56 is a mostly Mikan-less year in which they weren't very good, whereas they were a champion dynasty team in '51).
11,154 in '67 (more than double over either one of '51 or '56: a 148.2% increase from '56 (in just 11 years), 107.0% increase over their championship '51 team)
Knicks - 8,565 in '55; 11,716 in '67 (increase of 36.8%)
Royals - 2,478 in '55; 4,755 in '67 (91.9% increase in 12 years)
So on average, between the mid-50s and ‘67, live attendance increased by 70% for these franchises (the league had expanded a little, too).
While bench and lower tier players did not make a lot in Mikan’s era, the better players made a decent living from basketball. And Mikan himself did VERY well.
The top-paid player in the BAA’s inaugural season [‘47] was Tom King, who received $16,500 (adjusted for inflation, it’s the equivalent of ~$226k today). Joe Fulks made just under half that.
Mikan, in the NBL, was paid $60,000 that year (modern day equiv: ~$822k), plus incentives. So he was doing just fine.
Players actually signed to full-season contracts were making at least $5,000 in ‘47 [equivalent of about $69k today]. Some bench players may have been on more temporary contracts and earned less.
By ‘63, even the scrubs and bench warmers in the NBA made a livable wage (league minimum was the equivalent of ~$70-75k or so per year in inflation-adjusted dollars, iirc [didn’t write the exact figure]). Average player salary was a very decent/comfortable living by this point (comfortably six-figures in inflation-adjusted dollars).
It was before the ‘66 season that Wilt signed his historic $100k contract (that’s the equiv of about $943,500 today).
By ‘71, league minimum was up to $17,500 (the equivalent of $132k today); so NO ONE in the league was making a bad living at that point. The AVERAGE player salary that year was $90k (equiv of ~$690k today). Kareem [then Lew Alcindor] received $250k (equiv of almost $1.9M today).
By ‘96, the league average was up to $2.2M (equiv of nearly $4.3 in today’s dollars). Michael Jordan, for the ‘97 season had a contract worth $31.8M (that’s just over $60M in today’s dollars).
Average player salary today is around $8.8M per year.
Team Salary Caps:
‘47 - $55k (equiv of about $754k today)
‘96 - $23M (equiv of 44.8M today)
‘22 - $112M
TV contract info.....
*The NBA’s first TV contract in 1954 was purchased for $39k (about $443k in today’s dollars). The first nationally televised Finals game wasn’t until 1956.
*ABC paid [in 1964] $650k for TV rights to the NBA (that’s just over $6.4M in today’s dollars). So in a single decade, the value of a TV contract got about 14.5x bigger. ***To be fair, TV [as an institution] got much more popular in that span, and TV ownership much more common. So it’s not exactly fair to look at it by this.
*ABC paid almost $1M in 1968 (equiv of nearly $8.75M today). They then spent $3M for their contract the very next year [1969] (equiv of nearly $25M in today’s dollars). TV viewership of the NBA rose steadily between 1964 and 1970; in fact, one article indicated TV viewership in ‘67 was up 26% from what it had been in ‘66. Nielsen ratings of NBA games increased by >70% from ‘61 to ‘68 (from 4.8 to 8.2).
*In 1974, CBS paid $27M for a 3-year TV contract ($9M per year); that’s roughly $51M per year in today’s dollars (and roughly 115x what a TV contract had cost two decades earlier [though again: TV’s far more common and TV viewership far more popular in general]).
Idk…..take that info for whatever it’s worth. Not sure what to make of it, tbh.
Things have clearly expanded substantially, no question. The league itself is ~3x bigger than it was in Mikan’s time (“diluting” the talent). But yeah, there’s evidence to suggest that the player pool is perhaps 100x bigger. Maybe more. EDIT: Although per Doctor MJ's post #101 itt, I may be overstating things there. bball was apparently widely popular [within the US] a bit earlier than I thought.
So it was a much much smaller pond that Mikan was the big fish in.
As much as I appear to be defending Mikan in this post, that IS a valid consideration.
However, if still very very doubtful about Mikan’s ability to translate forward, I offer one last nugget to consider: if we took a big guy who is or would be legitimately good in any modern(ish) NBA setting, and placed him in the league of the early 50s, what would Mikan’s skeptics expect that modern player to do in that environment? Totally dominate those “white plumbers”, right?
So……kinda what George Mikan did, then??
We could look from other side. How would look these days NBA w/o black race players and w/o internation players? Only 10% of all league players are white Americans. So its around 40-45 players. The best of them:
.....
No one will argue that Mikan would be one of the best players in this kind of league. But if we add to the pool 26% international and around 60% black american players? How would look Mikan in this pool? Kevin Love was the last white american player selected into All-Star game in 2018 and ALL-NBA team in 2014.
