Offensive Player of the Year
1. Rick Barry
2. Julius Erving
3. Paul WestphalBeen vacillating with this category, but will keep it simple: Erving is the best offensive player in the ABA and wins the title with middling offensive support. However, I think Barry’s passing and spacing is more offensively valuable, and I am not going to over-index on a down efficiency year when he was still the primary focus of every opposing defence and with perhaps one exception took over in the postseason. And then Paul Westphal deserves recognition as the lead offensive player for the team which managed to upset Barry’s Warriors, especially with Calvin Murphy and Kareem missing the postseason.
Defensive Player of the Year
1. Elvin Hayes
2. Dave Cowens
3. Artis GilmoreHayes is the best defender on the second-best defensive team (with the best team being a true collective effort), and he even posts block rates exceeding Gilmore’s. Early postseason exit, but not to any particular fault of their defence, with both Hayes and the Bullets overall seeing an increase in defensive efficacy.
Cowens is still part of an ensemble, and we will see the Silas effect next year, but overall Cowens is the most important defender in aggregate for a relatively clean title team.
The Colonels see a five-point defensive drop from the prior year and Gilmore has his prime low in blocks and block rate, none of which is enough to push him off the ballot yet.
Honourable mention to Bill Walton, who characteristically may have pushed for a ballot slot with more games played. Shotblocking not quite what it will become, otherwise I would have out him here regardless. Will also mention Cliff Ray, who in a different way is similarly limited by his minutes.
Player of the Year
1. Julius Erving
2. Dave Cowens
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
4. Bob Lanier
5. Rick BarryI am more muted on Erving’s ABA years (although in turn I am more of an advocate than many are for his NBA years), but in a season where Kareem missed the postseason and the top player in the Finals was a late prime Dave Cowens, he secures top of the ballot without much trouble.
Cowens is a similar beneficiary of circumstance. Again, no Kareem. Lanier misses a fair chunk of time and has a worse season than he did in 1974 (when I voted him ahead of Cowens). McAdoo performs much worse against the Celtics than he did in 1974. And Havlicek scores less, so there is no longer any “1a/1b” splitting of credit. Altogether, Cowens was a weak MVP-level talent who was the best player in every series and won the title. When that happens, top two seems only fair.
Cort Reynolds wrote: The grueling style of play that the speedy 1970's Celtics employed, in concert with a short bench and going deep into the playoffs each year (and thus having shorter off-seasons), had started to take a toll on the club. Plus, team captain Havlicek and sixth man Don Nelson were each 36.
In 1976, a grizzled Boston squad fought its way to the Finals despite a foot injury to Havlicek. It was the 13th Celtic championship series appearance in 20 years, and the last before the Larry Bird era.
…
It was Cowens who took over and scored seven points in a clutch 9-4 Celtic spurt that clinched the crown.
Despite being plagued with five fouls, the redhead gambled and came up with the biggest play of the game. As Adams drove along the right side of the lane, Dave dangerously reached in and poked the ball away from the Rookie of the Year, lunging to tip the loose sphere away from Adams.
He then snatched up the loose ball and dribbled, or more accurately roared, 80 feet upcourt at top speed on a 2 on 1 fast break, a runaway red-headed center locomotive.
As he approached the basket, the Celtic center crossed over to the right side and gave a slight head fake to freeze defender Heard. Dave then laid in a twisting backhanded layup over his shoulder while being fouled. He cashed in the free throw to give Boston a 71-67 lead and a huge momentum swing.
After a Phoenix score, Dave sealed Adams outside the low block and took a perfectly timed top-side feed from Charlie Scott before converting a right-handed layin for a 73-69 advantage.
Cowens then forced a bad miss by Adams by hotly contesting his 15-footer. Adams later canned two foul shots to cut the lead back to two. Yet Havlicek swished a clutch 18-footer from the left wing to make it 75-71.
After a Westphal miss, Dave took an entry pass and spun quickly along the right baseline with his trademark move past Adams for a pretty layup. The pet move gave Boston a little breathing room with a 77-71 margin at the 3:29 mark.
White banked in a tough right side runner and added a free throw to stretch the lead to nine, and it was all over but the shouting as Boston ultimately held on to win, 87-80.
After the final buzzer sounded, a tired Cowens hugged retiring teammate Nelson as they strode off the court as champions for the last time. For Nellie, it was a satisfying fifth ring after being released by the Lakers over a decade earlier.
With White struggling and Hondo hurt, it was clearly the clutch late offensive burst from Cowens that capped banner number 13. His aggressive, all-out defense also led to a drought of over five minutes without a basket for the Suns down the stretch.
Even though Dave scored 21 points in the decisive win, paced the defense and led all players in rebounds during the series while averaging 20.5 ppg, teammate JoJo White (21.7 ppg) was named Finals MVP.
Yet in true Cowens fashion, Dave probably didn't care that much, as long as Boston won. He was simply about winning, an undersized center who won on great athleticism (strength, speed, quickness and jumping ability), high basketball intelligence, skill, and a burning desire as bright as his red mane.
"There is no player with greater desire than Dave Cowens," said CBS commentator and fiery Hall of Famer Rick Barry during the 1976 Finals.
A powerful leaper, Cowens frequently won jump balls against much taller centers like Jabbar and an older Chamberlain, and used great positioning to frustrate Kareem and occasionally block his shots as well by forcing him to turn back to his right shoulder, away from his patented hook.
Back then a center jump ball was held at the start of each quarter, and if that rule seems antiquated, consider that the original rules up through the 1930's required that there be a center jump after every basket. So each quarter jump ball could be a key extra possession gained.
As Havlicek, who played the first seven seasons of his career with the great Bill Russell and then his final eight with Cowens, the 1970-71 co-Rookie of the Year, once said - "no one ever did more for the Celtics than Dave Cowens."
In the post-game six locker room TV interviews with CBS, Havlicek reinforced this claim. "We were able to keep Dave on the floor (not foul out), and that made the difference," said Hondo.
Kareem was the league’s best player, but I will never advocate for a postseason-less Player of the Year, and a sub-.500 record is little to celebrate even outside of the unfortunate seeding exclusion. Still, would like to emphasise this: the Suns lost in game 6 of the NBA Finals (with a triple overtime loss in Game 5), but if the Lakers had managed to win
one of their three games against the Suns in the final three weeks of the season, then the Suns would have been excluded instead. Perhaps we should expect a near peak Kareem to swing one of those three late season losses, but in them Kareem averaged 30.3/17.3/5.7/3.7/1.7 on 59.6% efficiency; on the vast majority of playoff supporting casts, that should have been enough.
Lanier takes fourth because I prefer him to McAdoo generally and I am substantially more impressed by his postseason this year specifically. Lanier was the best player in that Warriors series, and much like Kareem, I think he could have won a title if he had any real support around him (6-12 record, -5 net in his missed time this year).
AEnigma wrote: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.
Speaking of the Warriors, the response to Barry this year by a group of what I will call regular season voters has really exposed some biases. So we have a team led by Barry one year removed from his peak. That team is the #1 offence
and #1 defence, and they are 4-SRS shy of any other team in total. However, now the argument is that they were just absolutely loaded with talent such that Barry did not need to be anything close to a top five player for them to achieve that.
Yet strangely, no one is inclined to give a DPoY vote to evidently elite all-time defender Cliff Ray and his 26.6 minutes a game (I was the sole person to vote for him last year too). No one caping in any real sense for the apparent secret team leader and one-time second-team all-NBA Phil Smith, apart from trying to use him to tear down Barry because of what some box composites say. Rookie Gus Williams plays 22.4 minutes a game, and something tells me he will never be assessed as some per minute MVP talent.
No, what it comes down to is, “I do not understand how a wing can score this inefficiently and be the clear best player on an elite team,” because playmaking efficiency is much tougher to quantify than scoring efficiency is, and because “Barry was a primarily offensive star” who did not receive all-defensive recognition so therefore we may as well dismiss his defence too. I do not know whether he was the fifth-best player in basketball this year. But I certainly do not need
BPM, win shares, and PER to tell me when players are significantly contributing to title contenders. None of you would argue Kemba was better than Tatum in 2020, but hey, no on/off numbers in 1976, guess that means it will forever be a mystery who deserves credit.
