AEnigma wrote:One_and_Done wrote:So Bird wasn't even 2nd last time, but now he's #1. The winning bias is real. Don't get me wrong, I'm going to have Bird #1 too, but I'm not sure he got much better. Statistically he's not much different, the team just added Parish and McHale.
He performed substantially better against the 76ers, and Erving and Kareem both performed substantially worse. Such a mystery!
Kareem had slipped a bit by this point. He was still a great player, but I don't think he had the impact of Bird or Marques. The Lakers had more talent than the Celtics or Bucks did, but performed worse than both. Some of that was the stupid coaching shift away from what worked the previous year, but even that serves to highlight how building a team around Kareem wasn't as much of a winning proposition as it used to be.
And why exactly did the Lakers have “more talent”? Why is Norm Nixon, third year Michael Cooper, Jamaal Wilkes, and 37 games of Magic so much better than Tiny Archibald, Cedric Maxwell, Robert Parish, and rookie McHale? Let alone Sidney Moncrief, Bob Lanier, and a stellar guard rotation of Quinn Buckner, Junior Bridgeman, and Brian Winters. The Bucks went 6-0 without Marques this year. In 1982, they go 16-6. From 1978-84, they go 32-18 without him in total. And you want to portray this as some untalented hard luck team being carried by this one 20ppg forward? Kareem went 28-17 without Magic this year; not enough of a “carry” for you?
I wanted to put Moses top 5, but I found myself wondering why his carry job was so much better than what Gervin did. The Spurs won more in the RS, and lost in 7 to a Rockets team that frankly had more support than Gervin did. If Gervin wins that narrow 7 game series, I'm sure he can beat the Kings and lose in the finals to the Celtics too.
Again, based on what was there this superior help. Was Gervin a good playmaker? No. Good defender? Absolutely not. He was a good scorer, but Moses outscored him and did so more efficiently. And then Moses replicated that feat when they met up in the postseason. Yet somehow your conclusion is that despite Moses being a bigger contributor on defence, and being a “better” scorer, and playing five hundred more minutes during the regular season, he actually had more help.
While Erving had slipped, and was a dubious MVP, he hadn't slipped so much that his impact was below the likes of Gervin or Moses. He just came up against the Celtics is all.
The 76ers with Erving outscored opponents by 351 points. Without Erving, they outscored opponents by 293 points. Great impact!
So, coming back to this. Some comments I’d make.
1) Strength of support casts
I don’t think much of Tiny or Maxwell on the Celtics. I didn’t think much of them in 1980, and I think even less of them now. If Bird hadn’t been on the 1980 Celtics they’d have been much the same as they were in 79. These guys were just not needle movers. Tiny got healthy in 1980 obviously, but it wouldn’t have made much difference. He got recognition because Bird made the Celtics great, not the other way around. Ditto Cowens. Both those guys were way past their used by date in 1980. I’ve discussed this before at length elsewhere.
Parish and McHale are a different story. Parish was really valuable, and McHale would be (though he was still not in his prime yet). However, I definitely think they’re inferior to the Lakers support cast. Wilkes was 10th in MVP voting in 1981, and was a 3 time all-star who had gotten MVP votes on 3 different occasions. Norm Nixon was an all-star guard. Cooper was a fine role defensive role player. Magic was hurt, but he was healthy in the playoffs. On the whole I’d say Kareem definitely had more help. Yet the Lakers had a worse record at 54 wins, an SRS half the Celtics, and flamed out in the 1st round. I voted for Kareem 9/10 years, and have him rated top 3 all-time. I don’t think I’m unfairly maligning him here. Kareem was 33. Not many guys, especially bigs, are still in their prime at 33. Bird’s impact was just bigger at this point.
The Bucks are similar. Moncrief would go on to become a superstar, but at age 23 he wasn’t that guy yet. As others have noted, he was particularly disappointing in the playoffs with 14ppg and 6.7rpg on weak efficiency. The only other guy worth discussing is Lanier, who I haven’t voted for even once. I don’t think that much of him. He was a good player and all, but not in his prime anymore. Post-prime Lanier and pre-prime Moncrief isn’t a better support cast than Erving or Kareem had. As I noted, Kareem had 2 all-stars outside of Magic (who was back by the playoffs), and a great role player in Cooper too. The Lakers problem in 81 was coaching, not talent. Even with Magic, they were 26-11 compared to 28-17 without him. Obviously having Magic helped, but they were only playing like a 57 win team even with Magic.
As for Philly, there’s more of an argument. Philly succeeded because of an ensemble cast of guys under Erving who fit well together and had well defined roles, rather than due to 1-2 talented sidekicks. They had a lot of good players though. Bobby Jones in particular, but also Caldwell, Dawkins, Hollins, and even a young Andrew Toney and Mo Cheeks. Every one of those 6 guys I just named had been or would be an all-star except for Dawkins (and Dawkins was a very solid starter too). Bobby Jones was in his prime at age 29, and was by far a better player than Moncrief at this stage in their careers, their respective playoff performances show that. He was a 5 time all-star who finished as high as 2nd in the MVP vote, and was a perennial DPOY type player. Caldwell Jones was a defensive 1st teamer that year, was still in his prime at age 30, and was a former all-star. Dawkins was a strong defensive player. Cheeks, who would go on to make 4 all-star teams, was in his athletic prime at 24 and was an elite defensive player too. There were just no holes on that Philly team. A lot of really great players were taking lesser roles to win, so they don’t jump out at your statistically, but they were fantastic players around Erving.
You note that the Bucks went 6-0 without Marques, but that’s too small a sample to tell us much. Maybe they just played 6 weak or injured or tired teams in those 6 games, or maybe they got lucky. Marques is a problematic guy to analyse, because we know he went to drug rehab in 1982, and obviously had ongoing drug isues, so that hangs over his performance with and without the team at times. It’s also tough because the Bucks roster changed a fair bit over the period from 78-84. This will probably be the only year he’ll get a vote from me. I understand the concerns some people have about him, as the Bucks were able to survive his absence and then departure in the future, but I credit that mostly to Don Nelson’s excellent GM’ing and acquiring a tonne of great new players. The stats, anecdotal evidence, footage and playoff results all suggest to me that Marques was the driving force for this team. I feel like he led a team to 60 wins that had no business being that good, with nothing like the support casts of Erving or Kareem, and then lost in 7 games to a guy who just had more talent.
2) Gervin and Moses
You criticise Gervin as “one dimensional”, and maybe he was. But to some extent we could make similar criticisms about Moses. The question isn’t how many dimensions your game has, it about how much it impacts winning. Shaq wasn’t a guy with a particularly diverse skill set in some ways, but it didn’t make him any less dominant. Moses team did worse than Gervin’s in the RS despite similar levels of talent, but in the PS Moses support cast came to play, whereas Gervin’s did not. That’s the difference.
