Going into the 1991 season the Bulls were given +700 odds, 4th in the league, behind the defending champion Pistons, the Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs (David Robinson had emerged as a rookie and led the team to 56 wins, so people figured that they were a team on the rise).
Looking back on it, the ‘91 Bulls being ranked #4 seems a little crazy, right? All the teams above them on this list were unquestionably ranked #1 going into the season (actually, possible exception of the '71 Bucks). #4 is as low as any team in the Top 10 was ranked until you get to the ‘14 Spurs. Jordan was *obviously* an absolute monster and his supporting cast was improving considerably (thanks to Pippen and Grant’s development).
Jordan being underappreciated by the oddsmakers is a curious trend. They absolutely low-balled the Bulls in ‘85, ‘87, ‘88 and ‘89 (if you’re counting the postseason, they were spot on with the regular season). Over and over again the oddsmakers just didn’t take the Jordan Bulls that seriously.
Were they simply dumb? I mean, Jordan is, well, Jordan, right? How could they have failed to understand how insanely dominant he was? You’ll note that none of the numbers I referenced were advanced stats; I only used stats that were available at the time. The guy led the league in points scored five of the FIVE years he was healthy through that stretch. In that stretch he finished 1st in VORP four times (2nd his rookie year). Yet he only won one MVP in that stretch and had his team routinely low-balled by Vegas.
I’m going to tell you right now that Vegas wasn’t being dumb. They were being smart, drawing the conclusions that best fit the data they had available to them at that time.
This is a long way of saying: nobody had ever seen *anything* like Jordan.
Let’s talk about it.
Riddle me this Batman; name every non-big to lead the league in points *and* win the title in the same season before, say, 1986.
It shouldn’t take you long. It’s a short list.
That crap had never happened.
Ever.
Furthermore, it has never happened after Jordan either (though we’re talking about the data Vegas had available for Jordan, so that’s less relevant).
Let’s actually go through all the NBA points leaders since 1955, with records and playoffs (I’m adjusting records to 82 game seasons):
1955: Neil Johnston, 38 wins, no playoffs
1956: Bob Pettit, 38 wins, lost Conference Finals
1957: Paul Arizin, 42 wins, lost Semis
1958: George Yardley, 38 wins, lost Conference Finals
1959: Bob Pettit, 56 wins, lost Conference Finals
1960-66: Wilt Chamberlain, avg 48 wins, 1 Finals loss, 3 Conf Finals losses
Can I take a moment to point out that Wilt led the league in points for seven straight years? And that the first year he didn’t lead the league in points (1967) was also the year that Wilt actually won the championship? Kinda jumps out at ya doesn’t it?
1967: Rick Barry, 45 wins, lost NBA Finals
1968: Dave Bing, 40 wins, lost Semis
1969: Elvin Hayes, 37 wins, lost Semis
1970-72: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, averaged 62 wins, Lost 2 Conference Finals, One Championship
1973: Tiny Archibald, 36 wins, no playoffs
1974-76: Bob McAdoo, average 46 wins, 3 lost in Semis
1977: Pete Maravich, 35 wins, no playoffs
1978-80: George Gervin, average 47 wins, Lost once in 1st, Semis and Conference Finals
1981: Adrian Dantley, 28 wins, no playoffs
1982: George Gervin, 48 wins, loss in Conference Finals
1983: Alex English, 45 wins, loss in Semis
1984: Adrian Dantley, 45 wins, loss in Semis
So . . . we’re talking an average of 43 wins for teams with the leading scorer, 1 championship in 30, 2 Finals losses out of 30 . . . This is *not* a good set of teams. And if you take out the ‘70-72 Bucks it gets even worse. I’m not saying that it’s bad per se to have the leading scorer, but it emphatically has nothing to do with being a great team. And, frankly, the only one to have any serious success was Kareem. But he’s a bit of an exception to a lot of rules.
The above is to communicate the following: the Bulls having a player (Jordan) leading the league in scoring every year impressed the Vegas oddsmakers not at all from a winning point of view. And look at that list. It *shouldn’t* have impressed them.
Let’s take a look at this from a different angle. Here are Jordan’s estimated percentage of his team’s shooting possessions taken (normally I’d use usage, but I don’t have that for most of this timespan):
1985: 30.5%
1986: 40.1%
1987: 39.9%
1988: 35.3%
1989: 32.8%
1990: 34.8%
So, in his crazy unsupported days he averaged taking close to 40% of his team’s shots. As his team got more successful he backed off into the 33-35% range. Let’s compare this to the leading scorers on every title team through 1990 back to 1955 (regular season):
1990: Isiah Thomas, 24.5%
1989: Isiah Thomas, 23.5%
1988: Byron Scott, 23.5%
1987: Magic Johnson, 25.7%
1986: Larry Bird, 27.8%
1985: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 25.1%
1984: Larry Bird, 27.1%
1983: Moses Malone, 26.6%
1982: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 25.8%
1981: Larry Bird, 24.6%
1980: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 24.1%
1979: Gus Williams, 27.9%
1978: Elvin Hayes, 21.9%
1977: Maurice Lucas, 24.6%
1976: Jo Jo White, 21.9%
1975: Rick Barry, 33.2%
1974: John Havlicek, 24.1%
1973: Walt Frazier, 22.4%
1972: Gail Goodrich, 27.2%
1971: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 29.0%
1970: Willis Reed, 22.3%
1969: John Havlicek, 25.2%
1968: John Havlicek, 24.4%
1967: Wilt Chamberlain, 16.9%
1966: Sam Jones, 28.2%
1965: Sam Jones, 28.0%
1964: John Havlicek, 25.9%
1963: Sam Jones, 23.9%
1962: Tom Heinsohn, 28.2%
1961: Tom Heinsohn, 28.0%
1960: Tom Heinsohn, 25.9%
1959: Bill Sharman, 24.1%
1958: Bob Pettit, 27.3%
1957: Bill Sharman, 24.2%
1956: Paul Arizin, 27.3%
1955: Dolph Schayes, 26.0%
So, a few things. Note that Kareem in ‘71, despite leading the league in points, only took about 29% of his team’s shots when on the floor. Kareem wasn’t actually a super high-usage player; he simply didn’t miss that much. So despite leading the league in points, he was only 3rd in shots taken and 12th in shots missed.
And notice that, with the exception of Rick Barry, there are *zero* players that took 30% or more of their team’s shots when on the court that lead a championship team in scoring. It simply didn’t happen.
Why?
It’s mostly guesswork. I have a few hypotheses:
1) Players that want to take a lot of shots alienate their teammates and undermine an effective team dynamic; or
2) Teams that win championships are generally good enough to have enough shooters that their leading scorer doesn’t *need* to take that many shots.
And let’s think about it. The 60s were dominated by the Celtics, who had an ATG (perhaps *the* ATG defense) and merely a serviceable offense. Wilt started winning championships when he went away from taking most of his team’s shots and started focusing on defense and more team play. Then we head into the 70s, where the best teams are the ball-movement and defense Knicks, the Bucks (for whom Kareem didn’t need to take tons of shots to make a ton of impact) and the Lakers (who had a fairly balanced attack). Move into the rest of the 70s and (with the exception of Rick Barry and the Warriors) you get a bunch of defense & teamwork teams. Move into the 80s and you have the Lakers (notable by being run by an equal opportunity point guard), the Celtics (who have Bird, who doesn’t get very close to 30%, and has lots of team-centric skills), the Sixers (who had *three* main scorers and so didn’t need anyone to use too many possessions) and the Pistons (who were an archetypal defense & teamwork team).
With the exception of the ‘75 Warriors, there simply aren’t players that are carried by one player taking a ton of shots that have any success.
This was the track record that Vegas was referencing.
This is why Jordan was talking about how his scoring numbers were going to drop after ‘88 (they did some, but he’d still lead the league in points per game *nine* more times).
Because teams that won almost never did so by having one guy take a ton of shots.
Did teams (and the analysts of their day) still talk about having ‘clutch’ shooters to take it home? Of course. But absolutely nobody was looking at the George Gervins, Adrian Dantleys or pre-1967 Wilt Chamberlains of the league and saying “Without a guy like that you just can’t win”. Year after year those kinds of players would flame out. Some made the transition, like Elvin Hayes, going from high-volume scorer on a weak team to valuable team player on a great team. But high-volume scorers were rightly seen as somewhat antithetical to winning.
Which is really interesting.
Because in the modern game it’s almost the opposite. People point at great scorers like Kevin Durant and hold him in high esteem because of his other-worldly scoring (he’s great, of course, but his scoring is seen as a singular virtue). The number of times in conversations on these boards (and even more often off of them) it is considered borderline axiomatic that without a go-to scorer, a #1 option, an alpha, it is almost impossible to win a championship.
Here’s a crazy thesis.
Are you ready?
This position *did not exist* before Jordan (and if it did, it really shouldn't have).
I mean, you can get tautological with it; if a team wins a championship, they presumably have a top scorer, and championship + top scorer = championship alpha player.
This reasoning is, of course, garbage. Isiah Thomas may have been the Bad Boy Pistons’ go-to scorer in the postseason, but they won because of team defense and execution, not because Isiah Thomas lifted his merely mortal teammates to the promised land with his volume scoring.
Who was the biggest prospect of the 60s? A big man who could score (but didn’t take a ton of shots), rebound, defend and pass (Kareem). The biggest prospect of the 70s? A big man who scored really efficiently but didn’t take a ton of shots, was a monster rebounder, passer and defender (Walton). The biggest prospects of the 80s? Defensive monster big men who rebounded a ton and could also score (Hakeem and Robinson).
But after Jordan the players that got the most attention (this isn’t empirical, but it seems true) were scoring wings. Iverson, Kobe, Carmelo, Wade, Derrick Rose, LeBron, Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Curry, Kyrie, Dame . . . I’ll absolutely stipulate that the game in the last decade or so has shifted to more perimeter-skills driven, and that’s part of it, but I genuinely believe that the unconscious heuristic for evaluating greatness has changed.
Before Jordan, the unconscious heuristic was around Russell/low-scoring Wilt/Walton/Kareem.
After Jordan, there was a new heuristic for greatness.
How else do you explain Kobe being considered a legitimate GOAT candidate by so many, despite the fact that almost every single objective test puts him well below that standard? I maintain that it’s because GOAT became synonymous with ‘Jordanesque’ and Kobe was the most Jordanesque player since.
How else do you get players like Duncan and Garnett (quintessential pre-Jordan bigs in terms of being monster defenders, rebounders, capable passers and strong scorers) being dismissed with reasoning like “But are they a true #1 scoring option?” (this applies to Garnett more than Duncan.) But there seems a considerable blindness to the value of players that isn’t tied directly to their scoring - a guy like Duncan that contributed in literally everything (but never posted gaudy scoring numbers) gets dismissed as a system player. Because if he doesn’t check the boxes that Jordan checked, how good can Duncan really be?
So yeah. I honestly believe that Jordan was so good, so dominant, that he broke everybody's mind. That on some level before Jordan everybody was looking for the next Russell/Kareem, the next team-first transcendent big (Russell was defense, rebounding and some passing, Kareem was the complete package). And that after Jordan everybody was looking for the next volume-scoring wing.
But that heuristic shift hadn’t happened yet going into the ‘91 season. There’s a reason that even with Jordan’s gaudy scoring numbers he was compared unfavorably to Magic. Magic was a “winner”, who “made his teammates better”. And Jordan, it was thought, didn’t. Because he took a lot of shots (and his teammates early on weren’t very good).
Which is bullcrap, we know now; Jordan took tons of shots with quality efficiency *and* set his teammates up, both with passing and defensive attention. It’s just that nobody had ever done it that well at that volume before (and Jordan also added a ton of value on the rebounding/passing/defensive side of things, it’s just that his scoring was so nuts that’s what people focused on).
So here’s the question: was the obsession with Jordan-esque scoring after him misguided, or a predictor of new trends? Anecdotally we can say that there are a lot of teams after him that won with a lot of ball-dominance. The Shaq/Kobe Lakers were ball-dominant, the Spurs really weren’t, the Pistons weren’t, the Heat were, the Celtics weren’t, the Kobe Lakers were, the LeBron Heat/Cavs/Lakers were, the Warriors were and the Raptors were. It honestly seems that ball-dominant wings became better since Jordan . . . but did they?
So, here’s the way we’re going to check. I’m going to go through and check every single 30+% usage player since usage started being a thing. I’m going to note the percentage of these high-volume players relative to the number of teams in the league, and note how many teams they averaged beating (in this case I’ll say that missing the playoffs = 0, a first round exit = the number of non playoff teams, a second round exit = the number of non playoff teams + first round teams, etc. This is hardly thorough analysis, but it should nevertheless be a good suggester of trends (and a good barometer of success that can be ascertained by a casual fan). I’m going to do this by decade (minimum 2000 minutes, including 2020 in the teens, and I only have ‘78 and ‘79 from the 70s, and the 10-11 range would be completely average in a 30-team league):
70s: 9.1% of teams, 8.50 Superiority Rating, 0/4 Rings (0%)
80s: 10.8% of teams, 9.96 Superiority Rating, 0/25 Rings (0%), 100% rings no HV Scorer
So. From ‘78 to ‘89 teams with 30%+ usage scorers actually performed a little below average for the league. Of the 29 player-seasons in that timeframe they won zero rings. It’s not a huge sample size, but still. It’s pretty clear that no right-thinking individual circa 1990 would think “Man, without a high-volume scorer / #1 option you just can’t win a championship”. In fact, it would be totally intuitive to think the contrary. Now for the 90s:
90s: 9.0% of teams, 19.92 Superiority Rating, 7/25 Rings (28%), 30% rings no HV Scorer
Okay, well, we know that Jordan is seven of these twenty-five player-seasons, and Jordan’s teams did pretty well. Even still, it’s notable that 28% of the high-volume players won rings, and the Superiority Ratings averaged closer to a first-round exit (14 points in a 30-team league) than a SemiFinals exist (22 points in a 30-team league). But, interestingly, the 90s seemed to have even less high volume scorers per team than the 80s.
00s: 22.0% of teams, 16.08 Superiority Rating, 7/65 Rings (11%), 50% rings no HV Scorer
Okay, Jordan’s out of the picture, but the number of high-volume scorers per team has more than doubled. The 16.08 Superiority Rating is a little better than a first-round exit (not by a ton), but the average team posts around 10-11 points, so having a high-volume scorer is clearly an asset. Only 11% of high-volume scorers won rings, but half of championship-winning teams didn’t need a high-volume scorer.
10s: 23.9% of teams, 17.72 Superiority Rating, 8/79 Rings (10%), 27% rings no HV Scorer
The number of high-volume scorers has gone up, as has their success (though not as high as it went in Jordan’s era), it has become increasingly rare for championship-winning teams not to have a high-volume scorer. About 10% of high-volume scoring-seasons end in rings.
Let’s look at the estimated odds-shift (the expected odds are +0%) for teams with and without High Volume scorers (-50% means that the odds go down 50%, +100% mean that the odds double):
80s: HV Scorer = -100%, No HV Scorer = +12%
90s: HV Scorer = +678%, No HV Scorer = -56%
00s: HV Scorer = +127%, No HV Scorer = -36%
10s: HV Scorer = +205%, No HV Scorer = -65%
So post-Jordan, having a high-volume scorer means that your odds of winning are somewhere between doubling and tripling, while not having a high-volume scorer means that your odds drop by about half.
In other words, since about 1990, a high-volume scorer like Jordan is almost exactly what you want for winning a championship (not that you need it, but it certainly helps), but before 1990 it’s almost antithetical to winning. So what to us is obvious (that Jordan was *going* to win because he’s the best Alpha scorer in a league where Alpha scorers are a huge asset) is almost purely after-the-fact bias. Because the league only became that way *after* Jordan. Nobody in 1990 would have any reason to think in this way.
So . . . why?
I mean, why did all of this happen? Was it just that Jordan transformed the league and everyone started imitating him (both players and teams)?
I don’t think that holds water for the larger trend (though there was unquestionably some such imitation).
Was it rule changes? Everybody knows that the release of tighter defensive rules in the aughts opened up the effectiveness of wing scorers.
But I don’t really buy that either, since high-volume scorers had a pretty reasonable amount of success before that time (Hakeem, Shaq and Kobe leap to mind). The aughts show pretty comparable *numbers* of high volume scorers, though the teens certainly show them as being more valuable (then again, LeBron emerging is kind of a big deal just as Jordan emerging was in the 90s).
So I think imitation is a part of it. And I think that rules may have played a role. But my best guess?
The salary cap.
The cap rolled out in ‘85, but it took a while for the NBA to adjust. Before that, loading up on players was totally doable if you were winning. If you’re the Russell Celtics you can absolutely keep Sam Jones on the bench for several years behind Bill Sharman. If you’re the 80s Celtics you can absolutely keep McHale on the bench behind Cedric Maxwell for several years. If you’re the 80s Lakers you can absolutely have Kareem, Magic *and* Jamaal Wilkes, *and* Norm Nixon *and* Bob McAdoo *and* Michael Cooper. If you’re the ‘83 Sixers you can field a team with Dr. J, Andrew Toney, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones *and* Moses Malone.
Winning teams before 1990 or so simply didn’t need a high-volume scorer, because they almost certainly already had enough quality players to reduce the lead-scorer’s burden below the 30% threshold. But as the salary cap increasingly made it difficult to assemble lots of strong scorers on the same team (with some obvious exceptions) it meant that teams had to find a way to win with teams that had multiple weak links on the scoring side of things. And in such a scenario, a player who could take a lot of his team’s shots without sacrificing too much efficiency became increasingly valuable. Making a team work with Rick Fox, Derek Fisher and old Horace Grant? In the early 80s that just meant that you were probably done-zo. None of those guys can take many shots efficiently, and you’re going to have a hard time competing with the teams that have 4+ solid scorers. But in the salary cap era you’re going to have to figure it out. Suddenly, a Shaq or a Kobe (or both) can go a long way to making that offense function. In a weird way the Bad Boy Pistons were the precursors to this whole pattern (even if they didn’t have any 30+% scorers) by mixing and matching high-ish volume scorers (Isiah, Vinnie Johnson, Adrian Dantley, Mark Aguirre) with low-usage specialists (Rodman, John Salley, Rick Mahorn). The Spurs consistently cheated this pattern, by having both an ATG jack of all trades big and developing an extremely team-centric approach that integrated lots of skilled players. They (especially later) are weirdly the ideal 70s/80s team; consistent success, lots of team execution and rarely a 30%+ usage scorer.
Anyhow. I’ve wandered far afield here. And I’ll absolutely admit that a lot of this is speculative.
But I got really curious about why Jordan’s teams were so consistently underrated.
And perhaps this gets back to that running thread about Jordan vs LeBron vis a vis their preseason rankings. Because the OP there had a point: there was *absolutely* a lesson there. We just disagree about what it was.
My thesis about the whole thing is that before 1991 a high-volume scorer leading a team of limited scoring ability to a title was simply a non-starter (minus Rick Barry and the ‘75 Warriors). So when oddsmakers were estimating how good the Jordan Bulls would be, they were doing it with that in mind. They were wrong, but only because the paradigm for what made a successful team had changed with the salary cap (so I speculate) and they hadn’t realized it yet. So Jordan’s teams pre-1992 were pretty consistently underrated.
Fast forward to LeBron James’ career. Was Vegas looking at young LeBron and going “A high-volume scorer from the wing? That’s not winning basketball.” Hell no they weren’t! They had just seen three teams post three threepeats in a 12-year stretch, and all nine rosters had a ball-dominant high-volume scoring wing.
With LeBron, their response was, “We’ve seen something like this before and it totally worked.”
With Jordan, their response was, “We’ve seen things kind of like this before, and it never worked.”
This is the basketball world we live in: where the salary cap makes having a high-volume scorer valuable enough to mean that they can be a critical part to winning a championship even if their scoring is by far the best part of their game. It is a complete paradigm shift from how basketball was before 1990.
And Jordan was the crest of that wave, the harbinger, the one whose coming made clear that we were watching the dawning of a new era. He is hardly unique in being a ball-dominant high-volume scoring wing (even if he was the best of them) but he was the first in this era. And it completely changed everything.
You know that really old (and totally underrated) chess movie “In Search of Bobby Fischer”? Check it out, you’re looking at Ben Kingsley, Lawrence Fishbourne and Joan Allen, it’s a great cast. Anyhow, the basic narrative thesis of the movie is that once upon a time the Russians completely dominated chess. And the style of play was reasonably consistent (specifically erring on the cautious and defensive side). And out of nowhere comes this American kid, Bobby Fischer, who changes *everything*. He didn’t come from any grand tradition or anything; he simply had amazing instincts for the game and was unconcerned with the idea that he was trying to win with strategies that were simply not used. He went out there, played as himself, and absolutely wrecked *everyone*. His success redefined everything from who could be good at chess to how to be good at chess. And his ELO score dwarfed every prior champion; he dominated his era as few ever would. (There are a lot of other interesting comparisons between the two, like how both struggled with a lot of anxiety about their role as an icon in their sport (even if they manifested it in totally different ways) and both of them left a lot of their career on the table by retiring early multiple times.)
Anyhow, the movie is about how Fisher was such a game-changer that great chess teachers (in America anyways) are, on some level, not trying to create the next great player so much as trying to find/create the next Bobby Fischer.
So when you get players that on paper are like Jordan but play differently (like LeBron passing out of big shots to open players) there is often a visceral recoiling. It’s not because passing to open players is bad, it’s because *it’s not what Jordan would have done* (or what he is reputed to have done). When a player scores a lot, is associated with winning and (ideally) has at least one big clutch shot, there is an instinctive urge to celebrate this player whether or not it’s entirely appropriate (Kyrie Irving leaps to mind). And it’s not necessarily because that player is actually great, but instead because he’s doing things that *remind us* of Jordan.
On a subconscious level, a huge number of NBA fans are in their own quest, searching for Michael Jordan. It’s perhaps a credit to his career and singular heights that in many ways he has become the embodiment of greatness. And it’s a big part of why so many people react with revulsion to the idea of *anyone* else being considered the GOAT. It isn’t because Jordan’s *value* can’t be eclipsed; it’s because, in their mind, Jordan *is* what it means to be great. In a weird way, their ability to actually weigh player value has been broken by how great Jordan was.
And it leads to a lot of dodgy analysis. Consider the following player: guard, high 20s usage, efficient scoring, led his team in assists per 100 many years, was an outstanding rebounder for his position, was a very athletic defender and definitely added value on that end, but in the playoffs his scoring tended to drop off.
Think about that player in a pre-Jordan context.
He sounds great. Actually, he sounds like Bird (totally different style of play from Bird, but the statistical footprint is similar even if Bird was better in pretty much every way). There is *nothing* about that description that doesn’t sound like an excellent pre-Jordan player on a championship team (certainly not Top 25 all-time, but you could absolutely win championships with him). The lack of playoff-resilient scoring isn’t ideal but plenty of guys had success without a resilient scoring game in the playoffs (again, Bird leaps to mind).
But put him in a post-Jordan world and he falls way short. His volume is too low, his scoring isn’t resilient enough, and who cares about the other things he does to add value? If you’re dependent on that guy being your #1 option (the reasoning goes) you have no real chance of winning a title. And it doesn’t help that in the ‘92 Finals we literally saw the contrast play out.
But Clyde Drexler catches a pretty tough break historically. Value-wise, he’s clearly a really good player. But a lot of people think ill of him because he was *like* Jordan in many ways, but *clearly* worse. Falling short of Jordan is the ultimate sin, because with Jordan and Greatness so intertwined, Drexler falling short of that ideal so nakedly is something that few can forgive him for. And there’s a reason why the biggest slams on Garnett are basically the three Jordan tests: 1) did he win, 2) was he a playoff-resilient high-volume first option and 3) did he make any big clutch shots? Garnett’s defense and other contributions simply don’t enter into it. Jordanliness is next to Godliness; that Garnett was so unlike Jordan means he is disqualified from any serious ‘greatness’ conversation for many fans.
This is the post-Jordan world. For better for worse.
I absolutely despise MJ the owner but as a player, at his best, he was a force of nature. One of the highest motors I’ve ever seen in any sport and simply relentless athletic output. He’d be fine. 
