Elvin Hayes all-time

[B-Mitch 30]

I'd like to think the availability would translate very well considering how much faster the pace was back in the 70's and early 80's. Obviously that doesn't mean today's game doesn't place more wear and tear on players, but it seems Hayes teams tended to be average or above average for pace most of his career. In addition, he was also doing a lot of the more physical work on his teams besides scoring, like being the primary rim protector and offensive rebounder.

[tsherkin]

I'd like to think the availability would translate very well considering how much faster the pace was back in the 70's and early 80's. Obviously that doesn't mean today's game doesn't place more wear and tear on players, but it seems Hayes teams tended to be average or above average for pace most of his career. In addition, he was also doing a lot of the more physical work on his teams besides scoring, like being the primary rim protector and offensive rebounder.

It isn't the pace which causes issue so much as the acceleration/deceleration and lateral stresses on joints which are very different than in earlier eras.

[TrueLAfan]

About every 3-4 years someone posts about Hayes, and I always have the same kind of things to say. Elvin Hayes was a good player, but flawed in both basketball and off-court ways. And—this is the big one—he got a push from playing alongside Wes Unseld. A pretty good amount of what made Elvin great was a byproduct of having Unseld as a teammate. The two men were polar opposites, but extraordinarily complementary. Elvin was a good sized, quick player that excelled on weak side D, who loved to shoot, hated to pass, was inclined to take more credit for success than he deserved, tended to whine and sulk and blame others for failure, and was disliked by teammates and virtually everyone else in the league. Unseld was a short, wide player with ridiculously long arms that excelled as a man defender and at holding his position, hated to shoot, loved to pass, kept his mouth shut and did his job, and was almost universally liked and respected. They were the best thing to ever happen to each other.

It’s hard to conceive of just how disliked Hayes was, by teammates, by other players, by coaches and reporters …. by everybody. Alex Hannum, who was a pretty good guy and coach, said Hayes was "the most despicable person I've ever met in sports.” Tex Winter coached him—at least tried to—and gave up and considered him uncoachable. Bob Ryan hated Hayes. This is the tip of the iceberg; Elvin’s attitude and personality were known commodities. And Hayes kind of lived up to all of that. He was what we used to call a “glory hog.” He tended to take credit for victories, and attack teammates when there were losses. He never met a shot he didn’t like and, to put it charitably, did not like to pass the ball. This is another way that Unseld was great for Hayes. Hayes frequently ripped on Unseld's lack of scoring. Unseld was a fairly quiet, hard working guy that led by example and was hugely respected by opposing players and coaches. Which meant nothing to Elvin, who attacked him anyway even though Unseld was his teammate.

Part of that was his childhood and upbringing, which were hard in a way that most people today can’t fathom. Hayes’s parents were factory workers in Louisiana, and he grew up in the period before the civil rights movement. The segregation and treatment of blacks in rural South was brutal. He stood up for himself as a way and, IMO, talked himself up as a way of proving the haters wrong—and he grew up in a time and place where everyone hated blacks.

Still, it’s hard for me to really reconcile the bad and good in a way that makes Elvin Hayes a top 30 player. He's top 50 or 60-ish for me. I respect his drive, I understand (to an extent) where his lousy attitude and qualities came from. You can't ignore what he could do and (to an extent did); you also can't discount the negatives, which affected not just his reputation but also team chemistry. Again, I think we would have heard about those negatives a whole lot more if it wasn’t for Wes Unseld.