Post#23 » by elrod enchilada » Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:41 pm
When I read this [url]piece about Bill Russell --http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090216/SPORTS/902160352/-1/SPORTS --this morning, it reminded me of when and why I became a Celtics fan. I was raised in Cleveland which had no NBA team in the 1960s. My older brother was a fanatical basketball fan, though he had no particular NBA team he rooted for. I was first a baseball and football fan, and very engrossed with sport statistics. I would look at the NBA standings and the individual statistical leaders throughout the 1960s and I would be confused. “How can the Celtics win the title every year if they do not have a player in the top 10 for scoring?” In baseball, for example, the teams with the guys with the best stats were the best teams. I didn’t really like the Celtics for that reason. They seemed boring from afar, no Oscar Robertson or Wilt Chamberlain or Rick Barry putting up Lou Gehrig numbers.
By the late 60s, when Russ became coach, I started watching a lot more hoops. I began slowly to understand that stats were different in basketball. (This point was made really well in the article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine this week by Michael Lewis. It looks at Houston GM Daryl Morey, who worked for Ainge and the Cs before going to the Rockets.) In 1969 the Celtics limped into the playoffs with the last seed in the east. Except for Hondo and Nelson, the 69 Cs did not have a single player who would be productive in the league just one year later.
They defeated the up-and-coming Knicks (who would win the NBA title in 1970), the excellent Billy Cunningham-in-his-prime 76ers that won 55 games, and then, the coup de grace, the Cs defeated the West-Chamberlain Laker powerhouse in 7 games. (During those 7 games, Jerry West played the game of basketball about as well as it has ever been played, yet the Cs still won.) The Cs had no business winning any of these series on paper. Statistically, they did not belong on the same floor as these teams. Yet they played with such intelligence and such heart and with such a complete commitment to team success that their victory seemed fated. It all started with Russell. I guess more than anything else it seemed like these guys had figured out the game better than anyone else. I became a Celtics lifer.
FWIW Kevin Garnett is very much in the Russell mode. Stats are of limited value when evaluating this guy. If he averaged 14 ppg and the Cs won the title here would be delirious. What he does at the defensive end cannot be measured, except in Ws and Ls.
