Retro POY '76-77 (Voting Complete)

[fatal9]

Kareem's numbers throughout the 70s were astronomical. My problem with Kareem is that those numbers and the talent around him routinely translated into less of a TEAM than you would expect.

Again, if he doesn't have his second or third best players injured in three deep playoff runs ('72, '74, '77), we would not be having this conversation.

Kareem's impact on win-loss speaks for itself. In the 70s, he missed time significantly only twice ('75 and '78), and the perfromance of his teams with/without him is night and day. Played with just one all-star from the '73-'79 stretch. They went from NBA finalists to worst team in the league without him in just one off season when he was injured (record without him in '75: 3-14, with him: 35-30), and were at the bottom of the conference again in '78 without him. Look at this comparatively with other legends. Lakers were 52-25 in all the games Magic missed from '80-'85. Celtics still a .500+ team without Bird (in '89). Bulls still a 55 win team without Jordan (that's with Pippen missing 10 games too). You have a guy who is on teams that can't keep themselves from being bottom feeders year in year out without him, while other players you recognize as "winners" are on teams that have no problem winning 45-50+ without them. See the problem here? The perception of "winning" exclusively depends on supporting casts.

And again, if he does get any sort of a team around him, his key players become injured during the deep playoff runs. No one wins when that happens. How did the Celtics manage when their team was injured in '87 and '88? How did Lakers manage without Worthy in '83? Sixers without Cunningham in '68? Bulls without Grant in '95? When your second or third best players get knocked out of a series (or in Grant's case, leave), you're not going to win, especially when your teams aren't that strong to begin with.

To say essentially that Kareem couldn't get his stats in the framework of a team is pretty ridiculous. Makes me question if you've ever seen him play. Could do anything you wanted him to in order to win, anchored historically great defenses in his Bucks days, led centers in assists year after year (and it's not liked he was passing to boost assist stats like Wilt was), is in the argument for greatest scorer to ever play...certainly the most unstoppable with the ball, an excellent rebounder during all of the 70s. He was the most successful college player of all time. Had a 35/17/5 season on a 60+ win team (probably best statistical season ever posted on a 60+ win team). Turned an expansion team into a contender over night. Won a championship with them in just his second year, and came one game from doing it again couple of years later. Was traded to a team at the bottom of the conference (who on top of that traded away key players the very same off season), and turned them into a respectable playoff team. Led the league in scoring the same year he won a championship (MJ and Shaq are the only others to do this right?). Has 4 rings (2 of them while being dominant statistically) as the best player despite his prime being wasted on poor teams.

[ThaRegul8r]

Fatal, good post. Where did you find the game logs for Kareem?

They're available in the papers at the time.

[Dr Positivity]

I love these Finals. The superstar led 76ers vs the Walton and co. Blazers - Truly a matchup of pure talent vs fit and chemistry. And the Blazermania crowd that year is a classic. Love the shot of the mobbing when they win the title.

I came into this thread thinking Walton would be the my #1 quite easily, but damn, Kareem's playoff numbers are pretty crazy. I'm still probably voting for Walton just because he had IMO a great mental impact on his teammates and the energy the personality in his game brought. Kareem OTOH was sulkier, introverted, and harder to get behind. So I like Walton here. He's not the scorer Kareem is but beats him everywhere else. Portland ran their 2nd overall ORTG through him in the high post, even without the gaudy scoring numbers he clearly had a huge impact. And I think Walton is the better defender. His work in the 77 finals is astonishing, it feels like no matter what shot Philly settles on, Walton is there to defend it. I forget what game it is, I believe Game 3 or 4, but in one of them Portland jumps out to a big lead in the 1st quarter, it's the single most dominant defensive quarter I've seen someone play. It's one of the few times I've seen a individual defense equivalent of an offensive player going for 20 in a quarter and hitting that unstoppable zone. At one point the announcers go "Philly has to find a way to stop Walton from dominating them on defense!" as if he's dropping bomb after bomb on them

[Sedale Threatt]

Hey Doc MJ, I understand what you are saying because Dr J also that same year lost with the HCA. I am just saying that he performed well as well against the Blazers like Kareem did, however Dr J still managed to win a few games in the process against them.

Goodness, he even clarified his point and you still missed it. Which was, HCA as a rote measure is pointless when it fails to accomodate for mitigating factors such as injuries.

For example, how well do you think the Sixers would have done had, say, George McGinnis and Caldwell Jones gone down with injury before the series started? Hell, even at full strength they still blew a 2-0 lead, which is pretty historic considering teams are 28-3 in the Finals when they take the first two games.

So which is worse? Getting swept, despite dominating individually, and your team being crippled by injuries, or playing great but losing with 10-1 odds?

[Sedale Threatt]

To say essentially that Kareem couldn't get his stats in the framework of a team is pretty ridiculous.

Yes. Kareem had a body of work of 25-plus seasons with which to assess his game. He won in high school while dominating individually. He won in college while dominating individually. He won with Milwaukee while dominating individually, then again with the Lakers in the 80s.

There's basically one portion of his career where we didn't get both, a portion that just happened to coincide with his teams usually being injury-plagued, mediocre or both. Yet, there's somehow a question as to what impact he was having. Is it really that big a mystery?

[Sedale Threatt]

IKareem OTOH was sulkier, introverted, and harder to get behind.

This is about the only criticism that I buy. No question he wasn't a great person to be around, especially at that stage of his life. But don't you think the decimation to L.A.'s frontcourt was much more hurtful?

[ElGee]

This is the first season this decade I already had some prior knowledge about, and was thinking Walton would be my No. 1. Now, I'm not sure. I value Walton's peak highly, but I'll have to do more digging. I think the criteria might dictate a Kareem vote (injuries).

Walton missed 17 games and left an 18th after 3 minutes (Dec 30 v Milwaukee). Portland's record in those games was something like 5-13 -- going to try and find this exact information later.

[Sedale Threatt]

I found some good quotes from one of my favorite books, "The Show." They prove nothing. In fact, they should be taken with a grain of salt considering one source is addicted to hyperbole, another would never say anything negative about Kareem and another still is the subject himself. Still, I think they're interesting.

Bill Walton: "I lived to play against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was the greatest player I ever played against, by far. Better than Jordan. Better than Magic. better than Bird. Better than Dr. J. Better than the best of the best that I played against. Better than Rick Barry. He was my source of motivation for everything I ever did."

(It should be noted that Bill himself will correct people when they mention how he "outplayed" Kareem in '77. He's an honorable man, and he knows the truth.)

Jerry West: "We had two writers in L.A. that were killing him in the newspaper that should have been fired. It was unfounded bias. People expected more than he was doing. It was never enough. Those teams in the late 70s would have been lucky to win 20 games without him. Yet we were always in the playoffs. We just didn't have enough pieces."

Doug Krikorian (reporter): "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that first year Jerry West coached (77), was as good a player as this league has ever had. You talk about a dominant center. People forget. He single-handedly beat Golden State in a series that went seven games. People could not stop Kareem."

Kareem: "I recall being the scapegoat. I was the best player on the team. I got a lot of things done, so they just used me as the focus for why the Lakers weren't successful. That was very frustrating. It was one of the worst times in my basketball life because I couldn't win. I was the dominant player in the league. I won three MVP awards in that span. It wasn't good enough. But I wasn't the problem."

The bold statements stand out especially to me.

There is one comment I especially wish I could find, but can't, from Maurice Lucas. Paraphrasing, we threw everything we could at Kareem, and he never stopped coming.

Maurice was about as bad as they come, the type of teammate Kareem was never fortunate to have in L.A. until Magic showed up. For him to praise Kareem in defeat speaks volumes to me, just like the way Russell and Hondo would almost feel bad about beating Jerry West.

[TrueLAfan]

There is one comment I especially wish I could find, but can't, from Maurice Lucas. Paraphrasing, we threw everything we could at Kareem, and he never stopped coming.

Might be this one. "Jabbar would never give up. He's the most respected player in the league because he never bows his head. Such great inner strength! You may beat his team but you never beat him."

[Sedale Threatt]

Yes. "You may beat his team, but you never beat him." A ringing endorsement if I've ever seen one. Thanks.

[Optimism Prime]

There is one comment I especially wish I could find, but can't, from Maurice Lucas. Paraphrasing, we threw everything we could at Kareem, and he never stopped coming.

Might be this one. "Jabbar would never give up. He's the most respected player in the league because he never bows his head. Such great inner strength! You may beat his team but you never beat him."

Was that about Kareem this year, or as a whole?

[Sedale Threatt]

Seems to me like it's both.

[TrueLAfan]

It was spoken by Lucas right after the Portland sweep. That's a comment about a player whose team has just been swept.

Anyway, props to fatal9 for his thoughtful posts (and saving me the trouble of posting Kareem's postseason stats). It's nice to come in a little late and have had others lay such a good groundwork of information.

1. Kareem. The Lakers had, IMO, the worst 50 win team of all time in 1977. They were kind of breathtakingly bad in 1976, so people sort of looked at the 1977 team had said, “meh...they're okay.” They're not. They're a 30 win team, tops, without Kareem. What—you think you could have an average NBA C start alongside Lucius Allen, Earl Tatum, Don Cheney, and Don Ford and win more than 30 games? Really?
2. Walton. Intangibles out the wazoo. Career high in minutes played, and it happens to coincide with a title. Methinks it's not such a coincidence. The Blazers were plenty good without Walton, but he's a deserving number two. Had he come close to outplaying Kareem, he might make #1. I was at game two of the Portland/L.A. Series. Lucas kept drifting back on Kareem (because, what, Don Ford was going to be a factor??). Walton and Mo Lucas...that's a heavy, heavy double team. And it had zero effect on Kareem. He dusted Walton off in the series.
3. Erving. Good regular season. Better post season. If George McGinnis hadn't folded up like a wet tortilla in the Finals, Doc would have had his first ring—easy. But Mo Lucas just gave McGinnis a thorough and complete beatdown. You can't fault Doc for that. McGinnis did come alive in Game 7—he had 28. Which is great...except her missed the final shot. And Doc had 40. Erving came through in the clutch, even if no one else did. Solid #3 for me.
4. Bob Lanier. To me, Lanier is instructive. I think the Pistons without Lanier are, on the whole, pretty comparable to the Lakers without Kareem. (The Pistons were pretty much the worst defensive team in the league with Bob Lanier. Without him, they might have been in the running for the worst defensive team of all time.) The Pistons without Lanier had 27.4 Win Shares; the Lakers without Kareem had 29.3. But the Lakers won 9 more games in the regular season and an extra playoff series. And Bob Lanier was a great, great player. So that's exactly how good Kareem was. He was worth a lot more wins than Bob Lanier. But the Dobber was still awesome, and even more spectacular in the playoffs.

5. Leaving this open for now. Lots of good, but flawed players/seasons to consider.

[JordansBulls]

It was spoken by Lucas right after the Portland sweep. That's a comment about a player whose team has just been swept.

Anyway, props to fatal9 for his thoughtful posts (and saving me the trouble of posting Kareem's postseason stats). It's nice to come in a little late and have had others lay such a good groundwork of information.

1. Kareem. The Lakers had, IMO, the worst 50 win team of all time in 1978. They were kind of breathtakingly bad in 1976, so people sort of looked at the 1977 team had said, “meh...they're okay.” They're not. They're a 30 win team, tops, without Kareem. What—you think you could have an average NBA C start alongside Lucius Allen, Earl Tatum, Don Cheney, and Don Ford and win more than 30 games? Really?
2. Walton. Intangibles out the wazoo. Career high in minutes played, and it happens to coincide with a title. Methinks it's not such a coincidence. The Blazers were plenty good without Walton, but he's a deserving nuvmer two. Had he come clsoe to outplaying Kareme, he might make #1. I was at game two of the Portland/L.A. Series. Lucas kept drifting back on Kareem (because, what, Don Ford was going to be a factor??). Walton and Mo Lucas...that's a heavy, heavy double team. And it had zero effect on Kareem. He dusted Walton off in the series.
3. Erving. Good regular season. Better post season. If George McGinnis hadn't folded up like a wet tortilla in the Finals, Doc would have had his first ring—easy. But Mo Lucas just gave McGinnis a thorough and complete beatdown. You can't fault Doc for that. McGinnis did come alive in Game 7—he had 28. Which is great...except her missed the final shot. And Doc had 40. Erving came through in the clutch, even if no one else did. Solid #3 for me.
4. Bob Lanier. To me, Lanier is instructive. I think the Pistons without Lanier are, on the whole, pretty comparable to the Lakers without Kareem. (The Pistons were pretty much the worst defensive team in the league with Bob Lanier. Without him, they might have been in the running for the worst defensive team of all time.) The Pistons without Lanier had 27.4 Win Shares; the Lakers without Kareem had 29.3. But the Lakers won 9 more games in the regular season and an extra playoff series. And Bob Lanier was a great, great player. So that's exactly how good Kareem was. He was worth a lot more wins than Bob Lanier. But the Dobber was still awesome, and even more spectacular in the playoffs.

5. Leaving this open for now. Lots of good, but flawed plaers/seasons to consider.

I disagree that the Lakers were the worst 50 win team of all time. I think that goes to the 1988 Bulls or 2007 Cavs.

[Doctor MJ]

A couple articles:

Blazer/Laker series:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Blazer/Sixer series:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

A telling quote about the Sixers after the loss: "Julius Erving would have been forgiven had he raised the roster of the Philadelphia 76ers over his head and jam-dunked it into the nearest garbage can." Blaming him for not winning with such a "great supporting cast" is just ridiculous.

[penbeast0]

Keeping with my format, let’s look for MVP candidates in order of team records:

The best team in the league this year is Portland. They didn’t have the best regular season record as they did poorly when Walton was injured but the swept the top regular season team in the playoffs and beat all three of the teams with better records to win the title! And, this is clearly the Walton team, Maurice Lucas is a very good supporting player but otherwise, it’s a bunch of hardworking role players who might not even start on another team.

The best record belonged to LA and, like Portland, they were basically Kareem and role players. Some solid scorers (Russell, Allen), some solid defenders (Chaney, Washington) but no one who stands out. Kareem also had the best stats in the league, better than Walton’s.

The other finalist and tied for 2nd best record was Philly with the Dr. J and Big George show again. They were very similar statistically (McGinnis was a bit better though the NBA didn’t record turnovers which was a McGinnis bugaboo) but Erving stepped it up in the playoffs whereas McGinnis sucked. So, only Doc is a real MVP candidate.

The other .600 team was Denver who, although losing in the 1st round to Portland, gave them a better fight than LA. Issel nearly matched David Thompson in scoring this year, and was even more efficient, while playing his outside/inside big man game; Bobby Jones was the team’s defensive heart as usual. Because Jones played less than 30 mpg, as usual, it’s hard to make the case for him; I’d probably give the team MVP to Issel over Thompson though Thompson was certainly the face of the franchise.

The other top teams were Houston and Washington. Houston had a 21 year old Moses but he only scored 13.5/game – their scorers were Rudy Tomjanovich and Calvin Murphy who were very solid scorers but weren’t 2-way players. Houston was last in defensive rating, first in offensive rating!

Elvin Hayes was as usual the man in Washington with 24/12, good defense, and over .500 shooting. However, his efficiency dropped in the playoffs and Houston beat them.

The other .500 teams were Golden State and Boston (1st round winners) and San Antonio, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland (the 1st round losers). Their candidates would be:

GSW – Rick Barry 22/6/5 but 28ppg in playoffs or Jamaal Wilkes 18/8/3+defense
BOS – Cowens inefficient 15/14/5 as no one scored 20/game
SAS – Gervin 23/6/4@.544fg% or Kenon 22/11/3 but both slipped in playoffs
CHI – Artis Gilmore 19/13/2 (Van Lier 10/4/8 was their second best)
DET – Bob Lanier 25/12/3 (M.L Carr at 13/8/2 was their second banana)
CLE -- No one over 16.5pts, 9.4reb, 5.1ast – Bill Fitch gets COY consideration
Other stats – Pete Maravich topped scoring by almost 5pt/game, Bob McAdoo was 5th in boh scoring and rebounding.

So, who is a legit top 5 candidate –

1. Bill Walton – only star on NBA champion and went through the other 3 contenders to win it.
2. Kareem – carried that LA team on his back to best regular season record
3. Julius Erving – his playoff performance moves him past the likes of Hayes
4. Elvin Hayes – defensive impact moves him over Lanier
5. ARtis Gilmore (changed from Lanier as posters here plus research convinced me that Gilmore still had strong defensive impact while Lanier was a weak defender)

[Sedale Threatt]

1. Bill Walton – only star on NBA champion and went through the other 3 contenders to win it.

If L.A. had been at full strength, this would be a fair statement.

[TrueLAfan]

Going to go with

5. Elvin Hayes. His best year shooting from the field, and since a knock on him was his relative shooting inefficiency, that's a nice plus. Excellent help defender. Very good rebounding and scoring. Folded up the tent in the playoffs, but he's the best player oveall at #5.

[TrueLAfan]

Going to go with

5. Elvin Hayes. His best year shooting from the field, and since a knock on him was his relative shooting inefficiency, that's a nice plus. Excellent help defender. Very good rebounding and scoring. Folded up the tent in the playoffs, but he's the best player oveall at #5.

[ElGee]

77-78: Walton's impact versus Kareem's impact.

Sort of a crude on/off type of measure, but when players miss large chunks of time like Walton and Kareem (in 78) it gives us a fairly interesting interesting picture of their value. Obviously there are potential confounds like other injuries, strategy changes, schedule, etc. This is raw data so pace isn't adjusted for either. Nonetheless, thought this data was pretty darn interesting from this period:

Portland 1977:

Code: Select all

             Record    PPG      Opp PPG      Diff     Opp SRS    %Road Games
With Walton   43-21    113.4    105.1       +8.3
W/O Walton    6-12     105.7    110.0       -4.3       0.26      61%
Total Difference                            +12.6


Los Angeles 78:

Code: Select all

             Record    PPG      Opp PPG      Diff     Opp SRS    %Road Games
With Kareem   37-24    111.9    107.8       +4.1
W/O Kareem    8-13     105.6    107.2       -1.6       0.03      48%
Total Difference                            +5.7


Walton's game on 12/30 and Kareem's season opener counted as "missed" games because they both played only a few minutes. Of course, there's more Walton data, as he went on to miss a comparable chunk of time in 1978 as well.

Portland 1978:

Code: Select all

             Record    PPG      Opp PPG      Diff     Opp SRS    %Road Games
With Walton   48-10    110.4    100.4       +10.0
W/O Walton    10-14     101.0    104.3       -3.3      -0.07     58%
Total Difference                            +13.3


Now, one major difference between 77 and 78 in Portland was Lloyd Neal's play off the bench. Praised by commentators and writers, he actually led the 78 team in pts/36, posted a nice .179 WS/48 line, and had 31 points filling in for Walton in the first game he missed (a 111-106 win at Detroit). And still the profound difference is still there without Walton.

If we combine the two seasons and pro-rate the records to 82-games:

Code: Select all

             Record    PPG      Opp PPG      Diff     Opp SRS   %Road Games
With Walton   61-21    112.0    102.9       +9.1
W/O Walton    31-51    103.0    106.7       -3.7       0.07     60%
Total Difference                            +12.6
         
With Kareem   52-30    111.9    107.8       +4.1
W/O Kareem    31-51    105.6    107.2       -1.6       0.03     48%
Total Difference                            +5.7