Retro POY '67-68 (Voting Complete)

[Sedale Threatt]

we know that Wilt's teammates were so damn nasty that they were contenders even without him.

Really? They won 55 games the first year without him, but they were spanked by the Celtics in the first round. That kicked off a downward slide, aided by Greer's aging and the terrible trade of Walker, that culminated with them recording the worst record in history in 1973, 9-73. That's not serious contention. Indeed, you can argue that getting rid of Wilt damned the franchise.

[ElGee]

Regulator - I found 25 of them when I was trying to run the +/- a couple threads ago:

Oct 17. to Nov. 12 (12 games with broken hand)
Dec. 26, 27 (2 games with back injury, Baylor out too)
Feb 25 to Mar 8 (Baylor had 40 on the 27th, West misses 8 games a groin)
Mar 17 to Mar 19 (3 games with broken nose)

*Fun game from Feb 13: West 47, Baylor 32. Rookie Early Monroe 56 points.

Lakers 17-8 so far, +1.5 point differential w/out West. I couldn't find the other 6...

[Sedale Threatt]

This stuff about Wilt is fascinating. To be honest, from everything I've gathered in this thread, it isn't Wilt's fault. His team inexplicably became dumb -- with Boston's guiding hand of course. Russell made an effective counter that Hannum didn't react to accordingly. Philly's teammates failed to pick Wilt up.

Just to zero in on Hannum -- can you imagine being involved in coaching performances like this in two consecutive years?

#1. Your coach, who is calling the plays from the sideline, apparently forgets you've been the hub of the offense for two straight seasons, earning the league MVP in the process, and calls your number exactly twice with a series on the line.

#2. Your coach apparently decides it is more important to pursue a personal vendetta than a championship and leaves you on the bench for the last three minutes of the final game of the season in favor of some ham and egger.

Obviously, Wilt has to accept a large portion of responsibility. At some point, he has to tell somebody to eat a dick, and he never did. That's on him. But a truly good coach never would have even let it get to that point in the first place.

[ronnymac2]

That does suck. Hannum is in my opinion a fabulous coach. Players don't need to like him, but they respect him, and he gets the best out of his players. He usually made correct decisions. But it seems he did screw up here.

[Doctor MJ]

I don't know if his impact was as huge as pure boxscore numbers would suggest. after all, 76ers didn't regress all that much the next year (7.96 to 4.79 SRS) and not only they lost Wilt but also Luke Jackson who played only 25 games. so what we have here is 76ers losing both starting bigs and replacing them with Imhoff and some guys that weren't supposed to play as bigs at all (like Cunningham)... and Sixers didn't even regress offensively in '69, the difference was on the defensive end, but that's kind of what you'd expect if you lose your bigs and have no one to replace them, resulting in small ball, which never helps your defense.

so that's a bit damning for MVP's value if his team doesn't regress all that much without him and, of course, in some way it's important to look at the context of Lakers '69 not improving at all with Wilt and then not suffering when they lost him in '70 either. how can you be so sure his numbers translated into impact ?

An SRS drop of 3+, when a former teammate goes from 6th man to MVP candidate, really doesn't sound so bad to me. That's basically Jordan's first retirement, without the excuse of Cunningham stunning the world with his emerging talent. When you consider also that the SRS with Wilt was so damn good there wasn't any motivation to dominate harder, it becomes more impressive still.

Also, Philly had the best DRtg in the league this year over Russell's Celtics, clearly Wilt was involved.

[Sedale Threatt]

That does suck. Hannum is in my opinion a fabulous coach. Players don't need to like him, but they respect him, and he gets the best out of his players. He usually made correct decisions. But it seems he did screw up here.

You're probably right. Everybody can have a bad moment -- but damn, what terrible timing. It's these little instances, not to mention the injuries and the strokes of bad luck (i.e., Jones and Don Nelson canning circus shots to stick a rusty fork in your eye), that make this whole thing as debatable as it is.

[Doctor MJ]

This stuff about Wilt is fascinating. To be honest, from everything I've gathered in this thread, it isn't Wilt's fault. His team inexplicably became dumb -- with Boston's guiding hand of course. Russell made an effective counter that Hannum didn't react to accordingly. Philly's teammates failed to pick Wilt up.

Just to zero in on Hannum -- can you imagine being involved in coaching performances like this in two consecutive years?

#1. Your coach, who is calling the plays from the sideline, apparently forgets you've been the hub of the offense for two straight seasons, earning the league MVP in the process, and calls your number exactly twice with a series on the line.

#2. Your coach apparently decides it is more important to pursue a personal vendetta than a championship and leaves you on the bench for the last three minutes of the final game of the season in favor of some ham and egger.

Obviously, Wilt has to accept a large portion of responsibility. At some point, he has to tell somebody to eat a dick, and he never did. That's on him. But a truly good coach never would have even let it get to that point in the first place.

Here's the thing though: Hannum isn't someone for whom it makes sense to say "Another crappy coach, poor Wilt".

Hannum was Wilt's coach on two separate occasions, both times resulted in HUGE improvements.

'63-64 Warriors: SRS improves by 6.25, and they go from 31 wins to the finals.
'66-67 76ers: SRS improves by 4.34, and the team turns into the greatest anyone had seen at that time.

Hannum was very clearly one of the very best coaches in existence at the time, and FAR better than most. It is not reasonable to look at Wilt's career and think "If only Wilt had a better coach than Hannum". Yes, Red was even better, but Russell the coach sure as hell wasn't.

Whatever happened between Wilt & Hannum, it was after Hannum had shown Wilt ways to play that made him orders of magnitude more valuable. If Wilt managed to have a falling out with Hannum in addition to everyone else, that says rather amazing things about Wilt's pathology.

[Sedale Threatt]

Here's the thing though: Hannum isn't someone for whom it makes sense to say "Another crappy coach, poor Wilt".

Yeah, I misspoke there. He and Sharman were pretty clearly the two best coaches he played for. Like I said, though, that's pretty bad timing.

[ElGee]

I see people are giving #1 to Wilt pretty easily. if you stop right here for a second, clear your mind, and try not looking at the boxscore, would you even consider giving #1 to Wilt at all ? granted his team regressed the following season, that is absolutely connected to the loss of not one but both starting bigs. as the story of Elgee's great analysis told us, each and every player who has gained some media recognition in MVP shares had sizeable impact when changing teams. everyone... but two guys. first one is Tracy McGrady who clearly was affected by injuries and who has proven to have positive impact on his team (multiyear +/-). the other is Wilt who changed teams not once, but twice and each time there was no impact on team performance.

Yes, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I don't know how one can view Wilt's play as consistent over the course of his career. I don't think he had great seasons in 1965 and 1969. But he was playing a style in 67 and 68 that was much more effective, most noticeably his defense in 1968. Would there be any argument that he clearly wasn't the player on the 76ers? And as Doc MJ said, the Philadelphia side of the equation isn't really too damning to Wilt when he leaves.

If you're suggesting that overall, Wilt or anyone can be overrated with gaudy box numbers, je concur.

Wilt and MJ did similar stuff paragraph

Here's the difference: Jordan was obsessed with winning. Watched his 30 for 30 last night on minor league baseball and Terry Francona practically has me convinced he could have made the majors. He had a chronic competition problem, as his Dad said. All the tactics you listed were motivational tools MJ used to get himself going...not for his personal attention or accolades, but so he would continue to play well. The 1997 Bulls team is one of the most amazing displays of will (from Pippen and Jordan) I can find in sports. Not even a hint of ennui. Jordan would make up stuff people said to motivate himself.

Wilt, on the other hand, almost by his own admission, seemed interested primarily in what people thought of Wilt. Why else would he constantly argue with the scorekeepers? Sometimes his goal-setting wasn't a good thing. I think that's why the press was on him so hard about not shooting -- he wanted to lead the league in assists instead of just playing the best way possible to help the team.

While were here, I thought this was an incredibly revealing quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CqQ4x3klT4#t=1m30s

Wilt, supposed you had [Russell]'s team, you would have never lost a game. Not true...If I was on that team, I'd be taking away from some of the things those other guys were doing

Conversely, Russell talks about how he spent time teaching and helping the role players so they were better off and capable of making the right play at the critical times. Russell's teammates talk about him like he's their teacher/father, Wilt never really seemed interested in that role in basketball (again, almost by his own admission).

[Doctor MJ]

Here's the thing though: Hannum isn't someone for whom it makes sense to say "Another crappy coach, poor Wilt".

Yeah, I misspoke there. He and Sharman were pretty clearly the two best coaches he played for. Like I said, though, that's pretty bad timing.

Glad we're in agreement on Hannum.

Re: bad timing. Is it timing? Is it just luck that this happened in such crucial situations with Wilt, and then the next year terrible things happen again involving Wilt in Game 7? I'm not sure.

I'll speak to '69, the one year I'm really certain the coach made a mistake in not using Wilt: The controversy only happens because the team (mostly West) catches fire without Wilt really being involved (after the Celtics had built up a huge lead with Wilt & everybody on the court), and then he asks to leave the game. It's not a case of Wilt dominating and the coach & team miraculously deciding to ignore him - Wilt's decisions & actions were a crucial part of this process.

(As I said, there was definitely a coaching mistake in there. The Lakers comeback lasted until the Celtics put hard doubles on West. These resulted in passes to teammates that didn't result in easy scores. Van Breda Kolff should have seen this coming and had a clear strategy. That strategy should have included both putting Wilt back in, and running the offense so that West knows ahead of time where to look for his teammates so they can take advantage of 4 on 3 basketball before the Celtics can recover.)

[Sedale Threatt]

Two touches for your offensive hub in the fourth quarter -- that absolutely cannot happen, under any circumstances.

So yeah, as much as Wilt and his teammates are culpable, at some point Hannum has to call a timeout and figure out what's going on, whether they're just on autopilot or he's ducking the ball or whatever.

His comments after the game about "wanting to play like we always play," when in fact they were doing anything but that, do not lead me to believe he had any command of the situation whatsoever.

And Wilt was still involved to some degree in L.A.'s comeback in 69; they were down by 17, and he was on the court up to the point West drew a shooting foul which he converted to get it down to seven.

[Doctor MJ]

Might be a great coach with "system" players and a terrible coach for a team with Wilt; of course Wilt actually complemented his coaching so who knows.

I don't know how you can say that when you see how much Wilt's team improved both times Hannum got there.

Again, maybe by modern standards Hannum is problematic - but Hannum was clearly orders of magnitude more effective of a coach with Wilt than the other guys Wilt worked with in the 60s. To acknowledge that and say "and even he was bad" seems to me to expecting angelic coaches that didn't exist to get Wilt to live up to his potential. At some point, if you struggle with the help that's actually out there for you, it's more on you than anyone else.

[mopper8]

That does suck. Hannum is in my opinion a fabulous coach. Players don't need to like him, but they respect him, and he gets the best out of his players. He usually made correct decisions. But it seems he did screw up here.

You're probably right. Everybody can have a bad moment -- but damn, what terrible timing. It's these little instances, not to mention the injuries and the strokes of bad luck (i.e., Jones and Don Nelson canning circus shots to stick a rusty fork in your eye), that make this whole thing as debatable as it is.

Just to build on this a little bit, most people forget that Havlicek never gets to steal the ball in that famous play if it wasn't for that fact that Russell pulled basically something akin to Chris Webber vs North Carolina or Bill Buckner or what have you and turned it over off an inbounds play, throwing the ball off long-hanging wires in the garden. Sometimes, your bad moments get overlooked because someone else saves your ass; other times, your bad moments are made worse by your teammates compounding things. The Sam Jones circus shot was off a broken play, another mess up that turned into a legendary play.

[mopper8]

Here's the difference: Jordan was obsessed with winning. Watched his 30 for 30 last night on minor league baseball and Terry Francona practically has me convinced he could have made the majors. He had a chronic competition problem, as his Dad said. All the tactics you listed were motivational tools MJ used to get himself going...not for his personal attention or accolades, but so he would continue to play well. The 1997 Bulls team is one of the most amazing displays of will (from Pippen and Jordan) I can find in sports. Not even a hint of ennui. Jordan would make up stuff people said to motivate himself.

Look, if you want to argue that Jordan was a much much fiercer competitor, you'll get no pushback from me. If you want to argue that Wilt payed far too much attention to statistics and chased far too many quirky statistical goals, you'll get no argument from me. I just don't think the guy should be punished for doing what just about ever pro athlete I can think of has done at one point or another during his career, which is to step up his play or even change his game in order to "silence his critics." Heck that's a commonly used phrase in sports, and its not out of the ordinary to hear a color guy saying that so-and-so is hoping to silence his critics with his performance tonight, or whatever. That's normal. Only for Wilt would it get turned into some evidence that he doesn't get it.

[fatal9]

Hmmm. Was said of Nate Thurmond this year:

“Thurmond quietly was becoming the best center and the most valuable player in the league before he suffered his annual injury in January.”

“Wilt […] drove off in his $12,000 Maserati, carrying beside him in the front seat like a good companion the regular season's Most Valuable Player trophy. It was fairly won, but Wilt, as much as anyone, knew that not only were the great Russell-Chamberlain duels almost at an end but that the trophy itself was merely in safekeeping for another. Nate Thurmond of San Francisco had been on his way to winning that cup before his kneecap snapped to pieces in a game in January.”

Averaged 20.5 points, 22.0 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 51 games.

He also did a great job containing Wilt in their matchups...

11/04/67 – Wilt had 1 point. 0/0 FG , 1/2 FT. Sixers won. Weird that Wilt didn't take a single shot when he averaged 24 ppg on 17 FGA during the season.
11/10/67 – 20 pts (8/? FG, 4/7 FT). L.
11/29/67 – 12 pts (3/11 FG, 6/17 FT). L.
01/19/68 – 20 pts (8/? FG, 4/19 FT). L.

So in games Thurmond played, Wilt averaged 13.2 ppg on what seems like poor efficiency and Sixers lost to them 3 out of 4 games. They didn't have a losing record against any team except when Thurmond played against them. That probably contributed to the best center talk at the time.

Thurmond got injured at the start of February and it's no coincidence the Warrior season spiraled downwards after that. I would have to think they were a 50-55 win team with him in the lineup.

[ThaRegul8r]

Hmmm. Was said of Nate Thurmond this year:

“Thurmond quietly was becoming the best center and the most valuable player in the league before he suffered his annual injury in January.”

“Wilt […] drove off in his $12,000 Maserati, carrying beside him in the front seat like a good companion the regular season's Most Valuable Player trophy. It was fairly won, but Wilt, as much as anyone, knew that not only were the great Russell-Chamberlain duels almost at an end but that the trophy itself was merely in safekeeping for another. Nate Thurmond of San Francisco had been on his way to winning that cup before his kneecap snapped to pieces in a game in January.”

Averaged 20.5 points, 22.0 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 51 games.

Wilt outdid him in all those categories as Philly was chugging along toward the league's best record. So I'm not sure if this is a legitimate opinion by whoever wrote it.

They were both from different people, and it was a sentiment that was shared by more than just them. And contextually, remember, Thurmond was coming off a season—the very next season we’ll be looking at—in which he was MVP runner-up, and his team was in the Finals, losing to one of the GOAT teams (I’ll talk more about that when we get there).

He also did a great job containing Wilt in their matchups...

11/04/67 – Wilt had 1 point. 0/0 FG , 1/2 FT. Sixers won. Weird that Wilt didn't take a single shot when he averaged 24 ppg on 17 FGA during the season.
11/10/67 – 20 pts (8/? FG, 4/7 FT). L.
11/29/67 – 12 pts (3/11 FG, 6/17 FT). L.
01/19/68 – 20 pts (8/? FG, 4/19 FT). L.

So in games Thurmond played, Wilt averaged 13.2 ppg on what seems like poor efficiency and Sixers lost to them 3 out of 4 games. They didn't have a losing record against any team except when Thurmond played against them. That probably contributed to the best center talk at the time.

Thurmond got injured at the start of February and it's no coincidence the Warrior season spiraled downwards after that. I would have to think they were a 50-55 win team with him in the lineup.

Hmm. Interesting. 3-for-11 shooting?

(About that first game: “Late in the fourth quarter, he did attempt a dunk shot, but Nate Thurmond blocked it before it left Wilt’s hand and no shot attempt was credited” [Wayne Lynch, Season of the 76ers: The Story of Wilt Chamberlain and the 1967 NBA Champion Philadelphia 76ers (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), p. 203])

In the next season we’ll be looking at, a Miami News writer wrote, “When Philadelphia gets ready to play San Francisco, Wilt usually comes up with some ache or pain. Chamberlain’s hecklers call this ‘Thurmonditis,’ or Wilt’s preparation of an excuse in advance.” Now, I dunno how true this is—if at all; I’d have to check—but it’s interesting in light of this, and considering that in that same season Thurmond had a game against Chamberlain in which he blocked eight of Chamberlain’s shots alone. It’s a shame Thurmond doesn’t get much recognition.

Regulator - I found 25 of them when I was trying to run the +/- a couple threads ago:

Oct 17. to Nov. 12 (12 games with broken hand)
Dec. 26, 27 (2 games with back injury, Baylor out too)
Feb 25 to Mar 8 (Baylor had 40 on the 27th, West misses 8 games a groin)
Mar 17 to Mar 19 (3 games with broken nose)

Oh, thanks! That makes things a lot simpler then.

[ElGee]

mopper - I'm with you on sometimes placing too much emphasis on a play or two here or there. I don't agree with your categorization of Wilt's "critics" games as normal.

Normal ways to silence your critics:

Malone's a choker. Malone play great in a key game.
Jordan can't win while leading league in scoring. Jordan wins 6 titles while doing so.
Ron Artest is a troublemaker. Ron Artest behaves.

Abnormal ways to "silence" critics (which only inflames them more):

Kobe's a ballhog. He doesn't understand how to play unselfishly. Kobe doesn't shoot in Sacramento.
Wilt scores too much. He needs to involve his teammates. Wilt tries to win the assists title.

The premise with Wilt is that he's not understanding something fundamental about the game that everyone else (rightly or wrongly) wants him to understand. There's no rule that says team success trumps individual "success." But that's how the game was taught, that's how the coaches coached and that's what fans wanted from their teams. Still do. And most of us play to win, even recreationally. It's not clear Wilt always wanted that foremost, and that's the basis of the criticism. To appease the critics he would have to play the "right way." Instead, he continues to "not get it" and that only begets more criticism from them. He felt he could never win...because in that cycle, he couldn't! The way to win in their eyes was to vomit before every game like Russell, but Wilt didn't want that:

[Russell] took the game so seriously that he threw up in the locker room before almost every game. But I tend to look at basketball as a game, not a life or death struggle. There are too many other things in life -- food, cars, girls, friends, the beach, freedom -- to get that emotionally wrapped up in basketball.

And Wilt backed up those words. Put the 20,000 women ( ) in his book because "it consumed as much of my time as my whole basketball career." Thought about retiring in 65. Left Kansas early, which wouldn't be odd, except that he didn't win a title. (3 OT loss in 57 title game, missed 3 games in 58 causing them to miss the NCAA's. There are claims of "freeze tactics" in 58 as the NCAA had no shot clock, but how is that any different than the 4 corners in the ACC? http://www.fanbase.com/Kansas-Jayhawks- ... 8/schedule)

Anyway, I think he probably took too much flack throughout his career, just like Kareem after him, but it doesn't change the reality that he marched to a different beat than what is normal for most athletes. That also doesn't prevent him from being the best player in the league in a given year.

[Doctor MJ]

Might be a great coach with "system" players and a terrible coach for a team with Wilt; of course Wilt actually complemented his coaching so who knows.

I don't know how you can say that when you see how much Wilt's team improved both times Hannum got there.

Again, maybe by modern standards Hannum is problematic - but Hannum was clearly orders of magnitude more effective of a coach with Wilt than the other guys Wilt worked with in the 60s. To acknowledge that and say "and even he was bad" seems to me to expecting angelic coaches that didn't exist to get Wilt to live up to his potential. At some point, if you struggle with the help that's actually out there for you, it's more on you than anyone else.

I'm quoting myself because I thought of a way to put it that really gets to my issue here:

Say you're a young star player dealing with coach after coach. You finally get to Coach A, and the team's success skyrockets. You leave for another team, he rejoins you a year later, and again the team success skyrockets. How do think about that coach after that? When he asks you to do something you don't like, or don't see the point of, how do you react?

If your coach is a cocky SOB, but he's clearly proven to know this stuff way better than everyone else, then if performing your best as a basketball player is your priority you gladly do what the man says whenever he's talking about basketball.

Any interpersonal issues Wilt has with Hannum to me go straight on Wilt. That's not true about his other coaches - but if you have problems with the coach proven to know best about basketball, than being the best at basketball is not your priority.

[Sedale Threatt]

So he isn't accountable in some form or fashion for what went down? That doesn't seem fair to me. It isn't a matter of what his relationship with Wilt was.

It was the fact that he said one thing -- paraphrasing, "We played the way we have all year" -- when in fact something entirely different happened. He isn't entirely to blame, nor is Wilt, nor is the supporting cast.

With a catastrophe of that magnitude, there is plenty to go around. But make no mistake -- he deserves his share.

[penbeast0]

Drat, you answered it before I deleted it because I thought it was a bad post. I can see having a huge problem with Bobby Knight style abusive coaches even if they get good results; but Wilt's saying Hannum was one of his best coaches sort of shot down that balloon so I tried to take it off but too slow.