Retro POY '65-66 (Voting Complete)

[ElGee]

So here’s what I’m baffled about. Who or what were the other Philadelphia contributions to defeat? Because here’s what I don’t see in the articles…any reference to the rest of the Philadelphia team playing poorly. And they stunk. The only starter other than Wilt on the team that shot over 40% in the series was Luke Jackson. He shot .429 while taking less than 10 shots a game. Hal Greer shot .352. Chet Walker shot .375. Wali Jones shot .325. The bench shot .324. And here’s how much was written about that; nothing. I have a problem with that. I have problem with the rest of the team playing so poorly without notice while Wilt gets called out from getting 28 points and 30 rebounds a game, and shooting 51%.

...

Do I think Russell outplayed Wilt in their series? Well, Russell averaged 14 points and 26.2 rebounds a game against the Sixers. Wilt, as noted averaged 28 and 30.2. And I’m totally willing to say that Russell affected the shooting/scoring of some of the other Sixers. But all of them? Look, if Wilt’s teammates had shot 40% in the series, the Sixers would have outscored the Celtics. I’ll be blunt; I think Wilt played great in the playoffs. I think his team was short a valuable member and his teammates all choked. But I think Wilt outplayed Russell—not by as much as he did in the regular season, but still.

Do I think Wilt handled situations well, such as missing practices? No. Do I think he should have made a bigger effort to get along with Dolph Schayes? Absolutely. But I think way too much blame is being given to Wilt for losing a playoff series to a team with a virtually identical RS record where the Sixers’ HOF sixth man was injured, and Wilt’s teammates shot 35% and these issues get swept under the rug. A series where Wilt averaged over 28 points and 30 rebounds on 51% shooting. I can see people are selling; I’m just not buying. Wilt is going to be my #1 this year.

But what you're saying fits into the idea that Wilt didn't really help his teammates, and Russell's defense help shut down Philadelphia.

Obviously, it's not as black-and-white as Bastillon makes it out to be; I'll always sing Satch's praises defensively, and KC was good too. I'm sure Philly missed some open shots too. Wilt missed FTs like Ted Williams made outs. But there's something to Wilt's style of play until Hannum comes along that leaves his teams more vulnerable to this. It's been talked about since the first years we did in this project, but ball-hogging/a single player-centric offense is, in theory, easier to derail. Not to mention the overall benefits (re-posted below) of playing a more optimal strategy.

Btw, I do see the same media narratives today. The rest of his team shot 77% from the line. Many analysts take the telescopic approach of "the game was won in x area," and in G7 that was FT shooting. Because, literally, if he shot a normal FT% they would have won. It's kind of silly and like saying "Cleveland lost because LeBron James turned it over 8 times." Yeah, but he also scored 38 points and his teammates missed 47 shots, so focusing on one facet is pretty arbitrary. I don't see anything too foreign there, and the line didn't stand out to me too much when I read it.

Thank you! Wow @ Boston's crapass offense. And it looks like Wilt deserves a lot of defensive credit for this team like 67 and 68. Not like Russ, but still.

I assume Wilt was playing good defense here. Maybe not his best defense ever, but I'm treating 66 as a year where Wilt brought it defensively. It is worth noting the 65 76ers were ~average defensively -- it's about the kind of impact I'd expect from a really good defensive presence.

...which is why it's so hard for me to take criticisms of Hannum in his handling of Wilt seriously.

As a whole, of course not. But for that particular Game 7 in '68, most definitely. Something wasn't working, and nobody did their part -- not Wilt, not his teammates, not Hannum -- to get it fixed.

A good point about the volume scoring, though. ElGee posted a paper on that subject -- I'm sure he could throw it up again -- about this. Even Jerry West, 40 years after all those defeats, talked about this in his recent biography, questioning the approach he and Baylor took in terms of dominating the offense. It's a real concern that deserves to be debated.

Here's the post, specifically about Wilt and these 76ers:

There is a paper out there by Brian Skinner called "The Price of Anarchy in Basketball" that explains how this is possibe: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1801 based largely on Braess's Paradox. Here's an intersting blog post which might be easier to scan: http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2 ... ng-theory/

The idea seems counterintuitive but upon digestions is fairly simple. Doctor MJ provides a real world example: Wilt Chamberlain in 1966 vs 1967.

Chamberlain can score at an efficiency much higher than his team's average. He does this by holding the ball, twisting and turning and essentially going one-on-one with the intention to score (Skinner may call this one "path" to scoring the ball). He does that, in 1966, at 54.7 TS%.

But every time he does this and passes, or every time he's not involved in a play, his teammates score at a certain rate. Let's call that 47.1% (the 1966 figure for his Philadelphia teammates).

So on the surface, one might ask, why doesn't Chamberlain shoot more? Perhaps he should shoot every time and his teams TS% would gravitate toward 54.7%? I hope it's intuitively obvious why that's not a good idea and why we've never seen something like that work at basketball levels above Lisa Leslie's high school games.

And similarly, it's possible for Chamberlain to actually shoot less and have his team's overall efficiency go up. If, instead, he looks to pass the ball more and aid his teammates in scoring (or even be used as a distraction off the ball), he can shoot a lot less -- even shooting at the same or lower (!) efficiency -- and his teammates can be more efficient, leading to an overall increase in team efficiency.

Look at what happened in 1967: Wilt, the team's leading shot-taker and leader in efficiency, shot the ball FOURTEEN fewer times per 36 minutes. His teammates scored at 50.7% efficiency. Wilt's TS% went up as well.

But, even if Chamberlain's TS% had remained the same, the overall team TS% would have gone from 49.0% to 51.4%! (As it were, the team's TS% increased to 52.8% because Chamberlain's TS% also increased.)

The 66 and 67 Phily team's had little team turnover and the same core group of players one through six. And despite Chamberlain's individual scoring attempts being reduced by more than half, even as the most efficient scorer, the different approach helped the team overall offense increase drastically.

[bastillon]

I don't love Sanders defense because he's a poor rebounder. he's a goddamn PF so he should be able to rebound a little bit more, especially if I was about to consider him a great defender. also, according to this Celtics had historically great defense in '59 and '62, but Sanders joined in '60 and they regressed upon his arrival.

[TrueLAfan]

But what you're saying fits into the idea that Wilt didn't really help his teammates, and Russell's defense help shut down Philadelphia.

Obviously, it's not as black-and-white as Bastillon makes it out to be; I'll always sing Satch's praises defensively, and KC was good too. I'm sure Philly missed some open shots too. Wilt missed FTs like Ted Williams made outs. But there's something to Wilt's style of play until Hannum comes along that leaves his teams more vulnerable to this. It's been talked about since the first years we did in this project, but ball-hogging/a single player-centric offense is, in theory, easier to derail. Not to mention the overall benefits (re-posted below) of playing a more optimal strategy.

Btw, I do see the same media narratives today. The rest of his team shot 77% from the line. Many analysts take the telescopic approach of "the game was won in x area," and in G7 that was FT shooting. Because, literally, if he shot a normal FT% they would have won. It's kind of silly and like saying "Cleveland lost because LeBron James turned it over 8 times." Yeah, but he also scored 38 points and his teammates missed 47 shots, so focusing on one facet is pretty arbitrary. I don't see anything too foreign there, and the line didn't stand out to me too much when I read it.

Yeah, I'm actually with you to a large degree here. I think it’s closer to say Wilt didn’t help his teammates as much…but part of that was because he individually did more. Prior to 1967, Wilt’s teammates were largely not as good as Russell’s. But I agree that, on the whole, Wilt did not in any way, shape, or form help his teammates as much as Russell did. Part of that is countered by the fact that Wilt starts from a point of having more overall responsibilities; he was asked to do more on the court, whereas Russell was able to be part of a team/system with better, more complimentary teammates. It can’t have helped that Wilt was virtually always under a new coach/system for his first decade in the NBA. It might be fairer to say Russell helped his teams step up more, while Wilt was unable to keep his team from slipping even though he, individually, often remained dominant. That’s still a big plus for Russell.

I think that’s the case in this season too…but to a lesser degree than in some other seasons. I have a problem placing too much blame with Wilt this year. (A glimpse into my future voting; that won’t necessarily be the case in 1965 or 1964, or maybe 1963.) What we had in the postseason is two teams that, if healthy, are equally matched. One team has its (excellent) sixth man injured and almost completely ineffective, while four of the five starters have horrendous series on offense. With just the Cunningham injury, I’d say Boston has an advantage. With the struggles of the rest of the team to shoot—and we are talking about your #2, 3, 4 and 5 scorers shooting a combined .327—it comes back to

1) How much of the teammates' failure can be traced back to Wilt?
2) How much of the total collapse of perimeter shooting can be traced to Russell? (Because I'm thinking the perimeter collapse might have had a lot more to with Satch, Hondo, and the Jones.

…and, in this case, I can’t say it’s enough to overcome Wilt’s better regular season and excellent postseason play. If Wilt’s intangibles had been enough to get two of his four high rotation teammates to play relatively well, I still think the Sixers would have gone down. Losing Cunningham hurt the team. I just can’t jibe the facts and performance with the idea that Wilt should take blame. I’m not necessarily giving him credit—or dinging Russell for letting Wilt run wild in Game 7. And, like I said, I’m down with the idea that Russell helped his team more, both in general and this season. But I don’t think that distinction is enough in 1966 for me to put Russell over Wilt. The narrative at the time isn’t just about the game 7; it’s that Wilt was a major (or the major) problem in a variety of ways for a team that had lost an important teammate and had an almost total offensive perimeter collapse..and having all of that virtually untouched/unmentioned. For me, the gist is this. Wilt had a better regular season. Russell gains some ground for his post season, but not enough to push past Wilt. Had Wilt’s team been at full strength in the post season, or some/many of his teammates played well, or Wilt folded, or Wilt not put forth a Herculean effort in Game 7, I might have a different opinion. But none of those things happened. So I have to go with Wilt this year.

[drza]

Back from a week-long trip. A couple of general (and rambling) thoughts...

*The Wilt/Russell debate doesn't get old for me. In fact, seeing and (to some extent) participating in it again and again is one of the more impactful parts of this project for me. My mental approach to evaluating the game is growing in this project at a rate that hasn't been matched for awhile. Maybe not since I started really getting into advanced stats and what they may or may not tell me about the game. I'm putting everything into a new context, and though practically unlikely it'd almost be great for me to go back and re-do this whole proejct again.

Back to Wilt and Russell, having the single-most dominant statistical producer and the single-most dominant team-results producer going head-to-head every year is creating some very interesting thoughts and arguments (and advancing debates that we previously had like Walton/Kareem 76-78 or KG/Kobe '08). And in some ways, it really is impossible to completely separate each year in their history when doing these comps. Because in the end, what we're getting to see here is the same experiment played out many different times in many different situations with the same two variables in-place. And in a lot of ways, I think we're seeing a very strong indictment (or at least an arguable case) against too much reliance upon box score stats to make our evaluations. Generally, box score stats are taken as the default starting point in evaluations. If two people are relatively similar in box score stats, then we're willing to suggest that maybe "intangibles" or at least "less-obvious-effects" could make up the differences. But I wonder if that's the approach to take. Because that approach tells us that Wilt should tacitly be considered the better player, and the only reason that Russ is even remotely on his level is because of the "intangibles" and team success that we can't just ignore. But is that right? One of the things that this repeated discussion is making me wonder is if there are truly instances when the "other stuff" (intangibles/hard-to-measures that obviously are leading to team success) outweigh the measurables to the extent that our defaults should be reversed. In other words, when comparing Wilt and Russ should the box score stats just be a tie-breaker? Are they even relevant at all? Should Russ be the default better player, with the onus on Wilt to prove year-to-year that he was actually on Russ's level? Food for thought.

*I find the question of "is there a such thing as too much of a good thing?" when it comes to one or two players dominating the scoring to be very interesting. I've been toying with that thought for awhile myself, specifically triggered by the Cavs' postseason performance in recent years. When I look at those Cavs, it seems to me that while the "let-LeBron-do-it" model helped make weaker teams stronger (2008 and before), it actually might not have been positive in the '09 and '10 postseasons. And as we look back historically, it seems to me that generally the 1 or 2 super-scorer strategies only lead to super-teams in special cases in which the other players combine to produce a stellar defense and/or other strong "intangible" (there's that word again) effects. I won't get too far afield here, but to me it leads to interesting questions/theories about the relative values of the ultra scorers when compared to the ultra defenders. As someone put it last thread, you could have added a super-dominant defensive player like Russell to any team and made a huge positive impact to the team. But if you add a super-dominant offensive player to a team that already has good offensive options, you only get a smaller net benefit and possibly diminishing returns. And that's not even necessarily getting into potential chemistry effects, as almost all players universally want more shots but hardly anyone will complain about a teammate "encoaching" by doing too much on defense. Again, makes me think more about the offense/defense imbalance when it comes to how we evaluate. Is it really ridiculous to have Ben Wallace of '04 as a top-5 player, for example, the way many here suggested? I'm not that sure of that.

[ElGee]

Bastillon, my method has Boston *jumping* from +6.2 to +8.2 when Sanders arrives in 1961 (he played ~1100 minutes). They get even better the next year when he plays 2300 minutes. 63-65 is the height of the dominance with Satch playing the same minutes.

I don't think of him as a bad rebounder or a true "power forward" because that's not how he played and that positional distinction didn't really hold true. He was away from the basket, guarding players on the perimeter a lot from what I can tell...

1) How much of the teammates' failure can be traced back to Wilt?
2) How much of the total collapse of perimeter shooting can be traced to Russell? (Because I'm thinking the perimeter collapse might have had a lot more to with Satch, Hondo, and the Jones.

…and, in this case, I can’t say it’s enough to overcome Wilt’s better regular season and excellent postseason play. If Wilt’s intangibles had been enough to get two of his four high rotation teammates to play relatively well, I still think the Sixers would have gone down. Losing Cunningham hurt the team. I just can’t jibe the facts and performance with the idea that Wilt should take blame. I’m not necessarily giving him credit—or dinging Russell for letting Wilt run wild in Game 7. And, like I said, I’m down with the idea that Russell helped his team more, both in general and this season. But I don’t think that distinction is enough in 1966 for me to put Russell over Wilt. The narrative at the time isn’t just about the game 7; it’s that Wilt was a major (or the major) problem in a variety of ways for a team that had lost an important teammate and had an almost total offensive perimeter collapse..and having all of that virtually untouched/unmentioned. For me, the gist is this. Wilt had a better regular season. Russell gains some ground for his post season, but not enough to push past Wilt.

Fair questions. I'm not even sure I think about it as Wilt's teammates failed because of him. I just think he was playing in a manner that wasn't really optimal. It's still good -- he may not be doing anything really negative in terms of his teammates play -- and he's still having a positive impact, I just don't think that positive impact is as large as when he plays in a more balanced manner (see: 1967).

I don't like too much "blame" either, and Cunningham's injury must have hurt. I just wonder how much Wilt Chamberlain helps a decent basketball team on offense playing the way he did that year. From 1960 to 1964, he has huge numbers (comparable to what we see in 66) playing that way, and while they clearly help his teams -- he's no cancer or drain -- I just don't think it's as much as we would intuitively expect. 1965, in some ways, was disastrous.

Piggy-backing on Doc's post earlier, using my estimation method his team's ORtg changes:

1959 to 1960: +1.4 (7th of 8)
1961 to 1962: +1.9 ((4th of 9) *the 50-point season
1965 to 1966: +0.3 (5th of 9)

In 65, Wilt was traded over without too much of a change in his former team or new team (I'll expand on this in the 65 thread). We would imagine The Most Devastating Force in basketball would have a bigger impact on his offenses. But he's not. And mentally, I think he's better than these numbers suggest, because they are simplifying a complicated equation, but to me it's fairly clear that Chamberlain just wasn't playing in a style then that made him a great "Offensive Anchor," so to speak.

When he said, in 1996, he "took away from other players," I think there is literally something to that. He may have had really solid teammates in 1966 but adding Wilt to the mix didn't seem to boost that team's offense too much.

*I think you mean Game 5, not Game 7 (Celtics won in 5) when you keep referencing that performance.

[ronnymac2]

Bastillon, my method has Boston *jumping* from +6.2 to +8.2 when Sanders arrives in 1961 (he played ~1100 minutes). They get even better the next year when he plays 2300 minutes. 63-65 is the height of the dominance with Satch playing the same minutes.

I don't think of him as a bad rebounder or a true "power forward" because that's not how he played and that positional distinction didn't really hold true. He was away from the basket, guarding players on the perimeter a lot from what I can tell...

Don't have much experience studying Sanders specifically, but I think this era (and the 70's) have power forwards that play a lot like power forwards of today. Perimeter-oriented. The 80's, 90's, and early 2000's had the "traditional" dirty work power forwards, the bangers. Pretty sure Elgin Baylor played the power forward. Look at Debusschere after the Detroit trade. Erving's biggest rebounding ABA years were at the 4 IIRC. Apparently, Sanders fits this, too.

I think the 67 Sixers were like the Lakers today (ito style of frontcourt, not effectiveness). Jackson was the guy who was different because he was a legit C playing the PF (Gasol is sort of like that). Philly had a versatile, athletic forward off the bench in Cunningham (Billy/Lamar are the versatile players who are like the power forwards of their own era instead of the relative outlier Gasol/Jackson type). That's why these frontcourts work so well. Relative to the rest of the league, they are stylistically different. It's a shock to see two big men like that, with another "traditional for the era" forward coming in off the bench.

I may be way off here. Just a casual observation.

[ElGee]

I had never seen this stretch of G4 between Boston and Cincinnati before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCRxiWSMekg

It's the same old story. On Cincinnati's very first play of the half, Oscar drives by Sam Jones and Russell inhales his shot. Hairston misses a contested jumper over Hondo, Oscar gets the board, and Russell blocks it again. Lucas grabs the ball and Satch ties him up for a jump.

Two possessions later, off a turnover, it's actually Sanders who cuts off Oscar's drive and forces him to pass. Robertson gets it back, guarded by KC, and takes an elbow jumper...only to be blocked by Sanders.

Showing a similar team concept, Smith gets around a screen a few trips later to look at a foul line jumper, only Russell flashes all the way out on him and deters the shot. Russ recovered to grab the board for the possession. On the next possession, Russell switched onto Oscar on a PnR, shut him off (he passed) and again, swept back to grab the board.

It's like a broken record every time I see a new game involving these guys...

Fun fact: Don Gillis, the broadcaster, called some epic candlepin bowling matches in his day (many available on youtube). $50 in bonus money!

[ThaRegul8r]

In this particular year I think we’re paying too much attention to sensational headlines and not enough to the facts that Billy Cunningham was hurt and Wilt’s teammates shot a combined 35%.

What we had in the postseason is two teams that, if healthy, are equally matched. One team has its (excellent) sixth man injured and almost completely ineffective, while four of the five starters have horrendous series on offense. With just the Cunningham injury, I’d say Boston has an advantage.

I don't like too much "blame" either, and Cunningham's injury must have hurt.

You've gotta be kidding. If we're talking about injuries, why is the full story not given? Why is it made to seem that only Philadelphia had injuries?

BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Celtics are held together by more than pride, and determination. Give tape and bandages plenty of credit in the team’s bid for an eighth straight National Basketball Association championship.

The Celtics, who fought a running battle with the injury bug throughout the regular season, had trainer Joe DeLauri working overtime again today in preparation for the Philadelphia 76ers in the second game of the Eastern Division finals Wednesday night at the Garden.

Tom Sanders and Larry Siegfried nursed twisted ankles and Sam Jones had a bruised leg as Coach Red Auerbach ordered an afternoon practice on the Garden court, where the Celtics dropped a late season meeting with the 76ers. Philadelphia went on to win the Eastern title, ending Boston’s nine-year reign.

Siegfried and Jones were injured in the Celtics’ 115-96 victory at Philadelphia Sunday. Sanders turned his ankle and was forced to retire for treat-workout Sunday.

K. C. Jones ran the drill in the absence of Auerbach, who visited his family in Washington, D.C., and Capt. Bill Russell, who was given a day off to rest after a duel with the 76ers’ Wilt Chamberlain.

The Celtics, riddled by a season of injuries dethroned by Philadelphia after a nine-year reign as regular season Eastern Division kings, capped a hard fought playoff by winning their ninth NBA championship in 10 years.

It's like injuries never happened to the Celtics, only their opponents.

But much more importantly—and I just got through saying this somewhere else—when people talk about injuries, I have NEVER heard anymore mention the fact that in the 1965-66 season Bill Russell himself was playing with a broken bone in his foot and a chipped (left) elbow (thought at the time to be possibly broken, but found out after the Finals to be chipped) since February.

“His right foot has a swelling which protrudes about three inches on the outside of the foot.”

Russell swore Auerbach and the Celtics to secrecy: 1) because he didn't want to give opponents a reason to target the injury and try to take Russell out and thus hurt the Celtics' chances of winning again, and 2)

.“I don’t want any alibis if I lose this year”

Russell wanted nothing to be said about it because he didn't want any excuses if the Celtics failed to win. But, I mean, we know Kevin McHale played the 1988 postseason with a broken foot. We know Wilt played the deciding game of the '72 Finals with a broken hand. But I have NEVER seen anyone other than myself mention this, even though injuries are always cited for other players. Russell was playing from February through the NBA Finals with this, and then was finally able to get something done once the season was over. This was potentially catastrophic. Why this oversight? Why is the full story not being presented, and only the injuries for one side?

Yes, Wilt had some team cohesion issues, but Russell by this point was missing a lot of practice time too to try to stay healthy.

Good reason to, when you've got a broken bone in your foot (which no one outside the Celtics knew about) and a three-inch swelling, wouldn't you say?

[TrueLAfan]

I apologize if you thought the presentation was one-sided. In this case, I personally feel that the Cunningham injury was a bigger deal in the context of how Wilt and Russell were/are compared in this particular season. Wilt, in this case, might be being judged harshly because of the failure of his teammates—which he had no control over. And many of the Celtic players who were injured were, in general, magnificent in the postseason. Satch Sanders—13.5 and 6.5 in 27 mpg on 48% shooting. Sam Jones averaged 25-5-3 on 45% shooting. I'm good with the idea that Bill Russell made his teammates better. But I'm not going to also give him a shaman bonus for healing, any more than I'm going to downgrade Wilt (or Schayes) because Cunningham didn't play well and eventually sat with his injury. If the Celtics played better because they were tougher—fine. I think that's an individual thing. I don't think either team lader had anything to do with how their teammates played when injured. The bottom line is that Wilt was (and is) often judged by team failure compared to Russell. Sometimes it's deserved. In this case, I don't think it is..not to the extent that Russell should be elevated over Wilt. Cunningham's injury kept him from playing well and that affected the series—which, to a degree, worked to Wilt's detriment. Siegfried, Sanders, and Jones all played well—and I don't think playing well when injured had much to do with Russell. This isn't to discount that Bill Russell was, also, badly injured—he's going to, likely, be my #2 choice this year. I don't want that to seem like a slight on Bill Russell and if it comes across that way, it's my bad.

btw—I'd bet real money that the reason Russell said/acted as he did was related to the one year up to that time in his career when the Celtics had not won the title...in a year when Russell had been injured in the Finals and had, similarly, played on anyway. Russell didn't want alibis then either. He was a man of tremendous pride and integrity; a great leader. It's terrific. But, in this particular year, I don't think it had a whole lot to do with Satch Sanders and Sam Jones playing well with their injuries, and Billy Cunningham being almost totally ineffective.

[ElGee]

Hope Regulator can add to this -- I won't have time.

----
Elgin Baylor

Injured his knee after playing 15 minutes Nov. 27 @ Boston (101-95 loss).

Missed Nov. 28 to Dec. 17 (12 games). LA went 5-7.

In those 12 games, LA averaged 119.2 ppg 115.5 opp ppg (season averages were 119.5/116.4).
-----
-----
Sam Jones

Injured in a blowout v New York on Nov. 24 (42-25 Boston after 1st).

Missed Nov. 26 to Dec. 7 (6 games). Bos went 4-2.
-Larry Siegfried filled in for Jones notably, scoring 23, 23, 18, 17 and 31 in 5 of the games.
-Russell didn't play Dec. 5 or Dec. 7

Missed Feb. 2 @Detroit with Strep Throat (99-93 loss). Siegfried had 39 in his place.

In those 7 games, Bos averaged 106.0 ppg 103.6 opp ppg (season averages were 112.7/107.8).

Played limited bench minutes in "emergency duty" Dec. 8. No mention of whether he or Russell played Dec. 11 against San Francisco.
----
----
Bill Russell

Injured Dec. 4 early in the 2nd quarter.

Missed Dec. 5 and Dec. 7. Boston went 1-1.

On Jan 17. v Phi, Russell left the game in the 3rd Q and Philadelphia scored 41 4th Q points.

On February 15, played 2 minutes before leaving in a 136-123 loss @Cin. (Boston was "never in the game" without Russell.)

Also stumbled across an interested column by Jim Murray calling Russell the most dominant player in all of sports: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Ku ... %2C2938289

[Doctor MJ]

Also stumbled across an interested column by Jim Murray calling Russell the most dominant player in all of sports: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Ku ... %2C2938289

An interesting read.

My main reaction to it is "Nobody loves Goliath". How else to explain quotes like this:

...the greatest feat in all the history of sports is his holding Wilt Chamberlain to a paltry 14 points in one game this season.

I understand there's a vein of humor running through the article, but still, I could totally understand it if Wilt felt there was just no way he could win the court of public opinion by being the best at a sport that everyone felt he was tailor-made for.

[ThaRegul8r]

I apologize if you thought the presentation was one-sided. In this case, I personally feel that the Cunningham injury was a bigger deal in the context of how Wilt and Russell were/are compared in this particular season. Wilt, in this case, might be being judged harshly because of the failure of his teammates—which he had no control over. And many of the Celtic players who were injured were, in general, magnificent in the postseason. Satch Sanders—13.5 and 6.5 in 27 mpg on 48% shooting. Sam Jones averaged 25-5-3 on 45% shooting. I'm good with the idea that Bill Russell made his teammates better. But I'm not going to also give him a shaman bonus for healing, any more than I'm going to downgrade Wilt (or Schayes) because Cunningham didn't play well and eventually sat with his injury. If the Celtics played better because they were tougher—fine. I think that's an individual thing. I don't think either team lader had anything to do with how their teammates played when injured.

I'm not talking about anyone getting a "shaman bonus for healing," or "team leaders ha[ving] anything to do with how their teammates played when injured," or anything like that. You're missing the point. Since injuries were discussed in the past, I was curious as to whether ALL the injuries that took place in this particular season would be discussed. But this thread went four pages long with only talk about the injuries Philadelphia incurred, with absolutely zero mention of the injuries Boston also sustained, until I chimed in to present the other side as well. This is most assuredly one-sided. Had I said nothing, nothing would have ever been said. If I didn't actually know what happened, I would be led to believe that a healthy Boston team took advantage of injuries to beat Philadelphia. I have a problem when things are slanted toward one side. I don't care who does it.

Then there was this statement:

I see some favoritism toward the Celtics and Bill Russell. Which is understandable. It’s hard for us to conceive of now, but the NBA bordered on being a regional sport in terms of popularity the mid-1960s. Half the teams in the league drew under 5000 fans per game. The Celtics (and, to a lesser extent, the Lakers) were the known commodities. So was Wilt—although his portrayal (and self-portrayal) is not always good. I think the press pumped up Boston and Russell.

And I think sportswriting was in the last throes of racism and sensationalism, and was only about halfway to the professionalism it would achieve by the middle of the next decade. (And, to be honest, most of the “good” sportswriters covered baseball.) I have a real problem with a sportswriter that looks a player who scores 46 points (on 34 shots) and grabs 34 rebounds in Game 7, and says he’s a primary reason to the team’s loss—“a major contributor to the Philadelphia defeat”—for his poor free throw shooting. I’m just baffled by that.

So here’s what I’m baffled about. Who or what were the other Philadelphia contributions to defeat? Because here’s what I don’t see in the articles…any reference to the rest of the Philadelphia team playing poorly.

Which means that this was inexplicably skipped over:

“Coach Dolph Schayes blamed his 76ers ‘miserable shooting’ for the defeat. […] Schayes who kept the Philadelphia locker room closed for 20 minutes following the game, said that in the first half Chamberlain was ‘the only one who shot better than 25 per cent’” (The Dispatch, Apr. 11, 1966).

I made it a point to post that so that the full story would be presented. Both Chamberlain's free throw shooting AND the shooting of the Philadelphia team were brought up in the articles. So now I'm baffled. Were not BOTH relevant to the defeat? They lost by eight. Surely the combination had something to do with it? It's not like anyone's blameless here.

[Dr Positivity]

1. Wilt - 33/24/5 with blocks is more impressive statistically than any non Wilt season. Anchored a 55 W team thanks to what seems like very good defense. This is a Lebron 09 like year, IMO. By far the most impressive player in the league and it translated to wins. Just didn't win the title.
2. Russell - Easy #2. The Celts amazing DRTG and piss poor ORTG shows Russ basically carried this team to contention. But with Wilt playing good d, I don't think it's enough to make up for the mammoth offensive difference this year
3. West - As impressive as Oscar statistically despite sharing ball with Baylor + better defense + better teammate and leader
4. Oscar - Just behind West but these are clearly the top 4
5. Sam Jones - By far best scorer on title team, great teammate, willing to sacrifice stats for good of team, and very clutch. Glad to put him on a list somewhere

[Deus_DJ]

...which is why it's so hard for me to take criticisms of Hannum in his handling of Wilt seriously.

As a whole, of course not. But for that particular Game 7 in '68, most definitely. Something wasn't working, and nobody did their part -- not Wilt, not his teammates, not Hannum -- to get it fixed.

A good point about the volume scoring, though. ElGee posted a paper on that subject -- I'm sure he could throw it up again -- about this. Even Jerry West, 40 years after all those defeats, talked about this in his recent biography, questioning the approach he and Baylor took in terms of dominating the offense. It's a real concern that deserves to be debated.

I believe you're talking about "The Price of Anarchy in Basketball":

http://www.bepress.com/jqas/vol6/iss1/3/

Here's the guy who wrote it explaining it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz1uQi_epAo

Thing is though, the issue with Wilt goes deeper than Breaess' paradox. The basic idea he's talking about is that if you have one option that's best in a vacuum, you may use it so much that the opposing team adapts and makes it much less efficient. The analogy is a bunch of people commuting to work on the freeway, and clogging up the freeway while the side streets are empty.

There's nothing in the idea captures Wilt's big problem here, which is in causing the rest of the team to do worse. To try to come up with something to extend the analogy: Say you're on the freeway and it's clogged, and you see that there's a side street that's open. At a certain point the freeway becomes so gridlocked you're desperate to use the side street, and you drive off the side of the freeway causing massive damage to your vehicle along the way. You get to the open side street, but now with the flat tires and bleeding livestock attached to your car, you're not able to drive very fast on the side street even though there's no traffic.

This is something that happens to varying degrees with role players, but the extent of it in Wilt's case is mind-blowing. Literally, Wilt with Hannum's method was many, many times more valuable than Wilt without Hannum's method.

I honestly think a lot of this is just nonsense. The game is far too fluid to simply state that anarchy on the part of an individual player will disrupt the whole team, particularly when the same story occurred with MJ except that he was successful. It's true to an extent, but it's not the golden rule, and that should be obvious to anyone after Jordan acme along.

[Deus_DJ]

Code: Select all

    1.  Boston        87.7
    2.  Philadelphia  91.8
    3.  Detroit       94.1
    4.  San Francisco 94.2
    LEAGUE AVG.       94.8
    5.  Los Angeles   95.9
    6.  St. Louis     95.9
    7.  Cincinnati    96.6
    8.  Baltimore     96.9
    9.  New York      100.3

Wilt's Philly was +3 with similar teammates to Russell defensively (rebounding is part of the defense). Celtics were +7.1... that's like Celtics 2008 or Pistons 2004 IIRC.

no wonder why Celtics were so bad offensively. although KC and Satch were good defenders (Sanders was borderline great) they had absolutely no game offensively. KC Jones was like Rondo but without driving ability or elite passing. total scrub on offense. Sanders lacked jumpshot too, but he wasn't THAT bad. I'll challenge you guys to find me a clip of KC making an outside jumpshot.

I'll challenge you to say Boston's Offense was worse than Philly's in the playoffs, because this is essentially what you want to imply in your quest to find/say whatever bad thing you can about Chamberlain.

[Jimmy76]

Jordan did best when put in a system thath forced him to work with his teammates and not when he was at his peak volume scoring

It reenforces the idea if anything

[Deus_DJ]

But what you're saying fits into the idea that Wilt didn't really help his teammates, and Russell's defense help shut down Philadelphia.

Obviously, it's not as black-and-white as Bastillon makes it out to be; I'll always sing Satch's praises defensively, and KC was good too. I'm sure Philly missed some open shots too. Wilt missed FTs like Ted Williams made outs. But there's something to Wilt's style of play until Hannum comes along that leaves his teams more vulnerable to this. It's been talked about since the first years we did in this project, but ball-hogging/a single player-centric offense is, in theory, easier to derail. Not to mention the overall benefits (re-posted below) of playing a more optimal strategy.

Btw, I do see the same media narratives today. The rest of his team shot 77% from the line. Many analysts take the telescopic approach of "the game was won in x area," and in G7 that was FT shooting. Because, literally, if he shot a normal FT% they would have won. It's kind of silly and like saying "Cleveland lost because LeBron James turned it over 8 times." Yeah, but he also scored 38 points and his teammates missed 47 shots, so focusing on one facet is pretty arbitrary. I don't see anything too foreign there, and the line didn't stand out to me too much when I read it.

Yeah, I'm actually with you to a large degree here. I think it’s closer to say Wilt didn’t help his teammates as much…but part of that was because he individually did more. Prior to 1967, Wilt’s teammates were largely not as good as Russell’s. But I agree that, on the whole, Wilt did not in any way, shape, or form help his teammates as much as Russell did. Part of that is countered by the fact that Wilt starts from a point of having more overall responsibilities; he was asked to do more on the court, whereas Russell was able to be part of a team/system with better, more complimentary teammates. It can’t have helped that Wilt was virtually always under a new coach/system for his first decade in the NBA. It might be fairer to say Russell helped his teams step up more, while Wilt was unable to keep his team from slipping even though he, individually, often remained dominant. That’s still a big plus for Russell.

Let me add something important for many of those that are inclined to go against Chamberlain and give a + for Russell...first of all, you have to realize that Russell could never be expected to do what Chamberlain did. When someone shoots with great efficiency and is a great all around player with his rebounding and blocked shots as well(whoever said he probably had 4 blocks a game is wrong...he probably had more) who can blame him for taking a larger amount of his team's shots?(in comparison to others anyhow). Russell was a **** shooter and he and his teammates acknowledged this many times. The only thing Russell COULD do was defend, rebound and block shots effectively....and he did this very, very well. With Russell not being a focus on the offensive end and only having to stay alert on the defensive end he could play to his full potential. In 1968 I'd say Wilt was simply unlucky for his team to have played a different style than they normally do in game 7, as the ball never went into his hands...in that season the ball normally went into his hands to run the offense. Anyhow, I just wanted to point out the stupidity of this meme always being brought up, and I'll summarize it for those that didn't get it: it is foolish to credit Russell for playing a certain way when there is no other way he could have played(unless he was lazier). Russell deserves credit for PLAYING HARD, not for playing different(what some would claim "better"). In this same respect I have an EXTREMELY hard time knocking Chamberlain down for playing a way he was not only accustomed to playing but doing it well(except the FT shooting of course). He deserves credit or no credit for whether he plays hard, and judging by his huge numbers(particularly his rebounding numbers, that are extremely large NO MATTER WHAT THE SCORE IN THE GAME IS!!, oh and that ALWAYS went up in the playoffs) show that he put up a lot of effort.

[Deus_DJ]

Jordan did best when put in a system thath forced him to work with his teammates and not when he was at his peak volume scoring

It reenforces the idea if anything

He was still scoring a lot dude...look at his career scoring average. To say that Wilt was shooting too much this year when they played in a year that had a slightly faster pace and he averaged 33-34 ppg, which is only 3-4 ppg above Jordan's CAREER average, shows that the foolish argument, ie the emperor, is wearing no clothes.

[Deus_DJ]

I don't like too much "blame" either, and Cunningham's injury must have hurt. I just wonder how much Wilt Chamberlain helps a decent basketball team on offense playing the way he did that year. From 1960 to 1964, he has huge numbers (comparable to what we see in 66) playing that way, and while they clearly help his teams -- he's no cancer or drain -- I just don't think it's as much as we would intuitively expect. 1965, in some ways, was disastrous.

1965 was disastrous because he actually(IN REALITY) had a heart attack that totally destroyed his play while he was with the Warriors. The official meme is that he had pancreatitis...but this is false. A few doctors that examined Chamberlain said that they would bet their money that he wouldn't be alive in another year. That is how serious his condition was. Let me put it another way: his heart was hurting him so bad that he had to take himself out of a game with 36 seconds remaining because it was hurting him so much. This is someone that could take a lot of pain and had a LOT of stamina(stamina is obvious; pain for example where in 1972 he played game 5 with 2 broken wrists).

[Jimmy76]

Jordan did best when put in a system thath forced him to work with his teammates and not when he was at his peak volume scoring

It reenforces the idea if anything

He was still scoring a lot dude...look at his career scoring average. To say that Wilt was shooting too much this year when they played in a year that had a slightly faster pace and he averaged 33-34 ppg, which is only 3-4 ppg above Jordan's CAREER average, shows that the foolish argument, ie the emperor, is wearing no clothes.

He was scoring a lot but within a team concept, this isn't black and white it's a million shades of gray and when Jordan bumped down couple shades his team bumped up

Check out the 67 sixers offensive success with Wilts reduced scoring role and get back to me