RealGM NBA Top 100 list -- #1

[MisterWestside]

4. "But could Russell do something like that now?". I'm willing to say I think he'd be less effective today. I think he'd still be the best defender, and I think his offense would shock people with how much better his numbers would look. However, I don't have a problem saying that I'd probably look at LeBron James was the better prospect were they coming out now for this league.

Should that knock Russell out of contention for the top spot? i don't think so. I do not see a GOAT list as something that should simply ask "How would they do now?". Let's take a clearly absurd example of where such thinking would take you:

"Yeah, Lincoln was great during the Civil War, but that doesn't give me any reason to think he'd be great against a financial crisis, and it's not like slavery's an issue any more."

But is it? I would like a stronger example if you're attempting to demonstrate a reductio ad absurdum.

Besides, if you don't think about context, as least as it applies to basketball, you'd be out of the job as a GM or talent evaluator. I can think of several examples from this NBA season alone that shows the importance of applying context to players, as opposed to simply copying/pasting impact from one context to another.

I'm not advocating for Russell based simply on dominance over his era - you have to figure in degree of difficulty as well, and this is why I largely ignore earlier eras this hype up on the GOAT list. Quite frankly, if Russell just dominated in those late 50s-early 60s years, it would be a major issue for me too.

However, Russell kept on dominating. Leagues coming of age follow S-curves, like a growing business does:



The thing is that Russell's career spans the rapid skill growth era. Unprecedented change in that 13 years, and there basically was never any answer for Russell no matter how the change occurred. That's just crazy. Basically, I think it's naive to assume other players could have thrived throughout all these changes like Russell did.

The game during those seasons is drastically different from the game that we have today. You're talking about Russell sixty years removed from his heyday if you conjecture about his impact in today's game. Can we agree as to the potential pitfalls that can occur from making this assumption?

[drza]

I mentioned that Russell was an Olympic caliber high-jumper.

That "sounds" better than really is, but in reality doesn't say much about his athleticism, because Olympic caliber high jumper in 1957 = high school caliber high jumper now.

Not really. Russell high-jumped 6-10 before the invention of the Fosbury Flop, which revolutionized the whole event. Fosbury himself went from a career-best jump of 5-4 to a then-world record of 7-4 using the technique. I won't intimate that Russell would have also gained 2 feet with the technique, but it would clearly have put him well, well outside the bounds of a high school caliber high-jumper. In fact, with the new technique and modern equipment Russell would still likely be at least borderline world class as a high jumper...which puts him far outside of the norms for an NBA center. Yes, likely even more athletic than David Robinson (possibly to a significant degree).

[drza]

Oh yeah. I don't know when the vote ends for this thread, so let me make it official:

Vote: Bill Russell

[ElGee]

Apologies -- Doc MJ already made my last point much more eloquently. He had time to post the S-curve.

Russell has an unparalleled number of titles and won with different supporting casts. However, I believe Russell was lucky to be in the situation he was in. He got in Boston who were coached by undoubtedly the greatest coach at that moment in Red Auerbach and I’m sorry for being so blunt but the other coaches were largely amateurs in terms of knowledge and tactics. That’s like putting this year’s (contender of your choice – SA, MIA, OKC, LAC, IND, etc. with their current coach) against the rest of the league coached by gym teachers.

I will not pretend to know more about Russell’s teammates than every other poster here but I am taking with a grain of salt all the comments about how overrated Cousy was, and how all of Russell’s teammates were HOFs because of Russell. The way I see it, Russell had excellent teammates and the team was incredibly deep in an era in which most teams had one star (or superstar), a couple of good players and that’s it; noone else had depth.

We have people convincing us that Russell’s numbers were not as bad as they look because of the era (poor efficiency) which I agree with but then they point out how Cousy shot under 40%... Shouldn’t we be judging Cousy by the same criteria? Maybe his % used to be the norm for a playmaker in an era where there was no such thing as an open shot, and where coaches believed that it was important to shoot and shoot and shoot instead of working for a good look. I got carried away though, I’d get back to it when we start discussing Cousy.

What I want to say is that if Wilt had been drafted by Boston instead of Russell, I have absolutely no doubt that Wilt would have all those titles and Russell would probably have 1 title or so. I firmly believe that Auerbach would have convinced Wilt about teamwork and defense and his offense and overall dominance would have been insurmountable for other teams, given Boston keep their amazing depth around him. If Wilt lucks into going to Boston, he has 10+ titles now and there is no argument for who the GOAT is. For all the wins Russell had against Wilt, I am still not convinced Russell was a better player.

I think you have the causality backwards here. I realize you're saying "you aren't sure," and in light of a copy-paste marathon that could make you more confident, I'll hit the highlights:

-Many people -- myself included -- don't see Red as the GOAT coach.

-Do NOT underestimate how many Celtics were absolutely average players and are in the HOF because it's a museum. They had a few all-nba/all-stars over the years, as did the other best teams. Russell was the main difference. To me, Havlicek and Jones were good. The rest were quite literally role players.

-Cousy specifically -- good to great player in the 50's. Not an offensive force per se, and when he retired people were concerned the Celtics would fall apart because there absolutely no analysis whatsoever, just "feeling." He retired, Boston got MORE dominant. It was like a QED moment for people realizing how good Russell was.

-Someone has gone through and calculated Boston's performance from 1958-1969 with/without Russell. It's something like "without = average," "with = +8"

-The last one about Wilt and defense is where you really off. Red Auerbach did not convince Russell to me a defensive-first player. Russell was already doing this -- he was told by certain people to not jump to bock shots. He did his own thing. Dominated in college (out of USF!) and in the Olympics. He intuitively thought probabilistically about the game -- a critical tool for a game like basketball -- and ignored raw totals, instead aiming to drive down the oppositions efficiency over time, realizing the collective value of that strategy. What Red did do was tell him to just keep playing that way when others thought it was a bad way to play.

This is probably why Si Green was selected ahead of Russell in the 1956 draft.

Contrast that with Wilt, who thought of the game as a lose-lose because he was so big (people expected him to dominate) and devised a strategy based around objective metrics (the box score) so he could feel immune to criticism. Points. Points. Rebounds and more points. Then what could they say?

It's two completely different approaches to the game, and to give Red credit here and assume he could mold Wilt into something else seems entirely off base to me. Heck, even in Wilt's heralded 1967 season where he tried to "impersonate" Russell (he really didn't, but that's what the media classified his shooting subjugation as), he immediately went into bizarro land in the ensuing seasons, trying to artificially rack up assists or not shoot at times to avoid damaging his FG%.

[ElGee]

I can see slamming the 60s although personally, since the question is greatest of all time rather than who would be the greatest in today's league, I think being portable to the 50s and 60s is just as important as being portable to the last 20 years.

But saying the talent level in the 60s is inferior then picking Kareem who played his most dominant ball in the 70s seems disingenuous to say the lleast. For most of Russell's career, there were the same number of teams and players. There was expansion toward the end (67 and 68 plus the very limited impact of the ABA's 1st two years), but it was a small talent pool with multiple college superstars on every team.

The 70s had two factors lessening the talent pool and inflating the statistics and the top players. First (and lesser), the ABA started siphoning off talent. By 1969, Rick Barry was the only player to jump leagues although Mel Daniels was an NBA 1st rounder who signed with the ABA. By 1975, the ABA was pretty much on a par talentwise with the NBA . . . and that's more players than played in 1966's NBA, a doubling of the size of the player tool in 10 years. But that grossly UNDERestimates the expansion of the player pool. In that same period the NBA had gone from 8 teams to 18, MORE THAN DOUBLING. There may have been an expansion of the basketball playing population in that time but without international players or greatly increased popularity, I don't see how you can say the competition that Kareem faced on a day in and day out basis was close to as good as Russell faced.

Add to that the limited number of great centers in Kareem's heyday . . . the centers he faced that gave him the most trouble during the 70s (other than the one year of poor injury plagued Bill Walton) were Wilt and Nate Thurmond, both of whom played the majority of their prime during Russell's era, not Kareem's. His main competition for the top center in the 70s were Dave Cowens (who was smaller than Russell and not a true rim protector though I loved his motor) and Willis Reed (also smaller than Russell and a bit injury prone). Meanwhile he was able to feast on a lot of expansion era centers that might not have even made the league as backups in 1965. In 1975, Kareem faced basically 7 competent NBA centers (Ray, McAdoo, Cowens, Unseld, Lacey, Lanier, aging Thurmond) and 10 stiffs (Sojourner, Kunnert, Neal, Elmore Smith -- the JaVale McGee of the 70s, Tom Burleson, E.C. Coleman -- a combo forward out of position for the expansion Jazz, Awtrey, Gianelli, LeRoy Ellis, Chones). If you think Elmore Smith could actually play well, it's still 8 good to 9 stiffs. Russell in 1965 faced a HOF center more than half the time (Wilt, Reed, Beaty, Bellamy, Thurmond) with only 3 weak centers (Wayne Embry -- a lot of people like him better than I do, maybe Sam Lacey level, LeRoy Ellis -- yeah, same one only 24 instead of 33, and Ray Scott).

There is no real way to say you won't support Russell but favor Kareem because of era strength and pass the red face test.

I most certainly can. Kareem's first year was 1970. Russell's last year was the year before Kareem's rookie year. A great deal had changed since Russell came out in 1956, 14 years earlier. I'll give you a hint what the most obvious one was:
Here's the 1957 championship Celtics.

And here's the 1970 Lakers.

It shouldn't he hard to spot the difference.

Your argument implies Russell in 1969 was doing something directly comparable to Kareem in 1970. That's clearly not true. Russell was putting up 10-19-5 on 433. FG% on a 48 win team. The next year without Russell the Celtics dropped 14 games. He was a big part of that, but he wasn't pulling Kareem's weight. Kareem came onto the garbage expansion Bucks who had won 27 games the year before, and turned them into a 56 win powerhouse who lost in the conference finals to a NY Knicks team that was substantially better than any team Russell faced the year before (thanks to the emergence of Walt Frazier). Kareem put up 29-15-4 on 518 FG%. They were not comparable players doing comparable things. Kareem was immediately the MVP of the NBA in 1970, and he (unsurprisingly for a rookie) got better the following few years.

To echo Doc MJ's point, the fact that Russell dominated throughout this transition should be extra, extra impressive. he was still a force as an old man at the end of his career -- as a player-coach!

[An Unbiased Fan]

Woah, I thought this was starting Monday or Tuesday.

VOTE #1: Michael Jordan

If you look at the broad range of ciriteria used to rank players, wheter it be career value, primes, impact, maximizing team's chances, skillset, 2-way ability, accolades, you name it.....MJ is either at the Top or in the Top 5 or so.

If we break down the Top 3 from each era, we get:

Pre-Shot clock:
Mikan
Cousy
Dolph

Post Shot-Clock/Pre-ABA(57:
Russell
Wilt
West/Oscar

Split Leagues Era:
KAJ
Dr. J
Barry

Golden Era:
Magic
Bird
Moses

NBA on NBC Era:
MJ
Hakeem
Mailman

Post-MJ Era:
Kobe
Duncan
Shaq

Big not 2, not 3, not 4 star players on 1 team Era(2012-):
Lebron
Durant
CP3?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now not all eras are created equal, so I decided to give a ranking score to each Era, based on the top 50 players from the last Top 100 list. Players are placed in era by their primes.

Total players listed in Top 50
13 - Post-MJ Era
12 - NBA on NBC Era
11 - Split Leagues Era
6 - Golden Era
6 - Post Shot-Clock/Pre-ABA
1 - Pre-Shot-Clock Era
1 - 2012+ Era(obivoulsy just a few year sample, can easily merge with Post-MJ era)

What immediately sticks out is how few Top 50 players the Golden era of Magic/Bird had in their primes, and how few the Wilt/Russell era did. We tend to put players from both these eras on a pedestal, but its clear that the talent level was significantly higher from the 90's to now considering that 25 out of the Top 50 players came from this period.

Total players listed in Top 20
5 - Post-MJ Era
5 - Post Shot-Clock/Pre-ABA
4 - NBA on NBC Era
3 - Golden Era
2 - Split Leagues Era
1 - 2012+ Era
0 - Pre-Shot-Clock Era


Total players listed in Top 10
3 - Post-MJ Era
3 - NBA on NBC Era
2 - Golden Era
2 - Post Shot-Clock/Pre-ABA
1 - Split Leagues Era
0 - Pre-Shot-Clock Era
0 - 2012+ Era

The Post-MJ Era is clearly the deepest with talent, and also has the most players in every category. The NBA on NBC era is #2, and the Wilt/Russ era is a top-heavy #3 based mostly on having 5 players in the Top 20, though hurt is bad depth of talent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So when I look at MJ, I see someone who ranks at the top or near the top in every criteria used for ranking players. I also see him playing in the 2nd toughest NBA era, and dominating it in both individual/team impact.

Russell was great in his era, but he did play in a league of 8-10 teams, and in a NBA with lesser overall talent. I also don't feel his imapct translates to other eras at the same level. he would still be a great defender, but his lack of scoring ability would be problematic considering how restrictive the salary cap is. Russell is not #1 or #2 option material either. Wilt's ratio of statistical impact to team impact is low, and I place him #2 in his era, so no GOAT for him.

Kareem is the clear #1 for his era....but its hard to ignore the 3 years of not making the playoffs in his prime. If we were talking high school/college, then Kareem is GOAT, but despite his longevity, I'm re-thinking Kareem's rank. is he truly greater than Magic? Or what about the trio from the Post-MJ era? Wilt? Criticisms that vex other players seem to evade Cap. I dont' understand why his teams didn't do more in a split NBA/ABA, and with no one else save Walton for a period around.

Magic is ahead of Bird for me, but like Bird he leaves alot to be desired on one end of the court. Also, the "Golden" era may have saved the NBA...but it's overrated. Magic himself played on a loaded team like Bird did, and only 6 Top 50 players had their primes in that era. guys like MJ/Hakeem/Barkley/Ewing all were just entering back when Magic/Bird were battling. Like Kareem, I have to re-think his ranking. Strange, Magic is my favorite player ever, never thought I would feel this way.

Kobe/TD/Shaq are all underrated frankly. They played in the deepest era in NBA history. They went head to head like Magic/Bird did, and I feel all 3 were better 2-way players in their primes. last time around I had Bird udner all 3, and this time around Magic man may take a tumble. When you consider impact/longetivity/team imapct, they all eclipse Magic/Bird...but I guess that's a debate for later. I can't put any of them as over MJ.

Lebron is the clear best player of the 2012(post-lockout) and on era. He had great statistical season in the 00's, but the correlation to team impact is lacking similar to Wilt. Has quite a bit to do to even sniff MJ at this point.

So MJ is my clear #1.

[Doctor MJ]

1) Remember those years smack dab in Kareem's prime where his teams did nothing special.

And you really think Russell would do more with that mid 70s Bucks and especially Lakers teams?

This is one of those cases where if you insist on stripping one of my sentences out of the post we're not going to get anywhere.

I made no statements implying that Russell should get ranked ahead of Kareem abased on what he could have done with Kareem's team. To go into more depth about what I said before would be just to repeat myself.

I'm not advocating for Russell based simply on dominance over his era - you have to figure in degree of difficulty as well, and this is why I largely ignore earlier eras this hype up on the GOAT list. Quite frankly, if Russell just dominated in those late 50s-early 60s years, it would be a major issue for me too.

However, Russell kept on dominating. Leagues coming of age follow S-curves, like a growing business does:


The thing is that Russell's career spans the rapid skill growth era. Unprecedented change in that 13 years, and there basically was never any answer for Russell no matter how the change occurred. That's just crazy.

The thing is Russell didn't dominate all the time. His teams clearly were better in first half of the 60s, than later. Of course he was older, but still:

Code: Select all

W/L%    SRS  Rel_ORtg Rel_DRtg    Russell
0,701   5,8   -0,5      -5,5   first 4 years
0,742   6,8   -3,0      -9,0   middle 5 years
0,665   5,2   -1,0      -5,6   last 4 years


Is that impressive enough to put him 1st on GOAT list? Well, for comparison sake Duncan during his first 13 seasons:

Code: Select all

W/L%    SRS  Rel_ORtg Rel_DRtg    Duncan
0,689   6,1   1,3      -5,8   first 4 years
0,724   6,8   1,2      -6,3   middle 5 years
0,665   5,5   1,3      -4,9   last 4 years


So Russell's defensive dominance at his peak is unmatched, but what matters is team overall level of play (yes, I think Russell was negative offensive player) and Duncan's teams look better here despite playing in tougher league. Of course Tim had great management, but so did Russell as Auerbach was also way ahead of his time in terms of being GM (BTW, Howell is one of the most underrated veteran additions ever).

I don't understand your charts. It appears you're saying that the Spurs offense was mediocre all through Duncan's career, and has remained around 5-6 points above average on defense the whole time. That's clearly not the case.

Now, just with the words, what you seem to be saying that Duncan's better because he's more of a two-way player and his team was arguably better overall. Here's how I see Duncan:

Duncan's a fantastic player - Top 10 all-time - he is however known in his prime as someone whose something of a superstar on both sides of the ball because he at one point volume scored. However, the entire resurgence of the Spurs is based on the fact that the team could do better on offense if they didn't use Duncan like that even if they had no other go-to-guy on offense. He is in other words, perceived as an offensive superstar because at one point he was wrongly used like a superstar on offense and the team's defense was sufficient to surround that sub-optimal offense with success.

On the other side of the ball, Duncan's a legit superstar certainly, but he's also not 'the best thing since Russell'. He never had the agility for that. And so I'll give a bit of a spoiler here: I intend to vote for Kevin Garnett before Tim Duncan.

I can actually see a scouting argument for Garnett over Russell pretty easily based on his two-way play...and yet Garnett's lacking in Russell's most dominant attribute (shot blocking), and when Garnett truly became a defensive player of impact well north of Duncan, we're talking about a guy not volume scoring but just a guy who can get you 15-20 on solid efficiency while also rebounding and playmaking. When you put it like that, how different is that from Russell really?

[sp6r=underrated]

-Why this forum continues to use pure RAPM over more powerful hybrid metrics like xRAPM or RPM (both of which do a better job of predicting overall impact as standalone metrics)

This thread might be of interest to you: viewtopic.php?f=344&t=1316036. There is a long discussion of the value of RAPM and it was a very interesting thread. I share your view that there is a bit of a RAPM confidence bubble on the player comparisons board and explain my reasons in that thread.

[Doctor MJ]

4. "But could Russell do something like that now?". I'm willing to say I think he'd be less effective today. I think he'd still be the best defender, and I think his offense would shock people with how much better his numbers would look. However, I don't have a problem saying that I'd probably look at LeBron James was the better prospect were they coming out now for this league.

Should that knock Russell out of contention for the top spot? i don't think so. I do not see a GOAT list as something that should simply ask "How would they do now?". Let's take a clearly absurd example of where such thinking would take you:

"Yeah, Lincoln was great during the Civil War, but that doesn't give me any reason to think he'd be great against a financial crisis, and it's not like slavery's an issue any more."

But is it? I would like a stronger example if you're attempting to demonstrate a reductio ad absurdum.

Besides, if you don't think about context, as least as it applies to basketball, you'd be out of the job as a GM or talent evaluator. I can think of several examples from this NBA season alone that shows the importance of applying context to players, as opposed to simply copying/pasting impact from one context to another.

I'm not advocating for Russell based simply on dominance over his era - you have to figure in degree of difficulty as well, and this is why I largely ignore earlier eras this hype up on the GOAT list. Quite frankly, if Russell just dominated in those late 50s-early 60s years, it would be a major issue for me too.

However, Russell kept on dominating. Leagues coming of age follow S-curves, like a growing business does:



The thing is that Russell's career spans the rapid skill growth era. Unprecedented change in that 13 years, and there basically was never any answer for Russell no matter how the change occurred. That's just crazy. Basically, I think it's naive to assume other players could have thrived throughout all these changes like Russell did.

The game during those seasons is drastically different from the game that we have today. You're talking about Russell sixty years removed from his heyday if you conjecture about his impact in today's game. Can we agree as to the potential pitfalls that can occur from making this assumption?

I'm not really sure what you're advocating with regards to context.

As to 60 years removed, the deeper in the past we need to go, the less precision we can claim in our analysis. This shouldn't be taken as a reason to "round down" our opinions of players from the past. You call it as you see it as best you can, and then you change your stance on an epiphany by epiphany basis.

[ardee]

I think people should be focusing more on era dominance and WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED than trying to fantasise about Russell's impact in today's era. Players are hard enough to evaluate anyway without thinking about some fantasy.

Not that I have an issue with a Jordan vote, I might change mine before the end of the thread, but I disagree with the what-if arguments about Russell.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[ardee]

I can't vote for Russell because he was a bad offensive player in his era, just imagine how bad that would be in this era.

But Russell carried the Celtics to 11 titles with his defense.

His lack of offensive game doesn't matter because he won 11 titles all with his defense and rebounding.

Hate to break it to you but that really is the case. The numbers don't lie. Russell's teams were really that bad offensively before Hondo got into his prime... and they won by absolutely licking the field defensively.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[lorak]

I mentioned that Russell was an Olympic caliber high-jumper.

That "sounds" better than really is, but in reality doesn't say much about his athleticism, because Olympic caliber high jumper in 1957 = high school caliber high jumper now.

Not really. Russell high-jumped 6-10

Source?

which revolutionized the whole event. Fosbury himself went from a career-best jump of 5-4 to a then-world record of 7-4 using the technique.

Cmonn drza, his 5-4 mark was before or at the beginning of high school, so natural psychical growth has A LOT to do with improvement. In high school, when he was using his "flop" technique, he still wasn't the best in the country, for example: "(...) the next year took second place in the state with a 6 ft 5.5 in (1.969 m) jump."

During 1968 Olympics he won, but it's not like he had big advantage over players using old technique (he was first with 2.24m, but needed three attempts, second place player had 2.22m and third 2.20m). In fact on next Olympics in 1972 the best result was set by player using OLD technique (Juri Tarmak won). So it's not so obvious new technique would give big advantage (if any), especially to so big player like Bill (the best high jumpers are usually around 6-1 to 6-5.)

Anyway, suggesting that Russell would gain 2 feet or anything close to that is irrational. Fact is Fosbury was using his technique on world stage since around mid 60s and 7-4 results or even 7-5 (by legendary Valeriy Brumel) weren't uncommon at the beginning of the 60s! (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_hi ... rogression). And high schoolers right now jump 7-4 regulary (world record for HS is 7-7)... so way better than Russell back then or even better than Fosbury career mark.

[Owly]

I'd glanced through the quotes (read properly now) but was already aware of what I think Heinsohn called a "pressure offense". But was Russell's combination of inefficency and low volume shooting down to that. Possibly very slightly, but I'd generally not. In part because Russell shot so much less frequently than the others that he must have been able to pick his spots/shots more. In part because I suspect he was usually the one Havlicek describes as being under the basket enabling the quick shot (or at least anticipating a quick shot and getting good rebounding position before the D is set), and in part because I think when he beat his man up court the shots he was or should have been taking shouldn't be low percentage. It might explain usage a little if he wasn't getting post ups, but then (again particularly in the earlier years with the faster pace, before Thurmond and Reed and more athletic rivals in the pivot) if he's beating his man up court (which he perhaps should be with his athleticism) why isn't he laying it in (and ditto off the offensive glass). Perhaps he was and that's why he was semi-efficient in the first 4 years. But the low volume and low efficiency in concert are a major concern to me, especially when we're talking about putting him first. Add in how well Boston started without him (and without a strong offensive player in Frank Ramsey) in '57 and you get my present position that Russell's impact on an offense is (in terms of a GOAT candidate) a significant concern.

And in general the quick shot offense (i.e. the acknowledgement that it was a strategic choice, minimising turnovers, crashing the offensive boards, and through their D too, getting more possessions) isn't great for the Russell case because it suggests Boston's "inefficient" offense wasn't really mediocre and thus somewhat counteracts the suggestion Boston were great exclusively on D, Russell was great on D therefore Boston were great almost exclusively because of Russell, and he didn't really have a good supporting cast. Now obviously Russell's rebounding would be a part of that offense but it moves the debate from "Russell must have had crazy levels of defensive impact" where it's basically all credit to Russell to "Russell was a very good defender (GOAT at this end) and a very good rebounder (which we have already accounted for in the boxscore)", which allows for other substantial contributors.

1) Until the end of his career, was Russ really shooting that much less frequently than his teammates? He generally had a decent number of attempts in terms of FGA or TSA (FGA+.44*FTA) I believe. I could be mistaken, I'm on my phone at the moment and don't have the data in front if me.

2) How often was he beating his man up the court if he was throwing outlet passes after grabbing defensive rebounds? I can't imagine it was very often, since from my understanding the outlet pass to a guard initiated the offense.

3) I'm not sure that I follow the bolded. If the inefficient offense was by design, how would that change how great Boston was on defense as opposed to offense as a team (see the ORtg/DRtg numbers) in terms of performance? Now, I do think that what the bolded means, is that the offensive talent was intentionally underutilized. Meaning that because of how effective they were defensively, they could afford to play the relatively equal opportunity offense they did, even if it wasn't optimal in terms of efficiency.

Don't have time to do this in full but
1) Am talking in terms of per minute, or shot creation burden. I think this is most relevent because (amongst other things, remember this is to be a short response) it affects how much opponents are forced to guard you, and reflects ability to create shots.

2) Good point, though I do recall something saying he ran the lanes well. But yes, he probably wasn't in position to score easy transition points that often. That said the leading (known) defensive rebound % guy got 30.75% percent of available boards on that end, even assuming Russell wasn't more of an offensive rebounder (and with his shot blocking and Boston's offensive system I'd think he would be) that's still clearly more than half the team's defensive boards where he isn't starting with the ball. But honestly his scoring in transition or not wasn't a central plank of my argument, it was more an aside (wondering if he was a poor finisher, or whether he was okay and halfcourt scoring was even worse than the %s). He shot rarely and shot poorly for a center.

3) My meaning was when people apportion credit for Boston's greatness those who tend to give the largest portion to Russell do so on the basis that in their intrerpretion Boston was incredible on D and a little below average on O. If Boston's inefficiency on O is a consequence of a plan to get more shots than opponents, then that plan will look like Boston is a poor offensive team, but that tiredness which is (partially) created on Boston's offense may manifest itself on Boston's D, but that doesn't mean Russell wasn't aided in winning by offensive talent (also that offense includes offensive boards, and so with Boston's offensive system creating a disporportionante number of chances for offensive boards numbers which don't reflect offensive rebounding will be somewhat off, so for these reasons I put "inefficient" in quotation marks, partly because I don't think it accurately represents where the impact of offensive talent occurs within the system, partly because I'm not sure about the measure in terms of boards). Okay got to go and tbh want to address others' points if/when I next get an opportunity (spent longer than I intended to on this). Thanks for the convo and making me clarify reasoning and thought process

[Doctor MJ]

"And another thing":

As it relates to Red Auerbach, and how to factor in coaching here.

I try to be very careful about things that assume that there's a zero-sum relationship between player/coach/GM impact. It's a coach's job to use a player correctly. That he does it when other don't doesn't make the player any less successful at what he did.

This is largely how I see Red & Russell.

However, there are times when it's important to understand the precise coach/GM/cast context to grasp how regular the situation truly was. While back when Russell first entered the league it was not the norm to use a defensive big like Boston used Russell, it became the new ideal very quickly. One can give Red credit for recognizing this first to some degree (although truthfully Russell was already doing it in college, so Red wasn't actually a spearhead here in the way, say, Alex Hannum was with Wilt), but afterward it's pretty clear that Russell would just be able to be used this way in general.

When I talk about Phil & the Bulls as they relate to Jordan, what I'm trying to emphasize is that in many circumstances you would actually want Jordan to play in a more team aware manner that he'd struggle with. The use of the triangle, and the Bulls willingness to do what it took to create a badass rebounding team around Jordan, are not things that we've ever seen readily doable for NBA teams. And while it is up to one's own philosophy to decide what they want to do with that information, when I judge players I like to look at what I could reasonable expect across a swath of universes rather than just what happened with one flip of the coin.

In other words, I think Jordan got luckier than most realize.

I would imagine some would be inclined to advocate that Russell was even luckier, and that's a fair point to make, just don't confuse the manners of luck involve. There are different forces at play here, and while it's up to each person to judge them as they see best, a superficial dismissal of them as being the same type of thing to be treated as essentially analogous is sloppy.

[ceiling raiser]

I'd glanced through the quotes (read properly now) but was already aware of what I think Heinsohn called a "pressure offense". But was Russell's combination of inefficency and low volume shooting down to that. Possibly very slightly, but I'd generally not. In part because Russell shot so much less frequently than the others that he must have been able to pick his spots/shots more. In part because I suspect he was usually the one Havlicek describes as being under the basket enabling the quick shot (or at least anticipating a quick shot and getting good rebounding position before the D is set), and in part because I think when he beat his man up court the shots he was or should have been taking shouldn't be low percentage. It might explain usage a little if he wasn't getting post ups, but then (again particularly in the earlier years with the faster pace, before Thurmond and Reed and more athletic rivals in the pivot) if he's beating his man up court (which he perhaps should be with his athleticism) why isn't he laying it in (and ditto off the offensive glass). Perhaps he was and that's why he was semi-efficient in the first 4 years. But the low volume and low efficiency in concert are a major concern to me, especially when we're talking about putting him first. Add in how well Boston started without him (and without a strong offensive player in Frank Ramsey) in '57 and you get my present position that Russell's impact on an offense is (in terms of a GOAT candidate) a significant concern.

And in general the quick shot offense (i.e. the acknowledgement that it was a strategic choice, minimising turnovers, crashing the offensive boards, and through their D too, getting more possessions) isn't great for the Russell case because it suggests Boston's "inefficient" offense wasn't really mediocre and thus somewhat counteracts the suggestion Boston were great exclusively on D, Russell was great on D therefore Boston were great almost exclusively because of Russell, and he didn't really have a good supporting cast. Now obviously Russell's rebounding would be a part of that offense but it moves the debate from "Russell must have had crazy levels of defensive impact" where it's basically all credit to Russell to "Russell was a very good defender (GOAT at this end) and a very good rebounder (which we have already accounted for in the boxscore)", which allows for other substantial contributors.

1) Until the end of his career, was Russ really shooting that much less frequently than his teammates? He generally had a decent number of attempts in terms of FGA or TSA (FGA+.44*FTA) I believe. I could be mistaken, I'm on my phone at the moment and don't have the data in front if me.

2) How often was he beating his man up the court if he was throwing outlet passes after grabbing defensive rebounds? I can't imagine it was very often, since from my understanding the outlet pass to a guard initiated the offense.

3) I'm not sure that I follow the bolded. If the inefficient offense was by design, how would that change how great Boston was on defense as opposed to offense as a team (see the ORtg/DRtg numbers) in terms of performance? Now, I do think that what the bolded means, is that the offensive talent was intentionally underutilized. Meaning that because of how effective they were defensively, they could afford to play the relatively equal opportunity offense they did, even if it wasn't optimal in terms of efficiency.

Don't have time to do this in full but
1) Am talking in terms of per minute, or shot creation burden. I think this is most relevent because (amongst other things, remember this is to be a short response) it affects how much opponents are forced to guard you, and reflects ability to create shots.

2) Good point, though I do recall something saying he ran the lanes well. But yes, he probably wasn't in position to score easy transition points that often. That said the leading (known) defensive rebound % guy got 30.75% percent of available boards on that end, even assuming Russell wasn't more of an offensive rebounder (and with his shot blocking and Boston's offensive system I'd think he would be) that's still clearly more than half the team's defensive boards where he isn't starting with the ball. But honestly his scoring in transition or not wasn't a central plank of my argument, it was more an aside (wondering if he was a poor finisher, or whether he was okay and halfcourt scoring was even worse than the %s). He shot rarely and shot poorly for a center.

3) My meaning was when people apportion credit for Boston's greatness those who tend to give the largest portion to Russell do so on the basis that in their intrerpretion Boston was incredible on D and a little below average on O. If Boston's inefficiency on O is a consequence of a plan to get more shots than opponents, then that plan will look like Boston is a poor offensive team, but that tiredness which is (partially) created on Boston's offense may manifest itself on Boston's D, but that doesn't mean Russell wasn't aided in winning by offensive talent (also that offense includes offensive boards, and so with Boston's offensive system creating a disporportionante number of chances for offensive boards numbers which don't reflect offensive rebounding will be somewhat off, so for these reasons I put "inefficient" in quotation marks, partly because I don't think it accurately represents where the impact of offensive talent occurs within the system, partly because I'm not sure about the measure in terms of boards). Okay got to go and tbh want to address others' points if/when I next get an opportunity (spent longer than I intended to on this). Thanks for the convo and making me clarify reasoning and thought process

Thanks for the response, appreciate the conversation (and sorry for keeping you, I was just very interested in your reasoning since you're a very astute poster). Looking forward to more as the project progresses.

[lorak]

1) Remember those years smack dab in Kareem's prime where his teams did nothing special.

And you really think Russell would do more with that mid 70s Bucks and especially Lakers teams?

This is one of those cases where if you insist on stripping one of my sentences out of the post we're not going to get anywhere.

I made no statements implying that Russell should get ranked ahead of Kareem abased on what he could have done with Kareem's team. To go into more depth about what I said before would be just to repeat myself.

So how should I interpret that:

What about the two-way impact? Two things to think about:

1) Remember those years smack dab in Kareem's prime where his teams did nothing special.

2) Understand how drastically off the charts Boston's defense was when Russell was at his apex.

I look at these things, and I give Russell the impact edge despite Kareem's clear edge on offense, and really this is what roughly holds true for me about Russell vs other in general. In other words, don't reply to me looking to defend Kareem here, because I'm not knocking Kareem really. The notion that a superstar can always turn any team into a contender is clearly a myth, and people would do well to remember Kareem when they look to knock others.

I'm not claiming that Russell a clear cut exception to this rule, but his impact on opposing defense was like nothing we've seen since.

[/quote]

?
Because it seems to me that bad results of KAJ's teams in mid 70s are one of the reasons, why you think Russell's impact was bigger. I'm missing something? And that implies that either you think that Russell would have done more with these teams (because his impact on defense was so great), or you ignore specific teams situation (roster, management, competition).

[Doctor MJ]

That "sounds" better than really is, but in reality doesn't say much about his athleticism, because Olympic caliber high jumper in 1957 = high school caliber high jumper now.

Not really. Russell high-jumped 6-10

Source?

which revolutionized the whole event. Fosbury himself went from a career-best jump of 5-4 to a then-world record of 7-4 using the technique.

Cmonn drza, his 5-4 mark was before or at the beginning of high school, so natural psychical growth has A LOT to do with improvement. In high school, when he was using his "flop" technique, he still wasn't the best in the country, for example: "(...) the next year took second place in the state with a 6 ft 5.5 in (1.969 m) jump."

During 1968 Olympics he won, but it's not like he had big advantage over players using old technique (he was first with 2.24m, but needed three attempts, second place player had 2.22m and third 2.20m). In fact on next Olympics in 1972 the best result was set by player using OLD technique (Juri Tarmak won). So it's not so obvious new technique would give big advantage (if any), especially to so big player like Bill (the best high jumpers are usually around 6-1 to 6-5.)

Anyway, suggesting that Russell would gain 2 feet or anything close to that is irrational. Fact is Fosbury was using his technique on world stage since around mid 60s and 7-4 results or even 7-5 (by legendary Valeriy Brumel) weren't uncommon at the beginning of the 60s! (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_hi ... rogression). And high schoolers right now jump 7-4 regulary (world record for HS is 7-7)... so way better than Russell back then or even better than Fosbury career mark.

You're making some good points, but I think you're also overthinking it a bit (or perhaps the back & forth here made me come in at a bad angle, apologies if that's the case).

Russell was an Olympic level high jumper in his day...
Despite the fact he was concentrating primarily on another sport...
With an athletic body that everyone basically agrees was absolutely world class.

If the argument you're making is simply that you're not impressed with athletes of the past, that's an understandable position.

I would tend to look at Russell based on all I see, and not see any reason to believe he and his genes would be outclassed by the guys of today. He's not the most impressive basketball specimen in history, but he's an outlier level guy. You just don't get guys that long and that agile very often.

[Doctor MJ]

And you really think Russell would do more with that mid 70s Bucks and especially Lakers teams?

This is one of those cases where if you insist on stripping one of my sentences out of the post we're not going to get anywhere.

I made no statements implying that Russell should get ranked ahead of Kareem abased on what he could have done with Kareem's team. To go into more depth about what I said before would be just to repeat myself.

So how should I interpret that:

What about the two-way impact? Two things to think about:

1) Remember those years smack dab in Kareem's prime where his teams did nothing special.

2) Understand how drastically off the charts Boston's defense was when Russell was at his apex.

I look at these things, and I give Russell the impact edge despite Kareem's clear edge on offense, and really this is what roughly holds true for me about Russell vs other in general. In other words, don't reply to me looking to defend Kareem here, because I'm not knocking Kareem really. The notion that a superstar can always turn any team into a contender is clearly a myth, and people would do well to remember Kareem when they look to knock others.

I'm not claiming that Russell a clear cut exception to this rule, but his impact on opposing defense was like nothing we've seen since.

?
Because it seems to me that bad results of KAJ's teams in mid 70s are one of the reasons, why you think Russell's impact was bigger. I'm missing something? And that implies that either you think that Russell would have done more with these teams (because his impact on defense was so great), or you ignore specific teams situation (roster, management, competition).[/quote]

I was saying that Russell had more impact in his situation than Kareem did in his, along with some other details indicating I believed this even after you adjust for era degree-of-difficulty.

This is not going as far as saying that Russell would be able to do more in all circumstances than Kareem, which is a level of dominance in a comparison that I expect I won't see in any controversial comparisons in this project.

[lorak]

I was saying that Russell had more impact in his situation than Kareem did in his, along with some other details indicating I believed this even after you adjust for era degree-of-difficulty.

Ok, but team result alone doesn't say much about player's impact (I know you know that! ). I mean, for example mid 70s KAJ's Lakers teams were clearly worse than Russell's, but it is possible KAJ still had more impact, but couldn't led LAL to better result, because his team was so bad. So mu question is how do you exactly evaluate how big was Jabbar's impact in 70s? I think it's important question. because Jordan will win in this thread (so far he has 18 votes, Russell 7 and KAJ 2) and in next one we would have a lot KAJ vs Russell discussion. And BTW, my feeling is that over the years I've been on realGM KAJ is the least discussed player among GOAT candidates, what might hurt his position on such list, so I hope we would discuss about him as much as possible in this and next thread.

[Dr Positivity]

I think Russell's offensive skillset as compared to modern players gets underrated a bit. Basically take Noah who is already valuable offensively and make him an athletic freak on the level of Bron, Westbrook, etc. and the results should be impressive. Still not Hakeem/Garnett/etc. but possibly high teens scoring with GOAT Orb and passing. Russell offense > Magic and Bird defense. Russell offense is possibly => Kareem defense. Russell is a two way player. I think MJ is more of a two way player