Had halfway convinced myself to switch my vote for #8 to Bird when the clock ran out. I’m not going to bother posting much of anything by way of numbers on his offensive game; it’s been done, and besides, his offensive game really speaks for itself.
Doctor MJ made a great observational post about his offense in the last thread:
Doctor MJ wrote:The more I think about it, the more I think Bird is the more unusual player, from this key perspective:
He's an off-ball savant.
General rule is that the true offensive savants prove their status when they get more control. They are on ball, and they are using their brain & body to force the field of play to be more what they want.
That's not Bird's main thing to me. To me with Bird it's more a guy who seems to accept what's given, see a way to exploit it, and then hustle to make it happen. There are other guys you can talk about doing this to some degree, but typically when we talk about them we're really talking defense as at least half their impact (Walton for example).
Bird has some of that on defense, but obviously it's his offense that's his #1 thing. And when I say "off-ball" that's an oversimplification. If someone called Reggie Miller an off-ball savant I wouldn't say they are wrong, but Bird clearly takes it quite a bit further. It's a distinction along the lines that after everything else, what Reggie's looking to do when he gets the ball is shoot, whereas Bird has a battery of choices at his disposal and the only given seems to be that he already knows what he's going to do before you even know he's going to be there getting the ball.
Of course that doesn't even go into the pre-ball differences. Bird seems to get rebounds like Reggie gets passes, and Bird with his bigger body is able to get where he needs to go with plenty of space without relying on a complicated array of obstacles.
Just looking at the offense, and considering the impact of it when Bird play, the interesting thing to me is this:
I don't think it's as effective as being an on-ball savant at peak, but it's considerably more portable.
People sometimes take issue with Steve Nash because he requires control to do his thing, and I always brush this aside with the statement that a team's a fool to choose to not give him control when he's so good with it, but the thing is, when we look at Bird's rookie year, I think the natural portability of his game has everything to do with him being possibly the most impactful rookie in NBA history. He just makes stuff happen in the moment even if you don't design everything around him.
In the end if you know full well who your savant is, to me it's best to give that guy as much direct control as possible, and that means being more on-ball, and I don't see Bird taking to that as well as Magic, so to me it all aligns pretty well: Offense-only Magic's got the better peak, but Bird had more years with extreme impact, and the reason has less to do with Bird being more mature early on, or even being given more primacy, and more to do with the fact that his game is not as primacy-dependent.
Saying all this: I'll explicitly say I'm not talking about defense here, and I'm not talking about how this would translate across eras. You may already have a sense of how I'm thinking here, but this isn't a vote, and really what I wanted to just spend time pondering was the nature of each guy's tendencies within their characteristic offensive genius.
Do you agree with how I put it? Do you see issues with it?
Great post.
From there I’m going to take a different tack and advocate for Bird’s oft-underrated (sometimes criminally so, imo) defense.
Where Doc described Bird as an “off-ball savant” on offense, I kinda think he was a defensive savant, too. What he lacked in the lateral quickness or natural leaping ability that are near-hallmark features of so many great defenders in NBA history, he made up a lot of with a near-GOAT level of defensive IQ, hustle, and a few other tools I’ll elaborate on.
For one, he was a fundamentally sound low-post defender. He was physical, REALLY used his lower body to great effect, getting (often bigger) offensive players off the block, making entry passes difficult, making shots difficult, etc. YouTube search “larry bird defense” and you’ll find any number of clips that would serve as fine examples of how to play sound and hard-nosed low-post defense (side note: seems like it’s always Jack Sikma in a lot of the ones I’ve seen; poor Sikma just getting owned by the 2” shorter Bird down low).
He had anticipation/intuition that at times appeared to border on precognition, making him one of the all-time great help defenders. Did he gamble a lot? Absolutely, but I’m not sure there’s ever been a player who got a higher rate of return on his gambles. Whether it was coming from the weakside to pick off an entry pass, or sneaking along the baseline from the weakside just as a post-player is about to make his move (wherein Larry would zip by and strip him), or simply playing a passing lane…..obviously not the quickest of fellows in the NBA, but he got a lot of thefts in this manner, and it seemed to me that he did so at a lower rate of failure than most players who gamble on defense.
He lacked great lateral quickness, which was a bit of a liability when having to guard perimeter players. But how many clips are there of Bird picking off a simple post entry-pass (where he’s guarding the passer)? He just seemed to know the exact space to occupy that would bait the guy he was guarding to attempt the entry pass…...and he would pick it off. Again, his anticipation bordered on clairvoyant; he sometimes seemed to know what his opponent would do before the opponent did himself.
And where he could be beat off the dribble by many perimeter players, he seemed to be one of the best in recovering for a block from behind. In fact, in some of the highlight clips you can find, I daresay he LETS them get by so he can do just that. Which brings me to another feature of Larry Bird on defense that was perhaps GOAT-like: his almost inhumanly precise hand/eye coordination. This relates to all those balls he would block from behind when “beat”, those balls he strips on the help-D (usually coming from the weakside), as well as on-ball steals (which he was also good at).
On all of those kinds of plays, the action is moving so fast; everything happens within a second or two, and obviously the ball is not a remotely stationary object. So when he makes these swipes at a fast-moving object, often if his swiping hand is off by even 2 inches in ANY direction, he’ll either miss the ball or commit a foul. But he simply didn’t miss with the customary frequency that would be expected from nearly anyone else. If the rest of us tried for these plays with any regularity, we’d likely foul out early. Larry Bird was nothing short of remarkable in this regard.
Versatility: note that Bird guarded---at one point or another---basically every position in his career. From 6’11”+ centers like Jack Sikma to 6’5” guards like Michael Cooper.
A few numbers regarding Larry Bird’s defense…….
*Per 100 possessions
Larry Bird for his Career: 2.2 STL, 1.0 BLK
Prime (‘81-’88) Bird: 2.2 STL, 1.1 BLK
For comparison, Lebron James to this point in his career per 100: 2.3 STL, 1.1 BLK.
**Career DRtg: 101 (despite DRtg’s generally running a little higher in the mid-late 80’s).
***FOUR times led the league in DWS. And despite his relatively poor longevity, he’s 27th all-time in career DWS.
****Team DRtg of the Boston Celtics over the years (with comments on relevant roster changes).
‘79 (Dave Cowens at the helm): 106.4 (19th of 22)
‘80 (rookie Larry Bird arrives, along with one good perimeter defender in M.L. Carr, and new coach Bill Fitch; Dave Cowens, while maybe free to focus more on D, plays 358 fewer minutes than the year before): 101.9 (4th of 23)
‘81 (rookie McHale and Parish arrive, but Dave Cowens leaves): 102.6 (4th of 23)
‘82: 103.5 (6th of 23)
‘83 (Quinn Buckner added): 101.8 (7th of 23)
‘84 (DJ arrives, K.C. Jones new coach): 104.4 (3rd of 23)
‘85: 106.3 (5th of 23)
‘86 (Buckner, Cedric Maxwell, and aging Carr leave; gain old Bill Walton-->playing just 19.3 mpg; probably Bird’s best season): 102.6 (1st of 23)
‘87 (Bill Walton misses nearly entire year): 106.8 (9th of 23)
‘88 (McHale misses 18 games; big four of Bird/McHale/Parish/DJ miss 37 games combined): 109.4 (17th of 23)
‘89 (Bird misses 76 games, and new coach; obtain down-low tough guy off bench in Joe Kleine at mid-season; other relevant mid-season acquisition is Ed Pinckney; new coach as well): 109.6 (20th of 25)
‘90 (Bird is back, though everyone getting old by this point): 107.9 (12th of 27)
‘91 (Bird misses 22 games; Bird is really sharing a lot of offensive responsibility with Reggie Lewis by this point, perhaps focusing more energy on D--->though past prime, his per 100: 2.3 STL, 1.2 BLK): 106.7 (10th of 27)
‘92 (Bird’s final season, he misses 37 games): 107.0 (9th of 27)
‘93 (Bird has left): 107.8 (14th of 27)
Now obviously there are multiple factors involved in some of these trends, and I tried to hint at what some of them might have been. While Bird wasn’t the isolated factor, what I find to be some interesting observations:
1) the Celtic defense was among the worst in the league the year before he arrived, and 4th best during his rookie season.
2) They only had two below average defensive years during his career, the WORST of which occurred (non-coincidentally??) in the year Bird missed 76 games.
3) Despite NEVER in Bird’s career having what most of would call an “elite defensive anchor”, they nonetheless managed an at least top 7 defense SEVEN years of his career; FOUR times in the top 4, and once the #1 rated D.
4) The immediate drop from 9th of 27 to 14th of 27 in DRtg right after he leaves.
In summary, Bird easily one of the all-time greatest two-way players, truly a player without much in the way of significant weaknesses; one of the greatest winners of all-time, one of the hardest workers of all-time. Would have been a worthy recipient of the #8 slot, imo. Is more than worthy of taking #9.
Duncan was also a consideration, with his mobility, ability to create from the post, and great paint protection. I keep going back and forth on him and KG, not sure who I'd pick between the two of them.
though my scouting needs a ton of work, tbh). drza set the standard earlier in the project with his Garnett breakdown (which mixed qualitative with quantitative), even if abridged, it would be great to have someone breakdown both Kobe and Bird defensively over their careers.