Doctor MJ wrote:ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:If his scoring had the kind of impact people assume it did, then why did his team offenses do so much better when he wasn't scoring so much?
As I outlined in my post, the reason was because his teammates got significantly better. And again, the fact that he was raising the '62 team by 3 points through his scoring shows that this playstyle could work.Doctor MJ wrote:This isn't some crazy thing to ask. We'd certainly be asking if of Jordan if we saw the same thing. It's super-super discrepant and literally any basketball analyst who hasn't seriously thought about it isn't someone to be taken that seriously. It's a question crying out for everyone to think very hard about.
Jordan played with better teammates, simple as that. Wilt was playing with multiple players during the early 60s who were all-time level bad in TS points added, and they were taking an enormous amount of shots--that is never leading to a top offense.
So Wilt scored less because he had better teammates and Jordan didn't need to score less because he had better teammates.
C'mon dude.
Bulls rosters were built much differently than Sixers ones. Jordan played with 3 defensive minded players (Pippen, Grant and old Cartwright) and Jackson built an offense around Jordan's scoring and offensive rebounding. Wilt played with 2 volume scorers in Philadelphia (Greer and Walker) and with Cunningham improvement, he got 3 volume scorers. I'm positive that had Jordan played with Dale Ellis, Dominique Wilkins and Terry Cummings, he wouldn't have scored 33 ppg either.
Re: '62 proves it works! No, the issue with someone like Wilt is not that it is better than all other possible NBA team offenses, but that it's not as good as other approaches. You can raise floors just handing the ball to Wilt, the question is what the ceiling is, and the '62 season most definitely does not address this.
ZeppelinPage said that despite Warriors roster getting worse from 1961 to 1962, their offense got better. So what Wilt did in that season clearly worked in comparison to his lesser scoring version from season before.
As to asking for ceiling - nobody questions it's a dumb strategy. Having one player taking 40 FGA is ridiculous and it's caused by lesser basketball knowledge in 1962.
You say "this is not optimal basketball, so Wilt shouldn't be rewarded for that" but I can say "this is not optimal basketball and yet Wilt made it work to some degree without good roster around him, so he deserves some praise for that". Nobody questions Jordan's offense when he played inoptimal basketball in 1987 and 1988, even though he produced worse results than Wilt in 1962.
People need to realize that Wilt led Warriors to 3rd best offense in the league desptie being asked to score 50 ppg, not because of it.
I think I've been clear on my perspective: I believe Hannum saw that Wilt's teammates weren't being used up to their potential and that the way to change that had to start with Wilt changing how he approached each possession. The essence of that change was to look at passing as an opportunity to attack the defense where they left openings.
Sure but again - this team was full of scorers, it wasn't optimal fit with volume scoring Wilt. Just because Hannum decided to make Wilt shoot less doesn't mean he believed that volume scoring Wilt wasn't good, he could believe that this particular team required different approach.
ZeppelinPage wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:That a new coach came in, made the offense play dramatically different such that "the greatest scorer in history" was not featured as a scorer, and the result was a vast improvement.
It was a vast improvement because the team got better. As I said in my post dated 1964, Hannum had made Wilt shoot less that year and the offense got worse because the team was worse.
The offense got worse by less than a point and the defense got better by nearly 7 because Hannum pushed for Wilt to dedicate himself to defense. Honestly, I don't know what you're doing trying to talk about '63-64 as some kind of failure. This was a year for Wilt to be very proud of!
But offense got worse and this was in spite of much bigger stability in roster than in 1963 (which was very tough situation for the team that just moved from Philly to SF).
I agree with you that this is one of Wilt's finest seasons, but Hannum didn't improve Warriors offense. He improved defense but I don't think it's only caused by motiviting Wilt to play defense. I also don't think this season is an example of improving team by reducing Wilt's volume - Wilt scored more per possession than in 1960, 1961 and only 3 points per100 less than in 1963. His average was "only" 36.9 ppg because 1964 Warriors played significantly slower than 1960-62 teams (almost 15 possessions less per game).
In short - Hannum improved Warriors because he stabilized roster and made them play elite defense, but he only reduced Wilt's volume scoring to small degree and that didn't improve their offense.
Hannum's next task, then, was to convince Wilt Chamberlain—the greatest scorer in history, the man who once scored 100 points in a single game, the man who holds eight of the 10 major scoring records—to let someone else shoot once in a while and to play defense with as much enthusiasm as he did offense. "For us to win," said Hannum, "Wilt has to play like Bill Russell at one end of the court and like Wilt Chamberlain at the other end of the court."
SI - Meet the New Wilt Chamberlain
Frankly it's understandable for folks to take an offensive narrative away from '63-64 because the idea of Wilt scoring less was something talked about in the press, but defense was always a focus too and it paid off big-time offering further proof that the way to win in the '60s era NBA was with a big man's defense rather than his offense if you knew at what data to look at...which by and large they didn't.
I'll add this specific Hannum quote that I think the most important in the whole piece:Alex Hannum wrote:I realized how completely inadequate the team had become. They had learned to depend on Wilt so completely they were even incapable of beating a squad of rookies. I had to convince them that they, too, had responsibilities.
I think this is pretty Hannum's '66-67 thesis in a nutshell. He recognized that Wilt's obviously superior talent led everyone else to defer to him and become diminished through passivity. He made it his mission to make changes that would bring out the best in Wilt's teammates, and the result was major overall improvements in performance in both '63-64 and '66-67.
I wouldn't mix Hannum quotes from 1963 with 1967 results. It's very probable that 1963 Warriors team was dysfunctional for number of reasons, including overreliance on Wilt's individual offense lack of defined roles of his teammates. You can't say the same thing about 1965 and 1966 Sixers though - they were decent offensive teams despite not having prime Cunningham and less than ideal fit with multiple scorers in starting 5. I've seen enough footage from 1965-66 Sixers games to be sure that their offense wasn't static and Wilt didn't play with tunnel vision. They worked a lot in triangle and Greer initiated a lot from perimeter.
What Hannum did in 1963 was different than what he did in 1966. In 1963, he got a mess that he had to clean up and he did by stabilizing roster and defining his team identity - slowing down the pace and focusing on defense. In 1966, he got very talented team and he had to create a system that was the most optimized to this situation. He decided to turn Wilt into playmaker - in part because he had to satisfy his biggest star with touches, in part because this Sixers team didn't have any other good playmaker - Greer was decent, but Walker and Cunningham couldn't make plays at this point of their careers. Besides, he combined Wilt's strength as a post player with off-ball movement and ball movement.
Doctor MJ wrote:Re: next year. Dude, the Lakers had the best offense in history the previous year. Wilt pushes his way to the Lakers then refuses to do what the offensive architect wanted. The team doesn't win a title until several years later when Wilt finally decides to play more like the other coach wanted him to play.
We had this debate many times before but I'll repeat this again - Wilt did decided to play in 1969 playoffs the way he played in 1972. This led to Lakers having better defense in playoffs than Celtics and Wilt shooting at ridiculously low volume in high minutes. If you don't agree, then tell me how Wilt played in 1969 playoffs that is different to his 1972 self? What should he have done on basketball court to satisfy what VBK wanted from him? I'm not talking about results, I'm talking about the process. Wilt played in basically identical way - he posted up but rarely looked for scoring, he set screens and he crashed offensive glass.
) were awful. Dirk is 27/12 with 3 blocks on 45/47/86 with 6 turnovers in 5 games. Everyone else is under 50% TS.
