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MYTH NO. 1: RUSSELL HAD A BETTER SUPPORTING CAST THAN WILT
There isn’t a simpler team sport to understand than basketball: if two quality opponents play a seven-game series, the dominant player should prevail as long as the talent level on both sides is relatively equal. We have sixty years of hard-core evidence to back this up. The ’84 Celtics were dead even with the ’84 Lakers, but Bird played better than Magic in the Finals. The ’93 Suns were better than the ’93 Bulls, but Jordan played out of his mind. Moses Malone was the dominant player in the ’81 Finals, but Houston’s collective talent couldn’t handle Boston’s collective talent. This isn’t rocket science. Since the 1976 merger, only one Finals result still doesn’t make sense on paper: when the ’04 Pistons soundly defeated a more talented (but quietly imploding) Lakers team (3), a wake-up call for a league that had been slowly gravitating toward lower-scoring games, fewer possessions, swarming, physical defenses and a much slower pace. As long as the talent level between two teams is relatively equal, the team with the best player should win. So the supporting-cast card works with Russell and Wilt only if we prove that the talent disparity was not relatively equal. Right off the bat, it’s almost impossible because the NBA didn’t expand to ten teams until 1967, giving everyone a good supporting cast (even the crummy teams). People seem to think Russell played with only Hall of Famers and poor Wilt was stuck carrying a bunch of beer-bellied bums; not only is that erroneous, but it would have been impossible given the numbers. Imagine the current NBA if you removed every foreign player, chopped the number of black players in half, then cut the number of teams from thirty to eight. Would every team end up with three All-Stars and four or five solid role players at worst? Of course. Welcome to the NBA from 1956 to 1966.
(Warning: If I just wrote, “Wilt’s teammates were better than you think and Russell’s teammates weren’t as great as you think,” you wouldn’t believe me, so we’re covering each season in painstaking detail the way Barry Scheck clinically took apart the DNA evidence in the O.J. trial, and if we kill a few thousand trees in the process, so be it. To keep you entertained, I loaded the bottom of the pages with dumb footnotes.)
Here’s how the seasons shook out after Russell entered the league:
1957. Russell joins Boston mid-January after banging out military duty (4), then the Celts squeak by Philly (featuring Hall of Famers Paul Arizin and Neil Johnston) in the Playoffs and meet St. Louis in the Finals. Boston has two stud guards in their prime (Bill Sharman and ’57 MVP Bob Cousy) and three terrific rookies (Russell, Heinsohn, and Frank Ramsey), while St. Louis has Bob Pettit (two-time MVP), Ed Macauley (Hall of Famer) and Slater Martin (5) (Hall of Famer, second-team All-NBA that season), as well as Charlie Share, Jack Coleman and Jack McMahon (three highly regarded role players). Since Boston won Game 7 in double OT (6), it’s safe to say these two teams were equally talented.
1958. The Hawks exact revenge thanks to up-and-comer Cliff Hagan (second-team All-NBA, Hall of Famer) and Russell’s badly sprained ankle (7). Again, even talent on both sides.
1959. Boston starts to pull away: three All-NBA first-teamers (Russell, Cousy, and Sharman), two promising guards (Sam and KC Jones), the best sixth man (Ramsey) and one of the best scoring forwards (Heinsohn). Even then, they needed seven games to get past Syracuse (led by NBA Top 50 members Dolph Schayes and Hal Greer) before easily sweeping Elgin and the Lakers. Through three years and two titles, Russell and the Celtics had the most talent exactly once.
1960. Boston handles Philly in six and needs seven to defeat a Hawks team with four Hall of Famers (including newcomer Lenny Wilkens). Meanwhile, Wilt wins the MVP as a rookie playing with Arizin (ten straight All-Stars), Tom Gola (five straight All-Stars, Hall of Famer), Guy Rodgers (8) (four All-Stars) and Woody Sauldsberry (’58 Rookie of the Year, ’59 All-Star). Boston had more firepower, but not by much. Wilt wasn’t exactly stuck playing with Eric Snow, Drew Gooden, Sasha Pavlovic, Larry Hughes, and Turdo Sandowich like 2007 LeBron.
1961. We’re kicking off a two-year stretch for the most loaded NBA team ever: Boston easily handles Syracuse and St. Louis for title number four. Meanwhile, Philly gets swept by a weaker Nats team in the first round, leading to Wilt throwing his first coach under the bus after the season (a recurring theme) (9).
1962. Still loaded to the gills, Boston needs seven games to defeat Wilt’s Sixers and an OT Game 7 in the Finals to defeat Baylor, Jerry West and the Lakers. I’m telling you, everyone had a good team back then (10).
1963. The first sign of trouble: Sharman retires, Cousy and Ramsey are slipping, and rookie John Havlicek isn’t Hondo yet. Boston needs seven games to hold off Cincy (led by Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson, Jack Twyman, and Wayne Embry) and another six to beat the Lakers (11). Meanwhile, Philly moves to San Fran, finishes 31–49 and misses the playoffs with Wilt, Rodgers, Tom Meschery (an All-Star), Al Attles (KC Jones’ equal as a defensive stopper) and Willie Naulls (four-time All-Star). But hey, if they’d won more games, maybe Wilt wouldn’t have averaged 44.8 points that season (12).
1964. Cousy retires and no Celtic makes first-team All-NBA, but that doesn’t stop Boston from beating a stacked Cincy team (led by Oscar and rookie of the year Jerry Lucas) and easily handling Wilt’s Warriors in the Finals (the same group as ’63, only with future Hall of Famer Nate Thurmond aboard). Boston won without a point guard or power forward this season—other than Russell, they didn’t have a top-twenty rebounder or anyone average more than 5 assists—but we’ll give them a check mark in the “most talent” department for the last time in the Russell era (13).
1965. Ramsey retires and Heinsohn fades noticeably in his final season. Undaunted, the Celts finish with their best record of the Russell era (62–18) and smoke L.A. in the Finals thanks to their Big Three (Russell, Havlicek, and Sam Jones) and a bunch of role players (including a monster year from Satch Sanders). As for the Warriors, they self-destruct and lose seventeen in a row, eventually trading Wilt for 30 cents on the dollar to Philly midway through the season (14). For the first time, Wilt’s team matches Boston’s talent with shooting guard Hal Greer (ten straight All-Star games), Lucious Jackson (an All-Star power forward who finished eighth in rebounding that season), swingman Chet Walker (seven-time All-Star), point guard Larry Costello (six-time All-Star) and two quality role players (Dave Gambee and Johnny Kerr). That’s why the Sixers-Celtics series comes down to the final play of Game 7 at the Garden, with Havlicek stealing the inbounds pass as Johnny Most screams, “Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!”
1966. Heinsohn coughs up a fifteen-pound oyster and retires, KC Jones is fading fast, and the Celts are forced to rely on aging veterans (Naulls and Mel Counts) (15) and castoffs from other teams (Don Nelson and Larry Siegfried) to help the Big Three in Auerbach’s final season. For the first time with Russell, they don’t finish with the league’s best record as Philly edges them (55 wins to 54). As usual, it doesn’t matter—Boston beats Philly in five and wins Game 7 of the Finals against L.A. by two points. Philly had more talent this season. On paper, anyway.
1967. KC retires, another veteran castoff comes aboard (future Hall of Famer Bailey Howell), and Russell struggles mightily to handle the first year of his player-coach duties (16). From day one, it’s Philly’s year: given an extra boost by rookie Billy Cunningham and Wilt’s sudden revelation that he doesn’t need to score to help his team win (more on this in a second), the Sixers roll to their famous 68-win season, topple the Celtics in five, and beat the Warriors in six for Wilt’s first title. This was the perfect storm for Wilt—his strongest possible team against Boston’s weakest possible team.
1968. Wilt leads the league in assists. And Philly finishes eight games better than the Celtics. The aging Celts rally from a 3–1 deficit in the Eastern Finals to advance, then beat a really good Lakers team for Russell’s tenth title. After the season, Philly trades Wilt to L.A. for 40 cents on the dollar. (17)
1969. With Russell and Jones running on fumes, everyone writes the Celtics off after they finish fourth in the East. In the first round, they beat a favored Sixers team in five. In the second round, they beat a favored Knicks team in six—the same group that wins the 1970 title and gets blown for the next twenty-five years by the New York media as the Greatest Team Ever. In the Finals, as 9-to-5 underdogs to Baylor, West, Wilt, and the Lakers, they rally back from a 3–1 deficit and win Game 7 in Los Angeles.
So here’s the final tally: Over a ten-year span, Russell’s teams clearly had more talent than Wilt’s teams for four seasons (’61, ’62, ’63, and ’64) and a slight edge in Wilt’s first season (1960). In ’65, Philly and Boston were a wash. From ’66 through ’69, Wilt played for stronger teams, making the final record 5–4–1, Russell. For six of those ten seasons, you could have described the talent disparity as “equal” or “relatively equal.” After Russell retired that summer, the ’70 Lakers lost the famous Willis Reed game in Game 7 of the Finals; the ’71 Lakers suffered a season-ending injury to Jerry West and lost to the eventual champions, the Bucks; the ’72 Lakers won 69 games and cruised to Wilt’s second title; and the ’73 Lakers lost a Finals rematch to the Knicks. Wilt retired after a ten-year stretch in which he played in the 1964 Finals and lost, then played for teams talented enough to win a championship EVERY SINGLE YEAR FOR THE NEXT NINE. So much for Russell being blessed with a better supporting cast than Chamberlain. If there’s a legitimate gripe on Wilt’s behalf, it’s that Russell was lucky enough to have Auerbach coaching him for ten years. Then again, Red is on record saying he never could have coached a prima donna like Wilt. Also, if you’re scoring at home: Russell played with four members of the NBA’s Top 50 at 50 (Havlicek, Cousy, Sharman and Sam Jones); Wilt played with six members (Baylor, West, Greer, Cunningham, Arizin, and Thurmond). And Russell’s teammates from 1957 to 1969 were selected to twenty-six All-Star games, while Wilt’s teammates from 1960 to 1973 were selected to twenty-four. Let’s never mention the supporting-cast card again with Russell and Chamberlain. Thank you.
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(3) Rule changes in place by 2005: no hand checking (making it easier for quick guards to penetrate); 8 seconds to advance the ball over midcourt (not 10); resetting the shot clock to 14 seconds instead of 24 in certain situations; whistles for offensive isolation plays (no overloading players on one side); a relaxing of illegal zones; and an implicit understanding that moving high screens were now okay (as long as you didn’t stick your knee or foot out on the pick).
(4) Imagine if this happened now and we had to wait three months to see ballyhooed rookies like Blake Griffin or Derrick Rose because they were going through basic training in East Bumfart, Texas. I think Nike would raise a stink.
(5) One of my favorite NBA names: Slater Martin. Just reeks of the ’50s, doesn’t it? He played with Whitey Skoog, Dick Schnittker, Dick Garmaker, Vern Mikkelsen, Lew Hitch, George Mikan and Ed Kalafat on the ’56 Lakers. Now those were some white guys! As far as I can tell, that’s the only two-Dick team in NBA history.
(6) My vote for the most underrated NBA game: double OT, Game 7. It ended with Boston scoring with 1 second left, followed by St. Louis player-coach Alex Hannum calling time out to set up a play from underneath his own basket, where he’d whip a full-court football pass off the other backboard, then it would ricochet to Pettit at the foul line and he’d quickly shoot. What happened? Hannum threw the ball 90 feet, it bounced off the backboard right to Pettit and he missed the game-tying shot. This actually happened. Can’t we put Gus Johnson in a time machine and have him announce this one?
(7) The Hawks won their four games by six points total. I’m guessing a healthy Russell would have made a difference in two of those.
(8) Another great ’50s sports name: Guy Rodgers. I actually tried to convince my wife to name our son Guy, but she couldn’t get past making cutesy talk with a baby named Guy. I thought it would be cool because we could have said things like “Look at the little Guy” or “He’s been a good Guy.” Regardless, we need more Guys. Some other classic NBA names from the ’50s that would work for dogs at the very least: Woody, Archie, Bo, McCoy, Harry, Clyde, Forest, Nat, Arnie and Elmer.
(9) Coaches Wilt threw under the bus: Neil Johnston, Dolph Schayes, Alex Hannum, Frank McGuire, Butch van Breda Kolff.
(10) Weirdest fact from this season: Russell won MVP but didn’t make first-team All-NBA.
(11) One of Boston’s greatest achievements of the Russell era: never losing to a team that featured West and Baylor in their prime (two of the best seven players of the NBA’s first thirty-five years). Everyone just casually overlooks this one.
(12) In The Last Loud Roar, Bob Cousy writes that Cincy gave Boston everything they could handle; he headed into the ’63 Finals expecting the Lakers would beat them. The X-factor was Tommy, who quit smoking a few weeks before the playoffs, dropped 14 pounds, and destroyed Rudy LaRusso in the Finals. You have to love it when NBA Finals were decided by things like “somebody quit smoking.”
(13) Hidden fact from the Russell era: KC Jones was abominable offensively. Playing 30 to 32 minutes a game post-Cousy, KC averaged 7.8 points and 5.3 assists, shot 39 percent from the field, and didn’t have to be guarded from 15 feet. How can a defensive specialist make the Hall of Fame by playing 9 years, starting for 4, and never making an All-Star team? Was he better than Al Attles? Was he even half as good as Dennis Johnson? Of the post-shot-clockers who’ve made the Hall of Fame, he’s the single strangest selection, just ahead of Calvin Murphy.
(14) At one point they were 10–34. Would a healthy MJ have ever played for a 10–34 team? What about a healthy Bird or a healthy Magic?
(15) Underrated aspect of the Russell era: Five aging vets signed with Boston hoping for a free ring (Naulls, Carl Braun, Wayne Embry, Clyde Lovellette and Woody Sauldsberry). Nowadays, these guys would just sign with Phoenix or Miami because of the weather.
(16) Russell’s inadequacies as a player-coach emerged as a dominant theme that season: he’d forget to rest guys or bring them back in and basically sucked. The next year, Russell delegated to teammates and named Havlicek and Jones as his de facto assistants, turning it into a professional intramural team where players subbed themselves and suggested plays during time-outs. This worked for two straight titles. Naturally, no NBA team since 1979 has tried it.
(17) Wilt was traded twice in his prime: once for Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, and cash, once for Archie Clark, Darrall Imhoff, Jerry Chambers, and cash. Wilt defenders stammer whenever this gets mentioned. ___
it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. - sherlock holmes
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