Bill Russell: Overrated?

I've discussed this in the past, but your "8 vs. 9" argument uses false logic. Your metric is Hall of Fame teammates overall, when it should be Hall of Fame teammates per season. You point out that Howell only played with Russell for 4 seasons while overlooking that the same could be said of virtually all of Wilt's teammates, because he played for 3 different teams.

In a given season, Wilt played with 2 or 3 Hall of Famers, compared with Russell playing with at least 4 or 5 of those guys each year. The fact is that Wilt played for 3 separate teams, the Warriors, Sixers, and Lakers. He won a title in 72 playing with 2 Hall of Fame teammates, Gail Goodrich and Jerry West. Elgin Baylor retired 9 games into the season, so he hardly counts. In 67 he won a title playing with Billy Cunningham and Hal Greer. Contrast that with Bill Russell's title in 60 when he was playing with Sam and KC Jones, Cousy, Sharman, Heinsohn, and Ramsey. In fact, that exact group was together from 58 until 63, when Cousy retired, but by then they'd added John Havilcek to the mix. It's not apples to apples, and you know it.

Neither of those guys, imo, did what Hakeem did in carrying a team to a title as the sole star and Hall-of-Famer. Dream would have mopped the floor with them both.

 

Ignored you? I addressed many of your points and went deeper into the facts than you did. Such as showing that the 1970 Celtics lost a lot more than just Russell. Or how small those <1 rpg and apg differences you brought up were compared to the ppg difference, which was a difference of 6 points but you tried to pass off as small.

You come across as Russell fan whose willing to play down/up the numbers to suit you. You don't seem to have much interest in actually discussing the topic; you've just referred people back to your list of myths throughout this thread. You say I ignored you, when my post ran for several paragraphs. In contrast, your dismissive response ran a single sentence. Who's ignoring who?

 

bill russell overrated as a center if compared to todays NBA i say yes maybe due to his size but the era he played in he was dominate.
bill russell was a winner cant take that from him. 11 rings no player/coach is ever going to get that much again i think.
if we judge by just player aspect russell is #5 in my opinion.
dream,kareem,wilt,shaq would be above him if just judging player ability no rings just pure basketball ability.

 

This thread makes B-Bob cry a little tear. The visitors do not know what they do to the land of our forefathers.

 

Well, the "killer crossovers" of today's game would be called palming/carrying back then, and walks would be called much more strictly. Remember how Dwyane Wade could hardly dribble the ball up the court without being called for traveling in the 2004 Olympics? I think that's probably what it would be like if today's players were magically teleported back 40 years and tried to play.

I think you have a point with the shooting, because definitely in the early 60's there was still a transition from the two-handed set shot era to the era of the modern jump shot, but by the late 60's that era had passed and FG% had reached about modern levels.

 

I'm sure the Celtics would've been pretty mediocre with Wilt instead of Russell.

 

You think Mike Brown coaches? That's a joke.

 

Younger days? Probably. He and Red Auerbach would've eventually killed each other due to Wilt's massive ego.

 

Wilt, in his prime, would school Shaq (in his prime) easily .

 

Agreed.

I remember watching something on tv years ago about jerry west, he said that russell was so dominant that he would miss wide open layups because he was too busy looking out for russell. I guess that kind of dominance can not be discribed by words or stats. U just have to watch him playing.

 

Wow! That only got about half a dozen responses? I don't look into Dish as often as I should, because I missed the thread. I'm going to check out the link.

Very nice!

 

13/13, raising the bar a bit much there? I'd expect, well, BizzleRocket to pull a move like that.

My thoughts exactly.

If you bring down Russell, you'd have to bring down the rest of that era too. Russell is the most visible but 4/5's of that era's Hall of Famers wouldnt have the athletic measurables for today's game either. Isnt it pretty much like that in any sport except golf? Even music is like that. I thought we just nodded along respectfully as old timers brag about how things were so good in their day, just so they have something to feel good about.

 

haven't read past page one, maybe this is mentioned but the irony of ironies is that the biggest battier supporter started this thread

 

some of you guys should look up the numbers of the "hall of famers" russell played with. those guys are only hofers because they played with russell

 

Some of the more "fringe" Hall of Famers that the Russell Celtics had, like Tom Heinsohn, KC Jones, and Bailey Howell, only made HoF in the 1980's after about 15 years of eligibility; even Sam Jones, who was very good, was only inducted in 1984. I remember Russell was selected as the greatest player of all time in the NBA's 1980 35th Anniversary Team, and I've heard it said that those other guys got HoF later in that decade as a bit of a revisionist history movement in basketball to credit those players for contributing to the Celtics dynasty.

Whether this is true or not, I think it's clear that those players' HOF credentials would be far poorer if they didn't have rings, and Russell is a huge reason why they have those rings.

 

You could say the same for Russell. If not for the rings, he might not be in the Hall. 44% FG shooter, 56% FT, 15 ppg, 22 rpg, 4 ast... the rebounds are the only stat that stands out at you, and I'd argue that particular statistic is inflated somewhat due to the pace of the game, the poor shooting percentages in the league creating more missed shots, and the relatively small size of the guys he was competing against (Elgin Baylor, 6'5", twice got 18-19 rpg in a season). So unless you're saying he won those titles alone, then he also depended on the help of big time guys like Cousy and Havilcek and Sam Jones to win all those rings.

 

there's two constants on those teams, red & bill

 

That's just a way of saying that Russell won 11 championships and nobody else did, so he obviously must be the best player ever.

But the Celtics won a title 5 years after Russell's retirement, in 74, and then 2 years after that, in 76. There was one constant between those 2 titles and the final 6 championships of the 60s... and it wasn't Russell. A guy by the name of John Havilcek. The guy who, by the way, was a 13 time All Star.

You could use the same "constants" argument to say that Bob Horry was the constant between the Rockets championships and the Lakers dynasty and the Spurs championships, so he must obviously be one of the greatest players of all time.

The fact is that Russell was a winner... no doubt. Most rings of all time. But he joined a Celtics team that was the 2nd best in the NBA by regular season record when he got there, and had been to 6 consecutive playoffs and finished above .500 each of those years, and he made it better. He joined veterans like Cousy (HOF), Sharman (HOF), and Ramsey (HOF). I'm not even counting guys like Phillips and Risen, who both made the HOF, because they were bench players by that point. Tommy Heinsohn (HOF) joined the Celtics the same year Russell did and averaged 16 and 10 his first season.

Bill Russell joined a great situation, surrounded by extremely talented guys, and put them over the top. But he never had to do what Jordan or Olajuwon or Shaq had to do, which is taking a bad team and raising it to championship level, or carrying a team on his back, being the go to guy on both offense and defense. And you have to take that into consideration.

 

They did, in 1968, but for some reason it's marked down in basketball history as a Chamberlain epic choke rather than a great Russell victory. Same with Russell defeating Wilt-West-Baylor in 1969, the "credit" mostly went to Wilt for choking/quitting (and Butch van Breda Kolff for being a douchebag, but that's beside the point).