There are a lot of great centers who can set picks, make the outlet pass, and grab a lot of offensive boards. Was Bill Russell really somehow a lot better at these skills than other centers? Wilt averaged 54% shooting for his career. Oscar Robertson averaged 48.5%. Jerry West avereaged 47.4% as a guard. Will Reed managed to shoot 47.6%. Yes, the game was different back then, but the great offensive players still shot a good percentage. Sorry, I just don't buy that he was a great offensive player who never put up great offensive stats for some unexplained reason.
I'm not going to spend the time right now to go over all those 50s-60s stats, because it's late. Also, the numbers were so different from the modern era that there's little reference to go by, so you pretty much have to pick apart all the numbers yourself to see what was considered typical back then. However, it is noticeable that Rusell's ppg was less than half of Wilt's during their heydays, and that Russell often wasn't even the 3rd highest scorer on his team. These are valid points; however they are mostly unquantified. So Bill Russell praises himself and makes claims, and that's supposed to be a valid point? Russell had 13 seasons in the league. Two 20+ ppg post seasons does not mean you can ignore the rest of his career. No one denies that Russell was a big part of the Celtics' success. But that doesn't necessarily mean he was this GODLY player; he could have been the missing cog in the system. Also, their failure in the season after Russell left wasn't directly caused by his departure the way you make it seem. A quick glance at basketball-reference.com shows that the 1969 Celtics were a much deeper team than the 1970 Celtics. Russell left, but so did five-time All-Star Sam Jones. Multi-time All-Star (who scored a shade under 20 ppg in 1969) also hit the wall hard in 1970 (scoring 12.6 ppg) and was retired by the end of the very next year. Myth #3 - Wilt Chamberlain played with Scrubs while Bill Russell had the most stacked team in NBA History[/U] - Big Myth. Wilt Chamberlain played with 8 HOfers throughout his career while Bill Russell had 9.[/quote] I went over this point earlier. Then I checked deeper into the stats. A lot of Wilt's 1960s teams were ugly; Wilt would dominate but he might have had 1 or 2 competent players around him. Russell clearly had the advantage in teammates. This doesn't make sense. Russell might have been a much better player today. He also may have been average, or a scrub. You don't know. You criticize people for their "magic time machine" thinking, but then you write fiction about what Russell might have been like which are just as much assumptions. We CAN safely say that players today are better than players of the 50s and 60s. Of course they have had the benefit of decades of development, superior nutrition, etc., but they're still better. "Mostly" a myth?! It's clear as day from the stats. Wilt's playoff ppg was in the high 20s to the mid THIRTIES for the first half of his career, which was more than double what Russell often averaged. This was during Rusell's dynasty. Wilt's ppg did plummet in the second half of his career (regular season and playoffs), which is perfectly valid to point out. However it is clear that he played past his last legs in his final seasons and was not nearly the same player; those final seasons dragged his averages down (Wilt played to 36, while Russell retired at 34). Regardless, a difference of 6 ppg in the playoffs is significant. It's almost 40% of Russells playoffs ppg average. And let's not ignore regular season. Wilt scored 30 ppg to Russell's 15 ppg. Russell's playoff rpg was 0.4 higher than Wilt's, and his playoff apg was 0.5 higher than Wilt's. Wilt had about 2 more mpg than Russell (they still both played well over 40 mpg, nearly the entire games), but even making that adjustment the differences aren't that much. You bring this up, yet you try to dismiss 6 ppg as "not exactly that huge?" Amazing. Russell LET Will drop 30+ points on him in the 1960s? You picked one series which wasn't representative at all of their careers. I can't find Russell's stats from that series, but his total playoff ppg that year was 10.8. Not that great either, and even worse. Russell shouldn't get credit for Wilt choking at the line that badly. Wilt always sucked at the line, but not that bad (average 51%). Russell was a very good player, but yes, he was overrated.
durvasa,I respect your opinion and knowledge but I feel you rely on stats a lot though you don't base everything on it. I feel that the Big O was one of the most skilled players of all time,that's why I don't think he is overrated.
insofar as dominance over his contemporaries, Shaq can't even hold Chamberlain jock strap. Wilt avg 50 ppg for a season and over 20 Reb for a season. led the league in scoring / scoring multiple times led the league in assist one time
If you mean by "them" as in the greatest centers mentioned earlier in this thread, tell me how a healthy Walton in his prime stacks up to Hakeem in his prime.
I know people like to pull stats and dismiss them and that's cool, but people alse need to think of them relative to the era. People are stomping on the notion of the smaller number of teamss as a rreason why russell won so many rings or Big O playing so many minutes. Think of it this way, take away the last couple of expansions, bobcats,raptors,and grizz and disperse those players. While you're at it, take away free agency. In fact, if you really want a good gauge, take away the 88 and 89 expansion, but keep free agency. There would be guys on the bench that are starting right now. I mean,those old teams had quality players. They would have guys sit on the bench who could play and start, but it wasn't enough teams. I remember a guy like mchale who had to wait till they got rid of finals mvp maxwell before he started. Even a guy like tony campbell couldn't get off the lakers pine went and lit it up in minny. Disperse the 100 players or so to the 22 teams and watch how hard it would be to win rings.
At least give him credit for reading half of it. I stopped reading when you used "setting a pick" as an argument for Russell being an above average offensive player.
Those are 2 horrible examples for your argument. Kevin McHale was the number 3 pick overall in the 1980 draft. He could have started at any point over Maxwell and was the more talented player, but the chemistry was already in place and the Celtics felt comfortable as him being the 6th man. Think Manu Ginobili. As for Tony Campbell, I'm not saying he's an outright scrub, but I think I've seen average players pad their stats when moved from a talent laden team to a crap expansion team. Doesn't mean they were special.
V.3, the league really didn't have the talent base to expand when they did,but they did it anyway. Expansion waters down the talent, that's know. Before the 88 expansion, there were high quality guys who were just bench players. If you just think about the players and the draft picks then maybe you can understand what I'm saiyng.I mean those players would be on existing teams. Hell, if we just look at the bobcats, wallace was on the kings bench,but he played well when given the chance.
I read your post. Sorry, but I've discussed this before and don't have the energy this time. Clearly this subject is much more interesting for you than me. We'll have plenty of other opportunities.
I'd go back and go after some of the points being made here in this thread, but this topic has come up so many times in my 10 or so years on this board, I find it difficult to struggle to go after them anymore. Maybe I'll be charged up enough to do it again, but in the meantime : The "he was a good offensive player but chose not to be a great scorer, etc." is a pile of bull. Why? Because if you are a good offensive shooter, you will be a good offensive shooter whether you choose to pass the ball or not. If you say you choose to be a team player, it shouldn't necessarily come at the expense of your FG%. Russell's shooting wasn't great. Just because you're supposedly this consummate team player doesn't force you to miss shots. Now if you're saying he passed so much that his shooting suffered, then you must accept he just wasn't a good shooter. But I find myself hearing the Russell supporters saying he was the consummate offensive player, but not acknowledging the guy couldn't shoot. Then you have people saying Russell allowed Wilt to score. Lovely. I can't even begin to defend this. The greatest defensive player in the universe is allowing Wilt to score on him. Righty-o. My bad... of course it's part of the mystique of one Bill Russell and his defensive "strategerization". I don't use this emoticon much, but here's your sign : Did he also allow Wilt to rebound the ball because Wilt racked up the rebounds on him, too. Maybe that was part of the strategy. Lol. Here's a quote from an SI article I've posted one or two times from 1968 - Elvin Hayes' rookie year. He was being tutored by Wilt, Russell, and Thurmond among others : "Last summer, while Russell was in Los Angeles making a TV film," Hayes said, "he spent three days coaching me. One thing he told me was that Wilt was going to get his 20, 30 points a game, and he was going to get his rebounds, and nobody in the world was going to stop him. If Wilt wants to score, well, he's just going to score. Where you have to stop him is on his assists, his assists up the middle. Bill said if you don't stop him there he'll destroy you." (from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1148045/1/index.htm) That's a direct quote from Big E. The fact is Russell knew he couldn't stop Wilt - no one could stop him, that is why he "let" Wilt score. He tried to deny Wilt the assist at all costs because that is where Wilt would destroy you. If Wilt scored, rebounded, AND assisted, it was going to be a long night. And there is something to be said for the most dominant scorer and rebounder the game has probably ever known leading the league in assists because he thought he'd try it. Wilt did just that. I do believe Russell is a great ball player, and defensively is one of the best to play, but I think he is vastly overrated and glorified. He played team ball well and if you think that is of utmost importance, then yes, he could be the greatest. In my eyes, however, he was not the greatest center or close to it. I'd take Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, Hakeem, etc. over him any day because they were either more dominant or better all around players than he was.
Well, a typical argument that people bring out against the 1960's greats was that there was less talent, thus it would be easy to compile big stats. But then there were much fewer teams, so the talent is concentrated. I don't think you can compare the top 5 teams of now to the top 5 teams back then. You'd have to compare the top 5 teams now to the top 2-3 teams back then i.e. some combination of Russell's Celtics, Wilt's Sixers/Lakers, the Knicks, and KAJ/Oscar's Bucks. Those teams can definitely go toe to toe with today's top teams. Pace is a factor, but then again pace has dropped by almost 10% from the 1980's to now and people don't seem to want to adjust 1980's stats. I'm of the opinion that you have to adjust for modern sports nutrition and sports medicine that the modern players get. If the older players played now, they would have access to these things. On Artis, I liked his game, his extremely solid and efficient post game and stout defense, and I always thought that he was under appreciated in the NBA. For whatever reason the stars of the ABA with the exception of Erving, like Gilmore, Mel Daniels, George McGinnis, Dan Issel, etc, seem to be forgotten players of that era.
Gave you points as I think you know your stuff, but I disagree with your analogy that you'd have to compare the top 2-3 teams (of their era) vs. the top 5 80's or 90's (or even today's) teams. Seems like it should be quite the opposite. Maybe comparing the best players on the top 8-10 teams now vs, the top 5 teams of their era since the league is so diluted now. Personally, I'm glad to see the love for Artis (although he did eventually play for the Spurs ). Moses Malone is one of my favorite players ever and still doesn't receive 1/2 the respect he deserves. I know it's blasphemous on this board, but I still remember a game when Moses went head to head against Dream, when he was with the Bullets, and he completely dominated him (like they were still at Fonde). Moses was an absolute monster on the boards and IIRC he hit 23/24 FT.
I'm with you on this one. There's no way to definitively rank these players when you have to factor in so many variables. Everything from overall statistics to head-to-heads to whatever. Plus, then there's the whole generation gap.
