lastly on fg%, in 58-59, russell's fg% was 45%. do you know where that ranked him, second in the league. different era, played by a guy who knew what it took to win
I like Bill Russel, but I also feel he is vastly overated. He was a good player on a great team, IMO. DD
That's easily the dumbest thing that's been said in this thread. Vernon Maxwell (and I love Mad Max) and Sleepy and OT made a total of 1 All Star game, combined, in their years with Houston. Bill Russell played with 14 Hall of Famers! There's no comparison. None.
the point I made was about statics, compare sleepy's to cousy's or kc's, compare thorpe's to any pf he played with. compare vernon's to the shooting guards. again, those guys are hofers because the played with russell, you need to go back and look at the thread I linked. kc jones is an hofer who didn't make one all star game. edit: just look at the 89-90 rockets, thorpe average 17 and 9 vernon didn't score a lot but he actually shot 44%, floyd averaged 12 and 7. buck johnson scored 14 on 49%.
now, when looking at the stats of the 89-90 rockets, compare them to the team that actually won the finals that year, the Pistons. The individual stats of that team are not that great, hakeem has played with mighty fine teamates, and he has been on some medicore teams. not saying that some of those teams should have or could have won championships, but it can be argued that until 92-93, he didn't elevate his team past the sum of its parts. that's not particularly a knock on him because i think rudy deserves credit into finally getting some of those guys to mesh.
Sam Jones had 7 seasons he scored at least 18 ppg. 4 of those were at least 21 ppg, and he topped out at 26 in 1965. Tommy Heinsohn had 5 season where he averaged at least 18.8 points and he was a 10 rebound guy for 6 seasons. Havilcek played with Bill for 7 seasons and in every season except his rookie one he scored 18 - 22 ppg. In his first 4 seasons with Russell, Bob Cousy scored 18 - 21 ppg and led the league in assists every season. With all of these guys, I'm strictly referring to their time with the Celtics, playing with Russell. Who are you trying to fool with this KC Jones talk? Cousy, Sam Jones, Heinsohn, and Havilcek were all big-time players that Russell could lean on. Don't tear down Hakeem by comparing his supporting cast to those guys.
cousy and havilcek are the legit all stars on those teams, even by today's standards, even so, they only played two seasons together. heinshon averaged 18 pts and 8 boards on 40% shooting for his career, not that great.
You can say the same thing in reverse. If you argue that Russell made his teammates better, then you have to acknowledge that his teammates made him better too. No matter how you slice it, that Celtics team was stacked. No other teams could have won that many championships in a row without being stacked with superior talents relative to the rest of the league. A 44% shooting big man was not a dominant scorer even if he wanted to. It's like saying Chuck Hayes could have been a better scorer if he was given the role of a go-to offensive guy. The fact is, if he was a great scorer, he would have been in that scoring role. What good coach wouldn't exploit a dominant scoring big man?
this is the last point on the field goal argument. its truly impressive that russell won so much later in his career because he played in a truly transitional period, coming in to the league when he was probably just truly dominant athletically, to playing against the likes of chamberlain. for example, the first great big man of the nba, mikan. what was his fg%, 40 for a career. however his second year in the league he was fifth in effective fg% its truly impressive that russell stepped his game up against chamberlain in head to head matchups, in the finals.
You say this as if you expected his effective FG% to be different than his FG%. I'd also suggest you consider FG% of the best shooters sucked back then. They were not great shooters.
You still haven't answered the question. Why wouldn't Red exploit Russell's scoring power if he could? Also, could the Celtics win as many titles if you substituted any of the other top 5 centers for Russell? Most of us think they could. Heck, I am quite optimistic that they could have won as much if you substituted Mutombo for Russell.
this is such a silly point, when you win 11 rings, obviously you exploited what you needed to? so i don't know why, but it really doesn't matter. wilt played on a stacked lakers team for four years and only won one ring. your mutombo comment is just stupid, i hope you're not serious
LOL, way to avoid the real question. That was exactly my point. They exploited what they could to win so many rings. Obviously, Russell's scoring ability wasn't something they thought was worth exploiting.
LOLOL, obviously they didn't need to. LOLOLOL, obvious the point is over your head. russell did what it took to win. he stepped his game up and scored when it mattered. is such a stupid, asinine, ridiculous statment to say, yeah he won 11 rings, but why didn't he score more. winning is the goal edit: sorry be so harsh, i'm just really amazed that when players today get so much critique about not caring about winning, people critique the greatest winner because he didn't score more, when he obviously proved he could in important championship games
I get your point. But to me, it is equally amazing how people keep using ring-count to measure a player's greatness. Players like Horry and Kerr won lots of rings. They are nowhere close to being an all-time great. Winning is a team achievement, not an individual achievement. Look, if Russell played with a poor team, would he still be considered one of the greatest players? I doubt it. On the other hand, both Wilt and Hakeem played on some poor teams. Yet they were recognized for their greatness. Of course, the disadvantage of Russell is that he played in an era when exposure was so little compared to players since the 80s. So it is unfair to really judge his game based on stats alone either way, positively or negatively.
It's not just ring count, it's the fact that Russell was the main guy on those Celtics teams, the most valuable player; he was voted MVP 5 times by the players (players voted for MVP then), and 4 of those were in competition with Chamberlain. Being the main guy/MVP on a championship team definitely deserves to add to his greatness. Russell never played for any poor teams, even at USF, so you can't say anything either way based on the historical record. Perhaps Russell would have elevated the "poor team" and made it a decent team? He beat the Sixers in 1968 and the Lakers in 1969 when his opponent was definitely the more talented team.
That's so true. I got to see him, and Wilt, play on TV, but the TV coverage was nothing like it was for baseball (the Yankees were on every weekend) or the NFL, which wasn't the big deal it is today, but certainly bigger than the NBA. So getting to see them was limited. Like I said earlier, when you saw the NBA games, it was almost always (at least as I remember it, it's been awhile) the Celtics against "somebody." Just not all that many games. No cable coverage at all, as cable was very, very limited to a few areas, mostly a few cities, like Austin, and they didn't have sports per se, but rather the same 4 channels, including PBS.
