How seriously do you take championships from the 50's-60's?

things have to start somewhere.

do you diss the cavemen's for creating the wheel?
do you diss RUN DMC cause you think their rap style wasn't complex?

come on dude. plus, you realize that things were harder back then. you know that segregation thing was probably tough.

also NO 3 POINT LINE.

I look back in history and i find it to be relevant.

 

the game has to evolve.

also, did you watch that espn series on racism and basketball? some of the best players never got to play in the NBA because there was some limit of how many Black players were allowed on one team.

 

Of course things improve year by year, era by era. Olympics athletes run faster, jump higher and are stronger right now than those in the past. Records in the 50s were all broken right now. It doesn't mean that those past medalists were all inrelevant. Their competition was totally different back in the past.

And there were only 100 something players in the basketball league back then. And those would be the very best ones in the world. So Matt Maloney might not even have been able to make it to the league back then.

 

Interesting. That would mean even a team like the Bucks or Charlotte from today's NBA could make it to the finals back then.

I always thought looking at the old black and white footage from back then, those guys dribble really funny. They run around in circles dribbling the ball with one hand. I don't know how anyone could watch them and not laugh.

 

Right - championships started, and end with, 1994 and 1995.

Forget The Babe, Jimmy Brown, and Wilt the Stilt.

 

I agree with AGBee. The Celtics' early championships were more cheaply earned than the one they got last night. But, with those early championships, they still got more of them than the other original teams.

 

funny attitude from (i'm assuming) a rockets fan - considering we get tired of people criticizing our championship "cause jordan wasn't playing"...


but actually yeah i agree that in this day and age it would be much more difficult - not to be a top team (ex: san antonio) - but to be able to be the final one standing for that many times over that many years...

 

Basketball is the only sport where the past teams and players are denigrated instead of revered. Everything pre-Magic and Bird or pre-Jordan was terrible.

 

Even though I respect the past championships from the 50s and 60s, I refuse to take them as seriously as I do for the championships in the "modern" era.

- One reason is that there was a WHOLE lot less popularity for the sport back then, it was relatively new, people did not play it as much in the U.S (even on the playgrounds or backyards).
- Hence, this meant that there was less competition for players to make it into the NBA since not a lot of people played it as much as they do these days.
- The population of the U.S. has risen exponentially since the 50's and 60's, thus more competition amongst people
- There was no international scene for basketball back then. Right now, you have almost every country playing basketball, producing star players that enter in the draft.

 

Sorry, but I'm an old f*rt and believe in things prior to this day, or even my life span. Football and baseball? I also meant to allude to Arnie. Icons for life, my life at least.

Boston's championships are legit. So were the Minnie Lakers. And '99 Spurs.

And Johnny U, Ben Hogan, and Lou Gehrig were and remain iconic.

 

This thread is pointless......without the past there would be no present. Of course you have to honor and respect those championships. The teams still had to play the games and win didn't they?

 

someone had to invent the hamburger first before we start talking about the whopper vs the big mac. the first hamburger probably taste pretty good.

 

I more agree with OddsOn.

Has anyone considered how many fewer teams they had in the 50's and 60's? And you didn't have: big fat money for good livin', personal trainers to tend to your every ache, even decent footwear. (People literally played 82 games in Chuck flippin' Taylors).

At Rudy's summer camps, I used to watch Sam Jones a lot and talked with him a number of times. That guy could straight out ball, even though he was one of the older guys there. His bankshot was a thing of beauty and I would not bet against him even when he had shooting contests with Rudy T.

So I think the question is (edit: not worthless, but let's say invalid), and it's easy to play the other side of the argument.

You could say that a team like this year's Celtics, assembled in one year, could never have won the championship in that era. Teams were built for decades and the players knew one another's every step (on the Cousy-led teams) without needing to open their eyes. In some ways, the league is incredibly weak right now, on pure basketball terms. There's so little continuity and consistency.

This year's finals saw a one-year wonder team beating a very soft, no-defense Lakers team that had also had it's 2nd-most-important component added mid-season. The Celtics were taken to 7 games by the below-500 Hawks and the one-player Cavs. How are they somehow greater than those vintage teams? We'll never know at all.

 

We already look back at 10-20 years and think today's NBA is faster, stronger, and much more physical. Imagine 30 years from now, people looking back on this era, and wanting to discount it. Maybe there will be an international 60 team league, and the 12th man on every team won't look like Novak, he'll look MadMax.

Would you think they have a legitimate argument to discount what happened today?

 

I appreciate what those men did for the game. I appreciate the commitment to excellence, the drive to win and the hard nosed style of play. These guys certainly did it for the love of the game because they didn't get paid much.

Having said all that, I don't think the majority of those guys could have played in today's NBA or even a D1 college for that matter. It's somewhat comical to see guys like Cousy dribbling the ball at mid-chest level while running down the court.

 

I could not disagree more, just having seen a lower-level star like Sam Jones play at an advanced age. Don't let the old films get you carried away.

If Cousy was at his prime in this era, had to adjust to today's game, you don't think he could be unto Nash? Again, we'll never know. How someone can watch 10 seconds of grainy film and dismiss the dude is a mystery to me.

Another example, Moses Malone. So, in 10 years, are people going to be saying the 70's were a joke? That Malone could never play in "today's" NBA? I watched so many Moses games. The dude trained young Hakeem, and I've never seen another player with a nose for the rebounds like Malone. No number of protein shakes and slam dunks from younguns will ever shake my faith that Malone, in his prime, could hang in any era.

I didn't get to watch any 50's or 60's b/c I wasn't alive.

Finally, here's one for you: was Abe Lincoln a lame president who could never handle today's whitehouse because the world was so much more simple then, with much less population, and less intense media scrutiny, etc.? LOL.