by Simmons Bill
Few remember his defining moment: the waning seconds of Game 5 in the ’87 Eastern finals, when Bird picked off Isiah’s pass and found DJ for the winning layup. Right after Bird snatched the ball from Laimbeer’s grimy hands, as everyone else was still processing what had happened, DJ started cutting toward the basket with his hands up. From the mid-seventies to right now, I can only pinpoint a handful of players who would have instinctively known to cut toward the basket there: MJ, Magic, Frazier, Stockton, Reggie, Mullin, Barry, Isiah (ironically, the one who threw the pass), Horry, Wade, Kidd, Iverson, Nash, Kobe and that’s about it. Nobody else starts moving for a full second after that steal happens. And by the way, if DJ had never made that cut, Bird would have been forced to launch a fall-away 10-footer over the backboard to win the game …
which he probably would have made, but that’s beside the point. Don’t forget that DJ was chugging full speed as he caught the pass from his left, with Dumars charging from the right, meaning he had to shield the ball from Dumars, turn his body and make an extremely difficult reverse layup that came within a hair of missing (believe me, I was there). Of course, few people remember this, just as few remember how great a basketball player Dennis Johnson was. As my father said on the phone when DJ died, “He was the best guard on the best team I ever watched in my entire life.”
Agreed. DJ should have made the trip to Springfield when he was still alive. At least he lives on in this book.
51. BILL SHARMAN
Resume: 12 years, 8 quality, 8 All-Stars … top 5 (’56, ’57, ’58, ’59), top 10 (’53, 55, ’60) …
started for 4 champs in Boston (’57, ’59, ’60, ’61) … leader: FT% (7x) … 3-year peak: 21–3–4 … best Playoffs FT shooter, 75+ games (91.1%)
The NBA’s best two-guard until Jerry West showed up; the first shooter to regularly crack 40
percent from the field and shoot 90 percent from the line; half of the most successful backcourt in the history of the league. Factoring in team success, individual careers, statistics and total games played together, we haven’t seen anything approaching Cousy and Sharman. (Lemme know when we’ll see two guards from the same team make first-team All-NBA for four straight years.)47
When Sharman retired in 1961, only twenty-two noncenters had played 500 games or more at that time. Of those twenty-two players, Sharman ranked first in free throw percentage (88 percent) and second in shooting percentage (42.6 percent, just behind Bob Pettit); he was the only guard to crack 40 percent from the field. So Sharman was significantly better than any other two-guard from his era; the numbers, awards, and titles back this up, as does the fact that Sharman held off Sam Jones for four solid years. The six-foot-two Sharman even moonlighted as a third baseman in Brooklyn’s farm system from 1950 to 1955, getting called up at the end of the ’51 season and being thrown out of a game for yelling at an umpire, becoming the only player in major league history to get ejected from a game without ever actually appearing in one. Bizarre. But that gives you an idea of his athletic pedigree. He was also infamous for being the first player to (a) study opponents’ tendencies and keep notes on them and (b) create a daily routine of stretching, exercising, and shooting and make a concerted effort to stick to that routine. 48
What doesn’t live on historically was Sharman’s defense. By all accounts, he was that decade’s best lockdown defender and a feisty competitor who had more fights than Jake LaMotta. Jerry West once remembered being a rookie and making seven straight shots against an aging Sharman, then Sharman preventing an eighth shot simply by taking a swing at him. As West told the L.A. Times years later, “I’ll tell you this, you did not drive by him. He got into more fights than Mike Tyson. You respected him as a player.” Sounds like my kind of guy. I’d tell you more, but Sharman retired when my mother was twelve.
50. DOLPH SCHAYES
Resume: 15 years, 11 quality, 12 All-Stars … ’58 MVP runner-up … top 5 (’52, ’53, ’54, ’55,
’57, ’58), top 10 (’50, ’51, ’56, ’59, ’60, ’61) … leader: rebounds (1x), FT% (3x), minutes (2x)
… career FT: 85% … 5-year peak: 23–13–3 … best player on champ (’55 Nats)
You have to love the days when NBA superstars had names like Dolph. Schayes excelled in two different eras (pre-shot-clock, post-shot-clock), won an Imaginary Playoffs MVP and a ring for the
’55 Nats, stuck around for an abnormally long time (fifteen years, which was like twenty-five years back then), exhibited a startling degree of durability (missing three games total in his first twelve seasons) and finished as the second most successful forward of the pre-Elgin era. Still, we have to penalize him for excelling as a set-shooting, slow-as-molasses power forward during an time when black players were few and far between. When Russell entered the league, Syracuse and Schayes won only two Playoffs in the next seven years. What would happen if he played now?
Whom would he defend? How would he score? Would he have been better than Danny Ferry? I also couldn’t shake his shooting stats—Schayes only shot 40% in a season twice and finished at a deadly 38% for his career, well behind contemporaries such as Hagan (45%), Twyman (45%), Ed Macauley (44%), Pettit (44%), George Yardley (42%) and Arizin (42%). Maybe Cousy’s shooting stats were equally brutal, but his playmaking skills would have translated nicely to today’s game. In short, I’m just not seeing the Dolphster. But you can’t argue with five top fives and six top tens, so he had to crack the top fifty. Barely. 49
49. ELVIN HAYES
Resume: 16 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … top 5 (’75, ’77, ’79), top 10 (’73, ’74, ’76) …
second-best player on 1 champ (’78 Bullets) and 2 runner-ups (’75, ’79) … missed 9 games in his entire career … traded once in his prime … ’75 playoffs: 26–11 (17 G) … ’78, ’79
playoffs: 22–14 (40 G) … 3-year peak: 28–17 … 25K-15K Club
The Big E played 50,000 minutes exactly. (Yes, it was intentional.) He missed 9 games in a sixteen-year career and never played fewer than 80 games in a season. He scored over 27,000
points and grabbed over 16,000 rebounds. And in the last three minutes of a huge game, you wouldn’t have wanted him on the floor. We’ll remember Hayes as his generation’s Karl Malone, a gifted power forward with terrific numbers who played differently when the bread needed to be buttered … although Malone carried a little more weight with his peers and weaseled his way into two MVP awards, whereas Hayes never cracked the top two in the balloting. It’s worth mentioning that the Big E played his first four years for the Rockets, 50 averaged a 27–16, and doubled as their franchise player when they moved to Houston, the same city where he memorably starred in college, only things deteriorated so badly that they gave him away before the ’73–’ 74 season for Jack Marin and cash considerations. 51 Jack Marin and cash considerations? That was the whole trade? Other than eye-opening numbers and a memorable no-show in the ’75 Finals, Hayes stands out for five reasons:
1. My favorite basketball writer growing up, Bob Ryan, openly detested Elvin’s game and took shots at the Big E any time he could. Any time someone choked in the clutch or shrank from a big moment, regardless of the sport, you could count on Ryan to compare that player to Hayes. Since Ryan is one of the more rational writers around, as well as the best hoops writer of my lifetime, I’m trusting his judgment here. 2. You know the annoying “Emm Vee Pee!” chants that get serenaded on every top-twenty player in the league? All empirical evidence suggests that Elvin Hayes and the Bullets fans are to blame. Down the stretch of the ’79 season, when there were three favorites to win the award (Malone, Gervin and Hayes), Washington fans started chanting “Emm Vee Pee!” every time he made a good play. Now we get to hear that chant when the likes of Joe Johnson makes a three. Awesome. By the way, with players voting for MVP for the majority of Elvin’s career, the Big E cracked the top six only three times—fifth in ’74, third in ’75, third in ’79—which makes me wonder if the other guys respected him that much. I’m guessing no.<
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3. He certainly didn’t distinguish himself in the ’78 Finals, scoring 133 points in the first six games but only 19 in the fourth quarters, earning derisive comments in Curry Kirkpatrick’s SI Finals feature, like “Individualism overcame Elvin in yet another big contest,” “Hayes once more disappeared in the moments of crisis,” “In between his hiding and complaining to everybody about the officials,” and “[It’s] imperative for the Bullets that their only real ‘name’ player and 10-year All-Star justify his status by not dissolving at the end of the seventh game.” What happened? Elvin scored 12 points in Game 7 and fouled out with 10 minutes to play in a close game. They won the title on the road without him. I find this interesting. 52
4. According to Filip Bondy in Tip Off, before Hayes’ final season with the Rockets in
’84, he made a big deal about mentoring prized rookie Ralph Sampson, causing Houston coach Bill Fitch to pull Sampson aside and tell him, “You stay away from that no-good fucking prick.” Elvin Hayes, everybody!
5. Hayes’ signature shot? The fall-away/turnaround. My theory on the fall-away: it’s a passive-aggressive shot that says more about a player than you think. For instance, Jordan, McHale and Hakeem all had tremendous fall-aways—in fact, MJ developed the shot to save his body from undue punishment driving to the basket—but it was one piece of their offensive arsenal, a weapon used to complement the other weapons already in place. Well, five basketball stars in the past sixty years have been famous for either failing miserably in the clutch or lacking the ability to rise to the occasion: Wilt, Hayes, Malone, Ewing and Garnett. All five were famous for their
fall-away/turnaround jumpers and took heat because their fall-aways pulled them out of rebounding position. If it missed, almost always it was a one-shot possession. On top of that, it never leads to free throws—either the shot falls or the other team gets it. Could you make the case that the fall-away, fundamentally, is a loser’s shot? For a big man, it’s the dumbest shot you can take—only one good thing can happen and that’s it—as well as a symbol of a larger problem, namely, that a team’s best big man would rather move away from the basket than toward it. Of the handful of differences that led Tim Duncan to become more successful than Garnett, the biggest has been their mind-set in close games. Duncan makes a concerted effort to plant his ass down low, post up and take high-percentage shots (either jump hooks, drop-step layups, mini-fall-aways or “I’m putting my shoulder into you and getting to the rim” layups) that might also lead to fouls, tip-ins, or put-back layups, whereas Garnett mostly settles for 18-footers and fall-aways.
So here’s my take: the fall-away says, “I’d rather stay out here.” It says, “I’m afraid to fail.” It says,
“I want to win this game, but only on my terms.” In a related story, Elvin Hayes attempted more fall-aways than anyone who ever played in the NBA. Draw your own conclusions.
48. JAMES WORTHY
Resume: 12 years, 8 quality, 7 All-Stars … ’88 Finals MVP … top 15 (’90, ’91) … 2nd-or 3rd-best player for 3 champs (’85, ’87, ’88 Lakers) and 3 runner-ups (’84, ’89, ’91) … 2-year peak: 21–5–4, 55% FG … playoffs (143 G): 21–5–2, 54% FG (5th-best ever, 100+ games)
If you made an All-Star team of Guys Who Made a Jump Historically Because They Were Fortunate Enough to Play on Some Really Good Teams, here’s your starting five: Parish, Worthy, Scottie Pippen, Walt Frazier and K. C. Jones (who snuck into the Hall of Fame even though he couldn’t shoot). At the same time, each player had skill sets and personalities that lent themselves to semicomplementary roles on winning teams (we covered the benefits in Parish’s section), so it’s tough to penalize them for being that way. You can win titles with guys like Pippen, Frazier and Worthy. You know, as long as they aren’t the best guy on your team.
Worthy stood out for his athleticism (off the charts), transition finishes (as good as anyone), and signature freeze-the-ball-high-above, swooping one-handed slam (one of the five memorable signature dunks of the eighties, along with Doc’s tomahawk dunk, Bernard’s running two-hander,
’Nique’s windmill and MJ’s tilt-the-body one-hander). I already made this joke, but let’s tweak it: anyone who had a Nerf hoop in the eighties and claims he didn’t attempt Worthy’s swooping dunk or Bernard’s two-hander at least five hundred times is lying. Worthy had an unstoppable first step and absolutely abused slower defenders. Defensively, he played Bird better than any quality offensive player and helped swing the ’87 Finals that way. He wasn’t the greatest rebounder but had a knack for grabbing big ones in big moments. And you can’t forget Game 7 of the ’88 Finals, when he carried the Lakers with a 36–16–10 against a superior defensive team and rightfully earned the nickname “Big Game James.” 53 Had he developed a three-point shot—and it’s unclear why he didn’t 54—Worthy would have been unstoppable. We also can’t forget that he spent three years at Carolina and another seven playing for Pat Riley, a notorious practice Nazi, which explains why Worthy’s legs went so quickly after just ten quality NBA seasons. You can’t penalize him for a lack of longevity.
You also can’t discuss Worthy without mentioning the Wilkins/Worthy what-if and Worthy’s thank-God-it-never-happened Clippers career, which would be neat to simulate Sliding Doors- style if we had the ability to do so. 55 One thing’s for sure: had Worthy gone second in the
’82 draft, he wouldn’t have cracked the top fifty of the Pyramid. You need some luck with this stuff and he had it. While we’re here, I’d like to honor him for two other things: being a starting forward on the All-Time Bearded All-Stars, 56 and being the subject of Peter Vecsey’s funniest joke ever, after Worthy was arrested for soliciting two prostitutes and arranging for them to meet him in a Houston hotel room (Vecsey cracked in his New York Post column, “James always did have trouble scoring against double teams”). High comedy for 1991, I’m telling you.
47. BILLY CUNNINGHAM
Resume: 11 years, 8 quality, 5 All-Stars (1 ABA) … ’73 ABA MVP … ’69 BS MVP … top 5
(’69, ’70, ’71), top 10 (’72), top 5 ABA (’73) … 5-year peak: 24–12–4 … ’73 ABA: 24–12–6 …
’73 Playoffs: 24–12–5 (12 G) … career: 21.2 PPG, 10.4 RPG (both top 40) … Playoffs: 20–10–4 (54 G)
Billy was the starting small forward on the Guys I Would Have Loved if I Had Seen Them Play Team: a lefty small forward who played bigger than his size and had a game best described as a cross between Manu Ginobili’s and Shawn Marion’s, only with that superintelligent hoops IQ of a kid weaned in the New York schoolyards. Like Bernard’s, his career was derailed by a major knee injury. Unlike Bernard, he never really recovered. But Cunningham was the sixth man for one of the greatest teams ever (the ’67 Sixers) and the NBA’s best small forward for a five-year stretch (’68 to ’72) before winning the ABA MVP … and then he got hurt and that was that. Billy C.’s calling card was his Manu-like drives. He grew up in Brooklyn and played on an outdoor court where it was so windy that everyone was afraid to take 20-footers, so everyone adjusted by taking the biscuit to the basket in any way possible. (After researching this book, I’m convinced that the guy who surpasses MJ will be a poor kid with two parents and two older brothers who grew up playing on a clay court where it was too windy to shoot 20-footers. Mark my words, he will break every record in the book.) Billy also may have been MVP of the White Guys Who Played Like Black Guys team (we made it!), a massively important topic for Jabaal Abdul-Simmons. You can’t really define what it takes to make this hallowed team; it’s more of a “you know it when you see it”
thing, although here are three good rules of thumb: Could the player in question have pulled a C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man and just pretended he was black without anyone noticing? Had the player actually been black instead of white, would his career (and the way we enjoyed it) have made more sense? In other words, did it almost seem like a mistake that he was white? And could the player do Billy Hoyle’s routine on an inner-city playground court and immedia
tely win the respect of everyone there? Here are the Billy Hoyle All-Stars:
Starters. Dave Cowens, Chambers, Cunningham, Westphal and Jason Williams, 57 or as I like to call them, the Honorary Brothers. You know what’s appealing about this group other than a complete lack of White Man’s Disease? They would have made a fantastic starting five! What would have been more fun than watching White Chocolate running the fast break with Cunningham and Chambers on the wings, or Westphal and Cowens running high screens in crunch time?
Sixth Man. Bobby Jones, among the confusing players in NBA history—a skinny, unassuming diabetic who played above the rim as much as any player black or white. Other than Big Shot Rob, no forward mastered the “run-the-floor, defend-the-rim, shut-down-a-hot-scorer, crash-the-boards, don’t-take-anything-off-the-table” role better than Bobby Jones. Even his name made him sound black.