by Simmons Bill
65. Grumpy Old Editor’s favorite “nobody tried more than DeBusschere” memory: “Dave scored on a tip-in to put the Knicks ahead in Game 3 of the 1970 Finals. When West hit the 65-footer to tie it, Dave was somehow already under that basket—and dropped to the ground in shock like Michael Cooper.”
66. I feel funny even mentioning Goldman’s credentials: he’s the greatest living screenwriter, an Oscar winner, and the author or coauthor of three of my favorite books (Wait Till Next Year, Adventures in the Screen Trade, and Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade). He’s also been a Knicks season ticket holder for over 40 years. He is overqualified to discuss DeBusschere.
67. He means Frazier, not Drexler. There’s only one Clyde in New York. 68. This happened in ’75 after they started keeping track of blocks/steals. Odds are, Russell and Wilt would have had a few in their day. And by “a few,” I mean “a few dozen.”
69. The series ended with Norm Van Lier sprawled on his knees, his head hanging, unable to stand for Barry’s clinching FTs because he was so distraught. Bob Ryan says Chicago’s Van Lier/Jerry Sloan backcourt was the “physically and mentally” toughest backcourt that he’s ever seen. Chicago averaged 52 W’s from ’71 to ’75 and got swallowed up by Kareem’s Bucks and West’s Lakers in the West.
70. Of the 36 centers who played 75+ playoff games, Thurmond had the second-lowest FG%
(41.6%), trailing only Jason Collins (37%). Russell was fourth-lowest (43%), Dave Cowens was seventh-lowest (45%) and Mark West was first (56.6%), so you can’t read too much into it. But still.
71. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. “Who wants to sex Mutombo?” is my favorite NBA urban legend other than “Are you ready for Maggette?”
72. The greatest example: In Game 1 of the ’92 Finals, after MJ’s fifth three-pointer, Clyde came back down and forced a three to “respond.” Air ball. So awkward when it happened. Nobody had less of a sense of the moment than Drexler.
73. I’m being generous with the “showed enough promise” compliment here; Clyde averaged 18
minutes and an 8–3–2. Not exactly MJ territory. On the other hand, anytime you have a chance to take a five-year senior who missed two years because of stress fractures, you gotta do it. 74. Vecsey’s take: “Enough of the gentlemanly behavior. Later for his nice-guy image. You can’t think about beating Jordan by being permissive or overly respectful.” Translation: “Grow some balls, Clyde!”
75. Did you know Eric Piatkowski has the lowest career APG of any guard who played at least 500
games? Pie played 789 games and finished with 778 assists (1.0 per game). His nickname should have been “Black Pie Hole.”
76. FG percentages of the best modern PGs: Tiny (47%), GP (47%), KJ (49%), Stockton (52%), Isiah (45%), Nash (49%), Mo Cheeks (52%), Mark Price (47%), Gus Williams (46%), Tim Hardaway (43%).
77. When they finally turn Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” into a movie, I want Hunter to play Montresor.
78. Jersey landed Devin Harris and two number ones in a trade that also cost Dallas $11 million (factoring in the luxury tax). It’s the worst non-Isiah trade of this decade other than Houston stealing T-Mac from Orlando.
79. This scandal led to roughly 200,000 Brandon-Kelly-Dylan jokes at the time. 80. Dallas did get Sam Cassell and Michael Finley back. Of course, Dallas f’ed up a year later with an eight-player deal that basically landed them Shawn Bradley and Robert Pack for Cassell, Jimmy Jackson and Chris Gatling. That same season, they dealt Mashburn for Sasha Danilovic and Kurt Thomas. So not only did Braxton implode the Kidd-Mashburn-Jackson nucleus, she eventually turned them into Finley and a load of crap. Thank you, Toni.
81. Kidd and Stockton should have been grandfathered into every All-Star Game until each turned fifty. Seriously, I’d rather watch a forty-eight-year-old Stockton run an All-Star offense than Gilbert Arenas or Chauncey Billups.
82. Comedian Guy Torry made fun of Kidd’s son at a Shaq roast, joking about his oversized head and little-kid mustache, comparing him to the Great Gazoo of The Flintstones and basically crossing every comedy line. When they showed Shaq sprawled over the dais laughing his ass off, supposedly Kidd was bitter and it’s been awkward with them ever since. I feel like you need to know these things.
83. My all-time team for Guys You Wouldn’t Have Wanted to Follow in a Bathroom Had They Been in There For a Half Hour or More”: Unseld (C), Hot Plate Williams (PF), Charles Barkley (SF), Micheal Ray Richardson (SG), John Bagley (PG). I picked Micheal Ray because he may have been too coked up to remember to flush.
84. The ’78 Bullets were easily the worst post-Russell champs, finishing 44–38 with a point differential of 0.9. During the regular season, their opponents finished better than them in FG%, FT%, steals, assists and blocks and averaged 2.5 fewer turnovers a game. Of their 38 losses, 14 of them came by double digits.
85. In Ken Shouler’s book, Bob Ryan raves, “No man in history ever began more fast breaks with 50-foot outlet passes than Wes Unseld did,” and Auerbach adds, “Wes was the greatest outlet passer of them all, the only one I’d rate better than Russell.”
86. That was the first Double Whopper Double: Eddy hit double figures in negative plus-minus and body fat. Eddy was recently hit with a gay sexual harassment suit by his chauffeur, who made a far-fetched claim that Eddy swung his dick at him and said, “You know you want to touch it, Dave.” (My buddy House immediately changed his fantasy team’s name to that quote.) Then Malik Rose defended Eddy by saying, “I know for a fact Eddy’s not gay,” spawning a few days of
“How exactly do you know this, Malik?” chatter. Then we learned that Eddy had six kids by two different women … and those are the kids we know about. So maybe that’s how Malik knew. Or maybe he said, “Hey Eddy, in the mood for some gay sex tonight?” and Eddy turned him down. Or maybe they had a threesome together. Or maybe Eddy tried to boink Malik’s girlfriend. Did House and I spend fifteen minutes on the phone trying to figure this out? Of course we did. 87. Morey became the league’s first statistically savvy GM when Houston hired him in 2007. We became friends when he worked for the Celtics. He runs the Sloan Sports Analytical Conference every year (which I nicknamed Dorkapalooza), and when he invited me in 2009, once I saw him swarmed by MIT grads the way the paparazzi swarm Britney, I nicknamed him “Dork Elvis.” He admitted this was funny. Begrudgingly.
88. I initially called this Swing Blocks before realizing it sounded like a gay porn movie. Couldn’t you see an early-nineties VCR tape of Swing Blocks with all the NBA’s Duke grads on the cover dressed like construction workers?
89. I thought about creating another stat for successful screens and picks, but that seems too arbitrary. Sorry, Wes.
90. Hollinger is a great guy and we’ve had good-natured arguments about this. He admits his formula is a work in progress—it values “per-48-minute” production, rebounds, and FG% too much. But he still believes in it. If this were Lost, I’d be Locke and he’d be Jack. Neither one of us is right or wrong; that’s the great thing. Okay, that’s not true—I’m right. But the man does make me think.
91. Actually, it jumped from 15.9 to 22. What’s a little Wes talk without a dab of gushing exaggeration?
92. You would not have wanted him as your GM. I emailed House, a long-suffering Bullets fan, and asked him for his four favorite abominable Unseld moves. His return email via BlackBerry:
“Traded Ben Wallace for Isaac Austin; [Mitch] Richmond for C-Webb; number one for washed-up Mark Price; acquisition/gross-overpay of Kevin Duckworth; $25 million for Jahidi White; traded our number one three straight years for shit; failed to lock up Juwan [Howard] the summer before his contract year, lowballed after Juwan put up big numbers, then paid $30–40 million more than the contract would have cost previous summer after Stern voided free-agent signing by Miami. Sure there’s more but I’m doing this off top of my head—playing golf right now. I love Wes but HE SUCKED!”
93. Payton was listed as playing “Rumeal Smith” in t
he closing credits, even though they never mentioned his character’s name in the movie. Really, they couldn’t have called him “Gary Dayton” or “Gary Parton”? How did they come up with Rumeal Smith? This has been bothering me for 13 years.
94. George Karl murdered Seattle by not switching GP onto MJ until Game 4. Karl goes down as the most overrated coach of his era—nobody had more guys quit on him, botched more games and series or made more excuses.
95. At halftime of Game 1 of the ’94 Nuggets series, before the Sonics infamously blew a 2–0 lead to an eighth seed, Payton and Ricky Pierce had an altercation that led to both guys threatening to get their guns before things calmed down. It was just like the fight Rick Reilly and I had at the 2008 ESPYs.
96. What would be the equivalent in other walks of life? Greg Maddux pitching as a setup man for the Yankees in 2009, then receiving congrats in the dugout because he extricated himself from a seventh-inning jam in the World Series? Springsteen getting a standing O at the Meadowlands after a rocking solo in his new gig as the harmonica player for Modest Mouse?
97. I have multiple New York friends who swear that Knicks fans were subconsciously predisposed to root against Ewing because so many Knicks fans love St. John’s and that was the height of the Johnnies-Hoyas Big East rivalry back then.
98. Ewing never cracked the top three in rebounding and currently has the 57th-highest career rebounding average, just ahead of Sikma (60th), Laimbeer (61st) and Rony Seikaly (70th). 99. Notice how I avoided any mention of the excruciating Knicks-Heat playoff battles? I always wanted a Bizarro ESPN Classic channel that featured programming like NBA’s Greatest Games: Miami 65, New York 56, SportsCentury and Beyond: Rusty Hilger, The Very Best of the Magic Hour, Games That Ended Prematurely Because Somebody Died, Actors Who Threw Like Women (hosted by Tim Robbins), Best Magic Johnson Comebacks, Inside Schwartz, NHL Instant Classic: Columbus at Minnesota and Nancy Lieberman’s 500 Most Awkward Sideline Interviews. 100. When Ewing became head of the Players Association, it was like finding out that Flavor Flav had been named the president of Viacom.
101. My favorite Ewing moment: When an Atlanta strip joint (Gold Club) was busted for drugs and prostitution, a number of celebs were revealed as pay-for-play customers in the ensuing trial, including Ewing, who made the following testimony: “The girls danced, started fondling me, I got aroused, they performed oral sex. I hung around a little bit and talked to them, then I left.” As Marv Albert would say, yes!
102. His original examples: Donyell Marshall (’95 UConn), Peyton Manning (’98 Tennessee), Keith Van Horn (’98 Utah), Don Mattingly (’96 Yankees), Bret Hart (’97 WWF). 103. Some enjoyable pop culture examples: Shannen Doherty (90210), David Lee Roth (Van Halen), Shelley Long (Cheers), David Caruso (NYPD Blue), Sonny Corleone (the Corleones), Craig Kilborn (Daily Show).
104. The 50–40–90 Club covers anyone who topped 50% FG, 40% 3FG and 90% FT shooting in one season. Not easy.
105. No small feat. Here’s how I described Thomas in 2008: “Is there an NBA forward alive who couldn’t average 31 minutes, 12 points, five rebounds and three assists, miss 70 percent of his 3-pointers and allow his guy to score at will? If baseball has VORP (value over replacement player), then basketball should have VOTT (value over Tim Thomas). He’s such a dog that PETA might protest this paragraph.” Ten months later, Basketball Prospectus unveiled a WARP stat that revealed Thomas scored exactly at replacement level for the ’08 and ’09 seasons. Stu Scott, give me a boo yeah!
106. We can’t use seatbelts, and we can’t put a rope around the bench because a player could go flying into the rope during play and get practically decapitated … but what about an electric-fence-type device where they’d get shocked if they ventured onto the court, like what people use with their dogs in the backyard? Wouldn’t that be worth it just to see Eddy Curry zone out, stand up to stretch and accidentally electroshock himself?
107. The hand check rule changes helped Nash. So did the speeding up of the games. And more than anyone else, he thrived once the refs started looking the other way on illegal screens. 108. They had an alpha dog battle that revolved around important stuff like “Why did he get the best seat on the charter last night?” and “Why is his locker in a better spot than mine?” Also, they fought over a chew toy once. Whoops, I’m thinking of my dogs. Sorry. 109. That’s like driving the nicest-smelling New York City cab.
110. The “soft” tag started in ’03 when Dirk refused to limp around with an injured knee in the ’03
Conference Finals. Strangely, nobody remembers this decision now.
111. Ginobili’s dumb foul takes its rightful place alongside Rasheed leaving Big Shot Brob in the
’05 Finals, Pau Gasol not helping Ray Allen on the game-clinching drive (Game 4, ’08 Finals) and no Kings fouling Shaq on the offensive rebound right before Big Shot Brob’s game-winning shot (Game 4, Kings-Lakers series) as one of the four dumbest defensive plays of the decade. 112. In a seven-game stretch from Game 3 of the Spurs series through Game 3 of the Suns series, Dirk averaged a 29–15. Yikes.
113. That’s how Stephen Jackson throttled him in the ’07 playoffs, although we didn’t know about that yet because we’re still in the NBA time machine, remember?
114. I also liked the idea of a 42 Club because it reminded me of the Five-Timer Club on SNL for five-time hosts, only there was no way to have a weak link like Elliott Gould. Everyone was Tom Hanks and Steve Martin.
115. If we made a Platinum wing in the 42 Club for any member who also topped 50% FG
shooting and 80% FT shooting that same playoffs, our Platinum members would be Jordan (4x), Bird (2x) and that’s it. Also, please tell Patrick Ewing that the Platinum wing of the 42 Club isn’t a place for him to get blown.
116. I made up that word: “dubulent” is a cross between “dubious” and “fraudulent.” If Webster’s ever picks it up, they should just show Wade’s free throw numbers in the ’06 Finals as its definition.
117. I just felt like breaking the “most Corey Haim references ever made in one paragraph in a sports book” record. I was feeling it.
NINE
THE PYRAMID: LEVEL 3
36. GEORGE MIKAN
Resume: 9 years, 7 quality, 4 All-Stars … Top 5 (’50, ’51, ’52, ’53, ’54) … leader: scoring (3x), rebounds (2x) … best player for 7 straight champs (including NBL and BAA) … 3-year peak: 28–14–3, 42% FG … playoffs: 23–14 (60 g’s)
Give yourself a high five because you just reached the dumbest moment of the book. I mean, where would you rank the best player of the pre-shot-clock era? Calling someone the greatest pre-shot-clock force is like calling One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird the greatest computer sports game of the early eighties. 1 In other words, you’re not saying much. The six-foot-ten Mikan peaked with a tiny three-second lane, no shot clock, no seven-footers, no goaltending rules and barely any black players … and it’s not like he was throwing up Wilt-like numbers. Look how he compared to his peers during his last four quality years (1951–54). 2
So Mikan led everyone in scoring and rebounding (but not in a staggering way) while attempting the most shots (by far) in a sport tailored to his specific attributes and talents (size and toughness). Make no mistake: Big George was not dynamic to watch. Here’s how Leonard Koppett described him: “The Lakers would bring the ball up slowly, waiting for the lumbering Mikan to get into position in the pivot. Then they would concentrate on getting the ball in to Big George, whose huge left elbow would open a swath as he turned into the basket…. Mikan was simply too big in bulk to be blocked out. He couldn’t jump very high, but he didn’t have to. He couldn’t run, but he didn’t have to.” No wonder the league nearly went under. The sport started moving against Mikan before the 1951–52 season, when they expanded the three-second lane to 12 feet so Big George couldn’t plant himself next to the basket anymore. In the three seasons preceding that rule change (’49 to ’51), he averaged 28 points on 42 percent shooting. For the next three years (’5
2 to ’54), he averaged 21 points on 39 percent shooting. Given how Mikan struggled to adjust to the three-second rule and the post-shot-clock era, you can only imagine how his career would have suffered when they changed the goaltending rules and allowed more black players. Every piece of evidence points to Mikan having better timing than anything: he entered and departed the league at the quintessential times. Unfortunately, we can’t stick him lower than Level 3 because I can’t risk offending my nursing home demographic.
Two fun things about George: First, he’s the only player in NBA history to successfully carry off the “thick glasses and dorky kneepads” combination. Every Mikan picture or clip makes him look like the starting center for Lambda Lambda Lambda’s intramural hoops team.3 Second, he may have been the toughest player of that era, breaking ten different bones and taking 160 stitches during his nine-year career. He helped Minny win the 1950 title playing with a broken wrist. During the 1951 playoffs, he played with a fractured leg when Minny fell to Rochester in the Western Finals. As Mikan told Newsday years later, “The doctors taped a plate on it for the playoffs. I played all right, scored in the 20s. I couldn’t run, sort of hopped down the court.” He was like the Bizarro Vince Carter. Of course, he just inadvertently proved the point of the previous few paragraphs—that Mikan excelled during an era when centers could score 20 a game in the playoffs while hopping around with a plate taped to their broken leg.
35. KEVIN MCHALE
Resume: 13 years, 10 quality, 7 All-Stars … Top 5 (’87) … All-Defense (6x, three 1st) …
season leader: FG% (2x) … 2nd-best player on one champ (’86 Celts) and 2 runner-ups (’85,
’87); 6th man for 2 other champs (’81, ’84) … 2-year peak: 24–9–3, 60% FG … 3-year Playoffs peak: 24–9, 59% FG … 3rd-best playoff FG ever, 100+ games (56.6%) … career: 55% FG (12th), 80% FT