Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  … and when your franchise guy is a futile defensive player, that doesn’t bode well for your title hopes. The Spurs made a conscious decision, “We’re revolving everything around Ice’s offense, running and gunning, scoring a ton of points and hoping our snazzy black uniforms catch on with inner-city gangs,” which was probably the right move. With Ice leading the way from 1974 to 1983 (ABA + NBA), the Spurs won 45, 51, 50, 44, 52, 48, 41, 52, 48 and 53 games—not a bad run by any means. But it didn’t translate to success in the Playoffs. They lost ten of eighteen playoff series and made the Conference Finals three times (’79, ’82 and ’83). Ice averaged a 27–7–3 over that stretch, but these were the relevant numbers: 31–41 (overall playoff record), 0–4 (Game 7’s), zero (Finals appearances).

  Gervin’s best chance happened in ’79, the second year of a peculiar two-spring vacuum with no dominant NBA team, when the Spurs jumped out to a three-games-to-one lead in the Eastern Finals over the aging Bullets. Ice scored 71 points combined in Games 3 and 4 at home, telling SI afterward, “The Bullets know they can’t stop Ice. Ice knows he’s got them on the run.” 20 But the Bullets staved off elimination in Game 5 and shockingly stole Game 6 in Texas, with Ice scoring just 20 points and getting hounded by Grevey and Bobby Dandridge all game. 21

  When Washington went bigger in the second half, Kirkpatrick explained later, “What this personnel switch did was force [San Antonio coach Doug] Moe to decide where to hide Gervin’s lazy, idling defense. On the tricky scorer, Dandridge, or on the power rebounder, [Greg] Ballard?”

  Does that sound like someone you’d want to go to war with? Moe picked Ballard, who finished with a 19–12 and combined with Bobby D for 17 of the last 19 Bullets points. Ice went scoreless in the first quarter of Game 7, headed into halftime with eight, then exploded for 34 in the second half

  … but the Spurs blew a six-point lead in the final three minutes, gave up the winning jumper to Dandridge and became the third team ever to blow a 3–1 lead in a playoff series. Ice completely disappeared in the final three minutes: no points, one brick off the backboard.

  Looking back, that was the seminal moment of Ice’s career: his biggest test, his chance to make the Finals and put himself on the map, and his team made history failing. He’d never get that close again. Can we blame his supporting cast? To some degree, yes. During that 1974–83 stretch, his best teammates were Silas (a stud until he blew out his knee in the ’76 Playoffs), Larry Kenon (a starter on the seventies Head Case All-Stars 22 and All-Time All-Afro teams); 23 Artis Gilmore (on his last legs), Johnny Moore and Mike Mitchell. Not exactly a murderer’s row. Like Jason Kidd, Gervin turned chicken shit into chicken salad to some degree. (By the way, San Antonio’s front office wasn’t helping matters: from 1977 to 1982, San Antonio traded away three first-rounders and took Frankie Sanders, Reggie Johnson and Wiley Peck with the other three.) On the other hand, none of the five most memorable all-offense/no-defense superstars of the past four decades—Gervin, McAdoo, Maravich, Vince and Dominique—ever became the best guy for a Finals team. This can’t be a coincidence. It just can’t. Edge: Sam.

  Winnability. We hinted around this word in the Parish/Worthy sections, so screw it: I’m just creating it. Couldn’t you argue that “winnability” is a specific trait? In other words, does a player’s overall package of skills and intangibles (personality, efficiency, sense of the moment, leadership, teamwork, lack of glaring weaknesses) inadvertently lend itself to a winning situation? It’s hard to imagine Gervin playing for a championship team unless it happened later in his career—a little like McAdoo with the ’82 Lakers, with a contender bringing him off the bench as instant offense 24—or as the second-best player on a team with a franchise big guy like Hakeem, Kareem or Duncan. And even then, I’m not totally sure it would work. Would the ’95 Rockets have cruised to the title if you switched ’82 Gervin with ’95 Drexler? Could they have covered up for his defense? Probably not. 25 On the flip side, you’d have to admit that Sam Jones winning ten rings in twelve seasons ranks absurdly high on the Winnability Scale. He could play either guard spot, didn’t care about stats and made monster plays when it mattered. I’m not sure what’s left. Sam Jones definitely knew The Secret. Big Edge: Sam.

  Clutchness. We just covered Gervin’s clutchness issues. (Lack of clutch-ness? Anti-clutchness?

  A-Rodability? A-Rodianism?) Even when Ice battled Pete Maravich in CBS’s legendary H-O-R-S-E tournament, he blew the clinching shot and Pistol finished him off with two of his patented moves: the sitting-in-the-floor layup and jumping-from-out-of-bounds reverse layup. Meanwhile, Sam’s teams finished 9–0 in Game 7’s and 13–2 in elimination games, with Sam scoring a combined 37 off the bench in Game 7’s against Syracuse and St. Louis, then averaging 30.1 points in eight other Game 7’s or deciding Game 5’s as a starter. You know what’s amazing?

  Sam had so many playoff heroics that I couldn’t even scrape together a complete list. Here are the ones we know for sure: ’62 Philly, Game 7 (27 points, game-winning jumper with two seconds left) … ’62 Lakers, do-or-die Game 6 (35 points in L.A.) … ’62 Lakers, Game 7 (27 points, 5 in OT) … ’63 Cincy, Game 7 (outscored Oscar, 47–43) 26… ’65 Philly, Game 7 (37 points in the

  “Havlicek steals the ball!” game) … ’66 Cincy, Game 5 (34 points in deciding game) … ’66

  Lakers, Game 7 (22 points) … ’68 Sixers, Game 7 (22 points) … ’69 Lakers, must-win Game 4

  (down by one, Sam hits the game-winning jumper at the buzzer) … ’69 Lakers, Game 7 (24 points in L.A.). 27 Sam and Jerry West were known as the Association’s first two clutch scorers for a reason. Big Edge: Sam.

  Defining quote. I’d narrow it down to these two:

  Sam on scoring 2,000 points (1965): “That doesn’t mean a thing. Every guy on this team has the ability to score 2,000 points if that’s what he’s asked to do. There’s a lot of unselfishness by others in those 2,000 points I scored.”

  Gervin on his legacy (1980): “I’m perfectly happy being known as George Gervin, scoring machine, because in this game the person who puts the ball in the hole is the person that usually gets ahead.”

  Which guy would you have wanted as a teammate? Which guy would you have wanted in your NBA foxhole with you? Which guy would you trust with your life on the line in a big game?

  Which guy was predisposed to thriving with great teammates? Please. Edge: Sam.

  We’ll give the last word to Russell (from Second Wind):

  Whenever the pressure was greatest, Sam was eager for the ball. To me, that’s one sign of a champion. Even with all the talent, the mental sharpness, the fun, the confidence and your focus honed down to winning, there’ll be a level of competition where it all evens out. Then the pressure builds, and for a champion it is a test of heart…. Heart in champions has to do with the depth of your motivation, and how well your mind and body react to pressure. It’s concentration—that is, being able to do what you do best under maximum pain and stress.28 Sam Jones has a champion’s heart. On the court he always had something in reserve. You could think he’d been squeezed out of his last drop of strength and cunning, but if you looked closely, you’d see him coming with something else he’d tucked away out of sight. Though sometimes he’d do things that made me want to break him in two, his presence gave me great comfort in key games. In Los Angeles, Jerry West was called “Mr. Clutch,” and he was, but in the seventh game of a championship series, I’ll take Sam over any player who’s ever walked on a court.

  Now I ask you: Would you rather go to war with George Gervin or Sam Jones?

  (I thought so.)

  32. WALT FRAZIER

  Resume: 13 years, 9 quality, 7 All-Stars … Top 5 (’70, ’72, ’74, ’75), Top 10 (’71, ’73) …

  All-Defense (7 1st teams) … Playoffs: 20–6–7 (93 G) … 6-year peak: 22–7–7 … best or 2nd-best player on 2 champs (’70, and ’73 Knicks) and one runner-up (’72)

  If you’re measuring guys by extremes and italicizing “the”
to hammer the point home, Frazier’s resume includes three extremes: one of the best big-game guards ever; one of the best defensive guards ever; and one of the single greatest performances ever (Game 7 of the ’70 Finals, when he notched 36 points, 19 assists, 7 rebounds and 5 steals and outclutched the actual Mr. Clutch). Beyond his pickpocketing skills (terrifying), rebounding (underrated), playmaking (top-notch) and demeanor (always in control), what stood out was Frazier’s Oscar-like ability to get the precise shots he wanted in tight games. You know how McHale had a killer low-post game? Clyde had a killer high-post game. 29 He started 25 feet from the basket, backed his defender down, shaked and baked a few times, settled on his preferred spot near the top of the key, then turned slightly and launched that moonshot jumper right in the guy’s face … swish. 30 That’s what made him so memorable on the road—not just how he always rose to the occasion, but the demoralizing effect those jumpers had on crowds. They knew the jumper was coming (“oh, shit”), they knew it (“shit”), they knew it (“send a double”), they knew it (“shit”) … and then it went in (dead silence).

  Quick tangent: I am too young to remember watching Clyde live, but in my basketball-watching lifetime, only seven guys were crowd-killers: Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isiah, Andrew Toney, and strangely enough, Vinnie Johnson. When those guys got going, you could see the future unfold before it started manifesting itself. We knew it was in the works, our guys knew it, our coaches knew it, everyone knew it … and then the points came in bunches and sucked all forms of life out of the building. It was like frolicking in the ocean, seeing a giant wave coming from fifteen seconds away, then remaining in place and getting crushed by it. Jordan and Bird were the all-time crowd-killers; they loved playing on the road, loved shutting everyone up and considered it the best possible challenge. When Fernando Medina took the famous photo of Jordan’s final shot of the ’98 Finals, that was the definitive crowd-killing moment: an entire section of Utah fans sitting behind the basket, screaming in horror and bracing for the inevitable even as the ball drifted toward the basket. My favorite crowd-killing moment happened after Bird had been fouled in the last few seconds with the Celtics trailing by one, only he wasn’t satisfied with the noise level of the pathetic Clippers crowd , so he stepped away from the line and waved his arms. That’s right, the Legend was imploring the crowd to pump up the volume. I mean, who does that? Do I even need to tell you that he swished the free throws? Probably not.

  Frazier was the most infamous crowd-killer of his generation and, taking it in a slightly different direction, the master of the impact play—whether it was stripping someone at midcourt when the Knicks needed a hoop, dramatically setting up and draining a high-post jumper or whatever. You always hear about guys like Gervin or English who finished with a “quiet” 39; Clyde routinely finished with a loud 25 and four deafening steals. His relationship with the MSG faithful ranked among the most unique in sports; they appreciated him to the fullest, understood exactly what he brought to the table and connected to him spiritually in an atypical way. When the Knicks struggled after Reed and DeBusschere retired, those same fans took out their frustrations by turning on Frazier as if he were to blame. Eventually they gave him away as compensation for signing free agent Jim Cleamons in 1977, an ignominious end to a particularly dignified career. Clyde was a lightning rod in every respect: he carried himself with particular style during a fairly bland era, became an iconic Manhattan personality because of his muttonchop sideburns, mink coats, Rolls-Royces, swank apartments, stamp-of-approval party appearances and enviable bachelor life, 31 and on top of that, he stood out for the way he connected with those MSG crowds. So maybe it made sense that his career ended in such a messy, ugly fashion; if you connect with a crowd positively when things are going well, maybe you connect negatively when everything is falling apart. Fans are fickle and that’s just the way it is.

  Two lingering questions about Frazier. First, his career ended so abruptly that it’s hard to make sense of it. He played nine good years and then was cooked without a drug problem or major injury to blame. Bizarre. And second, he peaked during the best possible era for his specific gifts—no three-point line, no slash-and-kick, no complex defensive strategies, mostly physical guards imposing their will and playing that high-post game. Not until the merger did NBA teams start differentiating between point guards and shooting guards. Before that? You were just a guard. Nobody cared who brought the ball up. Was it a coincidence that Frazier lost his fastball immediately after the merger, when the sport became faster and speedy point guards such as John Lucas, Norm Nixon, Gus Williams, Kevin Porter and Johnny Davis became all the rage?32 Hard to say. Had Frazier come along ten years later, maybe he would have been a hybrid guard like Dennis Johnson … and maybe he wouldn’t have been as effective. Again, we don’t know. 33 But we do know that an inordinate number of fans from Frazier’s generation—including a few that influenced me over the years—have Clyde ranked among the greatest ever. For instance, I always found it interesting that my father, a lifelong basketball fan and thirty-five-year NBA season ticket holder who remembers everyone from Cousy to LeBron, ranks Jordan and Frazier as his all-time back-court. So maybe I’m not old enough to remember seeing Frazier kill a crowd, but I grew up with my father telling me, “Frazier killed us. He was an assassin. You didn’t want any part of him in a big game—he was always the best guy on the court. I’ve never been happier to see anyone retire.” And that’s good enough for me.

  31. DAVE COWENS

  Resume: 11 years, 8 quality, 7 All-Stars … ’73 MVP … ’75 MVP runner-up … ’71 Rookie of the Year … Top 10 (’73, ’75, ’76) … All-Defense (2x) … Playoffs: 14.4 RPG (5th all-time) …

  4-year peak: 20–16–4, 46% FG … 4-year Playoffs peak: 21–16–4 (50 g’s) … best or 2nd-best player on 2 champs (’74, ’76 Celts), 21–15–4 (36 g’s) … starter for 68-win team (’73)

  When Dad bought our second season ticket in 1977, our new section hugged one side of the player’s tunnel and the wives’ section hugged the other side.34 Hondo’s wife (or, as Brent Musburger called her, “John Havlicek’s lovely wife, Beth”) and kids sat in the parallel row to our right during that first season. I remember checking out Hondo’s daughter from ten feet away and thinking, “Someday I’ll marry her and I can spend Christmas with the Hondos!” Then Hondo retired and the wives’ section was in constant flux, a little like how the cast of Law and Order changes every year. When Scott Wedman joined the team in 1982, we also picked up his beautiful spouse, Kim, who easily could have passed for the hottest daughter on Eight Is Enough. After we traded for Bill Walton, his wife and kids crammed into that three-seat row next to the railing—like seeing five people stack into the backseat of a Volkswagen or something—only every kid had Walton’s gigantic head crammed onto a tiny body. 35 You get the idea. The wives/girlfriends/families invariably filled in the blanks with each player and strengthened opinions you already had about them. Danny Ainge’s wife couldn’t have been more cute and wholesome. Bird’s wife was unsurprisingly normal and down to earth (like the Patty Scialfa of the NBA). Reggie Lewis’s wife was brash and loud; she clearly wore the pants in the family. Dino Radja married a leggy European who carried herself like Brigitte Nielsen in Rocky IV; you could picture them chainsmoking after games while Dino complained about Todd Day. Sherman Douglas’ wife showed up in saggy jogging pants and ate like a Shetland pony for three hours. Dee Brown had one of those “Shit, I didn’t realize I was going to be famous when I married her” wives as a rookie, won the Dunk Contest and soon traded up for the best-looking wife of that decade.

  Nobody stood out more than Robert Parish’s not-so-better half, a Gina Gershon look-alike who carried on like a profane bunshee, to the degree that she’d scream at officials as everyone else wondered, “Hey, do you think the Chief is just afraid to break up with her because he doesn’t want to wake up with his house on fire?” An aspiring singer who sang the national anthem before a few Celtics games,36 Mrs. Chief
detested referee Jake O’Donnell so much that she vaulted over two other girlfriends at halftime of one game, leaned over the railing, showered him with obscenities and actually had to be held back like a hockey player. For a second, we thought she might break free, hurtle off the railing and deliver a flying elbow like Macho Man Savage … and if it happened, none of us would have been even remotely surprised. She missed her true calling by about fifteen years: reality TV. Too bad. 37

  What does this have to do with Dave Cowens? Near the end of his career we noticed a new lady started sitting in the wives’ section: She looked a little like Linda Blair, only with frizzy reddish brown hair and a sane smile. She couldn’t have been more pleasant to everyone who approached her. You could have easily imagined her baking cookies every afternoon. We couldn’t figure out which player she was dating for the first few games, finally putting two and two together when Cowens was heading out to the court after halftime and stopped to talk to her for a few seconds with a big shit-eating smile on his face. I remember thinking the same thing as everyone else:

  “Good God, Dave Cowens has a girlfriend!” How was this possible? The guy had a competitiveness disorder, playing every game in fifth gear, berating officials like they were busboys, bellowing out instructions to teammates, diving for loose balls, crashing over three guys for rebounds, battling bigger centers game after game and getting into fights at least once a month. Whenever Cowens fouled out, he stood in disbelief with his hands stuck on his hips, staring the offending official down and hoping the guy might change his mind. Don’t you realize what you just did? This means I can’t play anymore! Don’t you realize what you just fucking did? The Newlin/flopping story doubled as the ultimate Cowens moment: after eight years of dealing with lousy referees and opponents who didn’t respect the sport, he finally snapped and took the law in his own hands. Even after all these years, he remains my father’s favorite Celtic—the guy who never took a night off, the guy who cared just a little bit more than everyone else. 38