Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  Con: Inexplicably kissed Magic before every game of the ’87 and ’88 Finals. We’ve never heard a good explanation. Ever. 16

  ou can’t discuss Isiah’s career without delving into his incredible omission from the Dream Team. The reasons were simple: supposedly Jordan wouldn’t play if Isiah was involved, and enough of the other players despised him that the committee decided, “Screw it, Isiah isn’t worth the trouble.” Understood. But they picked that team after the summer of ’91, with Isiah coming off three Finals appearances and two Conference Finals appearances as one of the five most important players of that generation (along with Moses, Bird, Jordan and Magic). Leaving him off the Dream Team was like leaving Billy Joel out of the “We Are the World” video.17 You just couldn’t do it. His stats don’t totally reflect his impact during the first ten years of his career—although three straight first-team All-NBA’s, A Finals MVP and back-to-back titles certainly help—and the Dream Team would have cemented his legacy. So he was robbed. And then some.

  One last thought: say what you want about All-Star Games, but they’re an accurate snapshot of who mattered in every given year. It’s like being a dad and getting the biggest leg of the chicken. In All-Star Games, the daddies get the biggest legs (or in this case, minutes). So that got me thinking

  … who were the chicken leg guys in All-Star history, the ones who simply had to play big minutes because they were who they were? Leaving out centers (it’s too easy for two great centers to split minutes in an All-Star Game), here’s how the career minute totals of forwards and guards broke down (minimum: six All-Stars except for LeBron/Wade) …

  Averaged 28-plus minutes: Jordan (13 games, 382 minutes); Oscar (12/380); Cousy (12/368); Pettit (11/360); West (12/341); Magic (11/338); Elgin (11/321); Isiah (11/318); Doc (11/316); Bird (10/287); LeBron (5/151)

  Averaged 23–27 minutes: Havlicek (13/303); Kobe (11/298); Duncan (11/263); Garnett (11/260); Iverson (9/239); Gervin (9/215); Barkley (9/209); Lucas (8/183); Frazier (7/183); Pippen (7/173); McGrady (7/172); Wade (5/127)

  Averaged 18–22 minutes: Hayes (12/264); Malone (12/244); Greer (10/207); Stockton (10, 197); Wilkens (9/182); R. Allen (9/182); Drexler (9/166); Archibald (6/162); Wilkins (8/159); English (8/158); Nowitzki (8/146); Worthy (7/142)

  oly shit! Other than the random appearance from Lucas, the chicken leg breakdown went exactly like you’d think it would go, right? The Stockton/Malone numbers were low because they never cared about playing in their later years; Kobe’s numbers were skewed because he only played 3 minutes in the ’08 game; and the Garnett/Duncan numbers were low because they cost each other minutes splitting time. Other than that, it’s a surprisingly accurate reflection of which noncenters mattered most over the last fifty-plus years. And that’s the thing: Isiah mattered. He deserved to be on the original Dream Team. It’s true. 18

  22. KEVIN GARNETT

  Resume: 14 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … ’04 MVP … ’00 runner-up … Top 5 (’00, ’03,

  ’04, ’08), Top 10 (’01, ’02, ’05), Top 15 (’98, ’07) … All-Defense (9x, seven 1st) … Defensive Player of the Year (’08) … ’03 All-Star MVP … leader: rebounds (4x) … 3-year peak: 23–14–6, 50% FG … ’04 Playoffs: 24–15–5, 43.4 MPG (18 G) … ’08 Playoffs: 20–11–3, 50%

  FG (26 G) … missed Playoffs three straight years … 2nd-best player on champ (’08 Celtics)

  … 20K-10K Club

  Right after graduating from college, I became hooked on Watergate and spent a few weeks reading the Woodward/Bernstein books, watching and rewatching All the President’s Men and wasting too much time figuring out Deep Throat’s identity. That was right up there with “Who killed JFK?” for me. Who was Deep Throat? I had to know. Every time I watched the movie on cable from 1992 to 2005—and since it resides in my permanent “I can’t pass this up even though I just watched it three weeks ago” rotation, that was often—my favorite scenes were those hushed conversations in the dark parking garage with Bob Redford (playing Woodward) and Hal Holbrook (playing Throat). They always nailed the lighting just right; you could kinda see Holbrook, but not totally; and he was always sucking on a cigarette, acting furtively, talking in a raspy voice and doing everything you ever thought Deep Throat would do. When we finally learned in 2005 that Throat was a former FBI and CIA executive named Mark Felt, I was crushed. It was more fun not knowing. Turns out Deep Throat was a failing grandfather who wanted to make his family some cash before he croaked, so he outed himself for a quickie book. I found the whole thing wildly disappointing. Things were much more fun when Hal Holbrook was Deep Throat, you know? And if you’re an NBA fan, maybe it was more fun when Kevin Garnett toiled away in Minnesota as we wondered,

  “Exactly how great is this guy?”

  We didn’t know the answer and were fine with this. We like arguing about this stuff. Here was one of the greatest forwards ever, one of the fiercest competitors in any sport, someone with a chance to finish with historic scoring and rebounding numbers, one of the killer defensive players of his era … and we had no clue how good he really was. He played with six quality players in his first twelve seasons: Joe Smith, Stephon Marbury, Terrell Brandon, Sam Cassell, Sprewell and Wally Szczerbiak. He never played for a decent coach and certainly didn’t have a cagey front office pulling strings for him.19 His NBA clock was ticking and he knew it; he had become an attractive single woman in her late thirties with rumbling ovaries. Garnett’s famed intensity slowly morphed into something else: frustration and despair, with a touch of “I might kill everyone on my team tonight” thrown in. Still, he couldn’t ask out. He just couldn’t do it to everyone in ’Sota. To keep the domestic analogies going, he was like an unhappy husband who couldn’t stomach the thought of divorce because he didn’t want to hurt the kids.

  There wasn’t a more tragic figure in the league. Heading into that 2006–7 season, Minnesota released Paul Shirley, who sent me a gushing email about KG’s everyday brilliance and declared that if KG had played on a contender his entire career, “people would speak of him as a candidate for best player ever.” Would that become KG’s legacy: the coulda-shoulda-woulda star who ended up being the Ernie Banks or Barry Sanders of basketball? Every time I watched him play in person, I always admired his command of the room, how he seemed larger than life at all times, how it was nearly impossible to stop glancing at him. The guy just seemed famous. He stood out. Applying my world-renowned Foreigner Test, if you brought an exchange student to his first NBA game and the guy was from Zimbabwe or Kenya and had no idea what anyone looked like, then you asked him to watch everyone warming up and pick the guy who seemed like he should be the best guy, Garnett would have been the one he picked.

  That charisma never translated to playoff success: The T-Wolves got knocked out of the first round in Garnett’s first seven Playoffs appearances. In nine elimination games over that stretch (Minny won two of them), Garnett averaged an 18–11–6 and shot 40 percent.20 Things turned during his MVP season in 2004, when Garnett had a certified monster Game 7 (a 32–21 against the Kings) before Cassell got injured and they fell to the Lakers. Then the Spree/Cassell dynamic imploded, Minnesota made all the wrong moves to replace them (Ricky Davis and Marko Jaric, anyone?) and Garnett became the only top forty Pyramid guy to miss the playoffs for three straight years. (One fun tidbit during this stretch: We learned KG kept in shape by running on the beaches of Malibu every summer. The sheer comedy of a seven-foot black guy sprinting along the sands of the whitest, most uptight place on the planet can’t be calculated. Some of his neighbors probably hadn’t seen a black person in twenty years. Imagine them glancing up from their morning coffee on the deck and seeing Garnett sprinting toward their beach house.) Wasn’t it his job to carry a subpar team? Wasn’t that what Barkley did in the late eighties and early nineties in Philly? And how much did his personality have to do with it? Every time I watched a Wolves-Clippers game during that stretch, I always pictured Garnett snapping afterward and killing everyone in the lo
cker room except for Ricky Davis, who would have calmly watched the whole thing unfold while sipping from a malt 40. Poor Garnett had become the Tiffani-Amber Thiessen of the NBA, someone with all the tools who should have been more successful than he was. It just didn’t make sense. 21

  By now, the Garnett vs. Duncan argument was in full swing and centered around a hypothetical, impossible-to-prove argument: “If Duncan had Garnett’s teammates from 1998 to 2007 and vice versa, wouldn’t KG be the guy with four rings?” I thought that was bullshit—what set Duncan apart was his ability to raise his game to another level in big moments. Just as selfless and competitive as Garnett, Duncan channeled his intensity and saved peak performances for when they mattered most. He knew there was a crucial difference between a ho-hum January game in Atlanta and a must-win playoff game in L.A. He developed reliable mental alerts like “Unless I grab 20 rebounds tonight, we’re going to lose” or “If I don’t take over this game right now and score every time down the floor, we’re cooked.” Meanwhile, Garnett never wavered from how he played—ever—even if it meant passing the game-winning shot because some untalented doofus like Troy Hudson had a better look.22 Once Pierce and Allen were flanking him in Boston, that freed him to do Garnett things (protect the rim, make high-percentage decisions, control the boards, draw centers away from the hoop with his killer 18-footer, throw up a 20–12 every night and raise everyone else’s play with his unparalleled intensity) without dealing with the pressure of making big shots. After 25 up-and-down playoff games fueled the “Is KG clutch?” debate yet again, 23 Garnett stood near Boston’s bench before Game 6 of the 2008 Finals, muttered a few things to psyche himself up and head-butted the basket support as hard as he could. Watching from about fifty feet away, my dad and I raced to make the “Uh-oh, I think we’re getting killer KG”

  comment. The signature moment: a three-point play when KG got knocked down and flung a line drive that banked in, then lay on the floor with his arms raised, screaming at the ceiling as the crowd went bonkers. We were like 18,000 people pouring Red Bull down his throat that night. He finished with a 26–14, played his usual terrific defense and found his swagger: a level of passion and intensity unique to him and only him. Let the record show that KG played one of his better games to clinch a championship. It’s something Elvin Hayes can’t say, or Karl Malone, or Patrick Ewing, or Chris Webber, or anyone else from the not-so-clutch group that Garnett escaped.

  What Garnett did for the ’08 Celtics can’t be measured by statistics; it would belittle what happened. He transformed the culture of a perennial doormat. He taught teammates to care about defense, practice, professionalism, and leaving everything they had on the court. He taught them to stop caring about stats and start caring about wins. He single-handedly transformed the careers of three youngsters (Rajon Rondo, Leon Powe and Kendrick Perkins), one veteran (Pierce), and one embattled coach (Doc Rivers). He played every exhibition game like it was the seventh game of the Finals. During blowouts, he cheered on his teammates like it was a tight game; because of that, the bench guys did the same and turned into a bunch of giddy March Madness scrubs. I have never watched a more contagious, selfless, team-oriented player on a daily basis. By Thanksgiving, the entire team followed his lead. Every time a young player went for his own stats or snapped at the coach, KG set him straight. Every time one of his teammates was intimidated, KG had his back. Every time one of his teammates got knocked down, KG rushed over to pick him up; eventually, four teammates were rushing over to help that fifth guy up. Every time an opponent kept going for a shot after a whistle, KG defiantly blocked the shot just out of principle. 24 Eventually, everyone started doing it. No shots after the whistle against the Celtics. That was the rule.

  So it was a series of little things, baby steps if you will, but they added up to something much bigger and built the backbone of an eventual championship. A wonderful all-around player, ultimately Kevin Garnett was only as good as his teammates. And I’m fine with that. We’ll remember him like Jimmy Page or Keith Richards, a gifted guitarist who needed an equally gifted band to make a memorable album … and any solo album would ultimately be forgettable.25 That was our answer. Unlike with Deep Throat, I’m glad we know the truth.

  21. BOB COUSY

  Resume: 13 years, 13 quality, 13 All-Stars … ’57 MVP … Top 5 (’52, ’53, ’54, ’55, ’56, ’57,

  ’58, ’59, ’60, ’61), Top 10 (’62, ’63) … two All-Star MVPs … records: most assists in one half (19), most playoff FTs made (30) … leader: assists (8x) … 2nd-best player on 6 champs (Boston) … 3-year Playoffs peak: 20–6–9 (32 G) … career: 18–8–5, 38% FG, 80% FT

  The Cooz should start fading historically soon—if it hasn’t happened already—which is one of the reasons I wanted to write this book. We can’t let that happen to a beloved Holy Cross grad. Future generations will point to his field goal shooting and say, “By any statistical calculation, Nash and Stockton were decidedly better.” Fortunately, I’m here. Allow me to make the case for Cooz in four parts:

  1. His poor shooting (37.5 percent for his career) was deceivingly abysmal because he peaked in the fifties, an unglorious decade for field goal percentages and scoring. Of the 66 players who played at least 300 games from 1951 to 1960, Ken Sears led everyone (45 percent), Freddie Scolari brought up the bottom (33 percent) and Cousy ranked forty-second (37 percent). Stretch that to a 500-game minimum and twenty-two players qualify: Neil Johnston leads the way (44 percent), Jack McMahon brings up the rear (34 percent) and Cousy ranks fifteenth (just three spots behind alleged deadeye Dolph Schayes). Comparing him to his point guard rivals from 1951 to 1963

  (400-game minimum), Gene Shue shot 39.9 percent, Dick McGuire shot 39.6 percent, Bobby Wanzer shot 39.2 percent, Cousy shot 37 percent, Andy Phillip shot 36.8

  percent, Slater Martin shot 36.5 percent … and Cousy’s teams consistently averaged more shots and points than anyone else. 26 Fast-forward to the high-scoring eighties: of the 124 players who played 500 games or more from 1981 to 1990, Artis Gilmore led the way at 63 percent, Elston Turner brought up the back at 43 percent and Isiah Thomas ranked 105th (46 percent). If you narrow the list to point guards (twenty-three in all), Mo Cheeks ranks first (53 percent), Darnell Valentine ranks last (43 percent) and Isiah ranks fifteenth. In other words, Isiah was actually a worse shooter for his era than Cousy. J-Kidd sucked more than both of them combined, the seventh-worst shooter from 1995 to 2008 of anyone who played 500 games or more (40 percent). While we’re on the subject, Baron Davis (41 percent career), Kenny Anderson (42

  percent), Iverson (42.6 percent) and Tim Hardaway (43 percent) were poorer shooters for their respective eras. So you can’t penalize the Cooz for peaking during a quantity-over-quality era of shot selection.

  2. You know how everyone makes a fuss about that stupid Tiny Archibald record? Cousy finished second in points and first in assists in ’54 and ’55; unlike Tiny’s Royals, the Celtics made the playoffs both times. He cracked the top four in scoring four straight times (’52–’55), finished in the top ten in scoring four other times, never finished lower than third in assists in thirteen seasons and won eight straight assist titles. Let’s say we assigned points for every top ten finish in scoring or assists per game—10 points for first place, 9 for second and so on, with 0 points for anything outside the top ten—then tallied up the combined points for each player’s career. 27 Here’s how the top point guards of all-time finish with that scoring system: Oscar, 181; Cousy, 164; Stockton, 139; West, 102; 28 Kidd, 96; Magic, 94; Wilkens, 89; Tiny, 87; Isiah, 64; Payton, 51. Just for kicks, a second list with the same scoring system, only first-team All-NBA’s are worth 10 and second-team All-NBA’s worth 5: Oscar, 281; Cousy, 274; West, 212; Magic, 189; Stockton, 189; Kidd, 151; Tiny, 127; Isiah, 104; Payton, 96; Wilkens, 89. I hate the phrase “devil’s advocate” because it makes me think of that excruciating Keanu Reeves/Al Pacino movie that couldn’t even get the Charlize Theron nude scene right, but screw it: can you thin
k of a valid reason why West (one title) and Oscar (one title) have endured historically as all-timers, but everyone has been so anxious to dump Cousy (six titles)? You can’t play the “he couldn’t have hacked it once the game sped up” card (like we used with Mikan earlier) because Cooz and Bob Pettit were the only NBA superstars who thrived pre-Russell and post-Russell. (If anything, Cooz was better off in a run-and-gun era—he led the league in assists as late as 1959 and 1960

  and made second-team All-NBA in the final two years of his career.) You can’t play the “he couldn’t shoot” card because that’s untrue. You can’t play the “Russell made his career” card because he was better statistically pre-Russell and made just as many All-NBA teams without him. As recently as 1980, Cousy made the NBA’s 35th Anniversary twelve-man team. So what happened?

  3. Cousy got screwed historically by his first four years (the pre-shot-clock era, when nobody scored more than 75–85 points a game) and the last five years (when they started counting assists differently). Cousy averaged 8.9 assists for a ’59 Celtics team that averaged 116.4 points per game; John Stockton averaged 12.4 assists for a ’94 Jazz team that averaged 101.9 points per game. How am I supposed to make sense of that? 29

  How do we know Cousy wasn’t averaging 15–16 assists per game if we applied the current criteria? By all accounts, nobody ran a better fast break and the stats reflect it: eight straight titles and four times where he finished with at least 30 percent more dimes than the number two guy. Cousy finished his career in 1963 with 6,945 assists; the next-highest guy (Dick McGuire) had 4,205. So it’s not like he was a little bit better than his peers, or a tad better, or even just better. He was significantly better. 4. Like fellow pioneers Erving, Russell and Baylor, Cousy deserves credit for pushing basketball in a more entertaining, fan-friendly direction. Here’s how SI’ s Herbert Warren Wind 30 described his impact in January ’56: