by Simmons Bill
Digging a little further, only two modern players (Bird and Magic) played with enough unselfishness and intuition that those qualities permeated to everyone else. They lifted their teammates offensively much the way Russell lifted his teammates defensively, a domino effect that can’t be measured by any statistic or formula other than wins. Play with Bird or Magic long enough and you started seeing angles that you’d never ordinarily see … and that went for the fans, too. Jordan may have peaked as the greatest individual player ever, but he never brought everyone else to a different level like Bird and Magic did. If you loved basketball—if you truly loved it—you treasured them both and savored every season, every series, every game, every play, every moment. That’s just the way it was. They brought the game to a better place. Ultimately, it didn’t matter which one of them ranked higher on the Pyramid.
(Or so I keep telling myself.)
3. KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
Resume: 20 years, 13 quality, 15 All-Stars … Finals MVP: ’71, ’85 … MVP: ’71, ’72, ’74,
’76, ’77, ’80 … Simmons MVP (’73) … ’70 Rookie of the Year … Top 5 (’71, ’72, ’73, ’74,
’76, ’77, ’80, ’81, ’84, ’86), Top 10 (’70, ’78, ’79, ’83, ’85) … All-Defense (1 1x, five 1st) …
leader: scoring (2x), rebounds (2x), blocks (4x), FG% (1x), minutes (1x) … career: points (1st), minutes (1st), FGs (1st), 25–11, 55.9% FG (9th) … Playoffs: 24–11–3, 237 games (1st), most FGs … best player on 4 champs (’70 Bucks, ’80 Lakers, ’82 Lakers, ’85 Lakers) and 3
runner-ups … ’71, ’74, ’80 playoffs: 30–15–4 (45 G) … member of 35K-15K Club. 78
Nobody in NBA history can approach the next two lines:
Kareem, 1971: 27–19–3, 61% FG, Finals MVP
Kareem, 1985: 26–9–5, 61% FG, Finals MVP
Chew on that one for a second. Kareem took home Finals MVPs fourteen seasons apart—once during year three of the Nixon presidency, once during year five of the Reagan presidency. 79
Things that happened between those two trophies: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II; Watergate and Nixon’s resignation; John Belushi’s rise to stardom and subsequent overdose; the Cambodia bombings; Hulkmania and Wrestle-Mania I; the rise and fall of disco; Battle of the Network Stars; The Deer Hunter and Coming Home; John Lennon’s assassination; the Munich Massacre; eleven seasons of M*A*S*H; the apex and descent of John Travolta, Chevy Chase, Farrah Fawcett and Burt Reynolds; Atari and Intellivision; PacMan and Ms. PacMan; Coach’s real-life death on Cheers; Mark Spitz, Bruce Jenner, Nadia Comaneci, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mary Lou Retton and Carl Lewis; “Who shot J.R.?”; the Iran hostage crisis; season one of Miami Vice; Patty Hearst’s abduction; Saturday Night Fever; the creation of home computers, Apple and Microsoft; three Ali-Frazier fights; the first three Rocky and Jaws movies; the birth of rap; U2 and Madonna; the Cambodia bombings; the birth of cable TV, ESPN and MTV. By 1985, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen were the four biggest stars on the planet, the Cold War was at an all-time fervor, and Kareem was still cranking out Finals MVP trophies.
Only Jack Nicklaus can claim such extended athletic superiority, winning the Masters twenty-three years apart (1963 and 1986)—but really, what’s more impressive, peaking over fifteen years in basketball, or peaking over twenty-three years in a sport that can be played with love handles and a potbelly? Kareem made first-team All-NBA’s fifteen seasons apart. From 1971
to 1980, he captured six MVP awards and should have won seven. For the first seven years of his career, he averaged a 30–16–5 with 54 percent shooting. For the first twelve years (1970–1981), he never averaged less than a 24–10. From 1970 to 1986 (an astonishing seventeen-year span), he averaged between 21.5 and 34.5 points and made between 51 percent and 60 percent of his shots. He’s one of the most durable superstars in sports history, missing just 80 of 1640 regular season games, cracking the 80-plus mark eleven times, playing 237 of a possible 238 playoff games and logging over 65,000 minutes in all. 80 He played for six championship teams. He reached eleven Finals and fourteen Conference Finals. His teams averaged 56 wins per season, dipped below .500
just twice and finished with a .600-plus winning percentage sixteen times. After his fortieth birthday, the ’87 Lakers called consecutive “we must score or we will lose” plays for him in the last 45 seconds of their biggest game (Game 4 at Boston): a delayed screen /alley-oop that tied it, then a post play in which he drew a foul. In a do-or-die Game 6 of the ’88 Finals, the Lakers called time with 27 seconds to play, trailing by one, and ran their biggest play of the season for their forty-one-year-old center; he drew a foul and nailed both free throws for the eventual victory.
They relied on him at that advanced age for one reason: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the surest two points in NBA history. Listed at 7-foot-2 but definitely two inches taller—at least81—his unstoppable sky hook remains the only basketball shot that couldn’t be blocked, an artistic achievement because of its consistency and efficiency. Every sky hook looked the same: in one motion, Kareem blocked off the defender with his left arm, swung his right arm over his head, reached as high as he could and flicked the basketball with his right wrist. Swish. Since defenders couldn’t dream of challenging the release, they settled on making him miserable, pounding him like a blocking sled—with tacit approval from the officials, of course 82—turning every 9-footer into a 13-footer and living with the odds from there. What else could they do? Kareem never needed a plan B, making him the Groundhog Day of NBA superstars. Fans struggled for ways to connect with him and failed, incapable of being thrilled by someone so predictable and aloof. Maybe it didn’t help that Kareem skipped the ’68 Olympics in protest of America’s racial climate, 83 or that he bristled at the public’s uneasiness about his religion and resented everyone’s impossibly high expectations. He handled every interview like he was disarming a hand grenade: too smart for dumb questions, too serious for frivolous jokes, too reserved for any semblance of personal candor. Unlike Chamberlain, he didn’t have a compulsive need to be loved; he just wanted to be left alone. And for the most part, that’s what fans did. When he changed his name a few weeks after Milwaukee won the ’71 title, the NBA’s dominant player was suddenly an introverted, intermittently sullen Muslim who towered over every center except Wilt, abhorred the press, relied on a robotic hook shot and pushed away the general public. You wouldn’t exactly throw in a “Good times!” to end the previous sentence.
(Note that’s too important to be a footnote: I always liked the fact that the best two athletes to adopt Muslim names happened to pick tremendously cool names—Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. According to the website for Muslim names that I just Googled twenty seconds ago, Kareem’s name means “generous, noble, friendly, precious and distinguished.” I will fight off the obligatory dig about the pomposity of that choice because I promised a potshot-free zone. But imagine if he’d picked “Khustar,” which means “surrounded by happiness.” Would Kareem have been as imposing with a name like Khustar Abdul-Jabbar? Probably not. What if he’d gone with Musharraf, which means “one who is honored or exalted”? Musharraf Abdul-Jabaar? I don’t think so. Not to to sound like Colonel James, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar … that’s a great fucking name!
By the way, my favorite Muslim name on that website: Khasib means “fertile, productive, and profuse.” Should I make the Shawn Kemp joke or do you want to do it? Go ahead. You take it. Let’s move on.)
But that’s how it went through the 1970s. We kept hoping someone would supplant him and nobody did. Kareem’s public stature suffered for four unrelated reasons: the goofy combination of his afro, facial hair and goggles added to his detachment (it almost seemed like a Halloween mask); his trade demands (Milwaukee finally obliged in 1975) made him seem like just another petulant black athlete who wanted his way (the public perception, not the reality); 1977’s sucker punch of Kent Benson went over like a fart in church; and his ongoing battle with migra
ines made fans wonder if he was looking for excuses not to play. So what if the goggles were a result of his eyes getting poked so many times that doctors worried about permanent damage, that Benson elbowed him first, that Milwaukee had a lousy supporting cast and no Muslim population, that his headaches left him unable to function? Kareem never received the benefit of the doubt—not from anyone, not once, not ever. People grumbled that he didn’t give a crap, mailed in games, played on cruise control, failed to make teammates better and only cared about money. That perception faded once Magic turned the Lakers into the league’s most entertaining team, breathing life into Kareem’s career in the process. Sports Illustrated ran a January 1980 feature with the headline “A Different Drummer” and the subhead “After years of moody introspection, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is coming out of his shell.” He made a well-received cameo in a comedy called Airplane that blew everyone away, playing himself as a pilot with the alias “Roger Murdock.” A young passenger recognizes him and “Roger” denies it, leading to this exchange. 84
KID: I think you’re the greatest, but my dad says you don’t work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, you don’t even run down court. And that you don’t really try … except during the Playoffs.
KAREEM: The hell I don’t. Listen, kid, I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes!
y his last scene, when Kareem was being lugged from the cockpit with his Laker uniform and goggles on, everyone had the same reaction. Kareem has a sense of humor? What? He would have cruised to 1980’s Comeback Personality of the Year Award if his single greatest playing moment—when he sprained an ankle in Game 5 of the ’80 Finals, limped back in with the Lakers trailing, finished off a 40-point performance on one leg and willed them to a crucial victory—hadn’t happened on tape delay and been overshadowed by Magic’s series-clinching 42–15–7 two days later. 85 Just like that, Kareem’s likability window had closed. The struggling Association moved forward with Bird and Magic, hitting its stride in the mid-eighties as Kareem settled into a new role as the aging, “How the hell is he still doing it?” superstar. And here’s where memories can be unfair: Kareem’s last six seasons (1984–89) unfortunately doubled as his most-seen stretch because the league’s TV ratings took off. Few remember him demolishing the
’71 Bullets, sinking the season-saving sky hook in double OT of the ’74 Finals or hobbling around to save the ’80 Finals; everyone remembers when he couldn’t rebound, couldn’t keep Moses off the boards (Kareem was thirty-six at the time, by the way), couldn’t protect the rim, slowed L.A.’s fast break, lost his hair and hung around for one awkward season too long. The thing that made him greater than Wilt—his staggering longevity—wounded the perception of his career after the fact. Wilt broke every record. Russell won eleven titles. Jordan dominated the nineties. Kareem? He’s the moody guy who peaked during the NBA’s darkest era and wouldn’t leave when it was time. What’s fun about celebrating that?
Since Kareem was measured against Wilt from the moment he started popping armpit hair, let’s
keep the tradition going here. We already debunked the myth about Wilt’s “inferior” supporting cast, but for the record, Wilt played with seven Pyramid guys (Greer, Arizin, West, Baylor, Cunningham, Thurmond and Goodrich) and Kareem played with five (Dandridge, Oscar, Worthy, McAdoo and Magic). Wilt’s supporting cast picked up for the last two-thirds of his career (1965–74); Kareem’s only picked up in the last half (1980–89). And Wilt never dealt with anything approaching Kareem’s shit sandwich in the 1970s, when his only elite teammates were Oscar (’71 and ’72), Dandridge (’71 through ’75) and Jamaal Wilkes (’78 and ’79). From ’73
through ’79, Kareem didn’t play with a single All-Star or elite point guard. 86 In twenty seasons, he only played with one power forward who averaged ten rebounds: the immortal Cornell Warner in 1975. When he dragged the ’74 Bucks to the Finals, their fourth and fifth leading “scorers” were Ron Washington and Jon McGlocklin. When the Lakers acquired him in the summer of ’75, they had to give up their best young players (Brian Winters, David Meyers and Junior Bridgeman) and left Kareem without a decent foundation. When he dragged the ’77 Lakers to the Western Finals without Kermit Washington and Lucius Allen (both injured), his crunch-time teammates were four piddling swingmen (Cazzie Russell, Earl Tatum, Don Chaney and Don Ford, with no rebounder or point guard to be seen). 87 Um, why is Wilt the one remembered as being “saddled” with a poor supporting cast again? Even Kareem admitted in 1980 to SI, “It’s the misunderstanding most people have about basketball that one man can make a team. One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team … [and] I have played on only three good teams.”
As for Wilt’s statistical “superiority,” we already established that the Dipper arrived during an optimal time: a mostly white league, no “modern” centers other than Russell, modified offensive goaltending, more possessions, and a less physical game that allowed him to play 48 minutes without any real physical repercussions. Those factors inflated his numbers, whereas Kareem’s only advantage from 1970 to 1976 was dilution/overexpansion. Compare Wilt’s third season (’62, his best statistically) with Kareem’s third season (’72, his best statistically) and Wilt’s season looks significantly better on paper. 88
Then you keep digging:
1962 starting centers: Russell (Hall of Famer); Walt Bellamy, Wayne Embry, Johnny Kerr (quality starters); Clyde Lovellette, Darrall Imhoff, Walter Dukes, Ray Felix (stiffs)
1972 starting centers: Chamberlain, Reed, Cowens, Thurmond, Unseld, Lanier, Elvin Hayes, (Hall of Famers); Jim McDaniels, Bellamy, Elmore Smith, Tom Boerwinkle (quality starters); Neal Walk, Jim Fox, Bob Rule, Walt Wesley, Dale Schuleter (stiffs)
Throw in a dearth of athletic power forwards in ’62 and Wilt could run amok like the killer bear from The Edge. Kareem’s pivot opponents were undeniably better, as were the new wave of forwards fighting him for rebounds (Paul Silas, Bill Bridges, Clyde Lee, Happy Hairston, Connie Hawkins, Spencer Haywood, Sidney Wicks, Dave DeBusschere, Jerry Lucas and so on). As for the stylistic changes from 1962 to 1972:
Can you say “statistical inflation”? Look at their percentages of their teams’ averages in the following categories.
To recap: Wilt scored 40 percent of his team’s points; Kareem scored 30 percent but did it more efficiently in a more physical era (57.4 percent shooting compared to Wilt’s 50.6 percent); Kareem grabbed just 2.8 percent less of his team’s available rebounds. Throw in Wilt’s era-specific advantages (covered earlier), all those extra Philly possessions (roughly 23–24 per game) and the difference in wins (63 for Milwaukee, 49 for Philly) and Kareem’s ’72 season may have been more impressive than Wilt’s legendary ’62 season. In fact, Kareem’s 35–17 has only been approached four times since 1972: McAdoo (31–15 in ’74, 34–14 in ’75), Moses (31–15 in ’82) and Shaq (30–14 in ’00). And it’s not like ’72 was a fluke: Kareem averaged at least a 30–16 for three straight years and topped 27 points and 14.5-plus rebounds in the same season six different times. In 97 playoff games from 1970 to 1981, Kareem averaged 29.4 points and 15.2 rebounds. 89
So yeah, Wilt’s statistical resume pops your eyes out on paper. But Kareem’s peak was nearly as impressive. He excelled for a longer period of time. His teams performed consistently better and won three times as many titles. He was more reliable in clutch moments and a much safer bet at the free throw line. He had an infinitely better grasp of The Secret. The gap between his first and last Finals MVPs lasted as long as Wilt’s entire career. Even his movie career was more entertaining. 90
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may have been fun to dislike—and believe me, I did—but his greatness cannot be denied. He’s the third-best basketball player of all time. Better than Oscar. Better than Wilt. Better than Magic or Bird. And since we finally have that settled, I will now light mys
elf on fire.
2. BILL RUSSELL
Resume: 13 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … MVP: ’58, ’61, ’62, ’63, ’65 … Simmons MVP
(’59) … runner-up: ’59, ’60 … Top 5 (’59, ’63, ’65) … Top 10 (’58, ’60, ’61, ’62, ’64, ’66, ’67,
’68) … 3-year peak: 18–24–4 … 3-year Playoffs peak: 21–27–5 … leader: rebounds (5x) …
career: 15.1 PPG, 22.5 RPG (2nd all-time), 4.3 APG … Playoffs: 16.2 PPG, 24.9 RPG (1st), 4.7 APG … record: rebounds, one half (32); rebounds, Finals (40); RPG, Finals (29.5) …
best player on 11 champs and 2 runner-ups (’50s, ’60s Celtics) … 10–0 in Game 7’s, 16–2 in do-or-die games … only player-coach to win a title (2x)
Bill Bradley summed up number 6’s career nicely in Life on the Run: “Russell never got as much recognition as he deserved. Race was one reason. During the early sixties no black artist got adequate publicity. Then, too, perhaps pro basketball didn’t have the national following sufficient to merit enormous press attention. Most probably, I think he was overlooked because his greatest accomplishments were in the game’s subtleties and in seeking to guarantee team victory in a society which tends to focus attention on the individual achiever.”