Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  • The ’97 Bulls signed Brian Williams14 for the stretch run, giving them something they lacked in ’96: a lefty who could score with his back to the basket. Williams grabbed all of Bill Wennington’s minutes in the ’97 Playoffs. You’ve seen Bill Wennington play, right?

  That’s a bigger upgrade than Ashton Kutcher going from January Jones to Brittany Murphy.

  • The league was better in ’97 and Utah provided a more experienced Finals opponent than the happy-to-be-there ’96 Sonics. The ’96 Bulls rolled through Orlando and Seattle; the ’97

  Bulls faced a frisky Bullets team (C-Webb, Juwan, and Rod Strickland), Riley’s feisty Miami team (Mourning and Hardaway) and the Jazz during Malone’s (cough, cough) first MVP season. So going 15–4 in the ’97 postseason was no less impressive than 15–3 in ’96.

  Before I asked Kerr the “Who was better?” question, I had been leaning toward the ’97 Bulls. The last part of my email: “Considering that you weren’t in ‘Eff You’ mode in ’97 because you had already climbed the mountain, but you guys still went out and kicked everybody’s ass to 98.9

  percent of the same degree you did the year before, in my mind, that’s a greater accomplishment than just winning the title in ’96 when you had all the necessary incentives in place. Does that make sense?”

  Kerr’s response:

  Very interesting. I guess the question is, do you reward a team for having less motivation, or do you take points away? I could make an argument that the ’96 team was better because we were more motivated. The hunger factor was huge for us that year and that helped make us a great team. Two things come to mind when I compare those teams. First is the Brian Williams factor. We got him for (the final 17 games) and he was huge for us down the stretch. Having a legit post-up scorer and athletic shot blocker was something we didn’t have before. Secondly, when you’ve won a title already, there’s a sense of superiority and invincibility that wasn’t there before. The great teams use that in a positive way, which is what we did. Instead of ‘eff you’ mode like in ’96, it’s more like “You have no chance against us” mode. We were so confident from already having won a title that we knew we were going to crush everyone that year. That’s a dangerous mentality to have, obviously, if you don’t have a mature team. It would be easy to stop working hard. But with MJ and all of our vets, there was no way that was going to happen. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I thought the ’96 team was better because of the edge we had. The “eff you” is a powerful force. But the ’97 team was better on paper. 15

  Perfect! Thank you, Steve Kerr. We couldn’t have asked for a better guy to solve that problem. That’s why I have the “eff you” mode ranked as Level Three and the “superiority/invincibility”

  mode ranked one level below: because Kerr lived through both seasons, he’s wicked smaht (©

  Will Hunting’s buddy) and we can trust him. So if we’re figuring out the single most invincible basketball team ever, really, there are three choices and only three: the ’86 Celtics, ’87 Lakers or

  ’96 Bulls … although we’re covering the best ten, because God forbid I ever took a shortcut in this book. One Stanley Roberts–size disclaimer: For any “most invincible” argument, it can’t be forgotten that the NBA peaked competitively from 1984 to 1993, a few years after the merger but before overexpansion, the megasalary boom and underclassmen flooding the college draft. Check out the roster of the ’84 Celtics, who won two seventh games to clinch a fifteenth banner, outlasted a seemingly unbeatable Lakers team, and were never considered for my top ten:

  STARTERS: Larry Bird (first of his three MVP years), Cedric Maxwell (’81 Finals MVP), Robert Parish (top–fifty-five Pyramid guy), Dennis Johnson (top–fifty-five Pyramid Guy, ’79

  Finals MVP), Gerald Henderson (good enough to get swapped for Seattle’s unconditional number one pick that summer)16

  BENCH: Kevin McHale (top-forty Pyramid guy, best sixth man ever), Danny Ainge (two-time All-Star, fourteen-year veteran), M. L. Carr (one of the league’s better bench players), Scott Wedman (two-time All-Star, best player on an ’81 Kings team that came within one win of the Finals), Quinn Buckner (former top-ten pick, 10-year veteran).

  See the benefits of a smaller league (just twenty-three teams) with incompetently run teams routinely screwing up drafts and giving away number one picks? Once the league began adding franchises and diluting its talent pool, it became nearly impossible to construct juggernauts like the ones from the Bird-Magic era. In the last fifteen years, we’ve only seen two competitive monsters: Jordan’s post-baseball Chicago teams and the first two Shaq-Kobe teams. In a thirty-team league with nearly every front office knowing what it’s doing, 17 with owners constantly fearing the salary cap and luxury tax, you cannot build a contender with a three-time MVP, three Finals MVPs, four Pyramid guys, McHale coming off the bench, Ainge as your third guard and Wedman as your eighth man. It’s not happening. You can’t get lucky enough times; the odds are too great.

  Hence, for the purposes of this chapter, I’m ignoring the pre-1960 teams (not enough black players, defense or quality shooting), severely penalizing the 1970–76 teams (because of the expansion/ABA double whammy) and pre-1970 teams (because I’ve seen the tapes and you can’t tell me with a straight face that the ’65 Celts or ’67 Sixers wouldn’t have gotten swept by the ’01

  Lakers by 25 points a game), and I’m discounting the post-MJ teams (because it’s impossible to put together a ridiculously talented team in a thirty-team league with cap/tax constraints). The teams left standing will be judged by four factors and only four.

  1. Invincibility at the time coupled with a willingness of everyone else to concede, “We had no chance against those guys.” This is a clear-cut yes-or-no question. You can easily tell from the articles written during the season and after the Finals. If writers are raving about the team and struggling to put them in a historical context, and if their opponents are gushing about them, then something magical just happened.

  2. Level of consistent/methodical/transcendent greatness from October to June. You can figure this out with regular-season/Playoffs records, double-digit winning streaks, high point differentials, few Playoffs losses and high margins in closeout games. The last one is my favorite: when invincible teams smell blood, they shift into “we aren’t just winning this, we’re going to hopefully ruin their confidence for the next five years and give our fans a lifelong memory” mode.

  3. Their defense of that “greatest season” the following year. Sorry, if you just submitted a historic season that might be remembered for eternity, shouldn’t that mean something to everyone who was involved? Show some pride. Protect your title. Make us feel like you’d rather die than lose your championship belt. What’s the point of winning a title if you aren’t going to defend it? 18 4. Hypothetical ability to transcend eras and succeed no matter the year. And yes, this is the single toughest ingredient to project; we’re eliminating nearly everyone before 1980 for the reasons laid out in the “How the Hell” chapter. God bless Russell’s Celtics teams, but they weren’t beating MJ’s Bulls with Hondo and Sam Jones handling the ball, and they definitely weren’t beating Bird’s Celtics with Tommy Heinsohn guarding Kevin McHale. As for the hypothetical stuff, you’re just going to have to trust my expertise. You’ve come this far. In the words of Bobby Knight, relax and enjoy it. Whoops, he was talking about rape. Bad example. Um, just relax and enjoy it. 19

  In my humble opinion, only twenty NBA champions deserved special commendation for this chapter. I narrowed it down to ten honorable mentions and an elite ten.

  HONORABLE MENTION

  THE ’61 CELTICS (57–22, 8–2 IN PLAYOFFS)

  Russell’s most dominant team considering he was hitting his prime (19–30–5 in the playoffs), eight Hall of Famers were aboard and they rolled through the playoffs … but that 57–22 record screams of “When are the playoffs starting?” In their defense, they were coming off back-to-back titles and God knows how many exhibition/regular s
eason games—playing something like 240–250 games in a twenty-four-month span, traveling by bus or train (or even worse, flying coach with connections)—without modern advances in training, workout equipment, medical care, dieting and everything else. Again, watch the first two seasons of Mad Men sometime and imagine playing professional basketball for a living back then. Give the ’61 Celtics a chartered plane, Dr. James Andrews, a dietitian and nicotine patches and God knows what would have happened.

  THE ’65 CELTICS (60–22, 8–4, 16-GAME WINNING STREAK)

  Personified the “it’s all about timing” point. Had San Francisco waited until the summer to gift-wrap Wilt for Philly, the Celtics would have played a 48-win Royals team in the Eastern Finals (they finished 8–2 against Cincy that year) and an Elginless Lakers team in the Finals. Instead, they barely survived a seven-game bloodbath against Wilt’s Sixers that everyone remembers for “Havlicek steals the ball!” No discussion about the greatest of the great should include the words “barely survived.” Unless you’re talking about Uruguayan rugby.20

  THE ’67 76ERS (68–13, 12–4)

  Beyond the pre-1970 issue and a weak competitive season described earlier, they were overrated for the following reasons: First, they caught the Russell era at the perfect time, immediately after Auerbach retired, when Russell struggled in his first year as player-coach. Second, the “special”

  component to Philly’s season was its 68–13 record … but really, the 68 happened because Boston stayed close for a while and the national media, for whatever reason, made a big deal about the quest for 70.21 Third, they only featured three Pyramid guys (Wilt, Greer and Cunningham, only a rookie), and when you think about it, how could the so-called greatest team of the NBA’s first thirty-five years have only three Pyramid guys? Fourth, Wilt’s poor free throw shooting would quickly manifest itself in a fictional round-robin tournament with the other all-time powerhouses; he infamously avoided the ball in the final two minutes, leaving Greer or Cunningham to match baskets with Jordan, Kobe, Bird or whomever. And fifth, for an allegedly “great” team, they couldn’t defend their title even once, blowing a 3–1 lead to the ’68 Celtics (with Wilt demanding a trade that summer). So much for our number one 1 Silver Anniversary choice.

  THE ’70 KNICKS (62–20, 12–7)

  Had the following things in their favor: three top-forty-five Pyramid guys and first-team All-Defense guys (Reed, Frazier and DeBusschere), a 10-plus point differential in the regular season, truly phenomenal home crowds, an undeniable grasp of The Secret, an 18-game winning streak and some of the most beautiful ball movement and perimeter shooting we’ve ever seen. But their playoff performance was lacking,22 and you can’t discount their failed title defense (losing a Game 7 to Baltimore at MSG). Throw in Russell (retired), Wilt (played 6 regular season games), Oscar (self-destructing in Cincy), Kareem (just a rookie) and expansion (five new teams since ’67) and the ’70 Knicks didn’t do nearly enough butt-whupping for my liking. On the bright side, 20,785 books have been written about them. So they have that going for them.

  THE ’82 L.A. LAKERS (57–25, 12–2)

  Along with the ’01 Lakers, my favorite “should have been greater” team that was sideswiped by the Disease of More. By the spring (once they changed coaches, quelled chemistry issues and got Magic going again), they had the following trump cards in place: two of the ten greatest players ever, a soul-crushing half-court offense anchored by Kareem, a once-in-a-generation fast break with two point guards (Magic and Norm Nixon) and an ahead-of-its-time 1–3–1 smallball trap with McAdoo anchoring the back, Norm Nixon up front, and Jamaal Wilkes, Magic and Michael Cooper covering the middle. They cruised to the degree that “best team ever” buzz built throughout the Playoffs—they were 10–0 heading into Game 3 of the Finals—before Philly salvaged two wins, the Lakers clinched in six, and everyone forgot about them five seconds later because CBS tape-delayed most of the series. But if you created a 32-team Best of All Time single-elimination, March Madness–type tournament, the ’82 Lakers would be my sleeper. Nightmare matchup for just about anyone. 23

  THE ’85 L.A. LAKERS (62–20, 15–4)

  Had to be included because of their impressive playoff numbers (127.1 points scored, 16.3 point differential per win, 54.3 percent FG shooting, 11 double-digit wins, closeout game margins of 16, 19, 44, and 9), although it’s still unclear if the best team won the title. (Note: That was the spring when Bird injured his shooting hand in a bar fight and stank in the Finals.) The ’85 Lakers were the first smallball champion: Kareem had stopped rebounding consistently, they didn’t have an elite power forward and their best lineup was Kareem-Worthy-Cooper-Scott-Magic. Despite Bird’s struggles and Cedric Maxwell’s no-show that season,24 it’s hard to fathom how a team blessed with Bird, Parish and McHale in their primes didn’t just pound the living crap out of the Lakers down low. (Even twenty-odd years later, McHale and Ainge still bitch that the Celtics blew a golden chance to repeat. Had the Lakers been a truly great team, their Finals opponents wouldn’t have been kicking themselves years later and bemoaning lost chances. Same goes for the ’84

  Celtics, by the way.) Their big issue was rebounding—one year later, the ’86 Rockets busted the Lakers by butchering them on the boards. Poor Kareem couldn’t fend them off. Why didn’t the ’85

  Celtics do this? I have no idea. But everything probably evened out: L.A. blew the ’84 Finals, Boston blew the ’85 Finals, and that’s that.

  THE ’92 CHICAGO BULLS (67–15, 15–7)

  A potential all-timer that didn’t quite get there because of something Kerr mentioned with his invincibility/superiority comments about Level Two teams: “That’s a dangerous mentality to have, obviously, if you don’t have a mature team.” Bingo. This should have been Jordan’s best team: MJ was at the peak of his physical powers, as was Pippen, and they were blessed with the best nine-man rotation of any Bulls team during the MJ era. They had an answer for everything. But the playoffs … arrrrrrrrgh. You shouldn’t need seven games to topple the ’92 Knicks. You shouldn’t need six games to topple the ’92 Blazers. You shouldn’t have to rally from 15 down at home to clinch your title.

  The Disease of More wreaked havoc with these guys. Pippen was kicking himself after signing a shortsighted contract extension, then learning the Bulls offered more money to Toni Kukoc. Grant was ticked because he didn’t get enough acclaim for doing all the dirty work. Young guns Stacey King, B. J. Armstrong and Cliff Levingston believed they were good enough to be starting. And all hell broke loose when Sam Smith released The Jordan Rules in January of ’92, a behind-the-scenes account of Chicago’s first title season. We learned about Jordan’s overcompetitive-ness, gigantic ego, “selfish” nature 25 and mean-spirited methods for motivating inferior teammates; everyone was flabbergasted because we only knew Jordan from his inventive Nike commercials and articulate interviews. Infuriated by the candid portrayal and incensed that teammates and coaches provided material for the book—among them, reportedly, Grant, Phil Jackson, and Jerry Reinsdorf—Jordan retreated into an icy shell and wouldn’t emerge until he started playing for the Birmingham Barons three years later. That’s what led to Chicago’s spotty performance in the ’92 playoffs. Tragically, that Bulls team had the highest ceiling of anyone other than the ’82 Lakers, ’86 Celtics and ’01 Lakers; watch Game 1 of the Finals not just for Jordan’s epic undressing of Clyde Drexler but for the way the Bulls demolished Portland defensively in a Pantheon-level ass-kicking. Then they relaxed and blew Game 2. And so it went for the Bulls that season: tons of potential, much of it realized … but not all of it. As it turned out, the only guy who could stop the ’92 Bulls was Sam Smith. 26

  THE ’00 L.A. LAKERS (67–15, 15–8, 19-GAME STREAK)

  It’s a shame we can’t combine their ’00 regular season with their ’01 playoffs (14–1) and make them a superteam. The smoking gun: they started the ’00 playoffs 11–8 (yuck) before sweeping the last four Philly games; even worse, Portland would have beate
n them if not for the most horrific fourth-quarter collapse in the history of the Association. They missed a few shots, got tight, stopped getting calls and got screwed by some illogical coaching decisions. Even the 2000 Source Awards didn’t melt down that fast. What a startling game to rewatch. Even more startling: Mike Dunleavy was hired to coach another team after what happened. When the poor Clippers had to spend ten hours spraying Dunleavy with a fire hose to get the blood of the 2000 Blazers off his body, maybe that should have been a sign to look at other candidates.

  THE ’07 SAN ANTONIO SPURS (58–24, 16–4)

  THE ’08 BOSTON CELTICS (66–16, 16–10)

  The Spurs lacked regular season chops and the Celtics lacked postseason chops, but they relied on the same formula: three elite players (Duncan-Parker-Ginobili for SA, Garnett-Pierce-Allen for Boston), multiple crunch-time scorers, effective role players and stifling defense. Including advancements in game planning, scouting, conditioning, defensive IQ, statistical study, DVD/editing, equipment, medicine, physical care, Internet/mobile devices, high school basketball camps and everything else, you could argue these past two title teams weren’t as loaded as the squads from the Bird-Magic era, but they were more prepared and more defensively sound.27 Back in 1984, a pivotal coaching adjustment was KC Jones finally realizing after three freaking games that Dennis Johnson should have been hounding Magic. 28 In 2008? Coaches and scouts broke things down so meticulously that they could tell you the exact benefits—right down to the percentage point—of forcing Lamar Odom right instead of letting him go left. Should hyperintelligence matter when we’re comparing teams from different decades? Absolutely. It’s an era-specific advantage, just like smoking, lowtop sneakers, lack of fitness and rudimentary VD