Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  You did not feel that way about the Bulls after the ’96 Playoffs. If anything, you were wondering if the Sonics could have stretched it to seven had Gary Payton been defending Jordan all series.

  • Can you really have a Greatest Team Ever that featured so many rejects, castoffs, role players, and past-their-primers? Their third scorer was Kukoc, a frustratingly soft forward with considerable gifts (terrific passer, streaky three-point shooter, post-up potential) who never totally delivered for them.58 Their center combination? Longley and Wennington. (If you’re telling me that the Greatest NBA Team Ever should have a center combo that averaged 12 points and 6 rebounds a game, provided no low-post threat and little shot blocking and floundered as NBA players before and after playing with Jordan/Pippen, then you have lower expectations for this stuff than I do.) Kerr frequently played crunch time, which was fine because he stretched defenses and was a Hall of Fame cooler … but he’s another one who struggled mightily in the before/after portions of his Pippen/Jordan experience. 59 Harper was a terrific defender who hobbled around on a bad knee (the players even jokingly called him “Peg Leg”) and couldn’t shoot threes or create his own shot. And their ninth and tenth men were Jud Buechler and Randy Brown. Enough said. So if you’re scoring at home, 70 percent of their ten-man rotation never made an All-Star team, averaged 7 rebounds a game or played for fewer than four teams. 60

  • Operating under Bob Ryan’s time-tested Martian Premise—that is, a team of highly skilled aliens land on earth and challenge us to a seven-game basketball series with the future of mankind at stake—are you really saying you’d go to war with Longley and Wennington as your centers? 61 The dirty little secret of Jordan’s six title seasons (twenty-four series in all) was his astounding luck with opposing centers: Ewing (four times), Brad Daugherty (twice), Alonzo Mourning (twice), Greg Ostertag (twice), Vlade Divac (twice), Mike Gminski, Bill Laimbeer, Rony Seikaly, Kevin Duckworth, Kevin Willis, Mark West, Shaq, Sam Perkins, Gheorge Muresan, Dikembe Mutombo, Jayson Williams and Rik Smits. He never battled two of that decade’s dominant big men (Hakeem and Robinson) and only faced the third one (Shaq) twice. Was it a coincidence that Chicago’s four toughest series from 1991 to 1998 were against quality low-post centers: Ewing (’92 and ’93), Shaq (’95, when they lost) and Smits (’98)? Shaq, Hakeem and Robinson played eight games against the ’96 Bulls (including playoffs) and averaged a 27–11 on 58 percent shooting. The 47-win Knicks played them surprisingly tough in the second round—losing by 7, 11, 3 and 13, and winning Game 3 in OT—with a sore-kneed Ewing averaging a 23–11. During Orlando’s upset the previous spring, Shaq blistered them for a 23–22 and a 27–13 in the deciding contests, averaging a 24–14 and shooting 83 free throws in six games. Well, what if the Martians had someone like Shaq or Moses in their prime? Jordan’s teams never needed a dominant center to win, but they also had an uncanny knack for avoiding dominant centers. Could they have handled a powerhouse like the 2001 Lakers? Wouldn’t 2001 Shaq have feasted on Longley/Wennington the same way he feasted on Todd MacCulloch, Vlade Divac and everyone else in that phylum? I say yes, and if you’re incorporating the Martian Premise, you have to assume the Martians would be better than the 2001 Lakers. I can’t get past the center issue. I just can’t.

  Add everything up and that 72–10 record doesn’t make a ton of sense … until you remember that the ’94 Rockets ushered in the We Overexpanded and Everyone’s Overpaid Era. Suddenly you only needed to surround two studs with the right role players. You needed good chemistry and the right coach, you needed to stay healthy, you needed to play defense at a high level, and over everything else, you needed the league’s dominant player. That was good enough. And that’s not to belittle what the Bulls did; their 41–3 start ranks among the all-time “holy shit” statistics in NBA history, and as we covered in Pippen’s Pyramid section, it was truly an experience to watch them play in person. Their defensive prowess and collective confidence were almost unparalleled, and their ability to maintain their focus/hunger as they became part of the day-to-day pop culture whirlwind—no other NBA team dealt with such a high level of scrutiny, media exposure and hysterical admiration from opposing fans, to the point that Jordan was trapped in his hotel on road trips like one of the Beatles—remains their single most impressive quality.

  If it wasn’t for one undeniable truth—namely, that you would have had to shoot Jordan with an elephant gun to prevent him from winning the title that season—I probably would have slid the ’96

  Bulls down to fourth for the aforementioned reasons, as well as the sobering fact that they won only eight more games than the ’96 Sonics. I like a starting five of Payton, Kemp, Hersey Hawkins, Detlef Schrempf and a fading Sam Perkins … but 64–18 with no bench?62 How is that possible? What about San Antonio winning fifty-nine games with Robinson, Elliott, Avery Johnson, Vinnie Del Negro, Will Perdue, a fading Chuck Person and a washed-up Charles Smith?

  I can’t shake this stuff. Just because the ’96 Bulls had the greatest season ever and the greatest player ever doesn’t mean they had the greatest team ever. If that makes sense. I swear it does.

  NO. 1: THE 1986 BOSTON CELTICS

  Regular season (67–15): peak of 64–13 … 40–1 at home … 9.4 SD (114.1–104.7) … 29.1

  APG (2nd), 46.4 RPG (1st), 50.8 FG% (2nd), 35.1 3FG% (1st), 79.4% FT (2nd), 46.1

  defensive FG% (1st) … 18–2 vs. 49-win teams … 3 double-digit losses (2nd-fewest ever)

  … best winning streaks: 14 + 13

  Playoffs (15–3): 10–0 at home … 10.6 SD (114.4–104.1) … fourth in PPG, first in PPG

  allowed … 11 double-digit wins … 50.7% FG (2nd), 79.4% FT (1st), 39.1% 3FG (2nd), 15.0 stocks, 45.1 RPG, 28.4 APG (2nd) … closeout wins: 18, 33, 13, + 17 … following season: lost in Finals (L.A. in 6)

  Cast and crew: Larry Bird (super-duper star, 26–10–7–2, 50–90–42%); Kevin McHale (super wingman, 26–10, 60% FG); Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson (wingmen); Bill Walton (super-duper sixth man); Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Jerry Sichting (supporting cast); KC Jones (coach)

  Let’s run through the Greatest Team Ever Checklist that I just made up thirty-seven seconds ago…

  Pyramid guys. The ’86 Celts had five of the top sixty, with no. 5 and no. 38 peaking that spring: 50.8 PPG, 17.9 RPG, 10.9 APG, 54% FG, 45 steals and 53 blocks combined in 18 playoff games. Fellas, here are your Greatest Inside/Outside Combo lifetime championship belts. Seriously, how did you stop them? Bird threw world-class entry passes and doubled as a dead-eye shooter. McHale had world-class low-post moves and commanded doubles and triples at all times. What could you do? Teams be-grudgingly settled on doubling McHale with a guard and keeping someone on Bird, which meant Johnson and Ainge got to shoot wide-open 15-footers all game. (Not wide-open threes … wide-open 15-footers.) Throw in the Parish/Walton center duo (24.9

  PPG, 15.2 RPG, 3.1 APG, 42 blocks) and the Celtics were basically announcing, “Our front line is going to notch 75 points and 33 rebounds, protect the rim, shoot 50-plus from the field and hit wide-open shooters and cutters all night; you will be foolish to double-team any of them, and you will not get a break from them for four quarters … good luck.” 63

  Quality of competition. The league was tougher in ’86 than ’96 (fewer teams, deeper teams, lower salaries), so considering the ’86 Celts finished only five wins behind the ’96 Bulls (87–13

  vs. 82–18), can those five extra wins be atttributed to playing in a watered-down league with someone who was clearly the best player (and pathologically competitive to boot)? Absolutely. Although the ’86 Celts would have thrived in a high-caliber season; they finished 18–2 against 49-win teams (30–5 including playoffs) but slacked against easier competition, with twelve of their fifteen regular season losses coming against sub-.500 teams. 64 Going against a steady stream of ’96 creampuffs, a bored Bird would have spent weeks at a time seeing how many 30-footers he could make or shooting only with his left hand.

  Extended stretch of do
minance. The C’s didn’t get rolling until January because of Bird’s sore back. As soon as he rounded into shape, they ripped off a 39–5 stretch that included an 11–0 mark against the Lakers, Sixers, Bucks, Hawks and Rockets (with at least one road win over each). I’d say that qualifies as a hot streak.

  Playoff run. Surprisingly good considering the talent that season. Jordan went bonkers in the first round (49 in Game 1, 63 in Game 2), but the Celtics still swept the series. They blew a second-round sweep against the frisky Hawks (50 wins, superathletic, led by the runner-up MVP

  pick), then exacted revenge with one of the all-time closeout ass-whuppings in Game 5. They swept a 57-win Bucks team in the Eastern Finals and convincingly handled a mildly terrifying Rockets team in the Finals. You left that Playoffs run thinking, “Wow, those guys couldn’t have played any better.” That’s what we want, right?

  Homecourt advantage. Forget about the record-setting 50–1 mark (including Playoffs) for a second. Did you know the Celtics nearly went undefeated at home for twelve straight months?

  After losing to Portland on December 6, 1985, they won 55 straight home games (including Playoffs and the first seven of the next season) before Washington beat them on December 2, 1986. Of those 55 straight wins, only 3 were decided by four or fewer points; 40 of the 55 were by double digits, 11 by more than 20, and five by more than 30. In the ’86 playoffs, only Jordan’s 63-point game robbed the Celtics of winning all 10 home games by double digits. When I say nobody was touching these guys at home, I mean, nobody was touching these guys at home. You have a better chance of seeing another multi-permed NBA coaching staff than seeing another NBA team win 55 straight home games in the luxury box era. 65 No way. It will never happen.

  Unintentional comedy. The Celts set the standard in three dopey categories: Best Whitewash Ever (Walton, Bird, McHale, Ainge and Wedman, with Sichting, Kite and Carlisle off the bench); Strangest-Looking Championship Team Ever, and Consistently Clumsiest High Fives Ever. Everything culminated in an unforgettable high five/pseudo-hug/half-embrace between Walton and McHale near the end of Game 6 of the ’86 Finals. Just an explosion of abnomally long appendages, giant teeth, bad hairdos, hairy armpits and über-Caucasian awkwardness; it’s amazing they didn’t clunk heads and knock each other unconscious.

  Defensive/rebounding prowess. Top of the line in both categories. You were not pounding the

  ’86 Celtics down low or on the boards. Period. Not even the Hakeem/Ralph or Chuck/Moses combos could do it.

  Signature Playoffs performances. They played three ESPN Classic games—Game 2 vs. Chicago (Jordan’s 63), Game 4 vs. Milwaukee (Bird’s four threes in the final 4:03 clinched a sweep) and Game 4 at Houston (legitimately exciting)—and three Sistine Chapel games, a list that includes Game 6 of the ’86 Finals (the clincher), Game 1 vs. Milwaukee (128–96) and especially Game 5

  vs. Atlanta, which remains the greatest evisceration in modern Playoffs history: a 36–6 third quarter punctuated by a 24–0 run and the longest standing ovation in NBA history. The Globe’s Bob Ryan called it a “scintillating display of interior defense, transition basketball and Globetrotter-like passing which transformed the game into something bordering on legitimate humiliation, but which never degenerated into farce … say this for the Hawks: At no point during that surrealistic third period did they lose dignity. They tried hard at both ends. They simply could not avoid being an accident of basketball history.” And that, my friends, is a Sistine Chapel performance.

  Rewatching it on tape, what stands out beyond the crowd (delirious), the passing (exquisite) and the defense (frenetic) was the cumulative effect it had on Atlanta. Mike Fratello called three time-outs trying to stop the bleeding; by the end of the quarter, the Hawks wobbled back to their bench like five guys escaping a violent bar fight. (McHale would say later, “I don’t think you’ll ever see another quarter of basketball like that again. I mean, the look on the faces of those Atlanta guys leaving the floor after the game, it was like they had just been in a war. It was shell-shock. I think they couldn’t wait to get out of there. It was as close to perfection as you are ever going to see.”) And it’s not like this was a bad Hawks team; they matched up fairly well because Boston had trouble defending Wilkins and Spud Webb.66 Didn’t matter. They got blown out of the building. Ainge told Peter May later, “I call it the Way Basketball Was Supposed to Be Played. That was maybe the most impressive quarter ever played. Atlanta just had no sniff.” The tape confirms this. Truly great teams can smell blood and raise it a level; you can see it happening, the fans recognize it, the announcers recognize it, the guys on the bench recognize it, and even the guys playing recognize it. At one point, DJ just starts happily hopping up and down after yet another layup, like even he can’t believe what’s happening. Great moment, transcendant quarter, unforgettable team.

  Biggest flaw. The Sichting/Thirdkill spots could have been better. KC Jones inflicted minimal damage other than killing Sam Vincent’s confidence. But we’re just picking nits. In the fictional round-robin, my biggest concern would be their lack of three-point attempts. Nobody was launching them in the mid-eighties; wouldn’t modern defensive teams double McHale and Bird a little more quickly? Then again, Bird and Ainge became killer three-point shooters and Wedman certainly had the range, so in a fictional tournament, they could have adjusted. Right? My head hurts.

  Dirk Diggler factor. In other words, could they adapt to every conceivable style? The answer is yes. They even had one wrinkle that mortified opponents: a supersized lineup with a front line of Parish, McHale and Walton, then Bird playing guard on offense (which could happen because McHale the Freak could defend almost any two-guard). Every time they played those four guys together at once, you moved to the edge of your seat. On the flip side, they could also handle smallball with Bird-DJ-Ainge-Wedman-McHale, or even Sichting in Wedman’s place and DJ

  playing small forward. You could not throw an opponent at them from any point in history that they wouldn’t have handled. Kinda like Dirk Diggler. 67

  Alpha dog. From January to June, Bird peaked as a basketball player. Even said so himself, commenting after Game 6 of the Finals, “That was the only game I thought I was totally prepared for. As far as focus was concerned, none better. Never. I should have quit right there.” You think a thirty-three-year-old MJ said that at any point in 1996?

  Title defense. The ’87 Playoffs may have set the standard for “to get rid of us, you’re going to have to chop our head off like we’re Jason in Friday the 13th because that’s the only way we’re dying” title defenses. See the prologue for the gory details.

  Chemistry and swagger. Top of the line. No team loved busting balls more than these guys. They killed Walton for his speech impediment, made fun of McHale’s goofy body, rode Ainge like a little brother, teased Wedman about his vegetarian diet … there wasn’t a single bad apple, or someone who didn’t have an exact understanding of his role in the team’s hierarchy. Pushing everything over the top were McHale and Ainge (two of the funniest guys who ever played), Bird (the best trash-talker ever) and Walton (whose overexuberance defined the season). 68 If anything, they had too much swagger and needed to be challenged at times. Their defining moment: Game 4

  of the Milwaukee series, when Bird disdainfully nailed his fourth three in four minutes at the buzzer (the first-ever eff-you three) and jogged off the court like he had just banged everyone’s girlfriend in the stands. In the video of that season, Walton runs into the locker room screaming,

  “Lar-ree Bird! Lar-reeeeee Bird!” We’ve seen other teams win on that level, but I can’t remember any of them getting more of a kick from it.

  Trump card. I can’t go with passing because Magic’s Lakers were just as memorable in that department. So let’s go with this: Remember how boxers like Julio Cesar Chavez, Roberto Duran or Bernard Hopkins would close the ring on opponents over the course of a few rounds, and by the eighth round, suddenly the other guy looked like he was fighting in a phone booth a
nd couldn’t move around at all? That’s what the Celtics did offensively. They pounded it down low, kept rotating Bird/McHale/Parish/Walton on the low post, kept swinging the ball, kept attacking mismatches, kept getting wide-open 20-footers—only they kept inching closer and closer, and by the second half, suddenly those 20-footers were 15-footers. (Like watching a hockey team pull its goalie and crowd the net with forwards, but in this case the net was the basket. In other words, they crowded the rim.) What’s interesting is that had this specific team come along just a few years later, Ainge and Bird would have been gleefully bombing wide-open threes, the spacing would have been better and that boxer/hockey dynamic wouldn’t have happened. Would this have made them even more efficient offensively? Probably. But this was memorable. We will never see it again. It’s too easy to just jack up threes now.

  Biggest luxury. Every time Walton loped off the bench for the first time, the crowd stood and cheered—partly because we liked him, partly because it meant he and Bird would do their “night at the Improv” routine. They experimented that whole season with various no-looks, pick-and-rolls and every other “only we are on this plane and see these angles” offensive play; even on tape two decades later, it’s like seeing rare video of Biggie freestyling with Eminem. Their favorite play?