by Simmons Bill
Bird dumped the ball in to Walton, then ran by him toward the basket like he was clearing out, only Walton would quickly flip the ball over his head to Bird for an easy layup. When teams caught on, they changed the play a little—now Bird used Walton (holding the ball) to pick his guy, so everything hinged post-pass on whether he ran by Walton’s right side or left side (and each time, both defenders had to guess). Nobody could stop it. 69 When teams floated a third defender over to stop them, his guy (usually McHale) just cut to the basket for an easy layup from Walton. And that’s how it went. Walton only averaged an 8–7 in 18 minutes a game, but that’s reason no. 759
why statistics don’t tell the story. Seeing two basketball savants combining their once-in-a-generation passing skills was the pickle for the greatest cheeseburger of a team ever assembled.
Killer instinct. They led by thirty-plus at some point in the fourth quarter or three of four playoff clinchers. The fourth? The one where Bird ripped Milwaukee’s heart out with all those threes. And if that’s not enough, they defeated their main threat in the West (the Lakers) both times by double digits and their main threats in the East (Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philly) twenty-two of twenty-five times. Well, then.
Iconic relevance (then). Yes.
Iconic relevance (now). Not as much. Yet another reason why we needed a book like this. 70
1. “Anythang is possaaaaaaabulllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!”
2. The answers, which I won’t bother to defend because I shouldn’t have to waste more than the minimum words: Emmitt; Gretzky; Ali; Montana; yes; no; no; yes; LeBron and Serena Williams. 3. Only one potential scenario could defy this statement, and it involves five ifs: if LeBron signs with Portland in 2010; if Greg Oden stays healthy and becomes a stud center; if Portland considers using its resources to buy late first-rounders and stash young foreign players; if they get lucky with one of those moves; and if Brandon Roy’s knees cooperate. Vegas odds: 75 to 1. 4. You probably remember the first time you had sex. Like, all the details. Do you remember everything about the sixth time? What about the eighth? Or the eleventh? Been there, done that, right? But that first time … I mean, even twenty-five years later, I still remember everything about that magical night at the Neverland Ranch.
5. The ’65 Celtics didn’t have a true point guard other than an aging KC Jones, who was a worse shot than Dick Cheney. In crunch time, Sam and Hondo handled the ball for them. Could you win the 2009 title with Kobe and Pierce as your ball handlers? Seems a little far-fetched, right?
6. Six of the ten ’67 teams won between 30 and 39 games; Baltimore won 20; San Fran went 5–13
vs. Boston/Philly and 39–24 against everyone else; and Boston/Philly finished a combined 128–34. (Hold on, era-appropriate pop culture reference coming…) That season was more top-heavy than Jayne Mansfield!
7. The cousin of this event: the undefeated ’07 Patriots pulling out a sloppy Week 14 game in Baltimore. Had they blown it, that would have been the kick in the ass they needed. No way they lose Super Bowl XLIV. At least this is what I keep telling myself. Hold on, I have to fire my BB
gun at the right leg of my Plax Burress bobblehead again. I’ll be right back. 8. If you don’t think this pushed mainstream interest in the NBA to new heights, you’re crazy. Remember, the media didn’t exist in its current form—we were confined to newspapers, local news shows, and SI. They covered sports instead of hyping them. By the late sixties, that was changing as we witnessed with the “Can Philly win 70?” stuff. Media members were searching for future angles instead of just digesting what had already happened. Now? We create angles that aren’t there! We’ve come a long way.
9. This was a joke—I am not well dressed.
10. I came up with this analogy after hitting a BlackBerry party with my friend Willy, who did extremely well for himself in Boston but couldn’t muster up the confidence to approach Bosworth in L.A., mainly because her legs were so breathtaking that we were staring at them like pit bulls looking at a prime rib. She’s like Dwyane Wade and Dwight Howard—you can’t properly appreciate her until you see her in person.
11. When it goes wrong for the defending champs, it’s like that same guy hooking up with Bosworth for a few weeks, having a threesome with LC and Lo from The Hills, then dressing and acting like a douche and proudly showing his buddies his BlackBerry contact list every time he goes drinking with them.
12. Game 3 (Chicago over L.A. in OT) was one of my worst gambling losses ever; trust me that I did not have to look up the line (L.A. by 3) or the score (Bulls 104, L.A. 96). My buddy Geoff and I watched at his mom’s house, sat in shock for another 20 minutes, then debated sneaking into her office and forging a check. The lesson, as always: don’t gamble in college. 13. What a shame we missed an Orlando-Chicago bloodbath. This was the great lost series of the nineties. Meanwhile, we were treated to 738 unwatchable Knicks-Heat games. Damn it all. 14. Just to clarify, this was the Arizona grad who battled gay rumors, changed his name to Bison Dele, retired prematurely, invested in a desalination complex in Lebanon and was apparently murdered by his brother (although there was no trial because the brother killed himself, but evidence pointed strongly to him) during an around-the-world boating trip … not the NBC news anchor. We should also mention that my 1999 and 2000 fantasy hoop teams were called “Bison’s Deli.”
15. Kerr submitted the greatest two-year sample of three-point shooting ever in ’95 (52.4%, 1st all-time) and ’96 (51.5%, 5th all-time), finishing 45.4% on threes for his career (2nd all-time). He won five rings, made a Finals-winning shot (’97, Game 6) and had a defining ESPN Classic game (Game 6, Dallas-SA in ’03). He played with MJ, Duncan, Shaq, Pippen, Robinson and the ’02 Jail Blazers and was coached by Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich. He got in a practice fight with MJ
and held his own. He made over $16 million in 15 years. He worked with Marv Albert on TNT. He got hired as a GM by Phoenix and … crap, that hasn’t worked out too well. At least so far. But now he’s making a crucial cameo in the second greatest NBA book ever written, or at least the longest one. Now that is a career!
16. That’s the pick that became Lenny Bias. I will now wander out into rush hour traffic. 17. I had to write “nearly” because of McHale, Chris Mullin, Bryan Colangelo, Ernie Grunfeld and everyone else who would have earned an invitation to the Atrocious GM Summit 2 if we had convened it for this book. Maybe the next one.
18. That reminds me—I’d like to thank Rasheed Wallace one more time for helping me realize a lifelong dream: seeing players on a defending NBA champion carry championship belts to games like pro wrestlers.
19. I wish Knight had made this comment to Connie Chung now during the overly politically correct era. ESPN would have offered around-the-clock twenty-four-hour coverage hosted by Bob Ley as we decided to whether to throw Knight in jail or deport him. 20. Come on … too soon? It’s been nearly thirty-seven years! Comedy = cannibalism + time. 21. Had this happened with any of the Boston teams from 1960 to 1963 (the heel-nipping and national attention), they may have turned it up a notch and gone for 70. And you know it. Concede my hypothetical that can’t be proven!
22. They lost six of eight road games, their playoff point differential was just 3.9, and Baltimore took them to 7 games in the first round.
23. One way to stop them: this was the height of the coke era and the ’82 Lakers, in retrospect, had a few “suspects” in their nine-man rotation. If I were a GM back then, wherever the Lakers partied after a game, I’d have sent $10K worth of hookers and coke to that location. 24. Max stuck a stamp on the ’85 season, taking too long to recover from a minor knee surgery that should have sidelined him for six weeks. Auerbach vengefully traded him for Walton; even two decades later, a still-pissed Red protested vehemently when Boston’s new owners retired Max’s number 31 under the always offensive “We just bought the team, wouldn’t it be fun to retire someone’s number?” logic. Only ten Boston numbers should be retired: Russell, Bird, Hondo, Cous
y, Sharman, Cowens, McHale, Heinsohn, Parish and Sam Jones.
25. I used quotes because Smith played up a premise that wasn’t necessarily true. MJ did whatever it took for his team to win, and really, during those first few Chicago years, his supporting cast sucked. What did you want him to do, pass up game-winning shots to set up Brad Sellers or Kyle Macy? Early MJ was only guilty of disparaging teammates and killing their confidence in some cases. Is that selfish? I’d argue he was just a dick. Big difference. 26. This would be much funnier if I showed you a picture of Sam Smith. He looks like the skinny brother of the “Time to make the donuts!” guy from the old Dunkin’ Donuts ads. 27. Biggest difference in 2008: how effectively teams space the floor and use corner threes. It’s an advantage that the best ’80s players (save for Bird) just hadn’t figured out—the most efficient shot on the floor and a must-defend at all times.
28. The over/under of unprovoked shots at KC Jones’ coaching ability was 9.5. I think we obliterated it 150 pages ago. And yes, he was the perfect guy to coach that ’86 Celts team—just roll the ball out and let them do their thing.
29. For every dollar spent that exceeds the tax threshold, the offending team has to match those dollars in tax fees paid to the league. If the tax line is $70 million and you spend $80 million, you’re looking at a $10 million tax as well. Plus you miss out on splitting the tax profit pool that’s filled by offending teams. The old double whammy.
30. Actual ’86 cap figures: Bird ($1.8M), McHale ($1.0M), Johnson ($782.5K), Parish ($700K), Ainge ($550K), Walton ($425K), Wedman ($400K), Kite ($150K), Sichting ($125K), Carlisle ($90K), Vincent ($87.5K), Thirdkill (unknown).
31. Max became a free agent after his inspiring ’84 Finals performance. In modern times, Boston couldn’t have afforded him and an idiot GM would have overpaid him something like $58 million for five years (instead of the four years at approximately $800,000 per that Boston gave him). There’s no possible modern scenario in which the ’86 Celts could have acquired Walton, which seems relevant since he transformed them from “top ten ever” to “potentially greatest ever.”
32. The same exercise for the ’87 Lakers: Kareem $20M; Magic $20M; Worthy $14M; Thompson
$11M; Cooper $7.5M; Rambis $6.0M; Scott $5.5M; Green $1.8M; Matthews $1.2M. Nine guys for $96 million. And by the way, it would have been humanly impossible for them to add Mychal Thompson.
33. I know, I know: HIV killed Showtime. But the ’91 Bulls greased the skids. Okay, wrong choice of words. I’m getting out now. Quickly.
34. Jordan Rules is riveting to read in retrospect. Through March, Chicago’s chemistry was still a mess because MJ was so brutal on his teammates. Then they ripped off a win streak, Pippen came into his own and MJ backed off. The rest was history.
35. The ’60 Celts held the record with 17; from ’70 to ’72, it was broken three straight years. The league was so watered down that they should have dumped West as its logo and used a picture of Carl Spackler.
36. Clint Richardson, Earl Cureton and Marc Iavaroni? That’s a Hamburger Helper bench. 37. They got swept by an inferior Bucks team in the second round. One major problem besides Fitch: The ’83 Celts had too many guys. How do you juggle minutes between Bird, Parish, Maxwell, Henderson, Tiny, McHale, Ainge, Wedman, Buckner, M. L. Carr and Rick Robey? Half were unhappy and all hated the coach. The following year, K. C. took over, Robey was swapped for DJ, Tiny retired, Carr became a towel-waver and they won the title. The lesson, as always: You only need 9 guys. I kept warning Daryl Morey (Houston’s GM) about this in October ’08 and he kept making fun of me. “Too many guys? How could that be a bad thing?” Four months later he was frantically trying to swing 4-for-1’s at the deadline.
38. A tough blow for the Lakers and an even tougher blow for Big Game James, who had an unwieldy cast and could only have sex with groupies in the “cowgirl” and “reverse cowgirl”
positions.
39. Recently he settled into a second phase of his career, as the embattled coach of an awful Grizzlies team who looked like Nic Cage and got fired within 100 games. 40. Inevitable counter from the Philly fans: “We got old!” Sorry, the stats don’t back this up. Moses slipped a little (25–15 in ’83, 23–13 in ’84), but Doc/Toney/Cheeks were slightly better statistically and they got similar bench production. They weren’t good enough collectively to combat the Year-After Syndrome in a much-improved league. How else would you drop from 77–18 to 54–33 without a major injury?
41. That includes a 1–4 record against the Knicks. Damn the Knicks for not showing up for the Finals. Damn them! Damn them to hell!
42. Their two losses: Game 4 at San Fran in the first round (by 2), Game 3 at L.A. (by 12). The S.F. series was weird: Games 1 and 4 were in San Fran (thanks to a scheduling conflict with Milwaukee’s arena), meaning the teams traveled for four of the five games. I love the days when the NBA had scheduling conflicts. “Sorry, guys, we can’t accommodate Game 4—we have a tractor pull that weekend.”
43. Kobe scored 40-plus points in nine consecutive games that winter, the third-longest 40-plus streak ever. Cue up Dirk Diggler’s “We’ll shoot when I’m good and goddamned ready, I’m the biggest star here!” tantrum, multiply it by three and that was Kobe’s demeanor for most of the season. The prologue in Phil Jackson’s book, More than a Game, tells about his ’01 battles with Kobe after Kobe basically decided, “Sorry, guys, I don’t really like the triangle anymore, I’m going to be breaking plays and going for my own points now.”
44. The one loss: Game 1, when Iverson went bonkers (48 points) and nearly stomped Ty Lue’s head.
45. I just made that term up. It’s like “Bennifer” or “Brangelina.” Right down to the inevitable breakup in the end. If only we had thought of it in 2002.
46. This was a hellacious sweep: the Lakers didn’t have home-court advantage and still won by 14, 7, 39 and 29 points. Ripping through the West during that era was no joke: from 2000 to 2005, the West had thirty-one 50-win teams and five 60-win teams; the East had twelve 50-win teams and one 60-win team.
47. I’m cringing. This is like a wet T-shirt contest with Scarlett Johansson taking on both Olsen twins.
48. Although they didn’t win a title until the year after leaving the mammoth Silver-dome, the Dome was a disadvantage for opponents because of lighting and depth perception adjustments (thanks to glass backboards and three miles of seats behind them). The ’87 Pistons clawed their way back against Boston because of the Silverdome effect combined with Saturday/Sunday starts for Games 3 and 4. By the way, ’87 was a memorable Silverdome year: Wrestlemania III (Andre-Hulk plus the watershed Savage-Steamboat match), the Bird-Laimbeer/Rodman brawl (Game 4) and Pope John Paul II celebrating mass there. That’s right, big moments from Andre, Hulk, Macho Man, the Pope and the Basketball Jesus in one year!
49. But not before exploiting Detroit’s personality for the infamous Bad Boys video (1989) that featured more cheap shots than a season of Jerry Springer shows. All copies of this tape have apparently been destroyed; you can’t find it anywhere. One of the all-time hypocritical moves by a sports league, just behind baseball looking the other way with (name an enhancer) during the McGwire-Sosa era.
50. The thing I respected most about those ’89 and ’90 Pistons teams: they took care of business on the road, closing six of eight series on the road and finishing 5–0 in road Finals games. 51. Shades of Rollergirl raving about Dirk Diggler in Amber Waves’ documentary about him. Is there a basketball scenario that can’t be tied to Boogie Nights? I say no. And I think we proved it over these last 4,500 pages.
52. This sucked doubly for Boston: Thompson went to college with McHale and knew all of his moves; he was the only player in the ’80s who could defend McHale by himself. Also, this was the first salary cap loophole trade: when Kupchak retired, the Lakers were allowed to use half of his salary cap number ($1.15 million) toward another player. Fans were thoroughly confused at the time: “Cap number, exception, half the number … what?”
(Robinson) and ’97 (Duncan).
54. The Mavs took them to seven games one year later, then Roy Tarpley got hooked on coke and they were done. Part of me wonders if Riley and West just sent unmarked packages of cocaine to every ’80s rival and hoped they would succumb. Tarpley, Bias, Lucas/Wiggins/Lloyd…
55. I once wrote an entire 2004 column about this game. Sleepy actually turns into a fireball at one point.
56. Bird played 1,015 grueling minutes in 23 playoff games (44.1 minutes per game). That’s the third-highest average for 20-plus playoff games in one postseason behind Allen Iverson in ’01 (22
games, 1,016 minutes) and Thunder Dan Majerle in ’93 (24 games, 1,071 minutes). Bird’s ’87
playoffs also ranks 11th in points, 5th in FTs made, 22nd in assists (first forward) and 80th in rebounds. Of course, it doesn’t rank in Hollinger’s top 50 for PER even though he averaged a 27–10–9, saved the season with the greatest steal in NBA history, logged superhuman minutes and nearly won the Finals by himself. And you wonder why I have trouble trusting player efficiency ratings.
57. Of their top seven guys only Rodman thrived: he averaged 14.9 rebounds in the Finals (41 of 88 offensive), battled a red-hot Shawn Kemp and was their best guy in two wins (Games 2 and 6). He arguably could have won MVP considering MJ’s struggles (22 for 60) in the final three games—you know, if you were using the same indefensible reasoning that led to Parker’s ’07
MVP and Maxwell’s ’81 MVP.
58. Kukoc won the “sixth man” award this year but stank in the playoffs. Chicago handed the post-Pippen/MJ team over to him and finished 13–37. For all the hype over the years, Kukoc never made a single All-Star team.
59. I once created a Ringo Starr Theory for MJ’s teammates: you can’t judge role players properly when they’re playing with a guy who makes everyone else better. Armstrong, Longley, Grant, Kerr and Williams looked better than they were during their Chicago stints (just ask the teams that overpaid them after). Same for Scott, Green, Rambis and Nixon with Magic, or Ainge, Maxwell, Robey and Henderson with Bird.