Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  60. The good news: Chicago could throw out a frightening whitewash—the twin vanilla towers of Wennington and Longley, with Kukoc, Kerr and Jud Buechler flanking them and Jack Haley cheering them on from the bench in streetclothes. That was almost a blizzard. 61. I just pulled a Paul Maguire there: started an argument with you, then debunked your point even though you never said anything. “Watch how I made you look bad, watch how I did that, watch this … bam! Right there!”

  62. Seattle’s ’96 bench: Vince Askew, Nate McMillan, Frank Brickowski and Ervin “No Magic”

  Johnson (one of my favorite nicknames ever). Ervin had a long, Shannon Sharpe-like face that was perfect for the “Hey, Ervin, why the long face?” heckle. That reminds me, I spent a lot of time heckling during the M. L. Carr and Rick Pitino eras in Boston (mostly out of drunken bitterness). This was before the “let’s keep noise going for three straight hours” NBA arena era, so if you were sitting within ten rows of a depressing game, you could hear every sneaker squeak, play conversation, and heckle. During one dead Miami game, I screamed, “You never won without Magic!” from 20 feet away at Pat Riley for four solid quarters. (You heard me, Pat. I know you heard me.) As for referee insults, I was always partial to “Hey ref, bend over and use your good eye!” Never failed to bring the house down.

  63. Of the hundreds of tapes I watched, no postmerger player had an easier time scoring playoff points than ’86 McHale: 39 MPG, 24.9 PPG, 58% FG, 79% FT, 16.1 FGA, 7.8 FTA. He barely broke a sweat. The Panda Express post-up menu was churning out orders like clockwork. “Who wants a no. 3? Can I interest you in a combo no. 2? Please, try an up-and-under egg roll, I insist!”

  64. They went 15–0 vs. Milwaukee, Atlanta, L.A. and Houston and 3–2 vs. Philly (one loss by 6

  points, the other by Doc’s banked 3 at the buzzer) but lost ten games to sub-.500 teams, including 26-win Indy, 29-win Cleveland, 30-win (and MJ-less) Chicago and the 23-win Knicks. Peter May’s The Last Banner has one recurring theme: the players bemoaning after the fact that they blew a chance to win 70 by getting bored too often. They also blew four OT games and two more at the buzzer, with Bird clanking FTs in two of them even though he led the league in FT percentage. So it was a slightly fluky 67-win season; they easily could have reached 71 or 72. 65. Assistants Jimmy Rodgers and Chris Ford had ghastly perms this season. Just ghastly. They were right from the Mike Fratello Collection. Ford even threw in a porn mustache and a variety of

  ’80s suits that looked like they came from a Philip Michael Thomas estate sale. 66. In the regular season, Atlanta went 0–6 against them but every game was close (between three and seven points). There was a memorable game in early January when the Hawks raced out to a 24-point first-half lead, did some trash-talking and got Keyser Söze’d in the second half, with Boston prevailing in OT behind Bird’s 41 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. You did not talk smack to the ’86 Celts.

  67. When Wedman broke two ribs during Game 3 of the Bucks series, they played small-ball for an extended stretch in Game 4 (Sichting, Ainge, DJ, Bird and McHale), then switched to giantball in crunch time (Ainge, Bird, McHale, Parish and Walton) to pull away. That’s ridiculous. 68. Funniest chemistry story from that season: Bird thought he had clinched the FT title, but Ainge realized before a meaningless Game 82 that if he went 13 for 15, he’d qualify with enough attempts and pass Bird. In the second half, Danny started driving to the basket recklessly, up-faking and trying to draw fouls—totally uncharacteristic—only nobody knew what was going on until the fourth quarter, and KC Jones couldn’t remove him because Ainge kept getting to the line. Finally McHale decided he would intentionally commit lane violations to stop Ainge, who was getting heckled by his own bench, but that was averted when there was a whistle and Jones pulled him. And by the way, all of this was for fun and everyone was laughing the whole time. 69. I’m not kidding: when the ’86 Celts were feeling it, every time Bird tossed it in to Walton, it was move-up-to-the-edge-of-your-seat exciting. What are they gonna come up with this time?

  70. One more reason: because I needed an excuse to hit up my boy Hirschy at the NBA for as many

  ’86 Celtics tapes as possible. If I ever get divorced, I guarantee you “He made me watch too many

  ’86 Celtics tapes” will be part of the Sports Gal’s irreconcilable differences case.

  THIRTEEN

  THE WINE CELLAR

  TIME TO PUT the jigsaw pieces together and make a puzzle.

  The puzzle revolves around the Martian Premise. Let’s say basketball-playing aliens land on earth, blow things up Independence Day– style, then challenge us to a seven-game series for control of the universe. And let’s say we have access to the time machine from Lost, allowing us to travel back Sarah Conner–style and grab any twelve NBA legends from 1946 through 2009, transport them to the present day, then hold practices for eight weeks before the Final Finals. Again, we have to prevail or planet Earth as we know it ends. Which twelve players would you pick?

  If you learned anything from this book other than “Simmons is incapable of editing himself” and

  “Rick Barry wore a Burt Reynolds–like wig during the 1975–76 season,” I hope and pray that it’s this: instead of picking the greatest players, you should pick twelve who complement each other in the best possible way … right? (Please nod. Thank you.) You want a basketball team. A group that understands The Secret. A pecking order of personalities/talents that no rogue player would dare challenge. A crunch-time unit that includes one vocal leader, one leader by example and one unquestioned alpha dog. Bench guys who will accept limited roles and not care about minutes. Roster flexibility with heights, styles and athleticism. At least four white guys so we can market more jerseys and posters. (Whoops, I screwed that up—I was thinking of the logic behind the ’92

  Dream Team. Scratch that one.) In a perfect world, our best twelve would care only about winning and meshing as a team.

  I call it the Wine Cellar Team, and here’s why: Whenever someone makes an all-time team, they casually throw out names without context. I‧ ll take Bird, Magic, Jordan, Kareem, LeBron … What does that even mean? Did you like pre-baseball or post-baseball Jordan? Did you like alpha dog Magic or unselfish Magic? I need more information. Think like a wine snob and regard players like vintages of wine and not the brands themselves. Ask any wine connosseur for their ten favorite Bordeaux of the last seventy-five years and they wouldn’t say, “ Mouton-Rothschild, Lafite, Haut Brion, Latour …” They would give you precise vintages. The ’59 Mouton Rothschild. The ’53

  Lafite. The ’82 Haut-Brion. The ’61 Latour. If you prodded them, they would happily accept this challenge, “I’ll give you five dinner menus and you give me the ten best Bordeaux, two per dinner, that match up with the food.” That’s part of being a wine connoisseur—not just knowing the wines but knowing the vintages and how they relate to food. They would have a grand old time figuring this out. 1

  Doesn’t that sound like basketball? It’s all about the vintages. I loved watching Bird, but I really loved watching ’86 Bird. Why? His teammates peaked in ’86, allowing him to explore parts of his game during his prime that couldn’t be explored otherwise. You could say his career year became special because of luck and timing. With wines, the determining factors for career years also hinge on luck and timing—like 1947, an unusually hot summer in France that created wines of high alcohol and low acidity. That’s how the ’47 Cheval Blanc emerged as a famous vintage and the best its vine-yard ever produced … you know, just like ’77 Bill Walton. Not every decision is that easy. Mouton-Rothschild peaked in ’53, ’59 and ’61 … you know, like how Magic peaked in different ways in ’82, ’85 and ’87. Wine connoisseurs disagree on the best Mouton-Rothschild vintage, just like we might disagree on the best vintage of Magic. His best scoring season occurred in ’87, but I have more than enough firepower on my Wine Cellar Team. If I’m already grabbing a Jordan bottle (either ’92 or ’96) and a bottle of ’86 Bird, and I
’m definitely picking a few more scorers, why would I need Magic to assume a bigger scoring load? Why not start ’85 Magic (the ultimate for unselfish point guards) or maybe even bring ’82 Magic (younger, better defensively, capable of playing four positions, talented enough to average a shade under a triple double) off the bench as my sixth man?

  So really, the Wine Cellar Team is a jigsaw puzzle. I made my decisions easier with three ground rules:

  1. Only vintage seasons that I remember witnessing live. That makes the ABA-NBA merger our cutoff date and gives us a time frame from 1977 to 2009.2

  2. Emulate the best basketball team ever (the ’86 Celts) as closely as possible, not their talent as much as their unselfishness and we-can-do-anything flexibility. 3. Don’t forget that a formula of “unselfishness + character + defense + rebounding + MJ”

  will run the Martians out of the gym unless they have an eight-foot-three center we didn’t know about.3

  From there, I worked backward and started with the following have-to-have-them guys who received check marks in the following categories: totally unselfish, awesome teammate, enjoyed making others better, incredibly high basketball IQ, complete comprehension of The Secret. There were three in all.

  ’86 Larry Bird

  25.8 PPG, 9.3 RPG, 8.2 APG, 2.1 SPG, 52–93–41 (18 playoff games)

  Give him superior teammates and he’d reinvent himself as a complementary player, drain a few threes, post smaller dudes up, rove around on defense like a free safety, make everyone else better and take over if you needed him. Mike Fratello summed up Bird’s better-with-great-teammates qualities after coaching an ’88 All-Star game in which Bird scored six points and Jordan and

  ’Nique combined for sixty-nine: “Michael played well, Dominique played well, but the thing which really impressed me was the way Larry Bird subjugated himself. Larry Bird showed me more today than most people could possibly have noticed. From the standpoint of a coach, you’ve got to love seeing a man do all he did—come up with a couple of key steals, get back on defense continually, and break up about five fast-break opportunities. To me, he was like an overseer of the game. He saw what we needed, and he acted accordingly.” Yes. We need an overseer. That will be Bird.

  ’03 Tim Duncan

  Playoffs: 24.7 PPG, 15.4 RPG, 5.3 APG, 3.3 BPG, 53–68 (24 games)

  Greatest power forward ever, commander of a double team at all times, the ultimate teammate, and someone capable of playing center when we go small. Fits everything we want to do. A superior version of ’86 McHale.

  ’85 Magic Johnson

  Playoffs: 17.5 PPG, 7.1 RPG, 15.2 APG, 51–85 (19 games).

  For all the reasons covered in the Mouton-Rothschild paragraph. Like Bird, he would live to make everyone else better.

  So that’s my three-man foundation along with Jordan. But which Jordan? He peaked athletically and statistically in ’91, peaked from a confidence level in ’92 and peaked as a competitor and winner in ’93 … but those three Jordan vintages were a little too competitive. Even with the future of the universe at stake, that might not deter him from undermining the confidence of certain teammates (imagine him scrimmaging against Kobe or LeBron) and turning every practice into an all-out war to constantly reaffirm his alpha status. Would we rather have ’96 Jordan? You know, the guy who was humbled from his baseball experience, more appreciative of his gifts, a more understanding and supportive teammate, just as competitive and hungry, a little less explosive but more efficient, smarter about his own limitations, someone who treasured The Secret completely?

  Hmmmmmm. Let’s go here.

  ’92 Michael Jordan

  Playoffs: 34.5 PPG, 6.2 RPG, 5.8 APG, 2.8 stocks, 50–86–39 (22 games)4

  And here’s why: prebaseball MJ struggled only to coexist with shitty teammates. He’s not playing with Brad Sellers and Will Perdue on the Wine Cellar Team. He’ll be fine. If he didn’t cause problems with the Dream Team, he won’t cause problems with the greatest team ever assembled. We want our best scorer coming off title number two at the peak of his powers; extending that ’86

  Celtics framework, imagine switching Jordan with Danny Ainge and what he would have inflicted. Yikes. And since we’re pay-per-viewing scrimmages to raise money for the cities destroyed by the evil Martians, any die-hard hoops fan will pony up to see him battling Young LeBron, Young Wade and/or Young Kobe for eight solid weeks. 5

  For the center spot, I can’t hold grudges with the future of the world at stake. I need the surest two points of all time. I need the sky hook. I need Kareem. Any doubts I had about him embracing The Secret were erased in a 1980 Sports Illustrated feature, when he explained a decision to play after a debilitating migraine like this: “These guys are my teammates, but they are also my friends. They needed me.” Yes! Sounds like something Russell would say. Hence …

  ’77 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Playoffs: 34.6 PPG, 17.7 RPG, 4.1 APG, 5.2 stocks, 61–73 (11 games)

  That’s our starting five: ’86 Bird, ’03 Duncan, ’85 Magic, ’92 Jordan and ’77 Kareem. You cannot assemble a better five-man unit of modern guys. Our five backups should complement them in every conceivable way (while grasping The Secret, of course).

  ’86 Kevin McHale

  Playoffs: 24.9 PPG, 8.6 RPG, 2.7 APG, 2.4 BPG, 58–79 (18 games)

  The most efficient low-post scorer ever. McHale comes in, we post him up, he scores six out of ten times (not counting foul shots). On the other end, he guards players ranging from six-foot-four to seven-foot-four, plays power forward or center and adapts to any style. The Martians will have to plan for McHale. In fact, they might look at his body and think he’s a fellow alien.

  ’92 Scottie Pippen

  Playoffs: 19.5 PPG, 8.8 RPG, 6.7 APG, 3.0 stocks, 47–76 (22 games)

  The best perimeter defender ever, a world-class athlete and someone who can swing between forward and guard and even play point forward. If one of the Martians gets hot, I’m unleashing Jordan or Pippen on him. Also, we need him for our Murderous Press, that’s about fifteen paragraphs away from rocking your world.

  ’77 Bill Walton

  Playoffs: 18.2 PPG, 15.2 RPG, 5.5 APG, 3.4 BPG, 51–69 (19 games)

  No modern center had a greater effect on his teammates. We want a combination rebounder, shot blocker and passer who would be overjoyed to join forces with the greatest collection of talent ever assembled. And as we learned in ’86, the Walton Experience works splendidly in short doses.6

  ’05 Ron Artest

  Playoffs: (DNP)

  Just kidding. He’d start an intergalactic melee. We need an MJ backup, though. What about …

  ’01 Kobe Bryant

  Playoffs: 29.4 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 6.1 APG, 47–82–32 (16 games).

  Best-case scenario: Young Kobe performs a reasonable MJ impression as Jordan’s caddy. It’s conceivable because he hasn’t gone Teen Wolf yet and he’s young enough to understand his place in the pecking order. If we asked him to play 15 minutes a game, kill himself defensively, push Jordan in practice and serve as his valet during games, Young Kobe probably says yes. Older Kobe would think, “Wait a second, why should I take a backseat to Michael? I’m just as good as he is!”

  That’s why we need Young Kobe.

  Worst-case scenario: Young Kobe gets totally caught up in the whole “I need to prove that I’m as good as MJ” thing, jacks up shots in games and keeps challenging Jordan in practice to the point that we can’t put them on different teams in scrimmages anymore.

  (Actually, why am I even risking it? Couldn’t we just go here?)

  ’09 Dwyane Wade

  Regular season: 30.2 PPG, 7.5 APG, 5.2 RPG, 2.2 SPG, 49–77–32 (79 games)

  For five reasons: (a) ’09 Wade performed the best Jordan imitiation yet; (b) it can’t be forgotten how he thrived off the bench during the ’08 Olympics; (c) I don’t have to worry about chemistry; (d) he can handle the ball at point in a pinch; and (e) Lakers fans will be furious that I bumped Kobe. This is a win-win all t
he way around. Sorry, Kobe. Just remember, I didn’t do this … you did this. 7

  ’09 Chris Paul

  Regular season: 22.9 PPG, 11.0 APG, 5.5 RPG, 2.8 SPG, 50–87–36 (77 games)

  The Evolutionary Isiah and the front of our Murderous Press, as well as the perfect Magic backup (capable of handling any waterbug point guard) and a second ballhandler/cooler for when we’re protecting a lead in the last 30 seconds.

  For our last two spots, we’re going with luxuries …

  ’09 LeBron James

  Regular season: 28.4 PPG, 7.6 RPG, 7.2 APG, 1.69 SPG, 49–78–34 (82 games)

  I considered ’89 Dennis Rodman before realizing he broke my Only One Head Case (you can get away with one head case, but if you have two, they might end up hanging out) and Nobody on My Wine Cellar Team Can Appear on Celebrity Apprentice at Any Point in Their Lives rules. No thanks. The ’09 LeBron gives us more smallball options, an über-athlete who can play four positions (à la ’82 Magic) and the next to final piece of our Murderous Press that’s now making you giddy, as well as a phenomenal teammate and competitor who might even challenge Bird for minutes. I’m downgrading him as the eleventh guy only because he’s still two or three years away from becoming the player we know he’ll be. 8