The Book of Basketball (109 page)

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 season 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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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,
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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
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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.
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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 beaten 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.
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Back in 1984, a pivotal coaching adjustment was KC Jones finally realizing after three freaking games that Dennis Johnson should have been hounding Magic.
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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 medication were detriments during the Russell era. But it doesn’t change the fact that Kendrick Perkins couldn’t have stopped Kareem in a million years, that Magic would have eaten Boston’s point guards alive, or that Jordan would have ripped up the ’07 Spurs.

If you’re still dubious that this decade’s finest teams couldn’t have handled the best of the Bird-Magic-Jordan era, beyond the preexpansion advantages of having two more quality guys in your top nine, consider this caveat: if the 1986 Celtics hopped in a time machine, turned into a 2009
expansion team and reconfigured under current salary-cap/luxury-tax rules (we’ll say a $70 million cap), do you realize how much money they would lose?
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Here’s a conservative estimate of their projected cap figures as well as the total amount of each hypothetical contract:

Larry Bird: $20 million (6 years, $120 million)
Kevin McHale: $15.5 million (6 years, $93 million)
Robert Parish: $15 million (5 years, $75 million)
Dennis Johnson: $13 million (5 years, $65 million)
Danny Ainge: $9 million (5 years, $45 million)
Bill Walton: $7 million (3 years, $21 million)
Scott Wedman: $6.5 million (5 years, $27.5 million)
Jerry Sichting: $1.8 million (2 years, $3.6 million)
Sam Vincent: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
Greg Kite: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
David Thirdkill: $1.2 million (1 year, $1.2 million)
Rick Carlisle: $400K (3 years, $1.2 million)
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Cap total: $92.8 million

Keep in mind, that’s only twelve players and every modern team carries fifteen, so we’d have to bump the total by another $1.5–$3 million; the Parish/McHale salaries assume that nobody cleared copious amounts of cap space (like Orlando with Rashard Lewis) to offer them $110-$120 million in free agency (which definitely could have happened); and Wedman’s number might be low when you remember what similar shooters like Jason Kapono and Vlad Radmanovic earned in free agency (and Wedman was better than those guys). Anyway, my “realistic” look at their projected salaries twenty-three years later yields a projected payroll of $95 million. Ninety-five million! The ’86 Celtics wouldn’t just lose money in 2009; they’d lose
outrageous, life-altering amounts of money
, upwards of
$30–$35 million once you include the luxury tax. In other words, there’s no conceivable way their nucleus could have remained intact. Which means they would have been forced to deal Parish or McHale—just for the hell of it, let’s say they traded McHale to Dallas for Sam Perkins, Derek Harper and a future number one—and instead of swapping Cedric Maxwell and a future number one to the Clippers for Bill Walton, they would been forced to deal Maxwell
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along with that number one pick (and possibly a second number one) to anyone with cap space for a future second-rounder just to ditch Max from their cap.

So let’s look at our revised, tax-friendly ’86 Celtics roster under 2009 rules: