The Book of Basketball (74 page)

Head Case Potential.
Gervin endured constant criticism for his priorities (did he care more about scoring titles or winning titles?); his defense (outstandingly
crappy); his squawking about being underpaid (constant); his dedication (he skipped practice so frequently that
SI
casually mentioned in 1982, “Gervin is habitually late for workouts and sometimes doesn’t show up at all,” like they were talking about an asthma condition or something); his effort issues (when the Spurs gave him a six-year, $3.9 million extension before the ’81 season, they included a $14,000 bonus for every win between 36 and 56 games);
¹⁵
and his personal life, which was endlessly rumored about.
¹⁶
Here’s how Ice summed up his relative lack of popularity in 1978: “Whereas I never went fly like some of the boys.
¹⁷
I’m conservative. I got the short hair, the pencil ’stache, the simple clothes. Plus I’m 6’8”, 183—no, make that 185—and when you look at me all you see is bone. Otherwise in Detroit I’m known as Twig according to my physique. I just do my thing and stay consistent. I figure the people be recognizing the Iceman pretty soon now. Whereas I be up there in a minute.”
¹⁸
It would have been fun following him and covering him, but you might not have enjoyed coaching him or playing with him. As for Sam, he was a head case only in one respect: He never liked the pressure of being “the guy” and preferred to be a complementary star. According to Russell’s
Second Wind
, Sam carried the team enough times that Russ finally asked him why it didn’t happen more often; Sam responded, “No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want the responsibility of having to play like that every night.” Russell respected that choice, pointing out how so many players wanted to be paid like stars without actually carrying the star’s
load every night, so Sam’s acceptance of his own limitations was admirable in a way, even as it frustrated the hell out of Russell that Sam was satisfied with being an afterthought some nights. Then again, Sam turned into Jimmy Chitwood with games on the line. Here’s how Russell described it:

I never could guess what Sam was going to do or say, with one major exception: I knew exactly how he would react in our huddle during the final seconds of a crucial game. I’m talking about a situation where we’d be one point behind, with five seconds to go in a game that meant not just first place or pride but a whole season, when everything was on the line…. Red would be looking around at faces, trying to decide which play to call. It’s a moment when even the better players in the NBA will start coughing, tying their shoelaces and looking the other way. At such moments I knew what Sam would do as well as I know my own name. “Give me the ball,” he’d say. “I’ll make it.”
¹⁹
And all of us would look at him, and we’d know by looking that he meant what he said. Not only that, but you knew that he’d make it.

Defensive Prowess.
The old joke about Sam: the best part of his defense was Russell. But he wasn’t better or worse than most of the guys back then—great athlete, well conditioned, long arms, knew where to go and what to do—while Ice was the worst defensive player of anyone in the top thirty-five. Part of this wasn’t Ice’s fault: the Spurs didn’t care about defense, only that he outscored whomever was guarding him. Which he usually did. Still, defense wins championships … and when your franchise guy is a futile defensive player, that doesn’t bode well for your title hopes. The Spurs made a conscious decision, “We’re revolving everything around Ice’s offense, running and gunning, scoring a ton of points and hoping our snazzy black uniforms catch on with inner-city gangs,” which was probably the right move. With Ice leading the way from 1974 to 1983
(ABA + NBA), the Spurs won 45, 51, 50, 44, 52, 48, 41, 52, 48 and 53 games—not a bad run by any means. But it didn’t translate to success in the Playoffs. They lost ten of eighteen playoff series and made the Conference Finals three times (’79, ’82 and ’83). Ice averaged a 27–7–3 over that stretch, but these were the relevant numbers: 31–41 (overall playoff record), 0–4 (Game 7’s), zero (Finals appearances).

Gervin’s best chance happened in ’79, the second year of a peculiar two-spring vacuum with no dominant NBA team, when the Spurs jumped out to a three-games-to-one lead in the Eastern Finals over the aging Bullets. Ice scored 71 points combined in Games 3 and 4 at home, telling
SI
afterward, “The Bullets know they can’t stop Ice. Ice knows he’s got them on the run.”
²⁰
But the Bullets staved off elimination in Game 5 and shockingly stole Game 6 in Texas, with Ice scoring just 20 points and getting hounded by Grevey and Bobby Dandridge all game.
²¹

When Washington went bigger in the second half, Kirkpatrick explained later, “What this personnel switch did was force [San Antonio coach Doug] Moe to decide where to hide Gervin’s lazy, idling defense. On the tricky scorer, Dandridge, or on the power rebounder, [Greg] Ballard?” Does that sound like someone you’d want to go to war with? Moe picked Ballard, who finished with a 19–12 and combined with Bobby D for 17 of the last 19 Bullets points. Ice went scoreless in the first quarter of Game 7, headed into halftime with eight, then exploded for 34 in the second half … but the Spurs blew a six-point lead in the final three minutes, gave up the winning jumper to Dandridge and became the third team ever to blow a 3–1 lead in a playoff series. Ice completely disappeared in the final three minutes: no points, one brick off the backboard.

Looking back, that was the seminal moment of Ice’s career: his biggest test, his chance to make the Finals and put himself on the map, and his
team
made history failing.
He’d never get that close again. Can we blame his supporting cast? To some degree, yes. During that 1974–83 stretch, his best teammates were Silas (a stud until he blew out his knee in the ’76 Playoffs), Larry Kenon (a starter on the seventies Head Case All-Stars
²²
and All-Time All-Afro teams);
²³
Artis Gilmore (on his last legs), Johnny Moore and Mike Mitchell. Not exactly a murderer’s row. Like Jason Kidd, Gervin turned chicken shit into chicken salad to some degree. (By the way, San Antonio’s front office wasn’t helping matters: from 1977 to 1982, San Antonio traded away three first-rounders and took Frankie Sanders, Reggie Johnson and Wiley Peck with the other three.) On the other hand, none of the five most memorable all-offense/no-defense superstars of the past four decades—Gervin, McAdoo, Maravich, Vince and Dominique—ever became the best guy for a Finals team. This can’t be a coincidence. It just can’t.
Edge: Sam.

Winnability.
We hinted around this word in the Parish/Worthy sections, so screw it: I’m just creating it. Couldn’t you argue that “winnability” is a specific trait? In other words, does a player’s overall package of skills and intangibles (personality, efficiency, sense of the moment, leadership, teamwork, lack of glaring weaknesses) inadvertently lend itself to a winning situation? It’s hard to imagine Gervin playing for a championship team unless it happened later in his career—a little like McAdoo with the ’82 Lakers, with a contender bringing him off the bench as instant offense
²⁴
—or as the second-best player on a team with a franchise big guy like Hakeem, Kareem or Duncan. And even then, I’m not totally sure it would work. Would the ’95 Rockets have cruised to the title if you switched ’82 Gervin with ’95 Drexler? Could they have covered up for his
defense? Probably not.
²⁵
On the flip side, you’d have to admit that Sam Jones winning ten rings in twelve seasons ranks absurdly high on the Winnability Scale. He could play either guard spot, didn’t care about stats and made monster plays when it mattered. I’m not sure what’s left. Sam Jones definitely knew The Secret.
Big Edge: Sam.

Clutchness.
We just covered Gervin’s clutchness issues. (Lack of clutchness? Anti-clutchness? A-Rodability? A-Rodianism?) Even when Ice battled Pete Maravich in CBS’s legendary H-O-R-S-E tournament, he blew the clinching shot and Pistol finished him off with two of his patented moves: the sitting-in-the-floor layup and jumping-from-out-of-bounds reverse layup. Meanwhile, Sam’s teams finished 9–0 in Game 7’s and 13–2 in elimination games, with Sam scoring a combined 37 off the bench in Game 7’s against Syracuse and St. Louis, then averaging 30.1 points in eight other Game 7’s or deciding Game 5’s as a starter. You know what’s amazing? Sam had so many playoff heroics that I couldn’t even scrape together a complete list. Here are the ones we know for sure: ’62 Philly, Game 7 (27 points, game-winning jumper with two seconds left) … ’62 Lakers, do-or-die Game 6 (35 points in L.A.) … ’62 Lakers, Game 7 (27 points, 5 in OT) … ’63 Cincy, Game 7 (outscored Oscar, 47–43)
²⁶
… ’65 Philly, Game 7 (37 points in the “Havlicek steals the ball!” game) …
’66
Cincy, Game 5 (34 points in deciding game) …
’66
Lakers, Game 7 (22 points) … ’68 Sixers, Game 7 (22 points) … ’69 Lakers, must-win Game 4 (down by one, Sam hits the game-winning jumper at the buzzer) … ’69 Lakers, Game 7 (24 points in L.A.).
²⁷
Sam and Jerry West were known as the Association’s first two clutch scorers for a reason.
Big Edge: Sam.

Defining quote.
I’d narrow it down to these two:

Sam on scoring 2,000 points (1965): “That doesn’t mean a thing. Every guy on this team has the ability to score 2,000 points if that’s what he’s asked to do. There’s a lot of unselfishness by others in those 2,000 points I scored.”

Gervin on his legacy (1980): “I’m perfectly happy being known as George Gervin, scoring machine, because in this game the person who puts the ball in the hole is the person that usually gets ahead.”

Which guy would you have wanted as a teammate? Which guy would you have wanted in your NBA foxhole with you? Which guy would you trust with your life on the line in a big game? Which guy was predisposed to thriving with great teammates? Please.
Edge: Sam.

We’ll give the last word to Russell (from
Second Wind):

Whenever the pressure was greatest, Sam was eager for the ball. To me, that’s one sign of a champion. Even with all the talent, the mental sharpness, the fun, the confidence and your focus honed down to winning, there’ll be a level of competition where it all evens out. Then the pressure builds, and for a champion it is a test of heart…. Heart in champions has to do with the depth of your motivation, and how well your mind and body react to pressure. It’s concentration—that is, being able to do what you do best under maximum pain and stress.
²⁸
Sam Jones has a champion’s heart. On the court he always had something in reserve. You could think he’d been squeezed out of his last drop of strength and cunning, but if you looked closely, you’d see him coming with something else he’d tucked away out of sight. Though sometimes he’d do things that made me want to break him in two, his presence gave me great comfort in key games. In Los Angeles, Jerry West was called “Mr. Clutch,” and he was, but in the seventh game of a championship series, I’ll take Sam over any player who’s ever walked on a court.

Now I ask you: Would you rather go to war with George Gervin or Sam Jones?

(I thought so.)

32. WALT FRAZIER

Resume: 13 years, 9 quality, 7 All-Stars … Top 5 (’70, ’72, ’74, ’75), Top 10 (’71, ’73) … All-Defense (7 1st teams) … Playoffs: 20–6–7 (93 G) … 6-year peak: 22–7–7 … best or 2nd-best player on 2 champs (’70, and ’73 Knicks) and one runner-up (’72)

If you’re measuring guys by extremes and italicizing “the” to hammer the point home, Frazier’s resume includes three extremes: one of
the
best big-game guards ever; one of
the
best defensive guards ever; and one of
the
single greatest performances ever (Game 7 of the ’70 Finals, when he notched 36 points, 19 assists, 7 rebounds and 5 steals and outclutched the actual Mr. Clutch). Beyond his pickpocketing skills (terrifying), rebounding (underrated), playmaking (top-notch) and demeanor (always in control), what stood out was Frazier’s Oscar-like ability to get the precise shots he wanted in tight games. You know how McHale had a killer low-post game? Clyde had a killer high-post game.
²⁹
He started 25 feet from the basket, backed his defender down, shaked and baked a few times, settled on his preferred spot near the top of the key, then turned slightly and launched that moonshot jumper right in the guy’s face
… swish.
³⁰
That’s what made him so memorable on the road—not just how he always rose to the occasion, but the demoralizing effect those jumpers had on crowds. They knew the jumper was coming (“oh, shit”), they knew it (“shit”), they knew it (“send a double”), they knew it
(“shit”) …
and then it went in (dead silence).

Quick tangent: I am too young to remember watching Clyde live, but in my basketball-watching lifetime, only seven guys were crowd-killers: Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Bernard, Isiah, Andrew Toney, and strangely enough, Vinnie Johnson. When those guys got going, you could see the future unfold before it started manifesting itself. We knew it was in the works, our guys knew it, our coaches knew it, everyone knew it … and then the points came in bunches and sucked all forms of life out of the building. It was like frolicking in the ocean, seeing a giant wave coming from fifteen seconds away, then remaining in place and getting crushed by it. Jordan and Bird were the all-time crowd-killers; they loved playing on the road, loved shutting everyone up and considered it the best possible challenge. When Fernando Medina took the famous photo of Jordan’s final shot of the ’98 Finals, that was the definitive crowd-killing moment: an entire section of Utah fans sitting behind the basket, screaming in horror and bracing for the inevitable even as the ball drifted toward the basket. My favorite crowd-killing moment happened after Bird had been fouled in the last few seconds with the Celtics trailing by one, only he wasn’t satisfied with the noise level of the pathetic Clippers crowd
, so he stepped away from the line and waved his arms.
That’s right, the Legend was imploring the crowd to pump up the volume. I mean, who does that? Do I even need to tell you that he swished the free throws? Probably not.