THE GREAT DEBATE: The #2 Greatest Player of All-Time

[B][CENTER]The Case for Bill Russell[/CENTER][/B]

I'd like to begin the case with a somewhat off topic yet relevant discussion about box score stats and how they can be misleading without proper context and simultaneous impact analysis. Like I said, it's somewhat off topic, but I feel that it's very relevant for players like Russell or Walton who's box score stats just don't do them proper justice.

Here is an article that does a much better job of articulating what is that I'm trying to show – [URL="http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1801.pdf"]http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1801.pdf[/URL]

If you're too lazy and don't want to read the article(which I would advise against), I'll do my best to summarize the main points below

[B]Summary:[/B]

The purpose of this article is to show that initial intuition with concerns to the apportion of shots a particular player should take is often wrong. For example, it might be intuitively reasonable to assume that the 62 Warriors should have allowed Wilt to shoot even more than he did. Why not? He was shooting a higher TS% than anyone else on his team and a higher TS% than the team in general. Wouldn’t taking some of those shots away from Wilt and giving them to players who shoot at a lower efficiency in essence be wasting possessions and lower the overall team efficiency? It might not be immediately obvious why this is false, but the article I’ve provided goes into great detail explaining why it is in fact the case. For those of you who are mathematically inclined, it’s a great read that winds up making intuitive sense by the end of the article. For those of you who aren’t so mathematically inclined, hopefully the analogies the author provides along with my summaries should suffice. After you’ve read the first article I suggest reading this next article [url]http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/braesss-paradox-and-the-ewing-theory/[/url] which does a great job of further explaining these reasonings and putting them within perspective.

The article describes something called the “Nash Equilibrium” in which player’s take a short sighted approach to the game of basketball and focus and making the best possible decisions at the time in an effort to win the game. Logically “It may seem like common sense to say that every play in a basketball game should be run in the way that gives it the highest probability of success. But, as this section will demonstrate, such a strategy is like the “selfish” Nash equilibrium in the previous section, and it is not necessarily the one that leads to the highest overall efficiency. A team that contents itself with making the highest-percentage play each time down the court does not consider the game-wide implications of its strategy can pay a significant price of anarchy for its “short-sighted approach””

A team’s offense can be characterized by a series of lines that represent a play from the beginning with the start of a possession and ending with a shot attempt. “Each line connecting the beginning of the possession to the shot attempt represents a different player, who is treated as a possible path by which points may come. Each player(labeled i=1,2,…5) has a particular scoring efficiency fi that depends on his frequency of use xi”

It is intuitively reasonable to imagine that there exists “an inverse relationship between offensive usage and offensive efficiency”. Phrased differently, the more a player looks to shoot, the less efficient he will be on those shots overall. It is very difficult to define the specifics of this relationship because “a great player will not spend much time taking less than 10% of his team’s shots, and a mediocre player will not spend much time taking more than 50% of his team’s shots.” However, what research we have so far suggests that this relationship trends towards being linear. We define this relationship as a “skill-curve”. As an example, here is Ray Allen’s skill curve which represents a plot of his “TS% as a function of the fraction of his team’s shots x that he took while on the court”(fi(xi) )

The author proposes a scenario in which Ray Allen is surrounded by four teammates who all shoot a worse TS% than he. It would be commonsensical to assume that Allen should be the one on the team shooting the most shots, given the fact that he is the team’s most efficient shooter. As it turns out, the team is at its most efficient when Allen is taken an almost even amount of shots in comparison with the rest of the team. Paralleling this to our Chamberlain scenario, this conclusion suggests that the 1962 Warriors might have improved their overall efficiency as a team by reallocating some of Chamberlains 39.5 FGA to some of the other players, despite the fact that the reallocation destination shooters would score less efficiently.

A great analogy to football is made – “In American football, every professional team produces more yards with the average passing play than with the average running play(see Alamar,2006). Nonetheless, teams continue to employ less efficient running plays as a means of ‘keeping the defense honest’. That is, the immediate success of a given play is sacrificed in order to maintain the high efficiency of a team’s offense as a whole.”

The purpose of this first section is to show why “stat’s arent everything” and do so by providing a plausible scenario in which player A can help his team’s offense more by putting up statline x than by putting up statline y, despite the fact that statline y is objectively greater than statline x. It’s not all that difficult to believe in reality. In fact we’ve seen it time and time again with superstars over the ages like Wilt, Kareem, Jordan, and Lebron whose best statistical seasons didn't correspond with their best actual play.

Now before we move on specifically to Russell himself, I'd like to address one final point(sorry for the asides, but I do think they're important). It's the age old question.


[B]Does Defense Really Win Championships?[/B]

The following is a blog post from the editor of Basketball Reference

[URL="http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7276"]http://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/?p=7276[/URL]

Again, if you're too lazy to read, here are some key points.

- All other things held constant, a good defense is statistically more likely to win a championship than an equally good offense

- The expected probably that a -10.0 defense will win a championship is 80.1% while the odds of a +10 offense winning a championship are only 32.3%

- The Bill Russell Celtics were so defensively dominant that they skew the results quite drastically in favor of good defenses.

- Even with the Russell Celtics removed from the picture, a -10.0 defense is still more likely to win a championship than a +10.0 offense, at 63.9% and 43.8% respectively.

Now that I've layed out the case for why box score stats aren't everything, and shown how important good defense is for winning championships, I'll move on to actually analyzing Bill Russell.

(continued below)

[B]Measuring Russell's Defensive Impact[/B]

A good way to go about measuring a particular player's impact on his team is by looking at games in which that player missed and then comparing how his team did without him vs how his team did with him. Obviously, the more games a player misses over the course of a career, the more accurate the statistical picture our results paint will be. Bill Russell missed 52 games over the course of his career, unfortunately for us, 24 of those games occurred during his rookie year because of the Olympics. Since most player's rookie years aren't indicative of the impact they'll be having in their prime years, this relatively large percentage of missed games coming within his rookie year(46%) skews the overall results in a somewhat negative manner. Even still, Russell's impact on his team is obvious.

In total, the Boston Celtics were 26-26 without Russell(.500), and had an overall SRS of 0.7; with Russell the Boston Celtics were 690-262(.725), and had an overall SRS of 5.38.

In case you were wondering, the Simple Rating System(SRS) is a metric that uses average point differential and strength of schedule to to evaluate a team's strength. It's generally a more accurate gauge of how “good” a team is, both going forward and looking back.

If we exclude Russell's rookie year from these results we get

Boston SRS without Russell : -2.03
Boston SRS with Russell : +5.88
Boston record without Russell : 10-18(.357)
Boston record with Russell : 682-246(.735)

No matter how you slice it, a +7.91 SRS impact is an incredible difference. To put that into perspective, that's similar to the difference between the Thunder and the Timberwolves this past year. The counterpoint is obviously the relatively small sample size, but given the overall sum of the data presented below, this piece in particular doesn't seem to be overly eristic.

I posted this spreadsheet that I made in the previous thread, but I'll post it here again for emphasis.

[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/e0pph5.png[/IMG]

It should be quite obvious that Russell was having an absolutely massive impact on the defensive end by looking at this data. The Celtics gained 6 relative points, 8 absolute points, 18 defensive win shares, jumped from the 6th all the way to 1st, and their SRS went up by 4.07. As Russell continued to improve as a player, the Celtics defense continued to improve as a team, indicating to me that Russell was a major influence on that. When Russell retired in 69' the Boston Celtics once again plummeted, dropping 6.4 relative points, 10.1 absolute points, 18.5 defensive win shares, and nearly 7 SRS points. One question I find myself asking is, “If a 35 year old Bill Russell was defensively worth that much, how much then was a prime Russell(64,65) worth?”.

Also of interest here is just how defensively dominant the Celtics were in the mid 60's, which coincidentally(or not) just so happens to coincide with what most basketball historians consider to be Russell's absolute peak(64-65). Going by the data, in 1965 the Boston Celtics were defensively 8.1 points better than the second best defensive team in the league. To put this in perspective with modern times, 2012's best defensive team, the Boston Celtics, were 8.1 points better than the Detroit Pistons, the 22nd best defensive team. What the 1964 Celtics did on the defensive end is akin to a team posting a 93.1 defensive rating in 2012.

I'm sure a lot of people probably consider Magic Johnson to be the best offensive player that's ever lived, and for good reason – go look at those showtime Laker offenses, but how does Magic's offensive contributions to compare to that of Russell's defensive contributions. Here's a quote from another poster on another board who sums it up quite nicely.

[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/300fkud.png[/IMG]

“As I said, I mentally give Russell more credit for individual impacting defense at that time than Magic individually impacting the Lakers offense. With that said, even if you gave Magic *all* the credit and Russell 80% of the credit, Russell's impact still looks larger. It's almost impossible to conclude that Russell's impact wasn't at the very least comparable to Magic's on the other side of the ball. Personally, I think it exceeded Magic's impact on offense.

Coming full circle back to Neil's post at B-R, according to his all-time offense/defense estimations, Magic's peak offenses from 85-87 are the 8th, 15th and 23rd best offenses ever. Again, Russell's peak defenses ranked 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 13th, 22nd and 23rd.” - Elgee

(continuted below)

Now it might be pointed out that Russell wasn't solely responsible for those great Celtic defenses, and while that's true, I'd argue that given the wealth of statistical evidence – the Celtics huge defensive improvement upon Russell's arrival, their huge drop off upon his retirement, their year by year defensive improvement when Russell was improving, their year by year decline as Russell started to decline, their sub-par performances without him in 1962,

[QUOTE]“If anyone doubts the value of Bill Russell to the Boston Celtics, the performance of the three-time National Basketball Association champs in the last four games may change their mind."

Russell, considered the best defensive player in the game, has missed the last four games because of a foot injury and the Celtics have lost every one.

Their four game losing streak matches their longest since March, 1957”[/QUOTE]

their sub-par performances without him in 1969(0-5), along with all of the anecdotal evidence from the time -

[QUOTE=Jerry West]“You just don't get those tap-ins with Russell in there. Too many teams make the mistake of trying to drive through the middle on Boston and Russell's always there.” [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Fred Schaus]“There is still no one on the horizon who can counteract the things Bill Russell can do to you, the Celts will be strong until they lose him”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“For the uninitiated, goateed Bill Russell is the difference between winning and losing for the Boston Celtics baskeball team. It has been like that for six years now”[/QUOTE]

, that Russell's defensive contributions were large enough to justify the usefullness of these statistics. Also, while Russell's teammates were obviously no slouches on defense, were they really all time great, like they would need to be for Russell to not be the primary contributor to these historic defenses? Havlicek was the only one I would consider to be a great defender, as in someone on that “Lebron” , for lack of a better modern comparison, level. Most of them were average to slightly above average, akin to the likes of Chalmers and Wade. A few others like Satch Sanders were considered to be pretty good and arguably great, but make no mistake that a this isn't some modern Chicago Bulls defense. Ask yourself these questions. Did Russell have more defensive help than Magic had offensive help? Was Magic better defensively than Russell was offensively. For me, that's two nos. Also, how much of their defense can be attributed to Russell himself? Russell had an absolutely brilliant defensive mind
[QUOTE=Bill Russell]
“The idea is not to block every shot. The idea is to make your opponent believe that you might block every shot. " [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Bill Russell]“One of my jobs is to be steerer for our team...I can steer most everybody in this league. Say they're rolling in toward me, and I want them to go to their right. First, I've got to get them thinking instead of playing naturally. I fake directly toward them with my head, and with my left arm extended-pointed straight toward their chest-and my weight on my left foot. This is not exactly the prettiest posture in all the world, and immediately they think, 'Ah hah, Russell has his weight on the wrong foot.' and sure enough, they swerve right every time to go around me. Now I can whirl completely around quickly enough off the left foot(which turns out to be the right, or correct foot after all), plant all my weight on my right foot, leap up, and when I'm at the peak of my jump, guess who has just shot-if my timing is correct. If I want them to move left, I swing my left arm over a little more to their right. You follow me here? I have very long arms, and they have got to move left.”[/QUOTE]

Like any good player with a great defensive mind, I'm sure he shared some of that knowledge with his teammates. I imagine playing along side Bill Russell to be like playing along side an on court defensive coach at all times, if you're not sure what to do, or where to go, just ask Bill. Furthermore, how much of that great defensive guard play was due to the increased pressure they could apply because of the fact that they had big Bill back there protecting the rim and correcting their mistakes? It doesn't seem outlandish to assume that Russell's presence alone allowed his guards to play their guys up tight and better contest outside shots, especially when you consider that Boston's entire defensive game plan centered around the guards playing their counterparts up close in an attempt to goad their man into driving to the lane and thereby forcing them to meet Russell at the rim.

Here is a Sport's illustrated article in which Tommy Heinsohn, the then(1970) Celtics head coach describes how he is implementing a similar gameplan to that of which his former Boston team used to play, with two crucial differences.
[QUOTE=Tom Heinsohn]
“Two major differences are that the defense no longer tries to funnel opponents into the middle, even though Cowens is a good shot blocker, and all five players go for defensive rebounds instead of just one or two. Both adjustments have been made simply because Russell is no longer in there.”[/QUOTE]


Going back to the stats that I posted, it should also be quite obvious that this team was winning primarily because of it's defense, for which Bill Russell is by far the largest contributor. For example, in 1964, a year in which many consider to be part of Russell's absolute peak, they were winning almost 90% of their games on the defensive end. In fact, one could make the argument that the Celtics were so good defensively that they were winning in spite of their offense. Here are the Boston Celtics offensive rankings during those years.

1957 – 87.2 (5th of 8)
1958 – 85.5 (7th of 8)
1959 – 88.3 (5th of 8)
1960 – 90.2 (5th of 8)
1961 – 87.5 (8th of 8)
1962 – 91.6 (7th of 9)
1963 – 92.6 (9th of 9)
1964 – 89.3 (9th of 9)
1965 - 92.9 (7th of 9)
1966 – 91.7 (8th of 9)
1967 – 97.7 (4th of 10)
1968 – 95.8 (8th of 12)
1969 – 93.2 (9th of 12)
[QUOTE=Fred Schaus]
“The Celtics are great because their defense is great, and defense is the name of the game”[/QUOTE]

As I mentioned the Olympics earlier in this section. Check out what Russell was doing defensively in the 56' Olympics, and keep in mind that Russell was 1 of just 2 future NBA players on that team(kudos to a poster from another board for pointing this out)

“Phillipines scored 94 and 77 in first 2 games but 53 against USA;
Japan 61 and 70... 40 against USA;
Thailand 55 and 50... 29 against USA;
Soviet Union 82 vs the rest... 110 vs USA... in two games (55 average)” - bastillion


Finally, I'd like to touch base with an interesting question that was posed in the previous thread. Just how many of the eleven championships was Russell the “main man” for? I think the only years really in question would be those fringe years, 57, 68, 69. I won't go into too much detail as to why I feel he was the most important player for all 11 of those championships(though I don't think he deserves 11 FMVPs), but I will provide some quotes from the years in question.

[B]1957[/B]

[QUOTE=Charley Eckman(Pistons coach)]“Russell beat us all by himself—with his brilliant defensive play.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Vince Borlya(Knickerbockers coach)]“it was Russell who beat us, nobody else. If he hadn’t batted down all those shots in the first half, we’d have taken such a commanding lead, they’d have given up.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“Russell is as awesome a player as basketball has ever seen and everybody now has given up hope of any strategy working against him steadily.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“The professional basketball season is barely under way but already the Boston Celtics are making a farce out of what must laughingly be described as a “race” because of a guy named Bill Russell. Because of his absolutely amazing defensive abilities he may wind up as the most valuable player in the history of pro basketball.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“When he’s around the basket he demoralizes your team. A fellow gets by his man and goes in for an easy shot and—whoom!—up goes Russell and he blocks it. It happened to Sparrow eight or nine times in one game. To beat the guy, you have to have three fellows hitting from outside. Nobody can have a bad night. It’s a tall order. Another thing, you play without your center. Everybody else has to go that much longer without relief. If you’re lucky, you beat him now and then. But it whacks your club out.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“But he[Mikan] never ran a game like Bill Russell. Nobody in history ever ruined you like Russell.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“The Boston Celtics set their sights on a four game sweep over Philadelphia today while the Warriors remained in awe of the mighty Bill Russell.”(The Telegraph, Mar. 24, 1958)[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]
“Boston’s chances in the National Basketball Assn. championship playoffs well may rest on how quickly Bill Russell can recover from an ankle injury.” -(Tuscaloosa News, Apr. 3, 1958)[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Bob Cousy]“Losing Russell hurts a lot in rebounding,” and “It will eliminate our usual fast break almost entirely”[/QUOTE]


(continued below)

[B]1969[/B]

[QUOTE=John Havlicek]“You couldn't begin to count the ways we missed[him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have every played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders, and myself. None of us were one on one players...Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been overlooked.” [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“As usual, center Bill Russell, their player-coach, holds the key to Boston’s success, and he dominated the Philadelphia series”.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“Boston’s mighty defense, led by Player-Coach Bill Russell, was the difference as the Celtics edged the Knicks 97-96 Sunday before a crowd of 13,506 and a national television audience.”[/QUOTE]

When asked how his team lost game 1 of the Easter Division semi-finals, Jack Ramsey(76ers Coach) said [QUOTE]“Bill Russell”[/QUOTE], and he went on to say [QUOTE]“he was the difference, He's always the difference when we play Boston.”[/QUOTE] - In that game, Russell only scored two points, but he blocked 13 shots, grabbed 15 rebounds and dished out 8 assists.

This was also the year that the Russell went down with an injury and the Celtics went 0-5 in his absence. Russell was also the team coach at the time, which has to be taken in to consideration. Here are some coaching insights from Russ at the time.

[QUOTE=Bill Russell]“See everybody still talks about the fact that Wilt only took two shots. They still almost won the game, right? And the key was that Chet Walker had been killing us. And I knew that I could guard him. And the reason I knew I could guard him is his moves were very deliberate. As part of my teaching myself, I learned -- we had six plays and nowadays they number those positions. One is point guard, two is shooting guard, three is a small forward, four is a power forward, five is a center. Well, I made a point to learn how to play all those positions on all six plays. Now not that I ever wanted to or hoped to play in those other positions, but in knowing those positions I know the problems that go with that position. So that if my teammate needed help I can help. And on defense I watched these guys, how they play defense, and I know how to guard almost any position. And I physically took over Chet.”[/QUOTE]

Here's more from that same interview in which Russell is asked about his stellar defensive performance on Wilt(by limiting him to only two shots)

[QUOTE=Bill Russell]“That's not true at all. That was a coach's decision. There was a forward on their team named Chet Walker, and he was hurting us badly, okay? So I had my backup center, it was a guy named Wayne Embry. Now Embry had been in the league seven or eight years, and he played against Wilt all those years. So at half time I said to him, "Wayne, I'm going to try something. It's not new. I want you to guard Wilt. Okay? I have to take care of Chet Walker." And see, when I made that substitution everybody thought it was trying to stay out of foul trouble, something like that, which was to me the best part of that because I made adjustments that they didn't know what I was doing. So they couldn't make a counter adjustment. You see if you make an adjustment, and they know what you're doing, well they can just counter it. But I made an adjustment, they thought it was to get off of Wilt. They didn't know it was to get on Chet. Now Wilt had a game plan, but his game plan was counting on me trying to guard him. When we put Wayne on him, he guarded him a completely different way.”[/QUOTE]

Playing devil's advocate against myself, I'd say that 1957 is the year with the strongest case for Bill Russell not being the most important player on his team. I think one poster pointed out that they were actually better off without him that year than they were with him, which isn't really true

without Russell +4.54
with Russell +5.77
playoffs with Russell +7.20

, even still, it's not nearly the same impact that we're seeing in other years.

Given the strong statistical surge and drop-off the Celtics experienced upon Russell's arrival and retirement, respectively, I would say this anecdotal evidence goes a long way towards supporting the notion that Russell was the most important Celtic, even as a newcomer and 34 year old player-coach.

Now that I've made the case for Russell's defense, both statistically and anecdotally, I'd like to move on to his “lackluster” offense.

(continued below)

[B]Just how bad was Bill Russell's Offense?[/B]

I have a feeling that Russell's offense often gets overlooked, and for a variety of reasons. He didn't put up a lot of points, true depending on what you consider to be a lot for that time, he wasn't very efficient, not true – he was almost always above league average, he wasn't known for his offense, true, but can you really fault him for that, considering just how brilliant he was defensively? While he's offensively the worst player of the consensus top ten, that's an elite bunch - most of whom can't hold a candle to his defensive impact – I do think he was easily an above average offensive player. Consider the context and the nature of those Boston team's and the role that Bill played over the years. He holds an NBA finals record for highest fg% in a finals series at 70.2% for a series in which he put up a 23/25/10 on 91%FG game.

The 1960s Celtics were truly a “team”, in every sense of the word. They never had a superstar offensive scorer taking an abnormally large percentage of the shots. Their general offensive philosophies revolved around sharing the rock, shooting the first good look you get, and running the fast break as often as possible. Russell was THE key factor and offensive anchor behind them running the fast break. His job, along with anchoring the defense, was to rebound the ball and start the fast break. He was Bill Walton before there was ever Bill Walton – Bill Walton with less scoring ability, but much better defensive ability. Just like Bill Walton, Bill Russell not only started their fast breaks, but he acted as the team's offensive hub. Extending beyond Bill Walton, Russell's offensive characteristics draw many parallels to what his contemporary, Wilt Chamberlain was doing with the 76ers. Russell is right up there with 67' Wilt, prime Walton, prime Sabonis and many others as the leagues all time best passing big men. While the offense is unlikely to collapse in his absence, unlike the defense, they were forced to run a different offense without him, and ultimately his outlet passing
[QUOTE=Elgin Baylor]“They just got to running.*They know Russell is going to control the backboards, so they just take off downcourt—all four of the others.”[/QUOTE]
and halfcourt passing were a critical part of Boston's schema.
[QUOTE=John Havlicek]
“You couldn't begin to count the ways we missed[him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have every played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders, and myself. None of us were one on one players...Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been overlooked.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Bill Russell]"In my modest opinion, shooting is of relatively little importance in a player's overall game. Almost all of us in the NBA are All-Americas. We became All-Americas by averaging 20 points or more a game, so by the layman's standards all of us can shoot. It's the other phases of the game that make the difference. If you're going to score 15 and let your man score 20 you're a deficit. If your value to the team is strictly as a shooter, you are of very little value. Offense is the first thing you learn as a kid in any sport: catch a pass, dribble, bat, shoot. You learn the offensive aspects of a game long before you learn there even are defensive aspects. These are the skills you come by naturally. Defense is hard work because it's unnatural.”[/QUOTE]

Whatever team he was on, his halfcourt and outlet passing helped his teammates to score baskets.
[QUOTE]
“But [Jerry] Lucas said he couldn’t have made his 25 points without the help of Bill Russell.”[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Jerry Lucas]

“Bill helped my shooting accuracy (12 of 19) with his set ups,”[/QUOTE]

Part of the usual argument against Russell has to do with the fact that he generally played with teammates who were good enough on the offensive end to cover up his shortcomings. People see “9 HOF” teammates and immediately assume that Russell was playing with a peak “showtime” supporting cast from day one up until the day he retired. But, and it's a big but, how many of those hall of fame teammates are really hall of fame teammates? How many of those teammates are in the hall of fame BECAUSE they played with Russell, and not based on their own merit?

Here's a quote from a very knowledgeable poster who posts on these boards from time to time and from whom I got a lot of these quotes.

[QUOTE=ThaRegul8r]Prior to 1980, only two other Celtics besides Russell were in the Hall of Fame—Bob Cousy, elected in 1970, seven years after his retirement in his second year of eligibility, and Bill Sharman, elected in 1976, 15 years after his retirement in his ninth year of eligibility. After 1980—when Russell was voted the greatest player of all time, six Celtics from those teams were inducted to the Hall: Frank Ramsey in 1981, 17 years after his retirement in his 11th year of eligibility; John Havlicek in 1984, six years after his retirement in his first year of eligibility; Sam Jones in 1984, 15 years after his retirement in his ninth year of eligibility; Tom Heinsohn in 1986, 21 years after his retirement in his 15th year of eligibility; K.C. Jones in 1989, 22 years after his retirement in his 16th year of eligibility; and Bailey Howell in 1997, 26 years after his retirement in his 20th year of eligibility. (Hall of Famer Clyde Lovellette played on Boston in 1962-63 and ’63-64, but played only 9.3 and 9.7 minutes per game—he made the Hall for his play on Minneapolis and St. Louis.) Havlicek was a bona fide HoFer, and made it first ballot. However, look at the others. Any coincidence that the majority didn't make the hall until after Russell was named GOAT? Look at how long it took. What made them HoFers when they never were before? Some of them weren't even All-Stars during their careers. They just got in under Russell.
[QUOTE]
"Cousy no doubt was a HOFer given his status pre-Russell. I don't see any reason to believe Sharman, Jones or Heinsohn were locks for HOF though. I mean Sharman moreso, but it's because of the 50s racism rather than his actual skills... and still he was a 4-time all-star, 3-time all-NBA player before Russell came around. SGs like him are rather common - high scoring, perimeter oriented and one dimensional. do you really need to dig to find these ? pretty much the same applies to Sam Jones.

was it really that hard to find a shooting/scoring wing ? in an 8-team league almost every team had just as good or better guard: Oscar, West, Guerin, Greer, Monroe, Wilkens, Gene Shue, Dave Bing, Hudson... every single one of them played at some point in the 60s so it's not like Russell had this game-changing advantage bc of Jones. his backcourts were rather alright, but nothing to brag about (especially considering that KC Jones was a PG without a jumper so he was pretty bad).

and don't get me started on Heinsohn... poor rebounder, non existent on defense AND a chucker. seems more like a old school Jamison (only without rebounds and on worse efficiency). and again, there were numerous forwards that played at similar or higher level than Heinsohn: Pettit, Baylor, Schayes, Arizin, Barry, Bob Boozer, Cunningham, Lucas, Twyman. I don't see how Russell had any advantage here over any other team either.”[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say he played with scrubs. Of the consensus top 10 he is among the luckier ones, but I don't think he's any luckier than guys like Kobe, Duncan, Bird, or Magic. All of those guys were very blessed with the personnel they were surrounded with over the course of their careers, but it's really only with Kobe and Russell do we see any sort of criticism from that angle.


(continued below)

[B]Summary[/B]

Wrapping it all up, Bill Russell was the kind of player who couldn't care less about personal stats; all he cared about was winning. He cared so deeply about winning that he would throw up in the restrooms before games. He was the kind of player that other players wanted to play with, the kind of player that made the players around him better. He was the kind of player that would do anything and everything to win, and it's by no coincidence that winning followed him wherever he went.

[QUOTE]Rusell turns the game of defense into a high art. Russell’s skills are as recondite as a plumber’s. They don’t show in the record book. They show in the scorebook. He has never-ever-played on a losing team. Wherever Bill Russell showed up in sneakers and a gym suit, his team was a winner. From McClymonds Hight, to San Fransisco U., to the Boston Celts, the only time a team of his failed to win a national championship was when he was in the hospital. (The Free Lance-Star Mar 1, 1966)[/QUOTE]

It boils down to the fact that he won, and continued to win, despite the situation, regardless of the teammates he was surrounded with, and he did so 11 times in 13 years,

[QUOTE]“And that is the way it is. Some Celtics play alongside Russell, some sit on the bench, some retire and come back to shake hands. The spokes change. Each supporting star leaves, as Sam Jones will now and the soothsayers forecast doom.” and yet "The wheel keeps rolling.”[/QUOTE]

great posts DatAsh :applause:

it's too bad that I can only rep you once, each post is spot on

[quote=DatAsh]Here's a quote from a very knowledgeable poster who posts on these boards from time to time and from whom I got a lot of these quotes.[/quote]

The first paragraph is mine, beginning with "Prior to 1980," and ending with "They just got in under Russell." However, the subsequent paragraphs were not written by me and so should not be attributed to me. I remember reading them, but it was not I who authored them. If you compare them with the first paragraph, you can see that the writing style isn't the same.

[QUOTE=ThaRegul8r]The first paragraph is mine, beginning with "Prior to 1980," and ending with "They just got in under Russell." However, the subsequent paragraphs were not written by me and so should not be attributed to me. I remember reading them, but it was not I who authored them. If you compare them with the first paragraph, you can see that the writing style isn't the same.[/QUOTE]

Gotcha, I'll make the correction

[QUOTE=fpliii]great posts DatAsh :applause:

it's too bad that I can only rep you once, each post is spot on[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I've been meaning to to rep a post of yours for several weeks now, but I'm far too slow at spreading around this rep.

[QUOTE=DatAsh]Sanders I can somewhat agree with, the other two not so much, K.C was good, but Sharman was nothing spectacular and I've even heard him mentioned as a below average defender, based on what I've read.[/quote]

While defense was not a major focus of 1950's basketball, Sharman was regarded by his peers and those who wrote about the game as one of the elite defensive guards. Only Slater Martin has a better reputation from the books and articles I've read.

Sharman was ahead of his time in numerous ways. He was always well conditioned. Preferred tea to coffee and cigarettes. Implemented pre-game shoot=arounds as a coach before anyone else. He was an underrated contributor to the early Celtics success.

[QUOTE=G.O.A.T.]Agreed. One of the interesting things I've found about Russell, when researching his block numbers the past few months, is that once the Jones boys, Hondo and Satch had replaced Heinsohn, Cousy, Sharman and Ramsey as the teams core around Russell (c. 1964) Russell adjusted his style and stayed in the paint a lot more because of how much better the defenders in front of him were. Previously he'd come out and pick up perimeter players, even block 18-22 foot jump shots fairly regularly.

Early in the 1963-64 season there were a number of articles about Russell blocking less shots than previously. In each players being interviewed agreed that he was just as dangerous as ever. As Si Green put it when asked if Russell was slipping a bit: "He must have lost some stamina after all these years. But it doesn't show in tough spots. If he has to block shots, he'll block them. The Psychological edge he has over men in this league is something."[/QUOTE]

Neat quote, I'll add that one to my database. Do you happen to have the source?

Here's how I view Russell's teammates defensively

great - Havlicek, Sanders(to a lesser extent)
very good - K.C. Jones
average - Sharman
below average - Sam Jones, Cousy(for awhile)
bad - Howell, Heinsohn

There are some other guys who I'm completely unsure how to rank like Jim Loscutoff and others.

[QUOTE=DatAsh]Neat quote, I'll add that one to my database. Do you happen to have the source?

Here's how I view Russell's teammates defensively

great - Havlicek, Sanders(to a lesser extent)
very good - K.C. Jones
average - Sharman
below average - Sam Jones, Cousy(for awhile)
bad - Howell, Heinsohn

There are some other guys who I'm completely unsure how to rank like Jim Loscutoff and others.[/QUOTE]

We're not far off Here'd be my conclusions as of now on the major rotation guys:

Very Good to Elite: Satch Sanders
Good to Very good: Hondo, Jones, Sharman
Average to Above Average: Sam Jones, Seigfried
Below Average: Howell, Ramsey, Nelson
Poor: Cousy, Heinsohn,

Loscutoff was a defensive forward, but he was a 50's defensive forward. A guy like Earl Lloyd or Red Rocha or Sweetwater Clifton to a lesser extent (as Clifton was a center forced to play forward on offense for reasons of racism) that basically means enforcer. He wasn't going to shut anyone down, but he was going to harass the oppositions best scoring forward.

A couple years ago I did a retroactive all-defensive team after scouring the books from the early era (The rivalry, Tall Tales, 24 seconds to shoot etc.) the Si and Sport magazine archives and the Google News archives.

Here's what I came up with: [url]http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190405[/url]

For my opinions, read DatAsh's posts.

[QUOTE=G.O.A.T]We're not far off Here'd be my conclusions as of now on the major rotation guys:

Very Good to Elite: Satch Sanders
Good to Very good: Hondo, Jones, Sharman
Average to Above Average: Sam Jones, Seigfried
Below Average: Howell, Ramsey, Nelson
Poor: Cousy, Heinsohn,

Loscutoff was a defensive forward, but he was a 50's defensive forward. A guy like Earl Lloyd or Red Rocha or Sweetwater Clifton to a lesser extent (as Clifton was a center forced to play forward on offense for reasons of racism) that basically means enforcer. He wasn't going to shut anyone down, but he was going to harass the oppositions best scoring forward.

A couple years ago I did a retroactive all-defensive team after scouring the books from the early era (The rivalry, Tall Tales, 24 seconds to shoot etc.) the Si and Sport magazine archives and the Google News archives.

Here's what I came up with: [url]http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190405[/url][/QUOTE]

Great list; I agree with most of it.

I see that you changed your first team in 67' from Russell to Wilt. What made you decide to make that switch? I've read a few quotes going both ways, but statistically I just don't see the argument for Wilt that year.

The Celtics were the best defensive team in the league (1 of 10) and the 76ers were just middle of the pack(5 of 10), and it's not like Wilt was surrounded with scrubs that year like in years prior.

Hal Greer was pretty damn good, and from what I've read a great defender with his overall speed and athleticism.
[QUOTE=Hal Greer]
Sometimes I stay up all night thinking about defense[/QUOTE]