Off-Topic: The 2011 NBA Finals

I won't do this a whole lot - but since I have more than a passing interest in basketball, I thought I should share my ha'penny's worth on The Finals which starts this evening (as if you didn't know).

Let me start with Miami.

Is anyone going to give Erik Spoelstra credit? With the Big Three joining forces in the offseason, the conventional wisdom was that they would struggle at first with their roles but grow more comfortable over time. I don't think the consensus of the prognosticators had them making the NBA Finals in their first season together. And certainly no one saw this coming when Miami started the year 10-8 and had an (admittedly small though not insignificant)incident between Spoelstra and LeBron James. At that point, the question on the minds of many was "When will Pat Riley take the team over?"

Since December began, Miami has gone 60-19, playoffs included. And of course, the players deserve the great majority of the credit - but no team coaches itself. In a high-pressure, high-expectation situation, Spoelstra didn't make waves and kept a steady hand during Miami's rough start. And he did what you'd expect a good coach to do with this personnel - put the ball in the hands of the two best players (Wade was tied for 4th-5th in the NBA (with Russell Westbrook) with a 31.6 Usage rating, James was just behind at #6 with a 31.5 Usage) and let them create. Miami finished the year 3rd in the NBA in offensive rating and 5th in defensive rating, and #1 in SRS. That's one hell of an accomplishment for what is essentially a brand new team, and Spoelstra deserves at least a little recognition.

And now, a few words on the Western Conference champions.

I am rooting for the Dallas Mavericks. Not easily, mind you - my favorite team is the San Antonio Spurs - but I am. For a few reasons:

1) Miami looks poised to win two or three championships in the next four or five seasons; someone better clip them now.
2) Why root against Miami? I don't dislike them - LeBron's okay by me. He's done a few things I don't care for, but there are worse guys in the NBA and in sports. I just don't care for super teams, great talents coming together to make winning championships easier. I am very much a sports socialist: leagues are better in my opinion when the talent is diffuse and more different teams have a chance to win.
3) Dirk Nowitzki. Unlike most pro athletes, Dirk is a guy who lets people in when things aren't going well. He admits when his confidence is low, and he'll be frank when explaining a loss. It's refreshing, if baffling. I mean, why show any weakness? But that's Dirk: he's honest. This is secondary, however: first and foremost, I marvel at the man's game, even when he's going nuts on the Spurs. It would be a shame if such a brilliant player didn't earn a ring. (Of course, he wouldn't be the first)
4) Like in the case of Dirk, I'll be happy for Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion. They've been great pros for a long time.
5) Old teams, and Dallas is definitely an old team, aren't supposed to win. So it's a better story if Dallas wins.
6) Dr. Niles Crane Rick Carlisle. He's been a top coach for years, one of the few survivors among coaches younger than the Sloan/Jackson/Popovich crowd. And he was the guy who laid the foundation for Larry Brown's Pistons, so it would be good for him to actually be at the helm for one of these.
7) How cool would it be to see David Stern handing the LOB to Mark Cuban? Oh my God, Stern's fake smile would never look more stressed.

But of course, who I root for and who I pick are not necessarily the same thing. And in this specific case, they are definitely not the same thing. Miami will win games one, two, four, and six for the first of several championships in the next five seasons.

Bill Russell on Offense: Filling in Bill Simmons' Blanks

     Since Bill decided to disprove the myth that Bill Russell wasn't a very good offensive player by way of discussing his passing and athleticism, I'll once more step into the role of Simmons' unpaid researcher and help him along. After all, he couldn't have gone into much detail on this, having only 700+ pages to work with.
     In the first place, we can look at Russell’s field-goal percentage as one indicator of his offense. It’s easy to imagine Russell, playing with the sort of high-scoring teammates he had, to be a guy who converted a high percentage of his shots just by hanging out near the rim for lay-ins or dunks from Bob Cousy passes or from gathering missed shots. Well, as it happens, Russell was the one missing quite a few of his shots: true, in his first four seasons, Russell ranked highly in FG% - 5th out of 42 qualifiers on 1957, 4th of 39 in ‘58, 2nd of 50 in ‘59, and 4th of ‘62 in 1960. Then, as the sixties moved along, Russell slipped well down on the FG% leaderboard. After that fourth season, Russell only finished in the top 40% of all qualifiers twice; in three of his final four seasons, he couldn’t crack the top 60%.
     Of course, Russell was undoubtedly putting back many of his own misses and those of his teammates. If they were tracking such things then, we could see that Russell’s true shooting wasn’t as bad as all that.
     At least, not from the field. Move this discussion to the free-throw line and Russell was nearly equally inept as his nemesis, Wilt Chamberlain. Russell was only 5% better than Chamberlain, making 56.1 of his free throws compared to Chamberlain’s 51.1. Granted, Russell was better in the playoffs and Chamberlain worse, but both were bad: 60.3% for Russell, 46.5% for Chamberlain. Russell was an unqualified liability at the end of games, but 1) the Celtics were usually far ahead at the end of games and 2) Russell wasn’t nearly as relied upon to score as was Chamberlain, so he was less likely to see the ball at the end of games.
     To find out where Russell stood as an offensive player during his era, I looked at centers who played in the years 1957-69 and played at least 350 games. Twenty players met those two standards. First, we’ll look at field goal percentage. Russell ranked 7th, and not surprisingly, five of the six players above him began their careers in the sixties. Only four of the thirteen below Russell began their careers in the sixties.
     Next, we’ll just quickly touch on free throw percentage. Eighteen players ranked ahead of Russell, just one below. (Guess who?)
     Russell didn’t shine at points per game, but he didn’t really have to. Nevertheless, his scoring average was a solid 7th. And Russell was indeed an accomplished passer, second on a per-game basis to Wilt Chamberlain.
     My question though, to wrap up discussion of Myth #2: Who the hell was out there saying that Russell wasn’t a very good offensive player? (God, what possessed me to critique this book?)

Sim Bit #9: Allen Iverson is Really Demanding

I'm a little behind schedule lately - busy week IRL - so we will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon enough. In the meantime, here's another Sim Bit to keep things moving along.

Sometimes, commentary is unnecessary. This is one of those times:

From TBOB, footnote, p428: “There were times when Iverson looked so pissed at [Keith Van Horn] for letting him down, the possibility of a postgame shower rape was in play.”

How to Disprove a Strawman With a Non-Sequitur, by Bill Simmons

“So why doesn’t Russell get credit for his passing?...Russell doesn’t get credit …because it’s easier to regurgitate something than to look it up.”

     I cut a lot out of a rather strangely-written sentence. One of the excised clauses read “…everyone thinks he played with eight Hall of Famers…” Gosh Bill, why do people think that? It was only seven Hall-of-Famers twice, six Hall-of-Famers five times, and five Hall-of-Famers once. Geez! People have such lousy memories. (I promised myself I was done with that supporting cast stuff).
     We’re actually discussing Simmons’ myth-busting of what he calls “Myth #2: Bill Russell wasn’t a very good offensive player”. This is news to me. I didn’t know the idea that Russell was a bad offensive player was running amok out there. But Bill Simmons, to support the idea that Myth #2 was tainting the great legacy of Bill Russell, pulled multiple quotes from multiple books and columns which illustrated this long-held myth just kind of put it out there with one quote from someone with no axe to grind in this debate, John Havlicek. Seriously. It’s astounding. Simmons is centering his case upon overturning six myths about the Chamberlain-Russell debate, and to prove the pervasiveness of this myth Simmons cites one of Russell’s former teammates weighing in on the matter 34 years ago. I’d like to see the existence of this Myth supported with quotes by former players (that played for someone other than Boston), sportwriters (again, not those from the Globe), and such. Otherwise, I might just conclude that Bill went for his phone and fired up the iMakeStuffUp app again.
     The hilarious thing? Well, since we’re dealing with offense here, you might think that we’d be dealing with things like field goal percentage, free throw percentage, points per game…nope. What little offensive discussion there is centers on passing. Now, I haven’t been to Vegas with House or threatened by Isiah Thomas so maybe my expertise can be called into question here, but I kind of thought offense was more than just passing. (And I’m not putting passing down – I love passing more than most people) So what does Bill Simmons have to say about Russell’s offense?

“When you watch Russ on tape, his passing jumps out nearly as much as his defense – not just his knack for finding cutters for layups, but how easily he found streaking guards for easy fast breaks directly off blocks or rebounds.”


“Four things stand out when watching Russell on tape: his passing (superb), his shot blocking (unparalleled), his speed getting down the court (breathtaking), and his unexpected talent for grabbing a rebound, taking off with it, and running the fast break like a point guard (has to be seen to be believed).”

Two – just two – observations by Simmons to counter the Myth #2, that Russell wasn’t a very good offensive player. And what does Simmons’ cite?

1. Russell’s passing to cutters
2. Russell’s outlet passes from rebounds or blocks
3. Russell’s superb passing
4. Russell’s unparalleled shotblocking (?)
5. Russell’s speed (??)
6. Russell’s ball-handling in transition

Something about this list seems wrong. Allow me to illustrate:

1. Passing is an offensive skill. One for one, Simmons.
2. You don’t get credit for mentioning it twice.
3. Yes, we get it. Russell could pass. Move on already.
4. Shotblocking is not really an offensive skill.
5. Speed is much more “athletic ability” than “basketball skill”.
6. That sounds pretty impressive, honestly. But when are you getting around to the rest of Russell’s offense? The shooting, the post moves, the free throws? Anything? Hello?

Driving his point home, Simmons describes Russell as (my comments in red and in parentheses):

"…Dennis Rodman, only if Rodman had Walton’s passing talent (offense!), David Robinson’s athletic ability (not basketball skill, strictly speaking), and Michael Jordan’s maniacal drive (nothing about offense here) , and if Rodman could block shots like Josh Smith unleashed on the WNBA for an entire season. (still waiting to hear about how good Russell’s offense really is)"

What? That’s it? We’re done? That was Simmons’ entire case against a Chamberlain-Russell myth he made up??

Oh, wait – there’s one more sentence. This ought to make it all clear:

“(Would you have enjoyed playing with such a player? I thought so.)”

I am filled, from the crown of my skull to the soles of my feet, with crimson rage right now. My blood vessels are on the verge of bursting. WHAT IN BLUE HELL DOES THE POTENTIAL ENJOYMENT ONE MAY RECEIVE FROM PLAYING WITH BILL RUSSELL HAVE TO DO WITH A NON-EXISTENT MYTH ABOUT RUSSELL BEING NOT VERY GOOD ON OFFENSE? FIRST SIMMONS MAKES UP A MYTH THEN OFFERS NO EVIDENCE OR ANECDOTES TO DEBUNK SAID MYTH?? AAAUUUUUUUUGHHH!
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I guess I’m okay now. But it’s at times like these that I am utterly baffled by the smash success of The Book of Basketball. More evidence for the unfairness of life, I guess.

Since the Grumpy Old Editor was unwilling to do his job for TBOB, I guess I’ll have to do more of Simmons’ research for him in my next post.

Wilt versus Russell, Part Seven: Myth Upheld as Fact

I've been hammering away at this for quite some time now. It's time to break down the rest of TBOB, chapter two. So allow me dispose of Simmons’ myth-busting in condensed style:

From 1960-69:

• Wilt’s teammates made the All-Star team 14 times; Russell’s, 19 times
• One of Wilt’s teammates made the All-NBA First team; Russell, eight teammates
• Five of Wilt’s teammates made the All-NBA Second team; Russell, fourteen teammates
• Wilt’s teammates accounted for 17 Hall-of-Fame player-seasons; Russell’s, 47

But wait! Bill's got a crusher ready, as if all of his previous evidence(???) wasn't decisive enough:

“Also, if you’re scoring at home, Russell played with four members of the NBA’s Top 50 at 50 (Havlicek, Cousy, Sharman and Sam Jones); Wilt played with six members (Baylor, West, Greer, Cunningham, Arizin and Thurmond).”

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time now to play America's favorite game, "What's? Bill? Simmons? HIDING!?" (applause) I'm JR, your host - folks, Bill Simmons just pointed out that Wilt Chamberlain played with more members of the NBA's top 50 at 50 than Bill Russell did. But something's missing from that statement, right audience?
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All right folks, you've had some time to think about this. Vanna, let's find out what Bill Simmons was hiding this time:

You read that right. Despite having two more Top 50 at 50 teammates than Russell, Wilt got 10 fewer seasons from his six 50@50 teammates. This is classic - classic - Bill Simmons. More to the point, it's a classic case of outright dishonesty. (Label forthcoming)

That’s enough of that. I’m done with this part of Wilt vs. Russell because by now, anyone who can read knows which player really did have the greater supporting cast. Surprisingly, it went to the guy with 11 championships in 13 seasons.

Wilt versus Russell, Part Six: The Regular Season Matters

     In my quest to refute Bill Simmons ludicrous claim that Bill Russell didn't have more talented supporting casts than Wilt Chamberlain, I have supported my counter-arguments with the results of each regular season. I figured that I needed to take a moment to explain myself a in little more detail. You see, there is a strange idea lingering, like the stench of a foul cheese, around basketball discussions in recent years. That idea being: The Regular Season Doesn't Matter.

     Those of you who believe in the Irrelevant Regular Season remember all of those occasions where the best regular season team didn't win. You remember 52-win Miami beating the 60-win Dallas Mavericks, the 47-win Rockets beating the four teams on top of the 1995 standings, the Sonics, Mavericks, and Spurs losing in the first round as #1 seeds. You remember the 2010 Celtics struggling through the season before nearly winning the championship.

That’s the thing about exceptions - they stand out. For those of you who don’t believe that the regular season is meaningful, here are the facts:

• Sixty-four seasons of NBA basketball have been played through 2010
• The team which owned or co-owned the best record in the NBA in a given season won the championship 31 times
• The team which owned or co-owned the second-best record in the NBA won the championship 19 times
• The team which owned or co-owned the third-best record in the NBA won the championship 6 times
• Every other place – fourth or lower – won the championship eight times

So if you have a problem with my lending weight to the regular season, don’t complain to me. Take it up with NBA history.

     I’d like to take some space here to discuss a statistic that some of you, perhaps many of you, aren’t familiar with. It’s called SRS – Simple Rating System, developed by the folks at basketball-reference.com. SRS is similar to Point Differential, but it accounts for the strength of the opponent. For example, here’s a hypothetical basketball team, the SRS Eagles. In their first two games, the Eagles win against teams with SRS ratings of 1.0 and 0.5. The margin of victory was ten points in each game. The Point Differential was +10.0 for the two games, but the SRS rating for the two was +7.5. This occurs because beating the weaker team by ten is equivalent to beating the stronger team by five, so the Eagles get 10 rating points for beating the 1.0 team by ten and five rating points for beating the 0.5 team by ten. 10.0 + 5.0 / 2 = 7.5 – Simple Rating System.

(In the very likely event that I butchered the explanation, just click on this post to get a better understanding of SRS.)

     I don’t know how Bill Simmons really evaluates talent – sometimes he emphasizes results, sometimes he emphasizes awards, sometimes he cites anecdotal evidence...hard to say. I think regular season performance is a very important indicator of how talented a team is, and SRS is one effective way to show just how exceptionally talented Bill Russell’s Celtics teams were.

Some things to take away from this chart:

1. If you award five points for first place, three points for second place, and one point for third place, you get: Boston 57, Syracuse/Philadelphia 76ers 26, Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors 11, New York and St. Louis 7, Los Angeles 5, and Cincinnati 4. Yes, you are reading that right: Boston garnered just under half of all the available award points by themselves.
2. In the seasons Russell and Chamberlain played together (1960-69), Boston garnered 48 points, Wilt’s teams (Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors 1960-64, Philadelphia 76ers 1965-68, Los Angeles Lakers 1969) got 15.
3. Boston’s SRS in the Russell era fell below 5.0 only four times. By contrast, every other team listed here exceeded 5.0 only three times, with the 1968 Lakers earning an SRS of exactly 5.0.

That was the NBA in the old days, with many fewer teams. What has the last thirteen seasons looked like?

Applying the same award points system from above: San Antonio 33, Los Angeles Lakers 13, Sacramento 12, Dallas 10, Boston and Cleveland 8, Portland 6, Miami and Orlando 5, Phoenix and Utah 4, Chicago, Detroit and Minnesota 3.

Boston captured 57 rating points from 1957-69 based on SRS. From 1999-2011, the Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, and San Antonio Spurs won 58 rating points on the same basis. These three (really two) teams were 9-2 in the NBA Finals; Boston was 11-1 during the Russell era. I don’t see how Boston did this without an enormous advantage in overall talent, relative to their competition. Consider: from 1999 to 2011 no #1 team enjoyed a greater gap than +2.0 in SRS points. From 1957-66 Boston was #1 in the SRS and in those ten seasons, the #2 got within +2.0 only twice. How does it not follow that Boston’s talent was head and shoulders above everyone else nearly every season?

Before I leave SRS:

• In 1968, Wilt’s Philadelphia’s 76ers earned an SRS of 8.0, which was double the SRS of the Celtics. It was the one and only time Wilt’s team enjoyed a clear advantage in talent. By contrast, the Celtics enjoyed a +4 (or greater) SRS margin over Wilt’s teams five times.
• In 1966, the Celtics’ SRS was 4.3, the 76ers’ SRS was 4.2. Dead heat.
• In 1967, the 76ers’ monster season of 68-13, the Celtics did pretty well to get 60-21. The SRS ratings were even closer: Philadelphia 8.5, Boston 7.2 – this was the third-closest SRS gap from #1 to #2 in the 1960’s.
• The 1969 Lakers didn’t make the SRS top three in an unusually crowded top of the standings, but their SRS was 3.8 – only 1.6 SRS points behind Boston.

To sum up: on five occasions, Boston had clearly superior talent to Wilt’s teams. In 1964 and 1969 Boston was superior, but not decisively. In 1966, the talent was level. In 1967, Wilt’s 76ers were superior but not decisively, to the Celtics. In 1968, Philadelphia was clearly superior to Boston.

So that’s +7=1-2, in Russell’s favor. Pushing that grade in Wilt’s direction makes it +5=4-1, still in Russell’s favor.

This is my sixth post on the so-called #1 Myth of the Chamberlain-Russell debate, and I have an entire chapter on this subject to get through. So in my next post, I'll wrap this up.

Bill Simmons' Bogus Book presents: Sim Bits!

Hi again. I have decided to, going forward, break the monotony of long posts with bite-sized excerpts from TBOB that, despite their brevity, I found nonetheless objectionable. I call them "Sim Bits". And when it's time for a little something to cleanse the palate, I'll have another Sim Bit at the ready.

And because it is always so funny to assign a random number to an item as though the entire list already exists and you're just pulling one out of a hat...

(pre-post edit: the thing I just mentioned is supposed to have a link, but I haven't yet found a good example of what I'm talking about)

Sim Bit #17: Bill's 2005 MVP

From TBOB, p252 – “My vote went to Shaq because of…two indisputable facts:
1. The Lakers won 57 games [with Shaq] in 2004 and 34 games in 2005 [without Shaq].
2. Miami won 42 games in 2004 [without Shaq] and 59 games in 2005 [with Shaq].”

Okay then Bill, what do you think of these two indisputable facts?
1) Phoenix went 29-53 in 2004 without Nash and 62-20 in 2005 with Nash.
2) Dwyane Wade was a rookie in 2004 and a second-year player in 2005.

The following chart will illustrate the improvement made by Wade from ’04 to ’05:

But no, Bill, I’m sure you’re right. Miami's improvement in 2005 was ALL Shaq.

Wilt versus Russell, Part Five: The Alternate Universe Edition

     Let's recap what I began in the previous post: Bill Simmons thinks, when comparing Wilt's supporting cast to Russell's, that it's a wash. On paper it doesn't look that way, but the 76ers had challenges that the 76ers didn't in the form of the big midseason trade. So in my attempt to justify Simmons' assertion, I recast the 1965 season in a way that saw Wilt Chamberlain start the season as a Sixer. And because he did so in this alternate universe, I reasoned that Philly would have had a better record; to get there, I just improved their luck in the close games. In this universe, Wilt Chamberlain had one Hall-of-Fame teammate; in the alternate, Chet Walker has recieved the honor due, and thus giving Wilt two HOF teammates. (Russell had four that season, but never mind)

And now, the 1965 season in an alternate universe:

     Yet again, I am amazed (not in the good way) by Simmons’ claims. I moved a few beads around, bumped Philly from 40 to 44 wins, turning their Point Differential positive in the process – and they’re eighteen games behind Boston. If I had tripled those four wins, Philly would still have finished 10 games back. Let’s look at this from another angle:

Again, that's counting Chet Walker as a Hall-of-Famer, which leads me to this:

In the 1964-65 season, Boston played a total of 19,275 player-minutes. 47.7% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Russell.
In the 1964-65 season, Philadelphia played a total of 19,275 player-minutes. 24.8% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Wilt.

     Remember, Simmons’ thesis is that the talent level on the 1965 Celtics was basically even with that of the 76ers. In an alternate reality where Wilt Chamberlain began the year as a Sixer with HOF teammates Hal Greer and Chet Walker, and when Philly takes care of business against the NBA bottom-feeders, the 1965 Philadelphia 76ers are still waaay behind the Celtics. Matter of fact, no other team is in the same area code – not in this universe, nor in the other one.

Many of you aren’t convinced by my reasoning. You believe that the regular season is irrelevant, an unreliable indicator of the strength of a given team. Well, my next post will address this very objection.

Wilt versus Russell: Bill Simmons Weighs In, Part Four

1960:

     Okay, enough of the side stuff. Now we're back to why I'm here. Remember, Bill claimed that the Celtics had “a slight edge” in talent over Wilt’s Philadelphia Warriors. Since I took us so far off course, let’s look at the 1959-60 regular season once more:

Maybe it wasn’t that the talent; maybe the Celtics just played better…?

Having spent my previous post decrying Never Define, Never Explain, I need to point out something about the table below:

     When I used this table previously, I counted everybody on each team; now, when I compare Russell and Chamberlain directly, I'm referring to every player except Russell and Chamberlain. Russell had two All-Star teammates, Chamberlain had one. Russell had two teammates who earned All-NBA first and All-NBA second team honors, Chamberlain had none. In 1960, Russell had six teammates who would go on to make the Hall of Fame, Chamberlain two.

Bill Simmons calls this "slightly more" talent.

     In a world where British understatement is the dominant idiom, I suppose one could say that Russell had “slightly better teammates” and get away with it. Oh, but wait - maybe he's right: just because Wilt had two HOF teammates and Russell had six doesn’t mean anything. Russell’s HOFmates could have been end of bench guys who barely saw the floor, right?

In the 1959-60 season, Boston played a total of 17,981 player-minutes. 65.2% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Russell.
In the 1959-60 season, Philadelphia played a total of 18,169 player-minutes. 30.2% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers, minus Wilt.

     I’d love to know how Bill Simmons arrived at the conclusion that the Celtics were only slightly more talented, but you know the drill by now. Say it with me, everybody! All together now!: Never Define, Never Explain.

     Anyway, I’m going to skip past ’61-’64 for the moment, since Bill concedes that “…Russell’s teams clearly had more talent than Chamberlain’s teams…” during that period. But he goes on to say that in 1965, the talent on each side was basically equal. So then we naturally move on to…


1965:

     Allow me to briefly share some details about the 1964-65 season as it relates to the San Francisco Warriors and Wilt Chamberlain. The 1965 season began with Wilt manning the center position for the Warriors, Wilt’s first NBA team. Obviously, they had moved west from Philadelphia, and things weren’t so smooth in the Bay Area. Whereas in Wilt’s first three seasons the team was strong and competitive (1960: 49-26, 1961: 26-33, 1962: 49-31), their first two seasons in Frisco couldn’t have been more different: 31-49 under Bob Feerick in 1963, 48-32 under Alex Hannum in 1964. It all came apart in 1965 – in Wilt’s 38 games as a Warrior that season, the team was 11-27 and riding a not-over-yet five-game losing streak. Wilt was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers (formerly the Syracuse Nats) for basically nobody: Connie Dierking, Paul Neumann, Lee Shaffer, and cash. (My guess is that Frisco was only after the cash and had to take the stiffs to get it)
     Bill Simmons’ tells this same story with a lot less detail, and willfully misrepresents two elements of the tale. Here is the first:

“As for the Warriors, they self-destruct and lose seventeen in a row, eventually trading Wilt for 30 cents on the dollar to Philly.”

Anyone reading this would conclude that this is how the sequence of events played out:

1. The 1964-65 San Francisco Warriors self-destructed right out of the gate
2. The 1964-65 San Francisco Warriors lost seventeen straight games
3. The 1964-65 San Francisco Warriors then trade Wilt Chamberlain

But that’s not what happened. When Wilt was traded away, the Warriors had only lost five in that seventeen game losing streak – less than one third of that streak was over with when Wilt left. This, folks, is outright dishonesty.

So is this, from a footnote:

“At one point, [the ’65 Warriors] were 10-34.”

     As bad as it was for the ’65 Warriors, it was never that bad (at least not when Wilt was there). Again, the team’s record when Wilt left was 11-27. 11-27 yields a .289 winning percentage, which is terrible but well ahead of 10-34 and its .227 winning percentage. I don’t know where Simmons got 10-34 from – considering what he has done with the facts so far on this topic, “making it all up” seems like the likely source.
     This is an embarrassment which should really be damaging to Simmons’ credibility, but The Audience - more on The Audience later - isn’t much interested in the reality of the 1965 San Francisco Warriors. Sadly, Bill’s word is quite enough for them.

     What I would normally do here is post the NBA standings for the season in question, but it hardly seems fair in this case. Russell’s Celtics have an enormous advantage in terms of continuity - moreso than in most seasons - in this particular season, so we don’t learn much from comparing the Celtics to the rebuilt-on-the-fly 76ers.
     Instead, what I will do is this: I will make the 1965 Warriors as strong a team as is plausible. I will share my method so that, if you disagree with what I do, you can at least see how I got there. Before I take even one action to remake the 1965 season, let me make the necessary assumptions which will guide my process:

1) If the 1965 Philadelphia 76ers were good enough to take the Boston Celtics to a seventh game, they must have been better than a 40-40 team, right? Now, I am on record as saying that series results can be deceiving, but in general there’s something valid about them. Playoff teams with a record near .500 are usually out in the first round, so if a .500 team wins one series and pushes the champs to the limit in the next, they probably weren’t as bad as their record.
2) If Wilt Chamberlain had been a member of the 76ers from the start of the season, they would have had a better record. Maybe not, but it’s plausible, right? In Wilt’s first five seasons, his team made the playoffs four times, with the worst of the four winning 58% of their games.
3) Chet Walker, Hall-of-Famer. He isn’t a Hall-of-Famer as I write this, but he has a strong case: according to basketball-reference.com’s Hall of Fame Probability index, Walker is the second-highest ranked player among HOF-eligible players (behind Jo Jo White). Though I may be completely botching this explanation, any number above .500 makes a player’s election to the HOF more likely. Walker’s number is .6984, which places him at #83 among all NBA players – retired or active - throughout history. With sixty-five seasons behind us, wouldn’t any player in the top 100 seem like a worthy Hall of Famer? So to strengthen the 1965 Philadelphia Warriors a bit more, Wilt Chamberlain now has two Hall of Fame teammates to work with. (Russell had four HOF teammates in 1965, but at least we’ve closed the gap)
4) Connie Dierking and Paul Neumann…are now gone. Since Wilt was traded for the two of them (and Lee Shaffer, who didn’t play one minute for the Sixers), we can start the season by giving their 1829 minutes to Wilt (which is only slightly more than the 1743 he played in San Francisco).
5) Let’s fix the records. We’ll exempt Boston from this, since a huge chunk of Simmons’ argument rests on the career head-to-head records of Wilt and Russell (we’ll get there later), but if we accept, in general, that the 76ers would be better with a full-time Wilt, we need to adjust their record.

Now that we've looked at the plausible changes we can make, let’s begin:

     The smallest, most natural step I can take here is to simply improve Philadelphia’s luck. The 1965 Philadelphia 76ers were 22-23 when Wilt joined the team and 18-17 with him. But if I improve their luck just a little bit…let’s see what happens. Here is a breakdown how the Sixers fared with Wilt on board:

     Now, if I simply change the wins and losses, Philly’s record with Wilt now stands at 20-15. Over a full season, that amounts to a 46-36 record, which would have been good for third-best in the East and fourth-best overall (Without, of course, accounting for the changing records of the other teams yet). But I can’t do it completely since I chose to exclude Boston from this process, so now we’re at 19-16, or 43-37.

Of course, I can take this same approach to the 45 games before Wilt, right?

     So they were a little luckier before Wilt came along. Well, one thing you can put on Wilt in this regard is his horrendous free-throw shooting. Maybe they would have fared better than 4-6 in two-possession games if he wasn’t so bad at free throws. As it happens, his complete 1965 season from the line was among his worst: excluding his 1970 season (when he only played 12 games due to injury), Wilt had only four worse seasons than 1965, and eight better. However, Wilt shot them pretty well (for him) after the trade – he only had five better seasons than his 35 games with the Sixers.
     In order to figure out how I can improve the Sixers in 1965, I need to next go over the head-to-head results. And to keep things plausible, I can take those two-possession losses against the four teams with worse records than Philly and convert them to wins. That places Philly at 21-14 after the Wilt trade; that’s .600 ball there, which over a full season would have been good enough for a second-place tie in the East (with Cincinnati) and third-best overall.
     Okay, I guess the next step is to do what I’ve just done and apply it to the teams above Philly in the standings (minus Boston, of course). I had to modify this one and here’s why: Seventeen of their thirty-five post-Wilt games were against Baltimore, Detroit, New York, and San Francisco - the worst teams in the league. Four of those were a one-point win and three two-point losses. It’s not a huge stretch to suggest that Philadelphia could have won all three of the losses while preserving the win. But against the good teams (Cincinnati, Los Angeles, St. Louis), Philadelphia played thirteen games, five being two possession games: a one-point win, a one-point loss, a two-point loss, a four-point win and a four-point loss. One cannot expect to reverse your luck in the losses only (we are dealing with the best teams in the league here), so I’ve reversed only one result – the two point loss to Cincinnati. Now what do the 1965 Sixers look like?

In TV parlance, this is known as a cliffhanger; results tomorrow. :D

Wilt versus Russell, Part Three: Never Define, Never Explain

    At last we have come to the whole point of this chapter – Bill Russell’s Celtics versus Wilt Chamberlain’s Philadelphia Warriors. Russell in his fourth season, Wilt in his first. Simmons concedes that Russell played on clearly superior teams from 1961-64, and a slightly better team in 1960. All right then; let’s see how the facts stack up against Simmons’ claims:

1960:

     Remember folks – Simmons’ claim is that Boston was “slightly” more talented than Philadelphia in 1960. So how does this explain Boston’s utter domination of the regular season? The Celtics won their average game by more than four baskets. Wouldn’t “slightly better” be more like +3 or +4 in the win column? A Point Differential of +3.5 or +4.0, instead twice the latter number?
     We don't know because Bill Simmons provides no context for his "slightly better" label, thus bringing us to another of Simmons’ Steps to Subterfuge:

SIMMONS’ STEP FOUR: NEVER DEFINE, NEVER EXPLAIN

     This is one of Bill’s greatest failings throughout the book, not just in the Russell-Chamberlain chapter. Bill will just state things flatly, without even a cursory attempt to justify the assertion, and build an entire argument around it. We already saw this in action when he referred to Jack Coleman, Jack McMahon and Charlie Share as being “well-regarded role players”. I might have lent the argument more weight had he at least provided some supportive anecdotes from the period, though of course they might have come from biased sources like Bob Pettit, Slater Martin, or Alex Hannum. Still, that would have been…something.
     Believe it or not, “Never Define, Never Explain” only gets worse as the book goes along. Here’s a random sampling of NDNE quotes before we get back to Russell versus Wilt, Year One:

p. 344: “…the weakest stretch of talent since the [ABA-NBA] merger (1994-98).” No explanation is given as to why this was the weakest talent stretch, neither on page 344 nor anywhere else in the book.

P. 394: “…during the most competitive stretch in league history (1990-93).” And how exactly was this the most competitive? The explanation, if it exists, cannot be found in the book. Since I’m here, isn’t this assertion at odds with the “every team was good in the 1950’s and ‘60’s” notion put forth in the very chapter I’m reviewing now? How would a 27-team league be more competitive than an 8-team league? (I’m asking Simmons; I believe it’s possible)

p. 634: “The league was better in ’97 [than ‘96]…” How so? I suppose Simmons could point to the additions of the new franchises in Vancouver and Toronto for the 1995-96 season, but they were still there in 1996-97. Even if the expansion effect is as strong as Simmons believes it is (I don’t), why would it be less of a problem just one year later? But again, I am guessing his at reasoning because of Simmons’ Step Four is in full effect.

p. 636-37: “…it can’t be forgotten that the NBA peaked competitively from 1984 to 1993, a few years after the [ABA-NBA] merger but before overexpansion, the megasalary boom and underclassmen flooding the college draft.” This one is less vague than the previous three, but 1) the NBA expanded by four teams during this competitive peak – I guess this wasn’t “overexpansion”, but “proper expansion” – 2) the megasalary boom is an argument that many accept uncritically (damn those lazy, pampered, overpaid athletes!), so there was no chance that Bill was going to produce any supportive evidence for it, and 3) see #2, as once again Bill Simmons makes points with yet another crowd-pleasing argument (those kids are there to LEARN, not play basketball! They’re jeopardizing their FUTURES!).

p. 260: “…Utah, a team that was worse in 1997 than they were in 1988 or even 1992…” Excuse me, but what? By any broad measure, the 1997 team was the best of the three:

     It doesn’t bother me that Bill is so utterly wrong about this (well, it does, but not more than the following); it bothers me that Bill didn’t issue even a shred of evidence to counter the overwhelming case against him. Never Define, Never Explain. All we get is a little conjecture about some stars being past their primes, younger stars not panning out, and a footnote comparing Utah to the relatively hottest girl in a bar on an off night. This is what you’re going with, Simmons? Name–dropping and mating rituals?

     Sorry to go further off-topic, but in that same section, Bill explains that the lack of a compelling story for the 1997 season led to Karl Malone’s MVP:

“By mid-March, once everyone realized that the Bulls couldn’t win 73 games…”

 Really.

     I realize winning eleven straight is a bit of a tall order, but would anyone watching NBA basketball at that time have put such a streak past a team that had gone 134-19 from the start of the 1995-96 season until 4/1/1997? I don’t think 73 was out of the question even then. Sure, it would have been eighteen straight from March 15th, but again – was that so farfetched for this team? They earned a 69-13 record – tied for the second-best record ever - despite losing three of their last four. If any team could have reeled off eighteen straight to get to 73 wins, the 1997 Bulls (or their 1996 predecessors) could have.
     My point being: I doubt too many people had written off 73 wins in mid-March. Even if they did, 70 wins was still very much in play. Am I really supposed to believe that people weren’t interested in a team going for 70 wins in back-to-back seasons?

     I've gone way off-topic, but I did so in order to show how Bill Simmons operates. If you want to fully appreciate the depth of Bill's reliance on fallacy, I am more or less forced to take this long, drawn-out approach. Once we have Bill in full focus, I can abandon the Dragon Ball Z posting style. Until then, I thank you for your patience.

Coming Monday: Simmons reveals his gift for British understatement.

Wilt versus Russell: Bill Simmons Weighs In, Part Two

     I had intended to not do this again for 1958 and 1959. This chapter is supposed to be about Russell versus Wilt, not Russell versus Bob Pettit or Elgin Baylor. I’ve already done too much of Simmons’ research for him. But I’m so appalled by Simmons’ claim that, “Through three years and two titles, Russell and the Celtics had the most talent exactly once.” that I can’t just let it go.

1958: "The Hawks exact revenge thanks to up-and-comer Cliff Hagan (second-team All-NBA, Hall of Famer) and Russell’s badly sprained ankle. Again, talent even on both sides."

     For two straight years, it’s as though the Celtics are playing a different game. It’s hard to imagine that someone would take a look at this and think that anyone else was in their ballpark. Maybe Red Auerbach’s coaching was just so superior that it accounts for the fact that the Celtics were closer to playing .700 ball than anyone else was to playing .600 ball.

That must be what Simmons is trying to argue, because the Celtics roster was even stronger than in 1957:

     Yes, with rookie Sam Jones joining up, this has Boston doubling the number of Hall of Famers that St. Louis has. And this season Boston has two All-NBA first teamers and one more All-Star than St. Louis. It’s hard to fathom how Bill Simmons concluded that the Celtics were anything but superior. The only possibilities are that 1) he chose not to examine the evidence or 2) he examined the evidence but ignored everything which ran counter to his beliefs. Back to Hall of Famers:

In the 1957-58 season, Boston played a total of 17,305 player-minutes. 82.1% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers.
In the 1957-58 season, St. Louis played a total of 17,330 player-minutes. 50.3% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers.

     Am I ignoring the elephant in the room? Of course not – I realize that Boston lost the Finals rematch. I don’t think Boston loses if Bill Russell is healthy. Neither does Simmons. I’d be surprised if any basketball historian felt that St. Louis wins regardless of Russell’s health.

1959:

     This was the one time in Russell’s first three seasons, according to Simmons, that Boston had the most talent. I suppose for the facts to fit the assertion the way Simmons tells it, Boston would have to go undefeated with a +15 Point Differential and a roster full of Hall of Famers. Let’s see what actually happened:

     Someone will have to explain to me one day how Syracuse managed a losing record with a Point Differential of plus four. Anyway, Boston needed seven games to get by Syracuse in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Nationals were led by “…NBA Top 50 members Dolph Schayes and Hal Greer…”, which leads me to a jumping-off point: Why is Bill giving us all these names and resumes? (The answer lies ahead)
Interesting, isn’t it, that it was this season Simmons identified as Boston’s most talented team yet in the Russell era; when you look at the regular season record, this is the closest any team got to Boston, both in terms of W/L record and Point Differential. Make no mistake, Boston had the most talented team yet again, but in Russell’s first three seasons the 1959 Hawks came closest to matching Boston’s performance. (Then they didn’t make the NBA Finals – go figure) Anyway, since Bill conceded that for once, the Celtics had superior talent, I won’t go into any more detail except to say that the Celtics only had seven Hall of Famers to make do with this time. Poor Red; such a burden he had back in the day.
      What we have seen from Simmons so far is unconvincing, to say the least. After Step One, Bill not only went to Step Two (Gloss Over Relevant Facts), he incorporated Step Three into Step Two:

STEP THREE: MUDDY THE WATERS

     This first myth Simmons’ looks to debunk is that Russell played with teammates superior to Wilt’s. So why is he wasting time with Russell’s first three seasons? Wilt wasn’t in the league yet! The St. Louis Hawks have nothing to do with Wilt vs. Russell. Neither do the Minneapolis Lakers. But think of this effect on the casual fan: who among the bandwagoning, dunk-loving, only-watch-the-playoffs crowd has heard of Neil Johnston or Paul Arizin or Slater Martin or Charlie Share or Dolph Schayes or anyone besides Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, and possibly Bob Pettit? For most of these folks, NBA basketball began in the 1980’s. Should any casual fan possess a little intellectual curiosity, he might look at a season or two from the late ‘50’s at NBA.com and find all these names Bill mentioned – and Bill will look like the deepest researcher ever.
    So yeah, Bill knows how to frame an argument. Had he jumped right into 1959-60 (the first year Russell and Chamberlain played in the league together), he would have missed a chance to 1) toss around some credibility-building obscurities, and 2) lay down his criteria for evaluating the talent levels on each roster. I never said Bill wasn’t smart.

Coming Saturday: Bill finally starts talking about Wilt vs. Russell.

Wilt versus Russell: Bill Simmons Weighs In, Part One

...which of course means that I weigh in on Bill's weigh in.

“Let’s never mention the supporting cast card again with Russell and Chamberlain. Thank you.”
-Bill Simmons, The Book of Basketball, p. 65

     It’s not hard to imagine what this would sound like if spoken aloud: catty and snide, with a tone of voice suggesting that the case is airtight, the argument impervious to challenge. But one might forgive Simmons’ gloating if his chapter on Russell vs. Chamberlain wasn’t one of the most poorly disguised pieces of propaganda I’ve ever read.
     To get to Simmons’ argument in chapter two of TBOB, one has to sift through an awful lot of irrelevant details posing as supporting facts. Bill’s attempt to muddy the waters is surprising, considering that it comes on the heels of his claim, “…if we are arguing about the greatest debate in NBA history – Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain – I can prove Russell was better.” I would think that a straightforward presentation of the facts would be the only step necessary to prove that claim, but let’s look at what Bill does. I’ll call these “Simmons’ Steps to Subterfuge”.

SIMMONS’ STEP ONE: FRAME ISSUE WITH NEGATIVE EMOTION

     Before Bill debunks what he calls “the six most common myths of the Chamberlain-Russell debate” , he begins by comparing Wilt’s supporters to OJ Simpson’s defense team. He explains how, in order to win acquittal, team OJ reprehensibly exploited America’s racial divide to shift the focus away from the evidence. He’s correct in that it was a disgusting tactic, but what does this have to do with Wilt?
     It doesn’t. But by selecting the OJ trial as an analogue, Bill is attempting to frame the issue negatively. How could those bastards set OJ free? And how could these other bastards think a two-time champion was a better player than an eleven-time champion? That’s the mindset Bill wants the reader in before he dips into the facts. It seems to me that if Bill’s argument is so very strong, there’s no need to do this. But he did, and then he went on to step two…

SIMMONS’ STEP TWO: GLOSS OVER RELEVANT FACTS

     The first myth Bill Simmons looks to debunk is that Bill Russell had a better supporting cast than Wilt did. Most port-casual NBA fans know that Bill Russell’s Celtics teams were usually loaded with Hall-of-Famers, so what evidence did Bill reveal to counter this?
     The most logical way, I would think, to look at the supporting casts of each man is to look at the rosters of each man’s team in the seasons they played simultaneously – from the 1959-60 season to the 1968-69 season. I mean, this is Wilt vs. Russell, right? Bill Simmons did not do this. Simmons began with Russell’s rookie year, which happened three seasons before Wilt’s. Was there a good reason for doing this? Let’s let Bill explain:

               …the supporting cast card works with Russell and Wilt only if

               we can prove that the talent disparity was not relatively equal.

              Right off the bat, it’s almost impossible because the NBA didn’t

              expand to ten teams until 1967, giving everyone a good supporting

              cast (even the crummy teams).

     Bill seems to have a lot of faith in the process by which teams coached, scouted, and developed basketball players in the late 1950’s. I mean, sure – the 96 or so NBA players in 1956 were the best in the world - in a still very primitive NBA. The shot clock had only been around for two years. This was only nine years after Jackie Robinson, so we’re not exactly talking about a fully integrated sport yet. In fact, Russell would suffer his only NBA Finals loss against the last all-white NBA championship team in his second season, 1958. The NBA was about to kick off its 11th season of play in 1956. So to state definitively that every team had good players just because the league was small – well, that’s asking a lot. Back in that era, teams didn’t carry a GM or assistant coaches. Sometimes the owner coached the team. I don’t believe that there were a whole lot of international players playing in the 1950s. I think it’s more than reasonable to assume that we hadn’t found a good many players back then.
     If the NBA shrunk to eight franchises now, then yes – we’d have some stacked teams. We know how to identify, develop, and utilize basketball talent. We have access to players all around the world. We can find this information in seconds. We have no trepidations about their ethnicity. In other words, we live today in exactly the opposite world, basketball-wise, than we did in 1956.
     Before he gets to Wilt, Simmons gives some quick recaps to NBA post-seasons from 1957, 58, and 59, leaving a trail of fallacies along the way:

1957: "Since Boston won Game 7 [over St. Louis] in double OT, it’s safe to say these two teams were equally talented."

That doesn’t seem so safe to me.

     First of all, the outcome of a series can be unpredictable. Inferior teams have swept superior teams. Series which looked beforehand to be a walkover sometimes turn out to be highly competitive. A series going seven games doesn’t mean that the two teams were even – they just played even.

Let’s review the 1956-57 standings:

     St. Louis finished 10 games back of Boston and two games under .500. Their Point Differential was negative. Meanwhile, Boston played basically the same schedule and won over 60% of their games. (In the regular season, St. Louis and Boston played nine times; Boston won seven) They won each game by over two possessions. Am I really supposed to believe these two teams have the same amount of talent?
     You see, Simmons won’t present all this because the facts don’t fit his assertion. To bolster this assertion, Simmons runs down the key players on each roster:

               Boston has two stud guards in their prime (Bill Sharman and ’57 MVP
               Bob Cousy) and three terrific rookies (Russell, Heinsohn, and Frank
               Ramsey), while St. Louis has Bob Pettit (two-time MVP), Macauley
               (Hall of Famer), and Slater Martin (Hall of Famer, second-team All-
               NBA that season), as well as Charlie Share, Jack Coleman, and Jack
               McMahon (three highly-regarded role players).

1) Bob Pettit was not a two-time MVP when the series was played.
2) Tommy Heinsohn wasn’t just a terrific rookie; he was the 1957 Rookie of the Year
3) Who regarded Share, Coleman, and McMahon so highly? Simmons just puts this out there and that’s the end of it?

     You see, one way to make the talent look more even is to withhold and omit certain information. You might notice that while Boston has an MVP, St. Louis has a two-time MVP, an All-NBA second-teamer, and two Hall-of-Famers! Wow, now that’s a loaded team! Simmons might have mentioned that St. Louis has rookie and future Hall-of-Famer Cliff Hagan on the roster, but Bill has to make these teams look even; St. Louis might look too good if we mention him. Hagan actually didn’t play a lot during the season but was fourth in Hawks’ minutes played during St. Louis’ playoffs.
     If you want to look backward or forward, Boston’s roster was significantly more talented than the St. Louis roster. Sure, the talent is about even at the top of the rosters, but Boston’s depth is impressive:

     So let’s match ‘em up. HOF big man? Pettit and Russell. HOF scoring forward? Heinsohn and Macauley. HOF point? Cousy and Martin. HOF swingman? Hagan and Ramsey. If you look at the table above, together with this rundown St. Louis looks to have as much talent as Boston. The problem here is that Boston had three more Hall-of-Fame players on its roster. Now I know Jack Coleman, Jack McMahon, and Charlie Share were highly regarded and all, but Bill Sharman, Andy Phillip, and Arnie Risen were much more highly regarded. Let’s do another table:

In the 1956-57 season, Boston played a total of 17,380 player-minutes. 68.1% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers.
In the 1956-57 season, St. Louis played a total of 16,788 player-minutes. 47.8% of those minutes were played by Hall of Famers.

     Back to that seventh game. One could argue that depth becomes less of an issue during the playoffs as coaches go with their top six, maybe seven guys. With the top of both rosters playing most of the minutes, the teams are more even, hence the seven games. This is possible. What is also possible is that there may have been another reason for a seven-game outcome. I now yield the floor to John Vanak, former NBA referee who began his officiating career in 1962 – five years after the NBA Finals we are discussing:

               Where officials made a few extra bucks was the playoffs. Again, you
               wanted as many games as possible. Hey, we pulled for every series
               to go the full seven. I’m not saying officials threw games to keep the
               series alive, but I do think it was a good idea when they finally
               changed to paying guys a flat fee for the playoffs.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good idea.

     I'd like to apologize on Bill Simmons' behalf. In a chapter on Wilt vs. Russell, he's got us talking about the 1956-57 season. (Wilt was at Kansas at the time) But it's important to take a look at all the little tricks in Simmons' bag. As I will show in greater detail later, he is discussing the pre-Wilt seasons in order to establish his credibility. I'm breaking this all down to show that his credibility is, at the very least, suspect.

Part two Thursday.

How to Build a Pyramid

     Let's kick this thing off with Bill Simmons' idea for the Basketball Hall of Fame – the Pyramid, he calls it. The ninety-six greatest basketball players of all time, arranged into five tiers: Levels One through Four, then the Pantheon - the best of the best - at the very top. Does ninety-six players sound like a good number? Some of you wish it was a smaller number, others larger. Simmons would have it fixed at ninety-six. What sense does that make? So in 2147, when the NBA celebrates its 200-year anniversary, will there really be less than one Hall-of-Famer for every two years of the league’s existence?
     Yes, says Simmons. In fact, he lays individual odds on a group of eighteen active players based on whether they could replace any of the players currently residing in The Pyramid. Honestly, did Bill Simmons think this through at all? To make my objections clear, let’s join a hypothetical dedication ceremony, already in progress, for his newly-opened Pyramid. Chairman Simmons is concluding his remarks:

September 2011
SIMMONS:…and to Tom Chambers, congratulations on a brilliant career. Your excellence in sixteen NBA seasons has earned for you the number 96, and last, spot in our new Basketball Hall of Fame. Bravo!

(Staying in the hypothetical reality: In the 2012 playoffs, the Chicago Bulls chased a league-best 68-14 record with an all-time playoff record of 16-1. Derrick Rose won the regular season and NBA Finals MVP. Let’s rejoin Pyramid Chairman Simmons for the 2012 Pyramid update ceremony – again, already in progress:)

September 2012

SIMMONS:  …and to Derrick Rose, whose spectacular dominance in the 2011-12 season earned you a place in the Pyramid. Congratulations, Derrick! And to Tom Chambers, your place in the Pyramid, along with the honor previously bestowed upon your career, is hereby revoked. Sorry you were born 30 years too soon.

     I agree with Simmons’ assertion that the current Basketball Hall of Fame does a lot of things wrong, but not throwing out the people they previously honored is one thing they do right.

The construction of the Pyramid leaves something to be desired. Let’s quote Simmons about the building itself:

“…Can you imagine climbing each level as the floors get smaller and smaller…and finally reaching the Pantheon? I get chills just thinking about it.”

I have two thoughts here:

1) I may be wrong, but Simmons seems to imply here that there’s a certain level of suspense involved. If you know anything at all about NBA history, you already know most of the names of the players in the Pantheon. His idea is really kind of anticlimactic. What’s more, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar et al are primarily the group of players people want to go see – doesn’t it annoy the public to have to climb stairs or stuff an elevator to cram into what is sure to be the most crowded level in the building?

2) Pyramids are famous for being large on bottom and small on top. If I had a four-tier pyramid honoring ten players, it would look something like this:

There would be four players on level one, three on level two, two on level three, and three on level four. Simple, right? Applying this concept to Bill Simmons’ Hall of Fame Pyramid, we could expect his ninety-six players to fill each hole by the same proportion, right? Remember, his Pyramid has five (5) levels:

This pyramid has 100 players exactly. This begs the question - why ninety-six in Bill's? Why not just go with the nice, even number of 100? Had he simply expanded his honorees to an even 100 – a 4.2% increase in honorees isn’t going to cheapen the honor – Simmons’ Pyramid could have nice, even levels: Forty-five players on level one, twenty-five on level two, fifteen on level three, ten on level four, and five in the Pantheon. Still, Bill Simmons could leave it at ninety-six and go with 41-25-15-10-5, right?

Here's how he did it:

There are more players in the top level than in the next level down? What the hell kind of sense does that make? Do more teams win sixty-plus games per season than fifty-plus? This is completely illogical.

     I think it’s highly likely that Simmons didn’t completely think this through. The other possibility involved with respect to this not-quite Pyramid is that Simmons thrives on the sort of backlash that inconsistency provides, so he deliberately constructed the Pyramid in this way for overreaction by people like me. Allowing for that possibility, I wouldn’t have bothered to point it out if the rest of The Book of Basketball was reasonably argued. No, if you are a passionate supporter of the substance of Simmons (many of his devoted fans know his work is top-notch fluff; though not a devoted fan, I fall into that camp), then to give his arguments every advantage one must assume that the entirety of this book was designed to provoke overreaction.
     Sadly, I am forced to conclude that there’s nothing particularly calculated – neither as contrarian provocateur nor as serious analyst - about Simmons’ arguments in TBOB. This is why I started with the construction of the Pyramid. It’s a small symptom of a much larger problem. To see this problem in action, on Tuesday we'll pick up with Simmons’ opening salvo, his attempt to sort out the myths and get to the truth behind the Wilt vs. Russell debate - chapter two of TBOB.

Intro: A Voice in the Wilderness

Hi. I'm glad you've decided to take a moment to read this post.

Bill Simmons is truly one of the most important figures to appear in the sports media in a long time. With a fresh and humorous writing style, he has reminded us all that sports is fun and intended to be enjoyed. Simmons established himself back when four beat writers in suits would go on TV and pontificate about NCAA violations, the merits of instant replay, whether the wild card was good for baseball, and other such topics. They had forgotten that we follow sports to hang with our friends and marvel at the otherworldly abilities of top athletes. Nothing in America beats sports for water-cooler talk, and Simmons became the one guy at work who had season tickets to every game. We wanted to hear from that guy.

Water-cooler Simmons is good for the column. He can tell an entertaining story when he writes not only about the games, but he can make us laugh about people he saw at the arena, about how a game reminded him of a movie we all like, about what he and his buddies did before tip-off. It's fun stuff. But when you want to discuss the substance and history of the sport, at length, you don't necessarily have the water-cooler guy in mind. You need a sober-minded, serious analyst. And despite the heaps of praise The Book of Basketball has received, it's really just a collection of columns by the water-cooler guy. One cannot discern that Simmons has made any particular effort to be scholarly and objective. It's a shame, because baseball fans have Bill James' Historical Abstracts to peruse; we basketball fans have Bill Simmons one-liners.

Bill Simmons' Bogus Book is here, then, as a counterpoint to Simmons' magnum opus. Someone needed to reign in the propaganda; someone needed to point out the fallacies. Someone needed to combat the army of strawmen and the slippery logic. Someone needed to point out the omissions, cut through the rhetoric, and steer the discussions back to the point. Someone needed to ask for explanations and turn assumptions back into questions. Scores of critics failed to do so - and that's why Bill Simmons' Bogus Book is here. That's why I'm here.