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.