Debunking the Debunking: Finishing Up Myth #3

     I’m still not done with Myth #3. Let’s go back to the quote about playoff production:

“Hmmmmmmm. Russell’s numbers jumped and Wilt’s numbers dipped dramatically when there was money on the line, even though Wilt was routinely his team’s number one scoring option and Russ was number four or five.”

     I already knocked over the first part of that quote, but the second part deserves discussion as well. You see, I’ve watched a lot of playoff basketball, and the number one option actually has a hard job. Yes, he’s going to see the ball more, but the defenses are tougher than they are in the regular season, and those defenses are all game-planning to stop that guy. True, sometimes the game plan is to let the primary scorer get his while clamping down on everyone else, but Wilt Chamberlain was double and triple-teamed practically his whole life. I’m only guessing here, but I don’t think playoff teams were letting Wilt get his. (I’m also guessing here that “don’t let the other guys beat you” is a relatively recent strategy) If my conjecture is accurate, then options two, three, and four should have an easier time of things, and I have witnessed this happen in playoff games. One example from my favorite team: Avery Johnson. A left-hander from Louisiana, undersized for his position (sound familiar?), Johnson was basically dared to shoot open jumpers in playoff games.
     Simmons seems to think Russell had a tougher job getting his numbers in the playoffs than Chamberlain did because of their respective roles. I think it’s a push because secondary offensive options often end up with open looks that primary scorers don’t usually get.
     Let us recall that this Myth #3 is: “Statistically, Wilt crushed Russell”. But just a page and a half into it, Simmons says, “So yeah, by any statistical calculation, Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest season player in NBA history. I concede this fact. For the playoffs? Not so great.”
     So why did we do this? Why did Simmons shoehorn this myth into chapter two?
     Then, as if out of nowhere, Simmons' breakdown of Myth #3 drifts into strange waters. It was one thing when Russell and Chamberlain were getting all the credit/blame for their teams wins and losses, but at least Simmons was assigning hard data to each man. But starting on paragraph two of page 69 through page 74, Simmons genuflects at the Altar of Anecdotes. Which is baffling, since, wasn't Bill trying to debunk the myth that Wilt crushed Russell statistically?
     Here now, your Anecdote Typhoon:

• "…Wilt famously swatted shots like volleyball spikes for dramatic effect, Russell deflected blocks to teammates for instant fast breaks…"

How the hell did Boston ever lose a game if Russell could do this at will? The implication here: Wilt always blocked the ball out of bounds, and Russell and the Celtics always recovered Russell's blocks. The second implication: Wilt's blocks were meaningless. Let's pretend Wilt always did spike the ball out of bounds. Okay, but he probably blocked at least a few shots with the shot clock run down under three seconds. It's often hard to get a score in that situation.

• "Opponents eventually gave up challenging Russell and settled for outside shots…"

Then how did Russell block so very many shots? You'd think that if they really did give up, Russell would have been blocking a lot fewer after a couple of years in the league.

• "Boston's scorers…found themselves in the dream situation of worrying about scoring and that's it."

I'm sure that's it. Whenever Boston played Cincinnati, Cousy or Sam Jones just said, "Hell with this. I don't have to do shit to this Oscar guy, Bill will just block the shot." Johnny Havlicek just let Elgin Baylor go wherever he wanted because, fuck it, Bill's got him. Because pro basketball players are just that stupid and, apparently, eager to piss off their head coach by not making an effort.

• "[Wilt] wasn't a natural jumper like Russell (emphasis mine)…[and] many opponents learned to time those jumps and float shots over his considerable reach."

Are you getting the idea that Simmons wants us to believe that Russell blocked many more shots than Chamberlain? I am. Never mind that in Tall Tales - a book cited by Simmons in TBOB - Earl Strom, who officiated during that era, says that Russell and Chamberlain were averaging "8 to 10 blocks a night for most of their careers." In the same book, legendary statistician Harvey Pollack estimated that Russell and Chamberlain averaged over five blocks per night in their peak seasons, and over four per game for their careers. If Russell did block more shots than Chamberlain, he didn't do it by much. If some players did learn to beat Chamberlain's shot blocking, they didn't do it too often if Strom and Pollack are to be believed.

• "[Wilt would] stop challenging shots with four or five fouls even if he was hurting his team in the process. I'm not making this up. (Seriously, I'm not making this up.)"

We're going to discuss this in greater detail coming up, but you know how Bill Simmons proves that he's not making it up? He offers a quote by John Havlicek. Simmons then footnotes this quote with another Havlicek quote, this one gushing about Russell's awesomeness on defense. Bill seems to believe that the old Celtics can be counted on to provide honest, sober, unbiased evaluations on the Russell/Chamberlain debate. It's really sad, honestly.

• "In the end, Russell's teams won championships and Wilt's teams lost them."

I give Simmons credit for finally noting that Russell and Chamberlain actually have teammates, but Wilt won championships, too. His 1967 76ers and 1972 Lakers went 68-13 and 69-13, respectively. Chamberlain was on one team that won during the Russell era; Bob Pettit was on the other one, and Pettit's Hawks beat an injured Russell.

Here is a list of awesome basketball players who won fewer championships than Wilt Chamberlain:

Neil Johnston, Dolph Schayes, Paul Arizin, Bob Pettit, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Earl Monroe, Elvin Hayes, Bob Lanier, Pete Maravich, Artis Gilmore, Julius Erving, George Gervin, Alex English, Adrian Dantley, Bernard King, Moses Malone, Dominique Wilkins, Clyde Drexler, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Reggie Miller, Allen Iverson

Here is a second list of awesome basketball players who won as many championships as Wilt Chamberlain:

Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave Cowens, Bill Walton, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson

These lists, while not comprehensive, illustrate that while Wilt certainly could have won more championships, achieved a hell of a lot on an individual AND team level.

Debunking the Debunking: Myth #3 of the Russell-Chamberlain Debate

“Russell’s career offensive numbers can’t compare except for REBOUNDS (emphasis mine).”

     We’re moving on to the next myth Simmons looks to debunk: “Myth no. 3: Statistically, Wilt crushed Russell.” And the quote above appears in the first paragraph of this myth-busting; how’s that for an inaccurate start? I’ll meet Bill halfway: a rebound can trigger the fast-break (especially with a rebounder who can pass the ball well), and of course, offensive rebounds can be directly put back for points. I will grant that we didn’t track offensive rebounds back then, but I’d wager good money that even in the sixties, 1) the great majority of rebounds were defensive and 2) most of those didn’t trigger a fast-break. I have nothing to bolster this opinion with, so draw your own conclusions on this point. My larger point is that rebounds aren’t offensive stats, which I assumed even casual fans knew.

     While we’re on the subject of rebounds, Russell was a great rebounder of course and, as Simmons suggests, in the same zip code as Chamberlain. But Wilt was in a much nicer house.
     Both men averaged 22 rebounds per game; Wilt 22.9, Russell 22.5. I don’t think they were this close in reality. Let’s consider a few things:

• Wilt played four seasons after Russell retired, from 1970-73. While Russell started his entire career in a very inaccurate shooting era, Wilt played three plus seasons (just 12 games in 1970) when teams shot the ball more accurately. Compare 57-59 with 70-73 to see what I’m getting at:

     This table doesn’t account for some things, but this is just to give you an idea. From 1957-59, there were 62, 72, and 69 rebounds to be had per game – Russell’s three years without Wilt in the league. From 1970-73, Wilt’s three-plus seasons without Russell in the league, there were 53, 49, and 50 rebounds to be had. Anyone else think Wilt would have had more rebounds if he was exactly the same age as Russell?

• Russell was 0.1 rebounds better than his career average (22.6 from 22.5) from 1960-69, Wilt’s first ten seasons. During that same period, Wilt was 1.4 rebounds better (24.3 from 22.9).
• You have seen how really big guys don’t always make the best rebounders, right? Where they have a size and strength advantage on one hand, they are slower to react and move on the other, right? The best rebounders I’ve watched are Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Lafayette Lever, Dennis Rodman, Charles Oakley, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Jayson Williams, Ben Wallace, and Zach Randolph. Not one of these guys was seven feet tall (despite Hakeem’s height listing), but they all had quick feet and reaction time to the ball. They were usually the first player off the floor when the shot rebounded and could jump repeatedly in one spot, like a jump rope exercise. In the films I’ve seen, Bill Russell looks bodily like Dennis Rodman – same height, same long arms – and it’s easy to imagine him dominating the glass in the way that Rodman often did. But in the games they played against each other, the larger and presumably slower Chamberlain was five rebounds better than Russell in 142 matchups. (28.7 RPG for Wilt, 23.7 RPG for Russell)

“At this point, you are thinking, ‘Come on Simmons, this is crazy. You have no case.’ Well, here are some more stats for you:”

     This came after Bill mentioned Russell’s and Wilt’s head-to-head points/rebounds averages. But Bill came ready with a devastating counter:

Wilt’s record against Russell: 58-84
Russell’s record against Wilt: 84-58

     You see, in Simmonsland, all stats are player stats. Points, rebounds, assists, blocks, wins, losses, championships – these can all be achieved by individual players. But the hilarious part of the W/L stat above: it’s listed twice. All Simmons had to do was run the stat out there like this:

Russell’s record against Wilt: 84-58

     And it means exactly the same thing as listing it twice. Was he trying to give Russell credit twice? (actually, he probably was)

     But Simmons hasn’t emptied his pistol yet. Next, he urges us to check out their playoff numbers:

Wilt: 160 games, 22.5 points, 24.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 47% FT, 52% FG
Russ: 165 games, 16.2 points, 24.9 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 60% FT, 43% FG

     And after showing these lines off, Simmons says:

“Hmmmmmmm. Russell’s numbers jumped and Wilt’s numbers dipped dramatically when there was money on the line, even though Wilt was routinely his team’s number one scoring option and Russ was number four or five.”

     That passage is chock full of wrong. Let's start with the first part of that quote:

Russell’s numbers jumped and Wilt’s numbers dipped dramatically

     That is one (highly skewed) way to look at it. If Bill was talking about only scoring average, he’d be right about Wilt’s dipping dramatically (as far as it goes), but it’s just wrong to say Russell’s numbers jumped. We’ll start with Russell:

16.2 points (up from career average of 15.1)
24.9 rebounds (up from career average of 22.5)
4.7 assists (up from career average of 4.3)
60% FT (up from career mark of 56%)
43% FG (down from career mark of 44%)

     Does this look like numbers jumping up to you? Yes, Russell did improve in all but one category, but the only mark which looks like a big jump was rebounds, and basketball fans are well aware that shooting accuracy goes down in the playoffs; why wouldn’t Russell’s rebounds go up?

Now let’s look at Wilt:

22.5 points (down from career average of 30.1)
24.5 rebounds (up from career average of 22.9)
4.2 assists (down from career average of 4.4)
47% FT (down from career mark of 51%)
52% FG (down from career mark of 54%)

     Like Russell, Wilt’s numbers are in the same ballpark as his regular season numbers except for rebounds (which we just discussed) and points; but there is a very specific reason Wilt’s scoring didn’t drop as much as you might think.

     As Simmons himself points out, Wilt Chamberlain changed his style of play over time. He was receptive to this change as suggested by Coach Alex Hannum before the 1967 season. This style of play resulted in Wilt 2.0, the do-it-all center fixated (in often ludicrous fashion) on assisting teammates’ baskets. Wilt 1.0 was wired to score every point in sight. (Wilt 1.0 played in 52 playoff games, Wilt 2.0 played in 108) I have a better way to illustrate a player’s playoff contributions – focus on each season instead of the aggregate.

     I have a philosophical question here, and my frame of reference for it is the 1962 season and playoffs. This was the year Wilt averaged 50 points during the season and “only” 35 in the playoffs. And my question is this: is your team really hurting getting 35 per game as opposed to 50? I’m not asking people to break down the 1962 season and playoffs to look at the question exactly – I just mean in the general sense.
Let me explain the table. Numbers in red are stats that dropped significantly, numbers in green are the stats that rose significantly. The numbers in bold are the stats Wilt led the playoffs in, therefore sometimes a red or green stat will be in bold. (How I defined significant: 4+ PPG, 2+ RPG, 2+ APG, 2+ FG% points, 4+ FT% points)
      As you can see, Wilt’s scoring and FG shooting dropped significantly on six and nine occasions respectively. His rebounding only dropped significantly once, his assists four times. His FT% was all over the place: it dropped significantly six times and rose significantly three times. Not surprising that Wilt couldn’t maintain consistency at the line, of course. Other significant gains: rebounding six times, assists twice, and FG% twice. Wilt was, overall, a little worse in the playoffs than in the season, but again – in reference to my earlier question, Wilt was worse to the tune of: 33 PPG, 35 PPG, 29 PPG, 28 PPG, 23 RPG, 6.5 APG, 57.9 FG%, 54.5 FG%, 56.3 FG%, 55.2 FG%. The standards he created were so great that those numbers were all significant drops compared to his season stats that year. I’ll admit that my methods are by no means comprehensive, but they’re more detailed than Simmons’ methods.
     Let’s give Russell the same treatment:

     In general, Russell was a little better during the playoffs than he was during the season, and Wilt was a little worse (owing in part to some stratospheric regular season standards). Russell certainly deserves credit for his playoff performance, but it is inaccurate to say that Russell’s numbers “jumped” or that Wilt “dipped dramatically” in the playoffs.
     Next time: we'll discuss the second half of the "Russell's numbers jumped" quote.

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.

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.