Over at A Substitute For War (a neat NBA blog if ever one existed), there's a great little piece about what the author believes to be the best starting five of all time. Instead of going with the "All-Time All-NBA 1st team, so to speak," they simply describe an ideal team, taking into account that many of the best players in history (almost because of their greatness) would be redundant in their roles, and that having 5 incredible scorers but no one to hit an open 3 or get putbacks would not actually be ideal. It's a fascinating concept: that players like Shane Battier might be better on an all-time team than LeBron, despite every statistic on Earth favoring LeBron as an individual performer (for all of Battier's particular areas of greatness). Given (as ASFW notes) that the Heat were a solid contender this season whose limiting factor seemed to be the offensive redundancy of Wade and LeBron, I really agree with this concept, and I'd like to put to words a new take on a very old concept, a take that immediately jumped out at me after reading this piece (coming from someone fascinated by the relative strength of eras and conferences).
Okay, for some context for what I'll say next: I'm the first person to say (basically) that we are living in the best of possible NBA worlds. There is an embarrassment of talent on at least 15 teams (I'm looking at you, entire Western Conference besides T'Wolves and Warriors) and the fact that #1 and #2 seeds keep getting bounced in the West - I sincerely believe - has as much to do with diminishing returns on such incredibly loaded (and well-coached) rosters as it does with sheer random chance, matchups, and injuries. Every team in the Western playoffs belongs, and then some. The 2011 Grizz and 2007 Warriors (and 2010 Spurs at the 7 seed) were fantastic, near-contending teams*. And the East - while incredibly top-heavy - is actually quite heavy at the top and its top teams rival the West's top teams. In short, we are looking at an incredibly loaded era which will surprise me if it can get any better, but given the intelligence at work in (most) of these great teams' front offices, I won't be too surprised. What I'm saying is I have never bought the concept that the talent pool today is at all diluted relative to any other era - fewer teams or not. If it seems like there is a diluted talent pool, I think it is mostly because there are the same proportion of bad/disinterested owners with a larger sample size (i.e. there are literally more examples), and that proportion's actions are more firmly in public view thanks to first ESPN and then the Internet.
*Granted, all eventually lost in the second round, but still, all three won the first in 6 convincing games and injuries hardly totally account for the difference in any of the three.
On the other hand, though the talent pool might be more barren than today, if we can accept that historically great players today and yesterday are comparable, then maybe the very best teams of yesterday are not as far behind our best teams then we think. After all, historically great teams might not feature a whole lot of historically great players...but they certainly might feature a few historically great players and many historically great role players that complemented them (and be better off than the former situation, even ignoring egos and salaries). And that got me thinking: What about teams like the 1960s Celtics? Even with a drier talent pool, didn't they have historically great players and fill in the gaps with remarkable craft and intelligence?
The 1960s dynasty Celtics - almost all of whose opponents are somewhat (and somewhat rightly) derided for being shorter, whiter, and less well-organized than today's teams - were extremely well-structured (in the second FreeDarko book, they are illustrated as a literal machine). It's at least plausible (though impossible of course to test) that they would be competitive (or - given a couple trades - even absolutely dominant) against today's teams. Red Auerbach and Bill Russell were such visionaries on and off the court and respectively had a good nose for 1) finding/acquiring the best players available at the time and 2) finding/creating roles for those players. Reading anything by or about Russell, it's obvious that the man was (besides being enigmatic and generally brilliant) a basketball mind of basketball minds. His capability to read and visualize offensive situations in order to defend them is unmatched by any big since, perhaps excluding Tim Duncan (and even then, it's at most a push). Short of a 3-point shooter or a stretch 4, the Celtics had all the components of a modern team, perhaps most closely resembling turnover-and-transition machines like this year's Grizzlies (except Russell's D and block/deflection ability was miles above Gasol and Z-Bo's).* So yeah, I conclude that they'd fit in today's league, and depending on whether their conditioning were modern or contemporary, they would be either dominant or legit contenders.
*Just as a thought experiment, in today's terms, I suppose the 1960s Celtics (and a lot of what we understand of them is through anecdotes and first-hand account instead of, say, through Youtube) don't have too many deprecated skills. Russell would (speculatively) look like a fast, lower-usage, late-prime Duncan (immaculate defense, incredible outlet passes, efficient, physically quick scoring threat from the post) with Dennis Rodman's rebounding acumen. We have something comparable to the ideal Stockton-Jordan backcourt that ASFW posits in Havlicek and Cousy - overall scoring prowess, tough D, stealing ability, surreal passing ability (Cousy's arm structure is the stuff of legend). Of course, we also know Cousy's horrible lifetime shooting percentage (to contrast starkly with Stockton's efficiency) and Havlicek uh...not being as good as Michael Jordan. But I mean, you might be able to accept that you get 75% of what would be a transcendent, even ideal, backcourt from Cousy-Havlicek. Add role players like K.C. and Sam Jones, Don Nelson, Tommy Heinsohn, etc, many of whom (Sam Jones comes to mind) Russell in his day recognized could occasionally be transcendent (tough defenders/scorers/shooters that played off of Russell), and you have a team that fills every role of that era especially well and with a special degree of non-redundancy.
Suppose we're willing to accept this extreme example - that the 60s Celtics were so well-constructed and skilled (that is to say, not redundant nor especially lacking in any qualitative basketball skill) that the worse conditioning, overall talent pool, and worse dissemination of information wouldn't stop them from being a contender today and possibly still a dynastic force. Then we can ask the old questions about which teams are historically more capable of dominating a given era or one another from a new pespective. See, because of this line of thought, I feel the general talent pool/conditioning arguments* no longer resonate as strongly, because the very best teams of their eras could plausibly field two or three HOFers that complemented one another, and then use front office/coaching acumen (something the Celtics definitely had) and the very best role players to turn these HOFers into a historic-level team that could qualitatively do anything on the court. That is to say, though I feel the general talent pool (outside of the very best players) is still half a tier** higher today than even like 1993 (much less 1977 or 1963), dominant teams like the '83 Sixers, the '77 Blazers, and the 80s Lakers and Celtics teams would rival (and the best would utterly dominate) the best teams today.
*arguments I've long taken as gospel that put Duncan as a first-ballot HOFer alone, if you get me. No, if we accept that the general talent pool is a couple full tiers higher** than Russell's era, then what is really, unfathomably impressive (as in comparable to Russell's unfathomable several titles) about Duncan's Spurs is their insane winning percentages and ability to consistently crush the 1st rounds. A 61-win season in 2011 might well be comparable to winning 8 or 9 consecutive first-round series (or winning 72 games) in Russell's era...and he only had to win two or three rounds to net a title. Also, my general argument that historically (shot clock era) great teams would dominate or contend in any era kind of implies that titles are somehow proportional in greatness to the greatness of the very best (and most various) also-rans they dealt with and with what success. That is, the greatest teams relative to any era may truly be the greatest absolute teams of all time (if you could arrange a meeting). Here we get into sticky ideas like "How can an also-ran truly establish its own absolute greatness if it can't win a title to prove it?" and we then have to talk about qualitatively and statistically what the players on that team were actually contributing relative to their peers in the era and the level of those peers. Sticky, sticky, sticky. But we might be in methodologically sound territory now.
This argument also implies that it's totally fair to use qualitative individual contributions for and against these greatest teams in order to judge individual greatness across eras, sample size be damned (maybe my single biggest annoyance with the Wages of Wins program (which is saying quite a lot) is its dismissal of playoffs). Duncan actually comes out extremely favorably - maybe even more so, to my astonishment - when all of this stuff is actually taken into account. Duncan may not be competing for titles with the historically best teams in history up to that point, but he is competing with a lot more historically solid and historically great teams and a lot fewer historically abominable teams, all because of the general talent pool increase. He is getting 40 of his annual 50 wins against teams that Russell would not face until the playoffs, and he might face three teams out of four in a playoff run at levels that Russell would face at most twice in a run. Don't misunderstand me; 11 titles in 13 years is almost beyond comparison, utterly insane. But the evidence suggests that what Duncan has done with the Spurs is seriously comparable to Russell's dynasty.
**Tiers being something like borderline D-Leaguer, 10/12th men, rotation players, starters, marginal All-Star, perennial All-Star, marginal HOFer, 1st ballot HOFer. I'm no statistician, but a great example is given by two Spurs' wings: Richard Jefferson and Sean Elliott - pretty similar statistics, similar career development, same position and abilities (though of course, playing with peak David Robinson and peak Jason Kidd engender very different roles). Elliott made it to (and earned) 2 All-Star apperances. Jefferson made it to (and earned) none, though he was a solid starter at his peak.
The central perspective shift of the ASFW piece (have you read it yet?) is that non-redundancy of roles is a fundamental concept that in some ways dualizes the concept of individual skill - a dual artifice that (combined with the glue of teamwork, unselfishness, intelligence, and chemistry) forms the seeds of greatness or disrepair. Given this dialectic of skill and non-redundancy - the call and response of basketball - we can formulate and reason about the particular qualities of the very best teams and the teams with tremendous skill that fail to flourish.*
Of course, the academic in me has to make a final footnote,** but the Positional Revolution just got retrospective, to sound like a 1980s trailer for a movie about my life.
*My friend Aaron will be my editor on an upcoming blog and he will literally murder me through the Internet if I use this many gigantic footnotes, so I guess this is kind of a bank run, but with footnotes. Bigfootnotes. Footnotes comparable in greatness to the 1986 Boston Celtics.
**that this does hinge on (the Russell-esque belief) that the very best players are (athletically and temperamentally) similar throughout eras, such that a player with Russell's body could (with the right dose of motivation and similar work ethic and intelligence) compete with a player like Tim Duncan (who came along 42 years later). I happen to think so, but it's really hard to judge. In this specific case I think it's more than fair: Russell (and Wilt, strangely) was an Olympic-caliber high jumper in college (with physical feats that easily challenge even Shaq, David Robinson, and Dwight Howard), Duncan was an Olympic-caliber swimmer in his adolescence before a hurricane ripped through his pool. As for temperament, certainly West, Robertson, and Russell belong in any era of competitiveness.
Okay, for some context for what I'll say next: I'm the first person to say (basically) that we are living in the best of possible NBA worlds. There is an embarrassment of talent on at least 15 teams (I'm looking at you, entire Western Conference besides T'Wolves and Warriors) and the fact that #1 and #2 seeds keep getting bounced in the West - I sincerely believe - has as much to do with diminishing returns on such incredibly loaded (and well-coached) rosters as it does with sheer random chance, matchups, and injuries. Every team in the Western playoffs belongs, and then some. The 2011 Grizz and 2007 Warriors (and 2010 Spurs at the 7 seed) were fantastic, near-contending teams*. And the East - while incredibly top-heavy - is actually quite heavy at the top and its top teams rival the West's top teams. In short, we are looking at an incredibly loaded era which will surprise me if it can get any better, but given the intelligence at work in (most) of these great teams' front offices, I won't be too surprised. What I'm saying is I have never bought the concept that the talent pool today is at all diluted relative to any other era - fewer teams or not. If it seems like there is a diluted talent pool, I think it is mostly because there are the same proportion of bad/disinterested owners with a larger sample size (i.e. there are literally more examples), and that proportion's actions are more firmly in public view thanks to first ESPN and then the Internet.
*Granted, all eventually lost in the second round, but still, all three won the first in 6 convincing games and injuries hardly totally account for the difference in any of the three.
On the other hand, though the talent pool might be more barren than today, if we can accept that historically great players today and yesterday are comparable, then maybe the very best teams of yesterday are not as far behind our best teams then we think. After all, historically great teams might not feature a whole lot of historically great players...but they certainly might feature a few historically great players and many historically great role players that complemented them (and be better off than the former situation, even ignoring egos and salaries). And that got me thinking: What about teams like the 1960s Celtics? Even with a drier talent pool, didn't they have historically great players and fill in the gaps with remarkable craft and intelligence?
The 1960s dynasty Celtics - almost all of whose opponents are somewhat (and somewhat rightly) derided for being shorter, whiter, and less well-organized than today's teams - were extremely well-structured (in the second FreeDarko book, they are illustrated as a literal machine). It's at least plausible (though impossible of course to test) that they would be competitive (or - given a couple trades - even absolutely dominant) against today's teams. Red Auerbach and Bill Russell were such visionaries on and off the court and respectively had a good nose for 1) finding/acquiring the best players available at the time and 2) finding/creating roles for those players. Reading anything by or about Russell, it's obvious that the man was (besides being enigmatic and generally brilliant) a basketball mind of basketball minds. His capability to read and visualize offensive situations in order to defend them is unmatched by any big since, perhaps excluding Tim Duncan (and even then, it's at most a push). Short of a 3-point shooter or a stretch 4, the Celtics had all the components of a modern team, perhaps most closely resembling turnover-and-transition machines like this year's Grizzlies (except Russell's D and block/deflection ability was miles above Gasol and Z-Bo's).* So yeah, I conclude that they'd fit in today's league, and depending on whether their conditioning were modern or contemporary, they would be either dominant or legit contenders.
*Just as a thought experiment, in today's terms, I suppose the 1960s Celtics (and a lot of what we understand of them is through anecdotes and first-hand account instead of, say, through Youtube) don't have too many deprecated skills. Russell would (speculatively) look like a fast, lower-usage, late-prime Duncan (immaculate defense, incredible outlet passes, efficient, physically quick scoring threat from the post) with Dennis Rodman's rebounding acumen. We have something comparable to the ideal Stockton-Jordan backcourt that ASFW posits in Havlicek and Cousy - overall scoring prowess, tough D, stealing ability, surreal passing ability (Cousy's arm structure is the stuff of legend). Of course, we also know Cousy's horrible lifetime shooting percentage (to contrast starkly with Stockton's efficiency) and Havlicek uh...not being as good as Michael Jordan. But I mean, you might be able to accept that you get 75% of what would be a transcendent, even ideal, backcourt from Cousy-Havlicek. Add role players like K.C. and Sam Jones, Don Nelson, Tommy Heinsohn, etc, many of whom (Sam Jones comes to mind) Russell in his day recognized could occasionally be transcendent (tough defenders/scorers/shooters that played off of Russell), and you have a team that fills every role of that era especially well and with a special degree of non-redundancy.
Suppose we're willing to accept this extreme example - that the 60s Celtics were so well-constructed and skilled (that is to say, not redundant nor especially lacking in any qualitative basketball skill) that the worse conditioning, overall talent pool, and worse dissemination of information wouldn't stop them from being a contender today and possibly still a dynastic force. Then we can ask the old questions about which teams are historically more capable of dominating a given era or one another from a new pespective. See, because of this line of thought, I feel the general talent pool/conditioning arguments* no longer resonate as strongly, because the very best teams of their eras could plausibly field two or three HOFers that complemented one another, and then use front office/coaching acumen (something the Celtics definitely had) and the very best role players to turn these HOFers into a historic-level team that could qualitatively do anything on the court. That is to say, though I feel the general talent pool (outside of the very best players) is still half a tier** higher today than even like 1993 (much less 1977 or 1963), dominant teams like the '83 Sixers, the '77 Blazers, and the 80s Lakers and Celtics teams would rival (and the best would utterly dominate) the best teams today.
*arguments I've long taken as gospel that put Duncan as a first-ballot HOFer alone, if you get me. No, if we accept that the general talent pool is a couple full tiers higher** than Russell's era, then what is really, unfathomably impressive (as in comparable to Russell's unfathomable several titles) about Duncan's Spurs is their insane winning percentages and ability to consistently crush the 1st rounds. A 61-win season in 2011 might well be comparable to winning 8 or 9 consecutive first-round series (or winning 72 games) in Russell's era...and he only had to win two or three rounds to net a title. Also, my general argument that historically (shot clock era) great teams would dominate or contend in any era kind of implies that titles are somehow proportional in greatness to the greatness of the very best (and most various) also-rans they dealt with and with what success. That is, the greatest teams relative to any era may truly be the greatest absolute teams of all time (if you could arrange a meeting). Here we get into sticky ideas like "How can an also-ran truly establish its own absolute greatness if it can't win a title to prove it?" and we then have to talk about qualitatively and statistically what the players on that team were actually contributing relative to their peers in the era and the level of those peers. Sticky, sticky, sticky. But we might be in methodologically sound territory now.
This argument also implies that it's totally fair to use qualitative individual contributions for and against these greatest teams in order to judge individual greatness across eras, sample size be damned (maybe my single biggest annoyance with the Wages of Wins program (which is saying quite a lot) is its dismissal of playoffs). Duncan actually comes out extremely favorably - maybe even more so, to my astonishment - when all of this stuff is actually taken into account. Duncan may not be competing for titles with the historically best teams in history up to that point, but he is competing with a lot more historically solid and historically great teams and a lot fewer historically abominable teams, all because of the general talent pool increase. He is getting 40 of his annual 50 wins against teams that Russell would not face until the playoffs, and he might face three teams out of four in a playoff run at levels that Russell would face at most twice in a run. Don't misunderstand me; 11 titles in 13 years is almost beyond comparison, utterly insane. But the evidence suggests that what Duncan has done with the Spurs is seriously comparable to Russell's dynasty.
**Tiers being something like borderline D-Leaguer, 10/12th men, rotation players, starters, marginal All-Star, perennial All-Star, marginal HOFer, 1st ballot HOFer. I'm no statistician, but a great example is given by two Spurs' wings: Richard Jefferson and Sean Elliott - pretty similar statistics, similar career development, same position and abilities (though of course, playing with peak David Robinson and peak Jason Kidd engender very different roles). Elliott made it to (and earned) 2 All-Star apperances. Jefferson made it to (and earned) none, though he was a solid starter at his peak.
The central perspective shift of the ASFW piece (have you read it yet?) is that non-redundancy of roles is a fundamental concept that in some ways dualizes the concept of individual skill - a dual artifice that (combined with the glue of teamwork, unselfishness, intelligence, and chemistry) forms the seeds of greatness or disrepair. Given this dialectic of skill and non-redundancy - the call and response of basketball - we can formulate and reason about the particular qualities of the very best teams and the teams with tremendous skill that fail to flourish.*
Of course, the academic in me has to make a final footnote,** but the Positional Revolution just got retrospective, to sound like a 1980s trailer for a movie about my life.
*My friend Aaron will be my editor on an upcoming blog and he will literally murder me through the Internet if I use this many gigantic footnotes, so I guess this is kind of a bank run, but with footnotes. Bigfootnotes. Footnotes comparable in greatness to the 1986 Boston Celtics.
**that this does hinge on (the Russell-esque belief) that the very best players are (athletically and temperamentally) similar throughout eras, such that a player with Russell's body could (with the right dose of motivation and similar work ethic and intelligence) compete with a player like Tim Duncan (who came along 42 years later). I happen to think so, but it's really hard to judge. In this specific case I think it's more than fair: Russell (and Wilt, strangely) was an Olympic-caliber high jumper in college (with physical feats that easily challenge even Shaq, David Robinson, and Dwight Howard), Duncan was an Olympic-caliber swimmer in his adolescence before a hurricane ripped through his pool. As for temperament, certainly West, Robertson, and Russell belong in any era of competitiveness.
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