Legend_33

I would take the '86 Celtics over that Bucks team any day. I would also take the '96 Bulls and '83 Sixers over that team.

lessthanjake

And what about last year's Pistons? 54 wins. Were they better or worse than this year's team?

Every finals team is at least a worthy opponent. They arent all the 80s Celtics and Lakers, but they are all good.

I wouldnt say they had a MUCH better coach. I mean the coach from 1971 went on to win the coach of the year award in the ABA (which Bill Sharman also did) and Bill Sharman wasnt exactly a coaching genius. Both were good coaches. Sharman may have been a bit better.

And what do you mean by 'they had a full season to figure out what to do with Wilt?' The Lakers had had him for a full season back in 1969.

They were not only an OK team. They had Wilt, West, and Goodrich and a good solid bench. Thats not just ok.

They were not exactly terrible after those guys. Don Chaney was a solid player and they had 3 decent guys off the bench who missed a combined 10 games in the year. Any bench with 3 decent guys who arent injured at all is not a terrible bench.

Jo Jo White was only an average player? He was an all star that year. And Don Nelson is at least an above average starter. Hes not gonna be a beast, but he put up numbers similar to Josh Howard on the Mavs.

And Cowens may have been a rookie but he put up numbers that were pretty much in line with what he did the rest of his career. He became a better passer later I guess, but he was basically a very similar player the next year when they won like 12 more games.

THe hawks also won 2 more games. Did I not also mention that?

The 1971 team had Wilt Chamberlain, Gail Goodrich, Jerry West, and Happy Hairston. The 1996 team had some borderline all stars but basically was not that great of a team. You can mention the names of the guys on their team as if they were good as much as you want but none of those guys were ever more than mildly above average players except for Eddie Jones, and that was his second year, he hadnt gotten to his peak yet in any way shape or form. Are you really gonna tell me that that 1996 team would beat the 1971 one, cause thats just a pile of crap.

I knew youd say that so I brought up other years later, and purposely had them be in the 80s when the NBA was at its peak.

Terrell Brandom put up 19/6/3 numbers. Are you seriously going to tell me that he was better than a prime Bill Cunningham, one of the 50 greatest players ever who was putting up 23/11/5 and made the All NBA first team? That is the most ridiculous thing anyone has said in this entire thread. Terrell Brandon had a very good year but he didnt even make All NBA third team.

He didnt put up Magic like numbers. I dont know how his PER got that high (PER is odd sometimes, like how D-Rob gets ridiculously high numbers. I cant always figure out why) but he wasnt more than an above average borderline all star player that year in every way except that he turned the ball over very little. But to say he was better than Billy Cunningham that year is outrageous.

You say that as if I should be impressed. None of those guys you mentioned are that great of players first off. Secondly Ricky Pierce was 36 then and not that good. Marc Jackson had an off year. Dale Davis has never been more than an average center. Antonio Davis took another 5 years to become pretty good, and that year didnt play all that many minutes. Travis Best is just an average player at best, was a rookie, and was out for 23 games that year. Oh and I forgot to mention that their second best player, Rik Smits missed 19 games.

How in the world could you EVER tell me the 71 Knicks are not clearly a better team. That is patently ridiculous. They had two of the 50 greatest players ever playing in their prime. They had two other hall of famers playing around their peak. They had two other players who made an all star game in their careers. I struggle to find a starting position where the Knicks dont have the better player. Maybe SG but thats only if you count Frazier as a PG.

Wow Aaron Mckie...in his second year...not a player worth mentioning. I like Sabonis a lot and he put up some very efficient numbers and was a great player that year but he played less than half the minutes that year (23.8 minutes per game). Rod Strickland was good but not even ever an all star in his career.

The Bullets had Earl Monroe and Wes Unseld, who are both I believe in the top 50 players ever and if they arent they are still hall of famers. Gus Johnson was all NBA 2nd team that year. Jack Marin was an all star level player. Kevin Loughery was very good. They had a solid bench. They were a better team than those Blazers. Its that simple. The Blazers are just outclassed.

Why would I mention those teams? I am comparing teams with similar records. No team besides the Bucks in 1971 had a similar record to those teams.

That makes very little sense. I would say the Knicks were on the extreme as they were very good but their records went down. Furthermore, with the Bucks there were three expansion teams in the league but none of them were in their division and the Blazers were the only one even in their conference (and they still won 29 games so they werent ridiculously bad). The Bucks played a total of 8 games against the Cavs and Braves. It is hardly what changed their record as you imply. Their record changed cause they got Oscar Robertson.

They didnt get Silas in 1972. They got him in 1973. Elgin played as little in 71 as 72. He was not a factor in either year. And maybe thats what happened after 1971 but its not what was going on in the actual year 1971 because clearly the good teams werent posting amazing records.

Pioneer10

[quote=lessthanjake]And what about last year's Pistons? 54 wins. Were they better or worse than this year's team?[quote]

No they weren't as good: they lost Mike James, Okur, Williamson. The reason they were better this year is Billups had by far his best regular season


A worthy opponent doesn't equal being equivalent to what other teams went through: the Bullets weren't as good of a Finals as other teams. In a sense they were near the bottom of equals


My mistake with Wilt but I'll stick by what Sharman did for that team. I've read plenty of accounts that he had a huge influence on Wilt. Similarly to how Phil Jackson had a huge influence on a group of underachieving Lakers.

This is the big problem I see with you're analysis again: players and teams are different from year to year. Goodrich was just OK in 1971 and his stats reflect that. It wasn't till 1972 that his stats jumped. His scoring shot up 8 points a game in 1972 and remarkably as well his FG% increased as well. So yes they were just Ok in 1971 and became exceptional when Goodrich played by far his best year ever.


His rookie was Cowens lowest scoring average and PER for another till he was past his prime at 30 so yes it looks pretty clear he improved. And yes the Celtics weren't that good


The 96 Hawks were also 6th best in the conference and the 11 the best team in the league. The 71 Celtics were the 3rd best team in the conference and had the 8 best record



96 Lakers were 4th best in there conference and only 6th best record overall. The 71 Lakers were 3rd in there conference and 4th overall
The 96 Lakers had a much deeper squad but considering you believe players and teams are the same calibre (i.e. Goodrich) no matter what year they play it doesn't surprise you make a statement like this. The Lakers had 5 (6 including Magic) who had PER's over 15 and had about 4 guys have career years. But of course if a player doesn't make the HOF no matter how good of a single season they have the other team with a HOF player is better.


It absolutely not outrageous. It's not ridiculous Terrell Brandon was abosuletly terrific and it shows you don't know much about how to normalize statistics comparing Billy Cunninghma 23/11/5 with Brandon's 19/6/3. The 96 Cavs had a limited number of possesion (scoring 90ppg) versus Cunningham whose team average 115 ppg. So at a minimum the 76ers had about 25 more possession a game!! Needless when you normalize Brandon's number are not only more impressive but he also had a significantly higher TS% - he scored more more points, did it far more efficiently, had about the same assists, and outrebounded Cunningham: outrageous. Brandon again had a career year that he was never able to achieve again. But again if you're a 50 greatest player it doesn't matter what season you compare to the 50th greatest player automatically had a better season.

You again overrate these old teams: the problem with using HOF from the older era of the NBA is the percentage of players who got in was much larger then in later years. A guy like Debusschere would never make the HOF if played right now while Reggie Miller who by any stretch had a better career of all things isn't a lock to get in. There is no way Bradley would get inducted as he never averaged more then 17 ppg and was an inefficient score at that as well


[quote]
Wow Aaron Mckie...in his second year...not a player worth mentioning. I like Sabonis a lot and he put up some very efficient numbers and was a great player that year but he played less than half the minutes that year (23.8 minutes per game). Rod Strickland was good but not even ever an all star in his career.

The Bullets had Earl Monroe and Wes Unseld, who are both I believe in the top 50 players ever and if they arent they are still hall of famers. Gus Johnson was all NBA 2nd team that year. Jack Marin was an all star level player. Kevin Loughery was very good. They had a solid bench. They were a better team than those Blazers. Its that simple. The Blazers are just outclassed.[quote]

I hope they are outclassed by a team that got to the Finals somewhat as the TrailBlazers were only the 7th best team in the West and just the and 14 best record in the league.

You have to mention those teams because the league had MORE teams. If you want to make a fair comparison go from the standings where you have to look at Orlando, Seattle, Utah, SA and compare them to the teams which you already have mentioned in 1971


You still aren't getting the effects of expansion. NOt only did the Bucks did get to play the Cavs, Braves, and you forget to add in Portland. The other teams were weaker as players form those 3 teams plus the ABA would have normally been on the other squads. Of course there record got better because of Oscar Robertson but we're comparing dominance and the Bucks significanly improving while everyone else downgraded is why they had big statiscal edge in the regular season


I meant to say 1973 to explain why there record jumped when you brought up the Celtic 73 improvement.

In another note which I just came to me is that because possessions and ppg were much more in the 70's you have to make another adjustment to correctly use scoring differential.
71 Bucks 118.4-106.2 = 12.2
96 Lakers 105.2-92.9 = 12.3

You have to be careful using these numbers because as league scoring was down on the whole so the Bulls 12.3 is actually more impressive then the Bucks 12.2. Probably a crude 995way would be just to divide out by the league average and recalculate.
118.4/112.4-106.2/112.4=1.053-0.945=+1.08 so based the Bucks beat there opponents by about 8% more then the league average
105.2/99.5-92.9/99.5=1.057-0.934=+.123 so the Bulls beat there opponents by about 12.3%

I don't have the playoff number but might be a bigger deal as well as scoring goes down

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lessthanjake

I wouldnt say they were much worse than the Knicks team the 72 Lakers faced. Both had sub 50 win records. The Knicks were playing without Willis Reed. The 67 Sixers team faced a 44 win Warriors team.

Yeah ive read the same things. But what he really did was have Wilt become totally non focused on offense. Obviously it looks like a good move but let me just point out that no one on the Lakers in 72 had a TS% higher than what Wilt had the year before when he was scoring more. So I dont know if that move made them a better scoring team. But maybe him focusing on defense made that facet of the game better for them. I dont know. Obviously it worked, and some of the credit goes to Sharman but certainly that cant explain all of the improvement.

You ignore the fact that he was a 20 point scorer in the previous two years with the Suns. I would argue that he sorta took over the offensive load that Wilt stopped taking during the 1972 season. But he was very much capable of scoring in 1971 its just he was the #3 option and became the #2 option in 72.

I didnt say he didnt improve, just that he didnt improve drastically. He became a bit better in later years, yes, but he was still very good in 1971.

Obviously with 29 teams instead of 17, a team with the same record is going to rank lower.

Who had a career year? I cant find a player who didnt have a better year another time.

And you have to understand I am not saying people are good just by virtue of making the HOF, I am just using that as evidence that they were good. The fact is that nobody on that 96 team had as good of a year as BOTH Wilt AND West had in 71. Cedric Ceballos had a great year, but hes no West or Chamberlain. Hes like a Goodrich level player at best.

Ok lets normalize. Based on normalization (which usually ends up downgrading past players too much anyways as star players didnt take up the load in scoring as much as they do now with the exception of Wilt) Cunningham's numbers are 18/8/4.5. Thats still better than 19/6/3

And you wanna normalize points, rebounds and assists, but not TS%? The TS% of the league in 71 was .500. It was .542 in 1996. When you adjust Brandon is still higher but only very slightly.

Cunningham still looks better to me with those adjusted stats, even when as I said, adjusting stats that way always make older players look worse because over the years as scoring has gone down, the amount of points the star player is expected to get has really not changed. Furthermore, you cant fully ignore the All NBA first team Cunningham got. Sometimes stats dont always tell the story. Brandon didnt even make 3rd team.

Reggie will easily make it first off. Secondly Debusschere was a very good player. He was one of if not the best defender of his era. He was a very dependable scorer on a team full of such players (I mean no one was gonna put up huge scoring numbers on the uber passing equal opportunity Knicks teams of the early 70s). He was a very good rebounder. He did make an All NBA team. He probably wouldnt be in the HOF if he wasnt on that championship Knicks team though. But he was still great. Same with Bradley. Their numbers were down from what they couldve been because of the team they played for, but their stock went up cause of all the winning. So its kind of a wash.

You are obviously misunderstanding what I am doing here. I am trying to show how the NBA was weaker in 1996 than in 1971 so I am comparing teams with similar records and showing how the 1971 team was better. There would be no use comparing 1971 teams to those teams in 1996 with excellent records as those teams SHOULD be better because they did in fact get better records. But if you insist I will say that the 71 Lakers compare pretty well with the 96 Magic.
Wilt + West = Shaq + Penny, probably better actually
Hairston + Goodrich > Horace Grant + Dennis Scott IMO
The rest of the Lakers < The rest of the Magic

Of course Shaq missed 28 games as well and they still won 60. The Magic with all their pieces in were a better team than the Lakers but with Shaq missing so much time its pretty damn close yet the Lakers won 12 less games.

I purposely didnt mention the Blazers because they were an ok team that year. Besides the Bucks went 3-1 against them so it didnt help their record anyways.

Everyone else wasnt downgraded though. The Knicks werent downgraded but their record went down. It shouldve gone up cause of expansion. The same is true of the Lakers. The got Wilt for the entire season instead of 12 games yet only improved 2 games. I could go on and on. You make this hypothesis that every other team got worse and the Bucks SHOULDVE dominated cause they didnt get worse, yet good teams who didnt get downgraded or changed really DIDNT dominate and in fact got worse. I am not saying expansion didnt help the Bucks (they went 11-1 against expansion teams) but there are crappy teams every year that the best teams ever will beat up on. Besides, the Bucks went on a 64 win pace against non expansion teams (as in only teams that won 33 games and above). Furthermore, you can say that expansion took away some talent from existing teams, which is technically true but there are three points to be made. The first is that the high scorers on those expansion teams were rarely double digit scorers beforehand so this wasnt devastating to anyone. The second is that once again good teams who didnt lose anything like the Knicks DIDNT get better. The third is that I could use that argument for the entire rest of NBA history. As there are more teams, the talent keeps getting more and more spread out, so a team that happens to have a load of talent is even better. The thing is though that that ends up downgrading all the great teams that came after the 1971 Bucks even more than it does to the Bucks (as there keeps being more expansion). The only truly amazing team that came before really any expansion was the 67 Sixers (and maybe those great Celtic teams too I guess).

Yeah they DID get better cause of Silas but they had already won 56 games the year before without him. Also this is off topic but I have to say that I think the 73 Celtic team played WAY above their means in the regular season. For one their point differential wasnt amazing (expected record based on that: 61 wins). And obviously second, cause they didnt win the championship. But thats for a different thread.

Well if you wanna do that then you might as well just look at expected win-loss record on basketball-reference as that takes into account point differential AND how many points are being scored. In that case only the 96 and 97 Bulls are better and we both know that expansion made those Bulls teams able to do that.

Link:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/...mit=View+Teams

Pioneer10

They certainly weren't the calibre of any team in the 80's, 96 Bulls, Wilt's Philly team

Coaching makes a huge improvement and even it doesn't matter who gets the credit: 72 Lakers were a far better team.

You're still not getting it: of course he was better because he was the #2 option in 1972 and that team was correspondinly better. In 1971 he was not so that team wasn't that good so it useless to try to use the 1972 team as some sort of barometer for the 71 Bucks since it was constructed differently


His number went up significantly (PER of 15.4 to 20.2 in his prime) is a big jump not a "bit" better


So its a poor comparison


Ceballas' only two years with a PER over 21 was in 95 and 96
Elden Campell was highest PER as a starter came in 96 (only one of two years he had a PER over 18)
Divac's highest PER was in 96 (by far)


Far more depth: the 96 players had well above average players across the board in all there starters and a strong bench. Not many teams have a good player at every position unless you're the Detroit Pistons at various point in times


Staticically it's not valid to normalize TS% like that as it's a percentage and not a per game statistic. Brandon for a PG so scored more, had more assists, and scored more efficiently then Cunningham: outrageous to consider he had a better season then Cunningham

Brandon played for one of the most boring teams of all time it's really no surprise he didn't get the recognition he deserved