The Book of Basketball_The NBA According to the Sports Guy

TWELVE
THE LEGEND OF KEYSER S?ZE



AFTER KEVIN GARNETT gave the most incoherent postgame interview in sports history following the 2008 Finals,1 I never imagined leaning on his insights for my Pulitzer winner. But before Boston’s title defense commenced in October, a writer named Chris Jones asked the Ticket how long he thought Celtics fans would remember that 2008 team. Would their memories have a shelf life? Would the team’s magical season eventually fade away? Here’s how Jones described Garnett’s response:
“Listen,” Garnett interrupted, leaning in closer, eyes narrowing. “It’s the one thing that connects me to this city and these guys forever. Ain’t no one can take that away. It’s like knowledge.” He pointed to the side of his bald, shining head. “Once it’s obtained, it’s obtained.”
Perfect. Who knew that someone who never attended college would provide one of the more illuminating quotes in the book? He’s right. Every championship season matters. So let’s figure out which one mattered most. Please don’t confuse this chapter with the consistently botched “Who’s the greatest NBA team of all time?” argument that ranks among the dumbest in sports, right up there with “Emmitt or Barry?” “Gretzky or Lemieux?” “Ali, Marciano, or Louis?” “Elway, Montana or Marino?” “Should there be a college playoff system?” “Will pro soccer ever make it in America?” “Should golf be considered a sport?” “Was the 1985 NBA Lottery rigged?” and “If you mated two current superstars in a deliberate attempt to create the greatest athlete of all time, which two would you pick?”2 Some topics just don’t need to be debated. Especially this one. Russell’s Celtics captured eleven titles in thirteen years, including eight straight from 1959 to 1966, while winning at least two playoff series against every Pyramid guy from that era. No NBA team has won four in a row since. Of course, when the league convened its 35th Anniversary panel in 1980 they threw in an extra wrinkle: pick the greatest single-season team ever as well.
You know who they picked? The 1967 Philadelphia Sixers.
That’s right, the one team from 1959 to 1969—an eleven-year stretch—that defeated the Celtics in a Playoffs series.
Take a step back and consider how brainless that is. If The Sopranos won ten of eleven Best Drama Emmys from 1997 to 2007, and Mad Men won the other year, nobody would ever say, “Mad Men was the best show of all time.” If Tom Hanks won ten of eleven Best Actor Oscars from 1991 to 2002, and Russell Crowe won the other year, nobody would ever say, “Russell Crowe was the best actor of all time.” You’d go with The Sopranos and you’d go with Hanks. It wouldn’t even be a question. So please, if only for my sanity, let’s all agree that Bill Russell’s Celtic teams earned “greatest basketball team of all time” honors. We will never see anything like eight straight or eleven of thirteen ever again. In any sport. We really won’t.3
And since that’s the case, what if we twist the argument and switch “greatest team ever” for “most invincible season ever”? Now we have something! Remember in The Usual Suspects when Verbal Kint told his Keyser S?ze story: how S?ze sought revenge for his murdered family and ripped through an entire town like a tornado from hell, killing everybody, burning everything down and leaving nothing in his wake? We’re looking for the ultimate Keyser S?ze team. We want to find the team that, more than anyone else, shredded everyone in its path and left us saying afterward, “Wow, nobody was beating those guys.” Those Russell-Auerbach teams were unbeatable, but they never submitted a defining S?ze season in an unfavorable preexpansion climate (8–9 teams, 88–99 players, cream of the crop at all times) as they constantly battled the “been here, done that” syndrome.4
Check out Boston’s regular season record as well as its total number of Hall of Famers and Pyramid guys, point differential, overall playoff record, and Finals record from 1959 to 1966.


Here’s the one great Philly season from 1967:


Hmmmmmm. Pay special attention to the ’65 Celts and ’67 Sixers. Heading into ’65 as the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back champs, the Celtics had exhausted so many different motivational gimmicks that “We need to win for Tommy Heinsohn, it’s his last year!” was their only galvanizing force other than Russell’s puking, Auerbach’s hollering and the promise of playoff money. Two years later, the Sixers were driven by a chance to capture their first title and topple Boston’s dynasty, as well as Wilt’s obsession with beating Russell and proving he could be a team player; those powerful, once-in-a-career incentives propelled them to 68 wins (six more than the ’65 Celts), a 9.4 scoring differential (one point higher than the ’65 Celts) and a 12–4 playoff record (four wins better than the Celts, who only played two rounds). And that wasn’t the most talented Russell team: the ’60, ’61 and ’62 groups were better.5 Comparing Russell’s Celtics to Robert DeNiro’s career, the ’65 team would be Heat. Great movie, iconic movie, astoudingly rewatchable movie, but not his best work.
Now add this: The ’67 season featured an expansion team (Chicago) and a hopeless doormat (the 20-win Bullets); Philly went 16–2 against those clowns but finished 4–5 against its only opponent with a winning percentage over .550 (the 60-win Celtics).6 The ’65 Celtics had one whipping boy (the 17-win Warriors, who dropped nine of ten to them) and three legitimate foes: the 49-win Lakers (West and Elgin), the 48-win Royals (Oscar at his apex) and a 40-win Philly team became competitive after stealing Wilt from San Fran in mid-January. Boston went 15–5 against Cincy and Los Angeles and 3–3 against Wilt’s Sixers. So what’s more impressive—the back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back champs winning 62 games in a tighter and more competitive league, or Philly winning 68 in an easier league with loads of incentive?
Any “most invincible season ever” argument hinges on motivation and timing. The ’96 Bulls wanted to avenge a disheartening playoff defeat. The ’71 Bucks and ’83 Sixers smelled first titles for Oscar and Doc/Moses. The ’86 Celtics were rejuvenated by Bill Walton and sought retribution for blowing the ’85 Finals. The ’87 Lakers wanted to prove they weren’t finished. And the ’67 Sixers were blessed with a secret weapon that any Celtics team from 1960 to 1966 was fundamentally disqualified from having: a burning desire to prove themselves and accomplish the great unknown. In retrospect, the biggest tragedy of Russell’s career was Selvy missing the winning shot of the ’62 Finals.7 Imagine an absurdly loaded ’63 Celtics team declaring war and finishing something like 72–8. They had Russell in his prime, Sam Jones emerging as a top-ten player, Cousy and Heinsohn still thriving, Satch and K. C. killing teams defensively, Ramsey and Havlicek coming off the bench … and unfortunately, the ’63 Celts lacked any incentive other than “We need to win for Cooz in his last year” and “We could use the playoff money for cigarettes and rent.” Even then, they rolled through the league with ease. What if they had been supremely pissed off? How can you get properly pissed when you keep winning?
We also can’t ignore the benefits—and really, that’s the perfect word—of a respected contender nipping at the alpha dog’s heels. That wrinkle pushed the ’86 Celtics, ’87 Lakers and ’67 Sixers to heights they might not have reached otherwise. For instance, the ’67 Celtics jumped to a 14–2 start before eventually falling behind a 26–2 Sixers team. As Philly extended its record to 46–4 in January, the Celtics were ripping off eleven straight and staying close enough that Philly never relaxed. What if Boston won 45 games instead of 60? Are the Sixers still driving to the finish line like Secretariat in the Belmont? Of course not. They needed that Celtics team to keep pushing them. Contrast that with ho-hum seasons for the ’60 C’s (who started off 30–4 and opened an eight-game lead before blowing six of their next eight) and the ’65 C’s (46–9 and leading the league by double digits before “stumbling” to 14–9 down the stretch). Why couldn’t they keep it up? They got bored! Nobody cared about anything like “Whoa, they might win 70 games!” back then; the league hadn’t been around long enough to place such an achievement in perspective. That changed during the ’67 season. Everyone wanted Philly to topple Boston’s dynasty and break the 70-win barrier (or come damned close); between that and Boston breathing down Philly’s neck, suddenly the NBA had never seen a hungrier regular season team.8 Again, much of this “most invincible team ever” stuff is totally, completely, undeniably circumstantial. That’s why the twenty best single-season teams (don’t worry, we’re getting there) fall into one of three categories.
LEVEL ONE: A TEAM CAPTURING ITS FIRST TITLE

Think of it like hiking a gigantic mountain: you don’t know if you can do it, you nearly get derailed a hundred times, you dig deeper than you ever thought you could, you tap into a level of passion that you didn’t know you had, you still don’t totally trust that it will happen … and then it happens. Level One teams never fully believe that they will become champions until the champagne is dripping off their heads. A crucial layer of confidence is missing. For instance, let’s say you’re handsome, funny, well dressed, and wealthy—like me, only if I were single.9 Let’s say someone introduces you to Kate Bosworth at a cocktail party in Manhattan. And let’s say you’re thinking, “Holy shit, I’m talking to Kate Bosworth!” and assuming you don’t have a chance in hell with her. Are you hopping in a cab with her later that night? No way. Now, let’s say you dated Meadow Soprano for three months, hooked up with an Olsen, and fooled around with Minka Kelly when she was between Mayer and Jeter … and then someone introduced you to Bosworth. You’ve been there before with female celebs. You’ve broken that barrier down. You have an inner confidence that you might not have had otherwise. Even better, she knows about you and Minka Kelly, giving you a little celebrity cachet with her. She doesn’t have to worry about you high-fiving yourself after an orgasm or waiting for her to fall asleep so you can film her with your cell phone.10 So who has a better chance of sealing the deal with Kate Bosworth: Great-on-Paper You or Great-on-Paper-with-Confidence You? The second guy. It’s not a debate. Well, basketball works the same way. Great-Team-on-Paper will never be as good as Great-Team-on-Paper-with-Confidence.
LEVEL TWO: A CHAMPION DEFENDING ITS TITLE

Sure, they might get bored during the regular season, battle overconfidence problems, struggle against the Disease of More and fail to find the same passion that carried them the previous year … but they snap into “You have no chance, we’re the champs” mode as soon as there’s money or pride on the line. When Lloyd Neal hissed in the locker room, “That’s why we’re the f*cking champs!” after the ’78 Blazers annihilated Philly, that’s the definitive Level Two story. MJ’s parade of threes in Game One of the ’92 Finals is the definitive “That’s why we’re the f*cking champs” game. L.A.’s roll through the 2001 playoffs was the definitive “That’s why we’re the f*cking champs” postseason.11
LEVEL THREE: A GREAT TEAM WITH THE EFF-YOU EDGE

Only one scenario applies, and it requires a run-on sentence: you need an elite former championship team with a transcendent star in his prime coming off a disappointing playoff exit who regrouped and made the necessary tweaks before locking themselves into S?ze mode for eight months trying to climb back over the mountain and reclaim what’s theirs while taking out their frustrations from a previous collapse along the way. Think ’86 Celts or ’96 Bulls.
Now, you can’t enter the S?ze zone as a Level One team. You can come close and have motivation oozing out the wazoo, but a shred of doubt loiters over everything. Are we that good? Can we actually win? We aren’t gonna blow this, are we? The ’91 Bulls are the best example: on paper, they were one of the six or seven greatest teams of all time by any statistical calculation. But I was there. I can report with complete certainty that most “experts” (including me)12 thought the Lakers would beat them in the Finals. You know, the old “experience over youth” thing. When the Bulls blew Game 1 at home, nobody thought Chicago would sweep the next four games. Not even Michael Jordan. (I specifically remember the Lakers being 5-to-2 favorites after Game 1.) And honestly? They didn’t become great until the last few minutes of Game 5, when Phil Jackson finally convinced Jordan to trust his teammates once and for all—the much-retold, “Michael, who’s open?” story—and the Bulls took care of business.
Level Two and Level Three? That’s another story. These teams know how to take care of business. They know what works. They know how to win. They know what it feels like to climb the mountain and know how to get back there. At this point, we’re arguing degrees. So what’s more impressive: a dethroned champion channeling its hostility into the following season and wreaking havoc, or a defending champion welcoming all comers, relishing every challenge, developing an air of invincibility/superiority and sticking it to everyone for an entire “Show me what you got!” season? Fortunately, we have the perfect case study (the ’96 and ’97 Bulls) and perfect person to answer the question (Steve Kerr, a starter on both teams and one of the more thoughtful ex-players, someone who genuinely wonders about this stuff). On paper, the ’96 and ’97 Bulls were closer than you probably remember.
1996 Bulls: 72–10 (reg. season), 15–3 (Playoffs), 13.4 point differential
1997 Bulls: 69–13 (reg. season), 15–4 (Playoffs), 12.0 point differential
Now throw these wrinkles in:
Chicago’s ’96 playoff record was skewed because of the Eastern Finals, when a much-anticipated Orlando rematch was derailed in Game 1 after Horace Grant (Orlando’s best rebounder and a former Bull with an ongoing grudge) left with a series-ending left elbow injury. When Nick Anderson (a worthy foil for Jordan in ’95) went down in Game 3, the Bulls ended up sweeping a Magic team that should have been a worthy opponent. Remember, Penny made first-team All-NBA that year; the Bulls had nobody to defend Shaq; and Orlando had already beaten them once.13
The ’97 Bulls signed Brian Williams14 for the stretch run, giving them something they lacked in ’96: a lefty who could score with his back to the basket. Williams grabbed all of Bill Wennington’s minutes in the ’97 Playoffs. You’ve seen Bill Wennington play, right? That’s a bigger upgrade than Ashton Kutcher going from January Jones to Brittany Murphy.
The league was better in ’97 and Utah provided a more experienced Finals opponent than the happy-to-be-there ’96 Sonics. The ’96 Bulls rolled through Orlando and Seattle; the ’97 Bulls faced a frisky Bullets team (C-Webb, Juwan, and Rod Strickland), Riley’s feisty Miami team (Mourning and Hardaway) and the Jazz during Malone’s (cough, cough) first MVP season. So going 15–4 in the ’97 postseason was no less impressive than 15–3 in ’96.
Before I asked Kerr the “Who was better?” question, I had been leaning toward the ’97 Bulls. The last part of my email: “Considering that you weren’t in ‘Eff You’ mode in ’97 because you had already climbed the mountain, but you guys still went out and kicked everybody’s ass to 98.9 percent of the same degree you did the year before, in my mind, that’s a greater accomplishment than just winning the title in ’96 when you had all the necessary incentives in place. Does that make sense?”
Kerr’s response:
Very interesting. I guess the question is, do you reward a team for having less motivation, or do you take points away? I could make an argument that the ’96 team was better because we were more motivated. The hunger factor was huge for us that year and that helped make us a great team. Two things come to mind when I compare those teams. First is the Brian Williams factor. We got him for (the final 17 games) and he was huge for us down the stretch. Having a legit post-up scorer and athletic shot blocker was something we didn’t have before. Secondly, when you’ve won a title already, there’s a sense of superiority and invincibility that wasn’t there before. The great teams use that in a positive way, which is what we did. Instead of ‘eff you’ mode like in ’96, it’s more like “You have no chance against us” mode. We were so confident from already having won a title that we knew we were going to crush everyone that year. That’s a dangerous mentality to have, obviously, if you don’t have a mature team. It would be easy to stop working hard. But with MJ and all of our vets, there was no way that was going to happen. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I thought the ’96 team was better because of the edge we had. The “eff you” is a powerful force. But the ’97 team was better on paper.15
Perfect! Thank you, Steve Kerr. We couldn’t have asked for a better guy to solve that problem. That’s why I have the “eff you” mode ranked as Level Three and the “superiority/invincibility” mode ranked one level below: because Kerr lived through both seasons, he’s wicked smaht (? Will Hunting’s buddy) and we can trust him. So if we’re figuring out the single most invincible basketball team ever, really, there are three choices and only three: the ’86 Celtics, ’87 Lakers or ’96 Bulls … although we’re covering the best ten, because God forbid I ever took a shortcut in this book. One Stanley Roberts–size disclaimer: For any “most invincible” argument, it can’t be forgotten that the NBA peaked competitively from 1984 to 1993, a few years after the merger but before overexpansion, the megasalary boom and underclassmen flooding the college draft. Check out the roster of the ’84 Celtics, who won two seventh games to clinch a fifteenth banner, outlasted a seemingly unbeatable Lakers team, and were never considered for my top ten:
STARTERS: Larry Bird (first of his three MVP years), Cedric Maxwell (’81 Finals MVP), Robert Parish (top–fifty-five Pyramid guy), Dennis Johnson (top–fifty-five Pyramid Guy, ’79 Finals MVP), Gerald Henderson (good enough to get swapped for Seattle’s unconditional number one pick that summer)16
BENCH: Kevin McHale (top-forty Pyramid guy, best sixth man ever), Danny Ainge (two-time All-Star, fourteen-year veteran), M. L. Carr (one of the league’s better bench players), Scott Wedman (two-time All-Star, best player on an ’81 Kings team that came within one win of the Finals), Quinn Buckner (former top-ten pick, 10-year veteran).
See the benefits of a smaller league (just twenty-three teams) with incompetently run teams routinely screwing up drafts and giving away number one picks? Once the league began adding franchises and diluting its talent pool, it became nearly impossible to construct juggernauts like the ones from the Bird-Magic era. In the last fifteen years, we’ve only seen two competitive monsters: Jordan’s post-baseball Chicago teams and the first two Shaq-Kobe teams. In a thirty-team league with nearly every front office knowing what it’s doing,17 with owners constantly fearing the salary cap and luxury tax, you cannot build a contender with a three-time MVP, three Finals MVPs, four Pyramid guys, McHale coming off the bench, Ainge as your third guard and Wedman as your eighth man. It’s not happening. You can’t get lucky enough times; the odds are too great.
Hence, for the purposes of this chapter, I’m ignoring the pre-1960 teams (not enough black players, defense or quality shooting), severely penalizing the 1970–76 teams (because of the expansion/ABA double whammy) and pre-1970 teams (because I’ve seen the tapes and you can’t tell me with a straight face that the ’65 Celts or ’67 Sixers wouldn’t have gotten swept by the ’01 Lakers by 25 points a game), and I’m discounting the post-MJ teams (because it’s impossible to put together a ridiculously talented team in a thirty-team league with cap/tax constraints). The teams left standing will be judged by four factors and only four.
1. Invincibility at the time coupled with a willingness of everyone else to concede, “We had no chance against those guys.” This is a clear-cut yes-or-no question. You can easily tell from the articles written during the season and after the Finals. If writers are raving about the team and struggling to put them in a historical context, and if their opponents are gushing about them, then something magical just happened.
2. Level of consistent/methodical/transcendent greatness from October to June. You can figure this out with regular-season/Playoffs records, double-digit winning streaks, high point differentials, few Playoffs losses and high margins in closeout games. The last one is my favorite: when invincible teams smell blood, they shift into “we aren’t just winning this, we’re going to hopefully ruin their confidence for the next five years and give our fans a lifelong memory” mode.
3. Their defense of that “greatest season” the following year. Sorry, if you just submitted a historic season that might be remembered for eternity, shouldn’t that mean something to everyone who was involved? Show some pride. Protect your title. Make us feel like you’d rather die than lose your championship belt. What’s the point of winning a title if you aren’t going to defend it?18 4. Hypothetical ability to transcend eras and succeed no matter the year. And yes, this is the single toughest ingredient to project; we’re eliminating nearly everyone before 1980 for the reasons laid out in the “How the Hell” chapter. God bless Russell’s Celtics teams, but they weren’t beating MJ’s Bulls with Hondo and Sam Jones handling the ball, and they definitely weren’t beating Bird’s Celtics with Tommy Heinsohn guarding Kevin McHale. As for the hypothetical stuff, you’re just going to have to trust my expertise. You’ve come this far. In the words of Bobby Knight, relax and enjoy it. Whoops, he was talking about rape. Bad example. Um, just relax and enjoy it.19
In my humble opinion, only twenty NBA champions deserved special commendation for this chapter. I narrowed it down to ten honorable mentions and an elite ten.
HONORABLE MENTION
THE ’61 CELTICS (57–22, 8–2 IN PLAYOFFS)

Russell’s most dominant team considering he was hitting his prime (19–30–5 in the playoffs), eight Hall of Famers were aboard and they rolled through the playoffs … but that 57–22 record screams of “When are the playoffs starting?” In their defense, they were coming off back-to-back titles and God knows how many exhibition/regular season games—playing something like 240–250 games in a twenty-four-month span, traveling by bus or train (or even worse, flying coach with connections)—without modern advances in training, workout equipment, medical care, dieting and everything else. Again, watch the first two seasons of Mad Men sometime and imagine playing professional basketball for a living back then. Give the ’61 Celtics a chartered plane, Dr. James Andrews, a dietitian and nicotine patches and God knows what would have happened.
THE ’65 CELTICS (60–22, 8–4, 16-GAME WINNING STREAK)

Personified the “it’s all about timing” point. Had San Francisco waited until the summer to gift-wrap Wilt for Philly, the Celtics would have played a 48-win Royals team in the Eastern Finals (they finished 8–2 against Cincy that year) and an Elginless Lakers team in the Finals. Instead, they barely survived a seven-game bloodbath against Wilt’s Sixers that everyone remembers for “Havlicek steals the ball!” No discussion about the greatest of the great should include the words “barely survived.” Unless you’re talking about Uruguayan rugby.20
THE ’67 76ERS (68–13, 12–4)

Beyond the pre-1970 issue and a weak competitive season described earlier, they were overrated for the following reasons: First, they caught the Russell era at the perfect time, immediately after Auerbach retired, when Russell struggled in his first year as player-coach. Second, the “special” component to Philly’s season was its 68–13 record … but really, the 68 happened because Boston stayed close for a while and the national media, for whatever reason, made a big deal about the quest for 70.21 Third, they only featured three Pyramid guys (Wilt, Greer and Cunningham, only a rookie), and when you think about it, how could the so-called greatest team of the NBA’s first thirty-five years have only three Pyramid guys? Fourth, Wilt’s poor free throw shooting would quickly manifest itself in a fictional round-robin tournament with the other all-time powerhouses; he infamously avoided the ball in the final two minutes, leaving Greer or Cunningham to match baskets with Jordan, Kobe, Bird or whomever. And fifth, for an allegedly “great” team, they couldn’t defend their title even once, blowing a 3–1 lead to the ’68 Celtics (with Wilt demanding a trade that summer). So much for our number one 1 Silver Anniversary choice.
THE ’70 KNICKS (62–20, 12–7)

Had the following things in their favor: three top-forty-five Pyramid guys and first-team All-Defense guys (Reed, Frazier and DeBusschere), a 10-plus point differential in the regular season, truly phenomenal home crowds, an undeniable grasp of The Secret, an 18-game winning streak and some of the most beautiful ball movement and perimeter shooting we’ve ever seen. But their playoff performance was lacking,22 and you can’t discount their failed title defense (losing a Game 7 to Baltimore at MSG). Throw in Russell (retired), Wilt (played 6 regular season games), Oscar (self-destructing in Cincy), Kareem (just a rookie) and expansion (five new teams since ’67) and the ’70 Knicks didn’t do nearly enough butt-whupping for my liking. On the bright side, 20,785 books have been written about them. So they have that going for them.
THE ’82 L.A. LAKERS (57–25, 12–2)

Along with the ’01 Lakers, my favorite “should have been greater” team that was sideswiped by the Disease of More. By the spring (once they changed coaches, quelled chemistry issues and got Magic going again), they had the following trump cards in place: two of the ten greatest players ever, a soul-crushing half-court offense anchored by Kareem, a once-in-a-generation fast break with two point guards (Magic and Norm Nixon) and an ahead-of-its-time 1–3–1 smallball trap with McAdoo anchoring the back, Norm Nixon up front, and Jamaal Wilkes, Magic and Michael Cooper covering the middle. They cruised to the degree that “best team ever” buzz built throughout the Playoffs—they were 10–0 heading into Game 3 of the Finals—before Philly salvaged two wins, the Lakers clinched in six, and everyone forgot about them five seconds later because CBS tape-delayed most of the series. But if you created a 32-team Best of All Time single-elimination, March Madness–type tournament, the ’82 Lakers would be my sleeper. Nightmare matchup for just about anyone.23
THE ’85 L.A. LAKERS (62–20, 15–4)

Had to be included because of their impressive playoff numbers (127.1 points scored, 16.3 point differential per win, 54.3 percent FG shooting, 11 double-digit wins, closeout game margins of 16, 19, 44, and 9), although it’s still unclear if the best team won the title. (Note: That was the spring when Bird injured his shooting hand in a bar fight and stank in the Finals.) The ’85 Lakers were the first smallball champion: Kareem had stopped rebounding consistently, they didn’t have an elite power forward and their best lineup was Kareem-Worthy-Cooper-Scott-Magic. Despite Bird’s struggles and Cedric Maxwell’s no-show that season,24 it’s hard to fathom how a team blessed with Bird, Parish and McHale in their primes didn’t just pound the living crap out of the Lakers down low. (Even twenty-odd years later, McHale and Ainge still bitch that the Celtics blew a golden chance to repeat. Had the Lakers been a truly great team, their Finals opponents wouldn’t have been kicking themselves years later and bemoaning lost chances. Same goes for the ’84 Celtics, by the way.) Their big issue was rebounding—one year later, the ’86 Rockets busted the Lakers by butchering them on the boards. Poor Kareem couldn’t fend them off. Why didn’t the ’85 Celtics do this? I have no idea. But everything probably evened out: L.A. blew the ’84 Finals, Boston blew the ’85 Finals, and that’s that.
THE ’92 CHICAGO BULLS (67–15, 15–7)

A potential all-timer that didn’t quite get there because of something Kerr mentioned with his invincibility/superiority comments about Level Two teams: “That’s a dangerous mentality to have, obviously, if you don’t have a mature team.” Bingo. This should have been Jordan’s best team: MJ was at the peak of his physical powers, as was Pippen, and they were blessed with the best nine-man rotation of any Bulls team during the MJ era. They had an answer for everything. But the playoffs … arrrrrrrrgh. You shouldn’t need seven games to topple the ’92 Knicks. You shouldn’t need six games to topple the ’92 Blazers. You shouldn’t have to rally from 15 down at home to clinch your title.
The Disease of More wreaked havoc with these guys. Pippen was kicking himself after signing a shortsighted contract extension, then learning the Bulls offered more money to Toni Kukoc. Grant was ticked because he didn’t get enough acclaim for doing all the dirty work. Young guns Stacey King, B. J. Armstrong and Cliff Levingston believed they were good enough to be starting. And all hell broke loose when Sam Smith released The Jordan Rules in January of ’92, a behind-the-scenes account of Chicago’s first title season. We learned about Jordan’s overcompetitive-ness, gigantic ego, “selfish” nature25 and mean-spirited methods for motivating inferior teammates; everyone was flabbergasted because we only knew Jordan from his inventive Nike commercials and articulate interviews. Infuriated by the candid portrayal and incensed that teammates and coaches provided material for the book—among them, reportedly, Grant, Phil Jackson, and Jerry Reinsdorf—Jordan retreated into an icy shell and wouldn’t emerge until he started playing for the Birmingham Barons three years later. That’s what led to Chicago’s spotty performance in the ’92 playoffs. Tragically, that Bulls team had the highest ceiling of anyone other than the ’82 Lakers, ’86 Celtics and ’01 Lakers; watch Game 1 of the Finals not just for Jordan’s epic undressing of Clyde Drexler but for the way the Bulls demolished Portland defensively in a Pantheon-level ass-kicking. Then they relaxed and blew Game 2. And so it went for the Bulls that season: tons of potential, much of it realized … but not all of it. As it turned out, the only guy who could stop the ’92 Bulls was Sam Smith.26
THE ’00 L.A. LAKERS (67–15, 15–8, 19-GAME STREAK)

It’s a shame we can’t combine their ’00 regular season with their ’01 playoffs (14–1) and make them a superteam. The smoking gun: they started the ’00 playoffs 11–8 (yuck) before sweeping the last four Philly games; even worse, Portland would have beaten them if not for the most horrific fourth-quarter collapse in the history of the Association. They missed a few shots, got tight, stopped getting calls and got screwed by some illogical coaching decisions. Even the 2000 Source Awards didn’t melt down that fast. What a startling game to rewatch. Even more startling: Mike Dunleavy was hired to coach another team after what happened. When the poor Clippers had to spend ten hours spraying Dunleavy with a fire hose to get the blood of the 2000 Blazers off his body, maybe that should have been a sign to look at other candidates.
THE ’07 SAN ANTONIO SPURS (58–24, 16–4)

THE ’08 BOSTON CELTICS (66–16, 16–10)

The Spurs lacked regular season chops and the Celtics lacked postseason chops, but they relied on the same formula: three elite players (Duncan-Parker-Ginobili for SA, Garnett-Pierce-Allen for Boston), multiple crunch-time scorers, effective role players and stifling defense. Including advancements in game planning, scouting, conditioning, defensive IQ, statistical study, DVD/editing, equipment, medicine, physical care, Internet/mobile devices, high school basketball camps and everything else, you could argue these past two title teams weren’t as loaded as the squads from the Bird-Magic era, but they were more prepared and more defensively sound.27 Back in 1984, a pivotal coaching adjustment was KC Jones finally realizing after three freaking games that Dennis Johnson should have been hounding Magic.28 In 2008? Coaches and scouts broke things down so meticulously that they could tell you the exact benefits—right down to the percentage point—of forcing Lamar Odom right instead of letting him go left. Should hyperintelligence matter when we’re comparing teams from different decades? Absolutely. It’s an era-specific advantage, just like smoking, lowtop sneakers, lack of fitness and rudimentary VD medication were detriments during the Russell era. But it doesn’t change the fact that Kendrick Perkins couldn’t have stopped Kareem in a million years, that Magic would have eaten Boston’s point guards alive, or that Jordan would have ripped up the ’07 Spurs.
If you’re still dubious that this decade’s finest teams couldn’t have handled the best of the Bird-Magic-Jordan era, beyond the preexpansion advantages of having two more quality guys in your top nine, consider this caveat: if the 1986 Celtics hopped in a time machine, turned into a 2009 expansion team and reconfigured under current salary-cap/luxury-tax rules (we’ll say a $70 million cap), do you realize how much money they would lose?29 Here’s a conservative estimate of their projected cap figures as well as the total amount of each hypothetical contract:
Larry Bird: $20 million (6 years, $120 million)
Kevin McHale: $15.5 million (6 years, $93 million)
Robert Parish: $15 million (5 years, $75 million)
Dennis Johnson: $13 million (5 years, $65 million)
Danny Ainge: $9 million (5 years, $45 million)
Bill Walton: $7 million (3 years, $21 million)
Scott Wedman: $6.5 million (5 years, $27.5 million)
Jerry Sichting: $1.8 million (2 years, $3.6 million)
Sam Vincent: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
Greg Kite: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
David Thirdkill: $1.2 million (1 year, $1.2 million)
Rick Carlisle: $400K (3 years, $1.2 million)30
Cap total: $92.8 million
Keep in mind, that’s only twelve players and every modern team carries fifteen, so we’d have to bump the total by another $1.5–$3 million; the Parish/McHale salaries assume that nobody cleared copious amounts of cap space (like Orlando with Rashard Lewis) to offer them $110-$120 million in free agency (which definitely could have happened); and Wedman’s number might be low when you remember what similar shooters like Jason Kapono and Vlad Radmanovic earned in free agency (and Wedman was better than those guys). Anyway, my “realistic” look at their projected salaries twenty-three years later yields a projected payroll of $95 million. Ninety-five million! The ’86 Celtics wouldn’t just lose money in 2009; they’d lose outrageous, life-altering amounts of money, upwards of $30–$35 million once you include the luxury tax. In other words, there’s no conceivable way their nucleus could have remained intact. Which means they would have been forced to deal Parish or McHale—just for the hell of it, let’s say they traded McHale to Dallas for Sam Perkins, Derek Harper and a future number one—and instead of swapping Cedric Maxwell and a future number one to the Clippers for Bill Walton, they would been forced to deal Maxwell31 along with that number one pick (and possibly a second number one) to anyone with cap space for a future second-rounder just to ditch Max from their cap.
So let’s look at our revised, tax-friendly ’86 Celtics roster under 2009 rules:
Larry Bird: $20 million (6 years, $120 million)
Robert Parish: $15 million (5 years, $75 million)
Dennis Johnson: $13 million (5 years, $65 million)
Danny Ainge: $9 million (5 years, $45 million)
Scott Wedman: $5.5 million (5 years, $27.5 million)
Sam Perkins: $4 million (4 years, $16 million)
Derek Harper: $3 million (4 years, $12 million)
Jerry Sichting: $1.8 million (2 years, $3.6 million)
Sam Vincent: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
Greg Kite: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
David Thirdkill: $1.2 million (1 year, $1.2 million)
Rick Carlisle: $400K (3 years, $1.2 million)
Cap total: $77.3 million
Translation: Even after the above moves, they’d be guaranteed a $10-$12 million loss unless they made the second round. If their owners were afraid of taking that hit, maybe they would pursue another cap-friendly trade of Wedman or Ainge for a cheaper player or expiring contract that would weaken the team even more. This is all an elaborate way of saying that if they had been playing under the 2009 rules, there’s no way in hell I would be bouncing my grandkids on my lap someday and telling them about the 1986 Boston Celtics. And that’s why we had to discount twenty-first-century teams in this chapter. The rules were and are stacked against them. Literally.32
Without further ado, the ten greatest teams of all time.
THE ELITE TEN
10. THE ’91 BULLS

Regular season (61–21): 35–6 at home … 9.0 SD (110–101) … 51% FG, 76% FT, 36% 3FG … 9–12 vs. 50-win teams … 56–15 (last 71 games) … winning streaks: 11 + 9
Playoffs (15–2): 8–1 at home … 11.7 PD (109.9–92.2) … 51.4 FG (1st), 45.0 defensive FG (2nd), 9.5 steals…. 9 double-digit wins … 2 losses by 4 points total … closeout margins: 9 + 5 + 21 + 7… following season: won title (beat Portland in 6)
Cast and crew: Michael Jordan (super-duper star), Scottie Pippen (super-duper-wingman), Horace Grant (wingman), Bill Cartwright, John Paxson, B. J. Armstrong, Stacey King, Cliff Levingston (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)
Gaining steam historically because their playoff record and point differentials were accomplished during an extremely competitive season and featured the following facts: they swept the back-to-back champs and murdered the Isiah era; they won the last four Finals games and helped kill Showtime;33 and of their two playoff losses, one happened in overtime (Game 3 against Barkley and the Sixers) and the other happened on a last-second three by Sam Perkins (Finals, Game 1). Do you realize that Jordan missed wide-open jumpers to win both of those games? We always hear about Philly’s “Fo-Fo-Fo” postseason, but it wasn’t as impressive as what the ’91 Bulls accomplished. We’re penalizing them for the aforementioned Level One reason: you can’t be great when you don’t know if you’re great until the very end, and the ’91 Bulls didn’t know until the six-minute mark of their last game.34
9. THE ’72 L.A. LAKERS

Regular season (69–13): peak of 67–12 … 37–5 at home … 12.3 SD (121.0–108.7) … led league in points, rebounds, and assists, 2nd in FG (49%) and defensive FG (43%) … 20–6 vs. 49-win teams … longest winning streak: 33 (all-time record).
Playoffs (12–3): 6–2 at home … 3.3 SD (106.6–103.4) … 6 double-digit wins … 3 double-digit losses … 42.9% FG, 75.0% FT … closeout game margins of 11, 4, and 14 … following season: runners-up (lost to Knicks in 5)
Cast and crew: Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain (superstars), Gail Goodrich (super wingman), Jim McMillian, Leroy Ellis, Happy Hairston, Pat Riley (role players), Bill Sharman (coach)
If you kept the 2008 Celtics intact, removed every foreigner from the league, relocated twelve teams to a competing league, allowed them to wreak havoc in a diluted NBA and gave them a Finals opponent missing its center and captain (the 2008 equivalent of Willis Reed), would they have finished better than 81–16? Yes. The answer is yes. So you can’t forget how incompetent that era was. In a three-season span, the ’70 Knicks, ’71 Bucks and ’72 Lakers ripped off four of the seven longest winning streaks of all time (33, 20 and 18).35 If you were even a little loaded, in a watered-down league struggling to replenish its young talent that made you super-duper-duper-duper loaded. With that said, their 33-game streak remains dumbfounding, and they certainly took care of business in the regular season. The playoffs? Not so much. It’s also hard for me to reconcile the fact that their best two players—West and Wilt—were at the tail end of their careers. Not even their primes … their careers. It’s a little reminiscent of the Stockton-Malone era peaking late for reasons that had nothing to do with Stockton or Malone. Anyway, I would have bumped them to honorable mention if not for that inconceivable streak. When nobody can approach 70-percent of your record, that record probably isn’t going anywhere for a while.
8. THE ’83 PHILADELPHIA 76ERS

Regular season (65–17): peak of 57–9 … 35–6 at home … 7.7 PD (112.1–104.4) … 13–7 vs. 50-win teams … winning streaks: 14 + 10
Playoffs (12–1): 7–0 at home … 5.9 SD (105.8–99.9) … 4 double-digit wins … closeout game margins of 3, 12 + 7 … following season: lost in round one (Philly in 5).
Cast & Crew: Moses (super-duper star); Julius Erving, Andrew Toney (super wingmen); Mo Cheeks (wingman); Bobby Jones (6th man); Clint Richardson, Clemon Johnson, Marc Iavaroni (role players);36 Billy Cunningham (coach)
My vote for Most Overrated Great Team. You had the following things in play: The Celtics turned against acerbic coach Bill Fitch37… James Worthy broke his leg and missed the last four months of the Lakers season38 … Larry Brown killed a 49-win Nets team by bolting to Kansas with six games left in the season … the other three 49-plus win teams (Milwaukee, SA and Phoenix) weren’t even remotely threats … cocaine had ravaged the league and sapped the talents of some key stars … and the Sixers were a textbook Level One team. I’m not arguing the season itself as much as its ceiling; when you consider that Philly had Moses in his prime, Doc and Bobby at the tail end, Toney emerging as an unstoppable offensive force, and Mo Cheeks doing Mo Cheeks things, as well as an overwhelming amount of motivation, of course they were going to look splendid that year. Especially when they were handed a gift-wrapped decimated Lakers opponent missing Worthy, Nixon and McAdoo by Game 4 of the Finals. You know, only three of their five best players.
Here’s the question we need to ask: removing the Sixers from that season and matching them against other superteams, what would happen? They certainly weren’t great defensively; only Cheeks and Jones were above average and Jones was almost cooked. (Don’t ask me who would have defended McHale, Duncan, Jordan, Kobe or Bird on this team because I have no clue.) Moses may have been one of the best rebounders ever (averaging a sterling 26–16 in the Playoffs), but any team with size (like the ’86 Celts, for instance) would have toyed with Philly since they didn’t have any other big guys. Their outside shooting was more than a little sketchy; only Cheeks and Toney could make anything beyond 15 feet, and nobody had three-point range. Not to belabor the point about their crummy supporting cast, but did we mention that the ’83 Sixers started Marc Iavaroni, a homeless man’s Kurt Rambis who wouldn’t have sniffed a nine-man rotation on a contender even six years later?39
How do we know for sure that the ’83 Sixers were overrated? Look at their title “defense,” when they returned everyone from their top eight and couldn’t get out of the first round. And it’s not like the ’84 Celtics knocked them out. Nope, it was the ’84 Nets with Mike Gminski, Albert King, Buck Williams and a sober-for-a-few-weeks Micheal Ray Richardson … and the Nets fought back from a 2–0 deficit to win three straight (including Game 5 in the Spectrum). Part of being a great champion is defending that title, right? What’s worse than bowing in the first round to Sugar and the Nets when you’re healthy? Was there a more appalling title defense in the past thirty-five years with the possible exception of the Iron Sheik losing the WWE title in five weeks?40 And since the league was considerably stronger in ’84—L.A. had Worthy back (and rookie Byron Scott), the Celtics were running on all cylinders again, Bernard and Sugar had rejuvenated the New York–area teams, younger athletic foes like Detroit, Dallas and Atlanta were starting to get frisky—the turd that Philly dropped in the ’84 punch bowl has to count for the legacy of the ’83 Sixers. They were the classic “right place, right time” team and you can’t tell me differently.
7. THE ’71 MILWAUKEE BUCKS

Regular season (66–16): peak of 64–11 … 34–2 at home … 12.2 SD (118.4–106.2) … led league in FG% (51%), defensive FG% (42%), points (9,710), assists (27.4) … 13–8 vs. 48-win teams41 … longest winning streaks: 20 + 16
Playoffs (12–2): 8–0 at home … 14.5 SD (109.1–94.6) … 11 double-digit wins … 49.7% FG, 72.1% FT … closeout game margins of 50, 18, + 12… following season: lost in Western Finals (Lakers in 6)
Cast and Crew: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (super-duper star, 32–16–3); Oscar Robertson (super wingman); Bobby Dandridge (wingman); Jon McGlocklin, Greg Smith, Bob Boozer, Lucius Allen (supporting cast); Larry Costello (coach)
Start to finish, this was the greatest NBA season on paper. You can’t do better. They had two of the ten best basketball players ever, one juuuuuust past his prime (Oscar), the other nearing the height of his powers (Kareem). During the regular season, they led the league in every relevant category, finished with the third-highest point differential ever and ripped off two killer winning streaks; they easily could have gotten 70 if they hadn’t clinched the top seed so early. They destroyed every playoff opponent and set a record for postseason point differential that still stands.42 They swept the Finals and won every game by at least eight points. And they only blew two home games in Milwaukee all year, second only to the ’86 Celtics. Now that’s a resume! Nobody seriously challenged them for nine solid months. Of course, that stupid Silver Anniversary panel voted for the ’67 Sixers over the ’71 Bucks as Best Team of the First 25 Years because … umm … I couldn’t possibly tell you why. That was a doubly indefensible pick in that Russell’s Celtics were the only logical choice, but if you were dumb enough to look elsewhere, then you had to take the ’71 Bucks.
So why not stick them higher? Because that diluted era from 1969 to 1976 rewarded any team with two great players (Kareem-Oscar, Wilt-Jerry, Cowens-Hondo, whomever). Because basketball just wasn’t fast enough or athletic enough yet. Because they caught a few significant breaks that year: the Lakers lost Elgin and West for the playoffs, the Celtics weren’t ready yet, the defending champs choked away the Eastern Finals at home and the 42–40 Bullets played in the Finals without an injured Gus Johnson. Add everything up and the team probably wasn’t as great as it looks on paper. No matter. We can’t stick them lower than seventh.
6. THE ’97 CHICAGO BULLS

Regular season (69–13): peak of 68–10 … 39–2 at home … 10.8 SD (103.1–92.3) … 19–9 vs. 50-win teams … winning streaks: 12 + 9
Playoffs (15–4): 10–1 at home … 5.5 SD (92.5–87.0) … 6 double-digit wins … 43.2% FG, 31.9% 3FG … closeout margins: 1, 15, 13, + 4 … following season: won title (beat Jazz in 6)
Cast and crew: Michael Jordan (super-duper star), Scottie Pippen (super wingman), Dennis Rodman (wingman), Toni Kukoc, Brian Williams, Luc Longley, Steve Kerr, Ron Harper (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)
Ineligible for the top five because of a “can’t include teams from back-to-back years” rule that I just made up ten seconds ago. Although they were worn down by the Finals after playing 200 games (not counting exhibition) in twenty months. With an oversized bull’s-eye on their backs. With every contender gunning for them. With a gargantuan media horde greeting them in every city. With sold-out arenas of fans around the country saying happily, “I’m going to see the Bulls tonight!” When you remember how colossal Jordan (and the team to a lesser extent) was compared to the other sports at the time—hockey was dying, baseball was still recovering from a damaging strike, college hoops was getting murdered by underclassmen leaving too soon, tennis had nobody, Tiger was just breaking onto the golf scene but wasn’t Tiger Woods yet, and only football had real star power (Elway, Favre, Sanders, and others)—that ’97 Bulls team meant more to the sports landscape than anyone remembers. If they were like rock stars (and they were in many respects), then that two-season stretch was like one of U2’s twenty-month concert tours that spans two hundred cities and thirty-five countries. They were clearly wearing down by the end of the tour (or in this case, the ’97 Finals). You can see it in every Jazz-Bulls replay on ESPN Classic or NBA TV. Look for this when you’re not concentrating on how rattled Karl Malone was.
5. THE ’01 LAKERS

Regular season (56–26): 31–10 at home … 3.4 SD (100.6–97.2) … longest winning streak: 8
Playoffs (15–1): 12.8 SD (103.4–90.6) … 46.7% FG, 38.6% 3FG, 67.6% FT, 15.0 stocks … 9 double-digit wins … only loss: overtime (Game 1, Philly) … following season: won title (beat Nets in 4)
Cast and crew: Shaq (super-duper star), Kobe (superstar), Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, Rick Fox, Brian Shaw, Tyronn Lue, Ron Harper, Horace Grant (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)
An upside pick that defies two ground rules established just pages earlier. Sue me. The Lakers had their regular season derailed by the Disease of More (a season-threatening case), bad luck with injuries (Shaq and Kobe missed 23 games combined) and a so-predictable-that-nobody-even-bothered-to-take-credit-for-predicting-it alpha dog battle as Kobe delved into petulant ballhog territory for the first time.43 With everyone healthy by March, Jackson mentally coerced/brainwashed Kobe back into the fold and the Lakers unleashed an all-time Keyser S?ze run in April, winning 23 of their last 24 and coming within an OT loss in the Finals of sweeping the entire NBA playoffs.44 So if we’re trying to find the most invincible team of all time, and there were legitimate reasons for why the Lakers took a few months to get going … I mean, would you have wanted to play these guys that spring? We haven’t seen anything approaching Shaqobe in the 2001 Playoffs;45 it’s the only time in NBA history that two top-twenty Pyramid guys joined forces as an inside/outside combo with both either approaching their primes or enjoying their primes. Check out Shaqobe’s regular season and playoff numbers.


Good God! Two 42 Clubbers on the same title team? That’s the one and only time it’s ever happened. Just for shits and giggles, let’s compare their combined 42 Club average to every other memorable one-two championship punch since Chamberlain and Greer combined for a jaw-dropping 49.3 in the ’67 Playoffs. Nobody topped 37.5 other than these ten combinations:


A good example of how ridiculous Shaqobe’s ’01 postseason was: in the second round, you might remember them sweeping a quality Kings team. They prevailed by three in Game 1, with Shaq notching 44 points (17 for 32 FG), 21 rebounds and 7 blocks. They won Game 2 by six, with Shaq springing for a 43–20–3. In Sacramento for Game 3, Kobe dropped 36 and Shaq added a quiet 21–18 in a twenty-two-point drubbing. They finished the sweep with a six-point win as Kobe played the best all-around game of his career: 48 points, 16 rebounds, 15-for-29 from the field and 17-for-19 from the line with no less than Doug Christie (one first-team All-Defense and three second teams from 2001–4) guarding him. Again, this was a really good Kings team with the best crowd in the league … and the Lakers blew them out of their own building like Fartman. In fact, the ’01 Lakers swept a 50-win Blazers team (that nearly beat them the previous spring), a 55-win Kings team (that almost beat them 12 months later), and a 58-win Spurs team (that won three titles in the next six years),46 then came within an overtime loss of sweeping the 56-win Sixers. The ’01 Lakers were the only NBA team to beat four straight 50-win playoff teams to win a championship. How does that 15–1 sound now?
One more thing: If you were creating the perfect Shaqobe team, you’d surround them with elite role players like Horry, Fox, Fisher, Shaw and Grant; you’d give them Phil Jackson for the Zen/harmony stuff; you’d definitely want 2000 or 2001 Shaq; and you’d want 2001 Kobe (only twenty-two with a ring and valuable playoff experience, back when his ego hadn’t erupted yet and he was closer to Young Pippen than Young MJ). The 2001 Kobe might have been the greatest second banana of all time; teaming him with a twenty-eight-year-old Shaq was almost criminal. Matching them up against the ’96 Bulls:
Center: Shaq vs. Longley
Forwards: Horry + Harper vs. Rodman + Pippen
Guards: Kobe + Fisher vs. Jordan + Harper
Bench: Grant, Lue, Shaw + Fox vs. Kukoc, Kerr, Wennington + Buechler
Coach: Jackson vs. Jackson
Would you take the ’01 Lakers in that series? I feel like I would—they were a better version of the ’95 Magic team that topped the Bulls. But what about the ’86 Celtics?
Center: Shaq vs. Parish
Forwards: Horry + Harper vs. Bird + McHale
Guards: Kobe + Fisher vs. Johnson + Ainge
Bench: Grant, Lue, Shaw + Fox vs. Walton, Wedman, Sichting + Kite
Coach: Jackson vs. KC Jones47
Don’t you think the ’86 Celtics swallow them up? They’d have two Hall of Fame centers to throw at Shaq, a Hall of Fame defensive guard to throw at Kobe, and a scoring mismatch with Bird/McHale against the Guy Who’s Not Robert Horry. The ’86 Celtics were vulnerable against speedy point guards and athletic small forwards and the ’01 Lakers didn’t have anyone fitting either of those categories. Either way, they were the best team of the last twelve years and in the top five of all time regardless of how late they got going. Shit, will we ever see two top-twenty Pyramid guys playing on the same team in their primes again in our lifetimes?
(Insert sound of every Knicks fan screaming, “Yes! Starting in 2011! We will see this again! I don’t know the combination of guys, but we will see this again! Yessssssss!”)
4: THE ’89 DETROIT PISTONS

Regular season (63–19) … 37–4 at home … 5.8 PD (106.6–100.8) … 49.4% FG, 44.7 defensive FG … 16–12 vs. 50-win teams
Playoffs (15–2): 8–1 at home48… 6 double-digit wins … 9.5 PD (100.6–92.9) … closeout margins: 15, 2, 9, + 8 (all on road) … following season: won title (beat Portland in 5)
Cast and crew: Isiah (superstar); Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman (wing-men); Vinnie Johnson (sixth man); Bill Laimbeer, John Salley, James Edwards, Rick Mahorn, Mark Aguirre (supporting cast); Chuck Daly (coach)
Not technically a Level One team since they were hardened by crushing losses in ’87 (Boston) and ’88 (Lakers). No NBA champ had more versatility and toughness: they were physical as hell; they could execute a fast break or half-court offense equally well; they played defense as well as anyone with the exception of the ’08 Celtics and the ’96–’97 Bulls; they controlled the boards; they could exploit any mismatch; and they always seemed to have two different hot players going offensively. Fans unfairly discounted Isiah’s Pistons because they couldn’t beat Boston or the Lakers at their peaks—even though they defeated Jordan’s Bulls twice and won back-to-back titles—and because they lacked a dominant center or super-duper star, which confused everyone who didn’t follow basketball obsessively. I hated these bastards but grew to respect their hard-nosed swagger; they never allowed layups or dunks, never gave an inch, never stopped fighting and didn’t care if they maimed you as long as they won. Their relentless competitiveness brought out the worst in opponents; I always found it fascinating that, for a team that ended up in so many fights, the Pistons never threw the first punch or had the most enraged guy in the brawl. And if you remember, the ’87 Celtics and ’88 Lakers spent so much energy fending them off that they were never the same afterward.
So much of what the Pistons accomplished was based on intimidation and the understanding that they’d do whatever it took to win, even if it meant intentionally stepping on McHale’s broken foot (which Mahorn did repeatedly in ’87) or hammering Jordan and Pippen during their forays to the basket. For them, the mental game was bigger than anything. If you were frustrated by their elbows and shoves, if you were afraid of getting clocked every time you drove to the basket, if you were obsessing over punching Laimbeer instead of just thinking about ways to beat him … then they had you. That’s what they wanted. You could say they figured out a loophole in the system, and after Pat Riley exploited that loophole even further with his bullying Knicks teams, the NBA finally stepped in and instituted taunting/fighting penalties and a system for flagrant fouls.49 If we’re judging the ’89 Pistons against other landmark teams, the question remains: would they have succeeded to that degree with 2009 rules in place? Probably not. But they were so intelligent/competitive/versatile/bloodthirsty that those particular qualities translate to any era.
One bummer for these guys: 1989–90 was a transition period with the Bird Era slowing down, the Kareem Era ending, the Jordan Era not totally rolling yet, the Stockton-Malone Era stalling, the Hakeem era floundering, the Ewing/Robinson/Barkley peaks still a few years away, and only the Bulls and Blazers rounding into legitimate contenders. The Pistons filled a void of sorts and became the Larry Holmes of NBA champs: unliked, resented and ultimately dismissed. We wanted them to go away and eventually, like Holmes, they did. But like Holmes, when you watch those old tapes you end up thinking, “Man, those guys were really good.”50
3: THE ’87 L.A. LAKERS

Regular season (65–17): peak of 65–15 … 37–4 at home … 9.3 SD (117.8–108.5) … 12–6 vs. 50-win teams … 51.6 FG%, 78.9% FT … winning streaks: 11 + 10
Playoffs (15–3): 10–0 at home … 11.4 SD (120.6–109.2) … 10 double-digit wins … 52.2% FG, 78.5% FT, 36.1% 3FG, 28.2 APG, 14.4 stocks … closeout game margins of 37, 12, 31, + 13 … following season: won title (beat Detroit in 7)
Cast and crew: Magic (super-duper star); Kareem + Worthy (super wingmen); Michael Cooper (sixth man); Byron Scott, A. C. Green, Mychal Thompson, Kurt Rambis (supporting cast); Pat Riley (coach)
How do we know this was Magic’s best Lakers team? He said so himself after the Finals: “There’s no question this is the best team I’ve played on. It’s fast, it can shoot and rebound, it has inside people, it has everything. I’ve never played on a team that had everything before.”51 He left out the biggest reason: Magic jumped a level and cruised to his first MVP, submitting his best statistical year (regular season: 24–6–12; playoffs: 22–8–12, 53% FG and an impossible 78–13 assist/turnover ratio in the Finals) and gently yanking control from a declining Kareem. Their humiliating Rockets defeat qualified them for Level Three status; it also helped that they got faster instead of bigger, dumping Maurice Lucas and Mitch Kupchak, handing their minutes to Green and Rambis and routinely going smallball with Magic-Scott-Coop-Worthy-Kareem. They mastered the art of juggling transition and half-court offense, running on every opportunity and waiting for Kareem to drag his ass up the court otherwise. From there, they had three devastating options: Kareem posting up, Magic posting up (a new wrinkle) or Worthy facing up and beating slower forwards off the dribble. And of their two glaring weaknesses (defending quick point guards or dominant low-post scorers), one was miraculously solved when San Antonio gift-wrapped Mychal Thompson and FedExed him to them for their stretch run.
The Thompson trade would have sparked an Internet riot if it happened today (take how everyone reacted to the Pau Gasol hijacking, then square it): the Spurs were 18–31 and considering a full-fledged tank job with the David Robinson sweepstakes looming, unwilling to pay $1.4 million combined for Thompson and a decomposing Artis Gilmore. Lakers GM Jerry West barraged them with Thompson offers for a solid month, finally landing him for a pu-pu platter deluxe offer of Frank Brickowski, Petur Gudmundsson, a 1987 first-round pick (destined to be last) and cash. Everyone went crazy, and rightly so: Thompson was a former number one overall pick and one of the league’s better low-post defenders.52 Within a week of the trade, Thompson played crunch time in a CBS game against Philly as everyone collectively said, “My God, what the hell just happened?” Thompson earned 22 minutes per game in the playoffs, rested Kareem for chunks of time, gave McHale fits and made the most underrated play of the Finals: when he jumped over Parish and McHale in Game 4 (foul! foul!) and caused Kareem’s pivotal free throw to bounce off their hands, setting the stage for Magic’s soul-wrenching baby hook.53 The Lakers also benefitted from Lenny Bias’ sudden death, a rash of Boston injuries, Houston’s untimely demise and the up-and-coming Mavericks (55 wins, 3–2 against the Lakers) unexpectedly choking in the first round one against Seattle.54 Since the playoffs expanded to sixteen teams in 1977, no Finals team ever played three worse conference opponents than the ’87 Lakers: in this case, the 37-win Nuggets (round 1), 42-win Warriors (round 2) and 39-win Sonics (round 3). Meanwhile, the banged-up Celtics faced MJ’s 40-win Bulls and endured seven-game slugfests against a veteran 50-win Bucks team and the 52-win Pistons. Gee, who do you think was fresher for the Finals?
And that’s what makes ranking the ’87 Lakers so difficult. Yes, they were a great team led by one of the five best players ever at his zenith. Yes, they had one of the only coaches that mattered. Yes, this was the best Lakers team of the Magic era. Yes, they caught a series of breaks. Yes, they had some flaws. Ultimately, they have to be ranked third for two reasons:
Defensively, they were somewhere between okay and good—sixth in opponent’s FG percentage, twelfth in points allowed, fourteenth in forcing turnovers and last in defensive rebounds. Kareem and Magic were liabilities. Byron Scott was okay. Green and Worthy were good, not great. Only Cooper and Thompson were elite. They couldn’t lock teams down or sweep the boards, and quicker point guards routinely lit them up like nothing we’ve seen since … oh, wait, we see it every night with whomever Jason Kidd and Steve Nash are guarding. But remember Sleepy Floyd decimating the ’87 Lakers for one of the all-time memorable scoring explosions: 34 points in the final 11 minutes of Game 4, 13 for 14 from the field, no threes, no shots from more than 15 feet, eight shots from 3 feet or less (six in traffic)?55 Or Stockton, Isiah, Dumars, KJ and Hardaway going bonkers against them in later years? As many matchup problems as Magic caused offensively, he caused nearly the same number defensively. Against bigger back-courts like the ’87 Celtics or ’87 Sonics, it didn’t matter. Against elite penetrators/distributors? It mattered. Cooper and Scott couldn’t guard those guys; neither could Magic. So what do you do? Take the hits on one end and outscore them on the other. And for the most part, that’s what the Lakers did. But that’s a pretty glaring weakness, no? And we haven’t even acknowledged Kareem’s vulnerability against those explosive Hakeem/Tarpley types (none of whom faced L.A. in the ’87 Playoffs). I know it’s nitpicking, but we can’t see the words “glaring weakness” in any capacity with the Greatest NBA Team Ever.
Even with Larry Bird dragging the carcass of an eleven-man roster into the ’87 Finals (five of the top seven were either injured or unable to play),56 Boston came within a late-game collapse, a terrible break on a rebound, two sketchy calls and Bird’s desperation three missing by 1/55,000th of an inch of tying the series at 2–2. And yeah, you could argue that the Garden willed the Celtics to those two home victories in the Finals. But when you consider the physical condition of that Boston team—I mean, Darren Daye (Game 4, Milwaukee) and Greg Kite (Game 3, Finals) had signature playoff moments for the ’87 Celtics—it’s hard to understand why the Best Lakers Team of the Magic Era didn’t sweep them or at least finish them in five. They soured critics just enough that Jack McCallum wrote after the Finals, “They may not be ‘one of the greatest teams ever,’ a phrase that was bandied about after they devastated the defending-champion Celtics in Games 1 and 2. But they are, assuredly, the league’s best team this season.” Damning praise. I actually think the ’87 Lakers were better than that; nobody blended transition and half-court better, and Magic had become a cold-blooded killer of the highest order. But they wouldn’t have beaten these next two teams.
2. The ’96 Chicago Bulls

Regular season (72–10): peak of 71–9 … 39–2 at home … 12.3 SD (105.2–92.9) … 1st in points scored, 2nd in points allowed … 47.8 FG% (7th), 74.6 FT% (14th), 44.7 RPG (4th), 24.7 APG (7th) … 12–4 vs. 49-win teams … 2 double-digit losses (fewest ever) … best winning streaks: 18 + 13
Playoffs (15–3): 10–0 at home … 10.6 SD (97.4–86.8) … fourth in PPG, 1st in PPG allowed … 10 double-digit wins … 44.3% FG (8th), 73.8% FT (7th), 30.4% 3FG (11th), 35.7 RPG, 22.7 APG, 13.7 stocks … closeout wins: 21, 13, 5, + 12 … following season: won title (beat Utah in 6)
Cast and crew: Michael Jordan (super-duper star), Scottie Pippen (super wingman), Dennis Rodman (wingman), Toni Kukoc, Luc Longley, Steve Kerr, Ron Harper, Bill Wennington (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)
“Number two?” you’re saying. “Number two? A team that went 87–13? Really? You’re that much of a homer?” Are you really asking that after I dropped Bird below Magic in my Pyramid? There are specific reasons for dropping the Bulls to no. 2, including …
They took full advantage of the We Overexpanded and Overpaid Everybody era (1994–99). Was it a coincidence that Chicago banged out 72 wins during the same season when (a) the Association expanded to Vancouver and Minnesota and (b) six teams won 26 games or fewer (compared to two in 1986)? How do you explain Utah averaging 52 wins from ’91 to ’93, then 61 wins from ’96 to ’98 … even though they had a worse team and their two stars were in their mid-thirties? You don’t find this fishy? As Bird told SI in ’97, “The league is a lot more watered down than when I played, so if you have a star like Michael Jordan today, you rule the league. Once he leaves, things will level out.”
Jordan turned thirty-three this season with over 800 games (including playoffs) already on his NBA odomoter. Pippen turned thirty before this season and hit the 800-game mark during it. Rodman turned thirty-five that season. Ron Harper turned thirty-two. Of their top five guys, only Kukoc was in his prime. And that’s why even die-hard Chicago fans would concede that the Sistine Chapel of the Jordan-Pippen era was reached during the ’92 season, when a younger, deeper Bulls team played two relatively perfect games: Game 7 vs. New York (110–81 final, 42 for MJ, a 17–11–11 for Scottie, a 58%–38% FG disparity) and Game 1 vs. Portland (122–89 final, 63 points and 21 assists for MJ/Pippen). The ’96 Bulls had a few postseason blowouts; none resonated like those two. And it comes down to the age thing: Pippen and Jordan were just better in ’92. Nobody remembers any of their ’96 playoff games because their competition was weak, but also because Jordan and Pippen weren’t as breathtaking anymore (like Wilt and West in ’72, actually). They were smarter about their games and bodies, better teammates and leaders, more efficient in myriad ways, demoralizing defensively … but Jordan peaked from ’91 to ’93 and Pippen peaked from ’92 to ’94. The stats back it up and so do the tapes.
The Bulls didn’t play particularly well (for them) in the playoffs, missing 70 percent of their threes and getting subpar offensive performances from Pippen (39% FG, 64% FT), Kukoc (39% FG, missed 55 of 68 threes) and Kerr (32% on threes).57 Even Jordan submitted his worst career playoff numbers of any title season (31–5–4, 46% FG). I want my Greatest Team Ever to leave me thinking after the Playoffs, “Not only could they not have played better, I will probably never see another team play better than that in my life.” You did not feel that way about the Bulls after the ’96 Playoffs. If anything, you were wondering if the Sonics could have stretched it to seven had Gary Payton been defending Jordan all series.
Can you really have a Greatest Team Ever that featured so many rejects, castoffs, role players, and past-their-primers? Their third scorer was Kukoc, a frustratingly soft forward with considerable gifts (terrific passer, streaky three-point shooter, post-up potential) who never totally delivered for them.58 Their center combination? Longley and Wennington. (If you’re telling me that the Greatest NBA Team Ever should have a center combo that averaged 12 points and 6 rebounds a game, provided no low-post threat and little shot blocking and floundered as NBA players before and after playing with Jordan/Pippen, then you have lower expectations for this stuff than I do.) Kerr frequently played crunch time, which was fine because he stretched defenses and was a Hall of Fame cooler … but he’s another one who struggled mightily in the before/after portions of his Pippen/Jordan experience.59 Harper was a terrific defender who hobbled around on a bad knee (the players even jokingly called him “Peg Leg”) and couldn’t shoot threes or create his own shot. And their ninth and tenth men were Jud Buechler and Randy Brown. Enough said. So if you’re scoring at home, 70 percent of their ten-man rotation never made an All-Star team, averaged 7 rebounds a game or played for fewer than four teams.60
Operating under Bob Ryan’s time-tested Martian Premise—that is, a team of highly skilled aliens land on earth and challenge us to a seven-game basketball series with the future of mankind at stake—are you really saying you’d go to war with Longley and Wennington as your centers?61 The dirty little secret of Jordan’s six title seasons (twenty-four series in all) was his astounding luck with opposing centers: Ewing (four times), Brad Daugherty (twice), Alonzo Mourning (twice), Greg Ostertag (twice), Vlade Divac (twice), Mike Gminski, Bill Laimbeer, Rony Seikaly, Kevin Duckworth, Kevin Willis, Mark West, Shaq, Sam Perkins, Gheorge Muresan, Dikembe Mutombo, Jayson Williams and Rik Smits. He never battled two of that decade’s dominant big men (Hakeem and Robinson) and only faced the third one (Shaq) twice. Was it a coincidence that Chicago’s four toughest series from 1991 to 1998 were against quality low-post centers: Ewing (’92 and ’93), Shaq (’95, when they lost) and Smits (’98)? Shaq, Hakeem and Robinson played eight games against the ’96 Bulls (including playoffs) and averaged a 27–11 on 58 percent shooting. The 47-win Knicks played them surprisingly tough in the second round—losing by 7, 11, 3 and 13, and winning Game 3 in OT—with a sore-kneed Ewing averaging a 23–11. During Orlando’s upset the previous spring, Shaq blistered them for a 23–22 and a 27–13 in the deciding contests, averaging a 24–14 and shooting 83 free throws in six games. Well, what if the Martians had someone like Shaq or Moses in their prime? Jordan’s teams never needed a dominant center to win, but they also had an uncanny knack for avoiding dominant centers. Could they have handled a powerhouse like the 2001 Lakers? Wouldn’t 2001 Shaq have feasted on Longley/Wennington the same way he feasted on Todd MacCulloch, Vlade Divac and everyone else in that phylum? I say yes, and if you’re incorporating the Martian Premise, you have to assume the Martians would be better than the 2001 Lakers. I can’t get past the center issue. I just can’t.
Add everything up and that 72–10 record doesn’t make a ton of sense … until you remember that the ’94 Rockets ushered in the We Overexpanded and Everyone’s Overpaid Era. Suddenly you only needed to surround two studs with the right role players. You needed good chemistry and the right coach, you needed to stay healthy, you needed to play defense at a high level, and over everything else, you needed the league’s dominant player. That was good enough. And that’s not to belittle what the Bulls did; their 41–3 start ranks among the all-time “holy shit” statistics in NBA history, and as we covered in Pippen’s Pyramid section, it was truly an experience to watch them play in person. Their defensive prowess and collective confidence were almost unparalleled, and their ability to maintain their focus/hunger as they became part of the day-to-day pop culture whirlwind—no other NBA team dealt with such a high level of scrutiny, media exposure and hysterical admiration from opposing fans, to the point that Jordan was trapped in his hotel on road trips like one of the Beatles—remains their single most impressive quality.
If it wasn’t for one undeniable truth—namely, that you would have had to shoot Jordan with an elephant gun to prevent him from winning the title that season—I probably would have slid the ’96 Bulls down to fourth for the aforementioned reasons, as well as the sobering fact that they won only eight more games than the ’96 Sonics. I like a starting five of Payton, Kemp, Hersey Hawkins, Detlef Schrempf and a fading Sam Perkins … but 64–18 with no bench?62 How is that possible? What about San Antonio winning fifty-nine games with Robinson, Elliott, Avery Johnson, Vinnie Del Negro, Will Perdue, a fading Chuck Person and a washed-up Charles Smith? I can’t shake this stuff. Just because the ’96 Bulls had the greatest season ever and the greatest player ever doesn’t mean they had the greatest team ever. If that makes sense. I swear it does.
NO. 1: THE 1986 BOSTON CELTICS

Regular season (67–15): peak of 64–13 … 40–1 at home … 9.4 SD (114.1–104.7) … 29.1 APG (2nd), 46.4 RPG (1st), 50.8 FG% (2nd), 35.1 3FG% (1st), 79.4% FT (2nd), 46.1 defensive FG% (1st) … 18–2 vs. 49-win teams … 3 double-digit losses (2nd-fewest ever) … best winning streaks: 14 + 13
Playoffs (15–3): 10–0 at home … 10.6 SD (114.4–104.1) … fourth in PPG, first in PPG allowed … 11 double-digit wins … 50.7% FG (2nd), 79.4% FT (1st), 39.1% 3FG (2nd), 15.0 stocks, 45.1 RPG, 28.4 APG (2nd) … closeout wins: 18, 33, 13, + 17 … following season: lost in Finals (L.A. in 6)
Cast and crew: Larry Bird (super-duper star, 26–10–7–2, 50–90–42%); Kevin McHale (super wingman, 26–10, 60% FG); Robert Parish, Dennis Johnson (wingmen); Bill Walton (super-duper sixth man); Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Jerry Sichting (supporting cast); KC Jones (coach)
Let’s run through the Greatest Team Ever Checklist that I just made up thirty-seven seconds ago …
Pyramid guys. The ’86 Celts had five of the top sixty, with no. 5 and no. 38 peaking that spring: 50.8 PPG, 17.9 RPG, 10.9 APG, 54% FG, 45 steals and 53 blocks combined in 18 playoff games. Fellas, here are your Greatest Inside/Outside Combo lifetime championship belts. Seriously, how did you stop them? Bird threw world-class entry passes and doubled as a dead-eye shooter. McHale had world-class low-post moves and commanded doubles and triples at all times. What could you do? Teams be-grudgingly settled on doubling McHale with a guard and keeping someone on Bird, which meant Johnson and Ainge got to shoot wide-open 15-footers all game. (Not wide-open threes … wide-open 15-footers.) Throw in the Parish/Walton center duo (24.9 PPG, 15.2 RPG, 3.1 APG, 42 blocks) and the Celtics were basically announcing, “Our front line is going to notch 75 points and 33 rebounds, protect the rim, shoot 50-plus from the field and hit wide-open shooters and cutters all night; you will be foolish to double-team any of them, and you will not get a break from them for four quarters … good luck.”63
Quality of competition. The league was tougher in ’86 than ’96 (fewer teams, deeper teams, lower salaries), so considering the ’86 Celts finished only five wins behind the ’96 Bulls (87–13 vs. 82–18), can those five extra wins be atttributed to playing in a watered-down league with someone who was clearly the best player (and pathologically competitive to boot)? Absolutely. Although the ’86 Celts would have thrived in a high-caliber season; they finished 18–2 against 49-win teams (30–5 including playoffs) but slacked against easier competition, with twelve of their fifteen regular season losses coming against sub-.500 teams.64 Going against a steady stream of ’96 creampuffs, a bored Bird would have spent weeks at a time seeing how many 30-footers he could make or shooting only with his left hand.
Extended stretch of dominance. The C’s didn’t get rolling until January because of Bird’s sore back. As soon as he rounded into shape, they ripped off a 39–5 stretch that included an 11–0 mark against the Lakers, Sixers, Bucks, Hawks and Rockets (with at least one road win over each). I’d say that qualifies as a hot streak.
Playoff run. Surprisingly good considering the talent that season. Jordan went bonkers in the first round (49 in Game 1, 63 in Game 2), but the Celtics still swept the series. They blew a second-round sweep against the frisky Hawks (50 wins, superathletic, led by the runner-up MVP pick), then exacted revenge with one of the all-time closeout ass-whuppings in Game 5. They swept a 57-win Bucks team in the Eastern Finals and convincingly handled a mildly terrifying Rockets team in the Finals. You left that Playoffs run thinking, “Wow, those guys couldn’t have played any better.” That’s what we want, right?
Homecourt advantage. Forget about the record-setting 50–1 mark (including Playoffs) for a second. Did you know the Celtics nearly went undefeated at home for twelve straight months? After losing to Portland on December 6, 1985, they won 55 straight home games (including Playoffs and the first seven of the next season) before Washington beat them on December 2, 1986. Of those 55 straight wins, only 3 were decided by four or fewer points; 40 of the 55 were by double digits, 11 by more than 20, and five by more than 30. In the ’86 playoffs, only Jordan’s 63-point game robbed the Celtics of winning all 10 home games by double digits. When I say nobody was touching these guys at home, I mean, nobody was touching these guys at home. You have a better chance of seeing another multi-permed NBA coaching staff than seeing another NBA team win 55 straight home games in the luxury box era.65 No way. It will never happen.
Unintentional comedy. The Celts set the standard in three dopey categories: Best Whitewash Ever (Walton, Bird, McHale, Ainge and Wedman, with Sichting, Kite and Carlisle off the bench); Strangest-Looking Championship Team Ever, and Consistently Clumsiest High Fives Ever. Everything culminated in an unforgettable high five/pseudo-hug/half-embrace between Walton and McHale near the end of Game 6 of the ’86 Finals. Just an explosion of abnomally long appendages, giant teeth, bad hairdos, hairy armpits and über-Caucasian awkwardness; it’s amazing they didn’t clunk heads and knock each other unconscious.
Defensive/rebounding prowess. Top of the line in both categories. You were not pounding the ’86 Celtics down low or on the boards. Period. Not even the Hakeem/Ralph or Chuck/Moses combos could do it.
Signature Playoffs performances. They played three ESPN Classic games—Game 2 vs. Chicago (Jordan’s 63), Game 4 vs. Milwaukee (Bird’s four threes in the final 4:03 clinched a sweep) and Game 4 at Houston (legitimately exciting)—and three Sistine Chapel games, a list that includes Game 6 of the ’86 Finals (the clincher), Game 1 vs. Milwaukee (128–96) and especially Game 5 vs. Atlanta, which remains the greatest evisceration in modern Playoffs history: a 36–6 third quarter punctuated by a 24–0 run and the longest standing ovation in NBA history. The Globe’s Bob Ryan called it a “scintillating display of interior defense, transition basketball and Globetrotter-like passing which transformed the game into something bordering on legitimate humiliation, but which never degenerated into farce … say this for the Hawks: At no point during that surrealistic third period did they lose dignity. They tried hard at both ends. They simply could not avoid being an accident of basketball history.” And that, my friends, is a Sistine Chapel performance.
Rewatching it on tape, what stands out beyond the crowd (delirious), the passing (exquisite) and the defense (frenetic) was the cumulative effect it had on Atlanta. Mike Fratello called three time-outs trying to stop the bleeding; by the end of the quarter, the Hawks wobbled back to their bench like five guys escaping a violent bar fight. (McHale would say later, “I don’t think you’ll ever see another quarter of basketball like that again. I mean, the look on the faces of those Atlanta guys leaving the floor after the game, it was like they had just been in a war. It was shell-shock. I think they couldn’t wait to get out of there. It was as close to perfection as you are ever going to see.”) And it’s not like this was a bad Hawks team; they matched up fairly well because Boston had trouble defending Wilkins and Spud Webb.66 Didn’t matter. They got blown out of the building. Ainge told Peter May later, “I call it the Way Basketball Was Supposed to Be Played. That was maybe the most impressive quarter ever played. Atlanta just had no sniff.” The tape confirms this. Truly great teams can smell blood and raise it a level; you can see it happening, the fans recognize it, the announcers recognize it, the guys on the bench recognize it, and even the guys playing recognize it. At one point, DJ just starts happily hopping up and down after yet another layup, like even he can’t believe what’s happening. Great moment, transcendant quarter, unforgettable team.
Biggest flaw. The Sichting/Thirdkill spots could have been better. KC Jones inflicted minimal damage other than killing Sam Vincent’s confidence. But we’re just picking nits. In the fictional round-robin, my biggest concern would be their lack of three-point attempts. Nobody was launching them in the mid-eighties; wouldn’t modern defensive teams double McHale and Bird a little more quickly? Then again, Bird and Ainge became killer three-point shooters and Wedman certainly had the range, so in a fictional tournament, they could have adjusted. Right? My head hurts.
Dirk Diggler factor. In other words, could they adapt to every conceivable style? The answer is yes. They even had one wrinkle that mortified opponents: a supersized lineup with a front line of Parish, McHale and Walton, then Bird playing guard on offense (which could happen because McHale the Freak could defend almost any two-guard). Every time they played those four guys together at once, you moved to the edge of your seat. On the flip side, they could also handle smallball with Bird-DJ-Ainge-Wedman-McHale, or even Sichting in Wedman’s place and DJ playing small forward. You could not throw an opponent at them from any point in history that they wouldn’t have handled. Kinda like Dirk Diggler.67
Alpha dog. From January to June, Bird peaked as a basketball player. Even said so himself, commenting after Game 6 of the Finals, “That was the only game I thought I was totally prepared for. As far as focus was concerned, none better. Never. I should have quit right there.” You think a thirty-three-year-old MJ said that at any point in 1996?
Title defense. The ’87 Playoffs may have set the standard for “to get rid of us, you’re going to have to chop our head off like we’re Jason in Friday the 13th because that’s the only way we’re dying” title defenses. See the prologue for the gory details.
Chemistry and swagger. Top of the line. No team loved busting balls more than these guys. They killed Walton for his speech impediment, made fun of McHale’s goofy body, rode Ainge like a little brother, teased Wedman about his vegetarian diet … there wasn’t a single bad apple, or someone who didn’t have an exact understanding of his role in the team’s hierarchy. Pushing everything over the top were McHale and Ainge (two of the funniest guys who ever played), Bird (the best trash-talker ever) and Walton (whose overexuberance defined the season).68 If anything, they had too much swagger and needed to be challenged at times. Their defining moment: Game 4 of the Milwaukee series, when Bird disdainfully nailed his fourth three in four minutes at the buzzer (the first-ever eff-you three) and jogged off the court like he had just banged everyone’s girlfriend in the stands. In the video of that season, Walton runs into the locker room screaming, “Lar-ree Bird! Lar-reeeeee Bird!” We’ve seen other teams win on that level, but I can’t remember any of them getting more of a kick from it.
Trump card. I can’t go with passing because Magic’s Lakers were just as memorable in that department. So let’s go with this: Remember how boxers like Julio Cesar Chavez, Roberto Duran or Bernard Hopkins would close the ring on opponents over the course of a few rounds, and by the eighth round, suddenly the other guy looked like he was fighting in a phone booth and couldn’t move around at all? That’s what the Celtics did offensively. They pounded it down low, kept rotating Bird/McHale/Parish/Walton on the low post, kept swinging the ball, kept attacking mismatches, kept getting wide-open 20-footers—only they kept inching closer and closer, and by the second half, suddenly those 20-footers were 15-footers. (Like watching a hockey team pull its goalie and crowd the net with forwards, but in this case the net was the basket. In other words, they crowded the rim.) What’s interesting is that had this specific team come along just a few years later, Ainge and Bird would have been gleefully bombing wide-open threes, the spacing would have been better and that boxer/hockey dynamic wouldn’t have happened. Would this have made them even more efficient offensively? Probably. But this was memorable. We will never see it again. It’s too easy to just jack up threes now.
Biggest luxury. Every time Walton loped off the bench for the first time, the crowd stood and cheered—partly because we liked him, partly because it meant he and Bird would do their “night at the Improv” routine. They experimented that whole season with various no-looks, pick-and-rolls and every other “only we are on this plane and see these angles” offensive play; even on tape two decades later, it’s like seeing rare video of Biggie freestyling with Eminem. Their favorite play? Bird dumped the ball in to Walton, then ran by him toward the basket like he was clearing out, only Walton would quickly flip the ball over his head to Bird for an easy layup. When teams caught on, they changed the play a little—now Bird used Walton (holding the ball) to pick his guy, so everything hinged post-pass on whether he ran by Walton’s right side or left side (and each time, both defenders had to guess). Nobody could stop it.69 When teams floated a third defender over to stop them, his guy (usually McHale) just cut to the basket for an easy layup from Walton. And that’s how it went. Walton only averaged an 8–7 in 18 minutes a game, but that’s reason no. 759 why statistics don’t tell the story. Seeing two basketball savants combining their once-in-a-generation passing skills was the pickle for the greatest cheeseburger of a team ever assembled.
Killer instinct. They led by thirty-plus at some point in the fourth quarter or three of four playoff clinchers. The fourth? The one where Bird ripped Milwaukee’s heart out with all those threes. And if that’s not enough, they defeated their main threat in the West (the Lakers) both times by double digits and their main threats in the East (Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philly) twenty-two of twenty-five times. Well, then.
Iconic relevance (then). Yes.
Iconic relevance (now). Not as much. Yet another reason why we needed a book like this.70
1. “Anythang is possaaaaaaabulllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!!!!!”
2. The answers, which I won’t bother to defend because I shouldn’t have to waste more than the minimum words: Emmitt; Gretzky; Ali; Montana; yes; no; no; yes; LeBron and Serena Williams.
3. Only one potential scenario could defy this statement, and it involves five ifs: if LeBron signs with Portland in 2010; if Greg Oden stays healthy and becomes a stud center; if Portland considers using its resources to buy late first-rounders and stash young foreign players; if they get lucky with one of those moves; and if Brandon Roy’s knees cooperate. Vegas odds: 75 to 1.
4. You probably remember the first time you had sex. Like, all the details. Do you remember everything about the sixth time? What about the eighth? Or the eleventh? Been there, done that, right? But that first time … I mean, even twenty-five years later, I still remember everything about that magical night at the Neverland Ranch.
5. The ’65 Celtics didn’t have a true point guard other than an aging KC Jones, who was a worse shot than Dick Cheney. In crunch time, Sam and Hondo handled the ball for them. Could you win the 2009 title with Kobe and Pierce as your ball handlers? Seems a little far-fetched, right?
6. Six of the ten ’67 teams won between 30 and 39 games; Baltimore won 20; San Fran went 5–13 vs. Boston/Philly and 39–24 against everyone else; and Boston/Philly finished a combined 128–34. (Hold on, era-appropriate pop culture reference coming…) That season was more top-heavy than Jayne Mansfield!
7. The cousin of this event: the undefeated ’07 Patriots pulling out a sloppy Week 14 game in Baltimore. Had they blown it, that would have been the kick in the ass they needed. No way they lose Super Bowl XLIV. At least this is what I keep telling myself. Hold on, I have to fire my BB gun at the right leg of my Plax Burress bobblehead again. I’ll be right back.
8. If you don’t think this pushed mainstream interest in the NBA to new heights, you’re crazy. Remember, the media didn’t exist in its current form—we were confined to newspapers, local news shows, and SI. They covered sports instead of hyping them. By the late sixties, that was changing as we witnessed with the “Can Philly win 70?” stuff. Media members were searching for future angles instead of just digesting what had already happened. Now? We create angles that aren’t there! We’ve come a long way.
9. This was a joke—I am not well dressed.
10. I came up with this analogy after hitting a BlackBerry party with my friend Willy, who did extremely well for himself in Boston but couldn’t muster up the confidence to approach Bosworth in L.A., mainly because her legs were so breathtaking that we were staring at them like pit bulls looking at a prime rib. She’s like Dwyane Wade and Dwight Howard—you can’t properly appreciate her until you see her in person.
11. When it goes wrong for the defending champs, it’s like that same guy hooking up with Bosworth for a few weeks, having a threesome with LC and Lo from The Hills, then dressing and acting like a douche and proudly showing his buddies his BlackBerry contact list every time he goes drinking with them.
12. Game 3 (Chicago over L.A. in OT) was one of my worst gambling losses ever; trust me that I did not have to look up the line (L.A. by 3) or the score (Bulls 104, L.A. 96). My buddy Geoff and I watched at his mom’s house, sat in shock for another 20 minutes, then debated sneaking into her office and forging a check. The lesson, as always: don’t gamble in college.
13. What a shame we missed an Orlando-Chicago bloodbath. This was the great lost series of the nineties. Meanwhile, we were treated to 738 unwatchable Knicks-Heat games. Damn it all.
14. Just to clarify, this was the Arizona grad who battled gay rumors, changed his name to Bison Dele, retired prematurely, invested in a desalination complex in Lebanon and was apparently murdered by his brother (although there was no trial because the brother killed himself, but evidence pointed strongly to him) during an around-the-world boating trip … not the NBC news anchor. We should also mention that my 1999 and 2000 fantasy hoop teams were called “Bison’s Deli.”
15. Kerr submitted the greatest two-year sample of three-point shooting ever in ’95 (52.4%, 1st all-time) and ’96 (51.5%, 5th all-time), finishing 45.4% on threes for his career (2nd all-time). He won five rings, made a Finals-winning shot (’97, Game 6) and had a defining ESPN Classic game (Game 6, Dallas-SA in ’03). He played with MJ, Duncan, Shaq, Pippen, Robinson and the ’02 Jail Blazers and was coached by Phil Jackson and Greg Popovich. He got in a practice fight with MJ and held his own. He made over $16 million in 15 years. He worked with Marv Albert on TNT. He got hired as a GM by Phoenix and … crap, that hasn’t worked out too well. At least so far. But now he’s making a crucial cameo in the second greatest NBA book ever written, or at least the longest one. Now that is a career!
16. That’s the pick that became Lenny Bias. I will now wander out into rush hour traffic.
17. I had to write “nearly” because of McHale, Chris Mullin, Bryan Colangelo, Ernie Grunfeld and everyone else who would have earned an invitation to the Atrocious GM Summit 2 if we had convened it for this book. Maybe the next one.
18. That reminds me—I’d like to thank Rasheed Wallace one more time for helping me realize a lifelong dream: seeing players on a defending NBA champion carry championship belts to games like pro wrestlers.
19. I wish Knight had made this comment to Connie Chung now during the overly politically correct era. ESPN would have offered around-the-clock twenty-four-hour coverage hosted by Bob Ley as we decided to whether to throw Knight in jail or deport him.
20. Come on … too soon? It’s been nearly thirty-seven years! Comedy = cannibalism + time.
21. Had this happened with any of the Boston teams from 1960 to 1963 (the heel-nipping and national attention), they may have turned it up a notch and gone for 70. And you know it. Concede my hypothetical that can’t be proven!
22. They lost six of eight road games, their playoff point differential was just 3.9, and Baltimore took them to 7 games in the first round.
23. One way to stop them: this was the height of the coke era and the ’82 Lakers, in retrospect, had a few “suspects” in their nine-man rotation. If I were a GM back then, wherever the Lakers partied after a game, I’d have sent $10K worth of hookers and coke to that location.
24. Max stuck a stamp on the ’85 season, taking too long to recover from a minor knee surgery that should have sidelined him for six weeks. Auerbach vengefully traded him for Walton; even two decades later, a still-pissed Red protested vehemently when Boston’s new owners retired Max’s number 31 under the always offensive “We just bought the team, wouldn’t it be fun to retire someone’s number?” logic. Only ten Boston numbers should be retired: Russell, Bird, Hondo, Cousy, Sharman, Cowens, McHale, Heinsohn, Parish and Sam Jones.
25. I used quotes because Smith played up a premise that wasn’t necessarily true. MJ did whatever it took for his team to win, and really, during those first few Chicago years, his supporting cast sucked. What did you want him to do, pass up game-winning shots to set up Brad Sellers or Kyle Macy? Early MJ was only guilty of disparaging teammates and killing their confidence in some cases. Is that selfish? I’d argue he was just a dick. Big difference.
26. This would be much funnier if I showed you a picture of Sam Smith. He looks like the skinny brother of the “Time to make the donuts!” guy from the old Dunkin’ Donuts ads.
27. Biggest difference in 2008: how effectively teams space the floor and use corner threes. It’s an advantage that the best ’80s players (save for Bird) just hadn’t figured out—the most efficient shot on the floor and a must-defend at all times.
28. The over/under of unprovoked shots at KC Jones’ coaching ability was 9.5. I think we obliterated it 150 pages ago. And yes, he was the perfect guy to coach that ’86 Celts team—just roll the ball out and let them do their thing.
29. For every dollar spent that exceeds the tax threshold, the offending team has to match those dollars in tax fees paid to the league. If the tax line is $70 million and you spend $80 million, you’re looking at a $10 million tax as well. Plus you miss out on splitting the tax profit pool that’s filled by offending teams. The old double whammy.
30. Actual ’86 cap figures: Bird ($1.8M), McHale ($1.0M), Johnson ($782.5K), Parish ($700K), Ainge ($550K), Walton ($425K), Wedman ($400K), Kite ($150K), Sichting ($125K), Carlisle ($90K), Vincent ($87.5K), Thirdkill (unknown).
31. Max became a free agent after his inspiring ’84 Finals performance. In modern times, Boston couldn’t have afforded him and an idiot GM would have overpaid him something like $58 million for five years (instead of the four years at approximately $800,000 per that Boston gave him). There’s no possible modern scenario in which the ’86 Celts could have acquired Walton, which seems relevant since he transformed them from “top ten ever” to “potentially greatest ever.”
32. The same exercise for the ’87 Lakers: Kareem $20M; Magic $20M; Worthy $14M; Thompson $11M; Cooper $7.5M; Rambis $6.0M; Scott $5.5M; Green $1.8M; Matthews $1.2M. Nine guys for $96 million. And by the way, it would have been humanly impossible for them to add Mychal Thompson.
33. I know, I know: HIV killed Showtime. But the ’91 Bulls greased the skids. Okay, wrong choice of words. I’m getting out now. Quickly.
34. Jordan Rules is riveting to read in retrospect. Through March, Chicago’s chemistry was still a mess because MJ was so brutal on his teammates. Then they ripped off a win streak, Pippen came into his own and MJ backed off. The rest was history.
35. The ’60 Celts held the record with 17; from ’70 to ’72, it was broken three straight years. The league was so watered down that they should have dumped West as its logo and used a picture of Carl Spackler.
36. Clint Richardson, Earl Cureton and Marc Iavaroni? That’s a Hamburger Helper bench.
37. They got swept by an inferior Bucks team in the second round. One major problem besides Fitch: The ’83 Celts had too many guys. How do you juggle minutes between Bird, Parish, Maxwell, Henderson, Tiny, McHale, Ainge, Wedman, Buckner, M. L. Carr and Rick Robey? Half were unhappy and all hated the coach. The following year, K. C. took over, Robey was swapped for DJ, Tiny retired, Carr became a towel-waver and they won the title. The lesson, as always: You only need 9 guys. I kept warning Daryl Morey (Houston’s GM) about this in October ’08 and he kept making fun of me. “Too many guys? How could that be a bad thing?” Four months later he was frantically trying to swing 4-for-1’s at the deadline.
38. A tough blow for the Lakers and an even tougher blow for Big Game James, who had an unwieldy cast and could only have sex with groupies in the “cowgirl” and “reverse cowgirl” positions.
39. Recently he settled into a second phase of his career, as the embattled coach of an awful Grizzlies team who looked like Nic Cage and got fired within 100 games.
40. Inevitable counter from the Philly fans: “We got old!” Sorry, the stats don’t back this up. Moses slipped a little (25–15 in ’83, 23–13 in ’84), but Doc/Toney/Cheeks were slightly better statistically and they got similar bench production. They weren’t good enough collectively to combat the Year-After Syndrome in a much-improved league. How else would you drop from 77–18 to 54–33 without a major injury?
41. That includes a 1–4 record against the Knicks. Damn the Knicks for not showing up for the Finals. Damn them! Damn them to hell!
42. Their two losses: Game 4 at San Fran in the first round (by 2), Game 3 at L.A. (by 12). The S.F. series was weird: Games 1 and 4 were in San Fran (thanks to a scheduling conflict with Milwaukee’s arena), meaning the teams traveled for four of the five games. I love the days when the NBA had scheduling conflicts. “Sorry, guys, we can’t accommodate Game 4—we have a tractor pull that weekend.”
43. Kobe scored 40-plus points in nine consecutive games that winter, the third-longest 40-plus streak ever. Cue up Dirk Diggler’s “We’ll shoot when I’m good and goddamned ready, I’m the biggest star here!” tantrum, multiply it by three and that was Kobe’s demeanor for most of the season. The prologue in Phil Jackson’s book, More than a Game, tells about his ’01 battles with Kobe after Kobe basically decided, “Sorry, guys, I don’t really like the triangle anymore, I’m going to be breaking plays and going for my own points now.”
44. The one loss: Game 1, when Iverson went bonkers (48 points) and nearly stomped Ty Lue’s head.
45. I just made that term up. It’s like “Bennifer” or “Brangelina.” Right down to the inevitable breakup in the end. If only we had thought of it in 2002.
46. This was a hellacious sweep: the Lakers didn’t have home-court advantage and still won by 14, 7, 39 and 29 points. Ripping through the West during that era was no joke: from 2000 to 2005, the West had thirty-one 50-win teams and five 60-win teams; the East had twelve 50-win teams and one 60-win team.
47. I’m cringing. This is like a wet T-shirt contest with Scarlett Johansson taking on both Olsen twins.
48. Although they didn’t win a title until the year after leaving the mammoth Silver-dome, the Dome was a disadvantage for opponents because of lighting and depth perception adjustments (thanks to glass backboards and three miles of seats behind them). The ’87 Pistons clawed their way back against Boston because of the Silverdome effect combined with Saturday/Sunday starts for Games 3 and 4. By the way, ’87 was a memorable Silverdome year: Wrestlemania III (Andre-Hulk plus the watershed Savage-Steamboat match), the Bird-Laimbeer/Rodman brawl (Game 4) and Pope John Paul II celebrating mass there. That’s right, big moments from Andre, Hulk, Macho Man, the Pope and the Basketball Jesus in one year!
49. But not before exploiting Detroit’s personality for the infamous Bad Boys video (1989) that featured more cheap shots than a season of Jerry Springer shows. All copies of this tape have apparently been destroyed; you can’t find it anywhere. One of the all-time hypocritical moves by a sports league, just behind baseball looking the other way with (name an enhancer) during the McGwire-Sosa era.
50. The thing I respected most about those ’89 and ’90 Pistons teams: they took care of business on the road, closing six of eight series on the road and finishing 5–0 in road Finals games.
51. Shades of Rollergirl raving about Dirk Diggler in Amber Waves’ documentary about him. Is there a basketball scenario that can’t be tied to Boogie Nights? I say no. And I think we proved it over these last 4,500 pages.
52. This sucked doubly for Boston: Thompson went to college with McHale and knew all of his moves; he was the only player in the ’80s who could defend McHale by himself. Also, this was the first salary cap loophole trade: when Kupchak retired, the Lakers were allowed to use half of his salary cap number ($1.15 million) toward another player. Fans were thoroughly confused at the time: “Cap number, exception, half the number … what?”
53. The Spurs are living proof that the Tanking Karma Gods don’t exist: they did it in ’87 (Robinson) and ’97 (Duncan).
54. The Mavs took them to seven games one year later, then Roy Tarpley got hooked on coke and they were done. Part of me wonders if Riley and West just sent unmarked packages of cocaine to every ’80s rival and hoped they would succumb. Tarpley, Bias, Lucas/Wiggins/Lloyd …
55. I once wrote an entire 2004 column about this game. Sleepy actually turns into a fireball at one point.
56. Bird played 1,015 grueling minutes in 23 playoff games (44.1 minutes per game). That’s the third-highest average for 20-plus playoff games in one postseason behind Allen Iverson in ’01 (22 games, 1,016 minutes) and Thunder Dan Majerle in ’93 (24 games, 1,071 minutes). Bird’s ’87 playoffs also ranks 11th in points, 5th in FTs made, 22nd in assists (first forward) and 80th in rebounds. Of course, it doesn’t rank in Hollinger’s top 50 for PER even though he averaged a 27–10–9, saved the season with the greatest steal in NBA history, logged superhuman minutes and nearly won the Finals by himself. And you wonder why I have trouble trusting player efficiency ratings.
57. Of their top seven guys only Rodman thrived: he averaged 14.9 rebounds in the Finals (41 of 88 offensive), battled a red-hot Shawn Kemp and was their best guy in two wins (Games 2 and 6). He arguably could have won MVP considering MJ’s struggles (22 for 60) in the final three games—you know, if you were using the same indefensible reasoning that led to Parker’s ’07 MVP and Maxwell’s ’81 MVP.
58. Kukoc won the “sixth man” award this year but stank in the playoffs. Chicago handed the post-Pippen/MJ team over to him and finished 13–37. For all the hype over the years, Kukoc never made a single All-Star team.
59. I once created a Ringo Starr Theory for MJ’s teammates: you can’t judge role players properly when they’re playing with a guy who makes everyone else better. Armstrong, Longley, Grant, Kerr and Williams looked better than they were during their Chicago stints (just ask the teams that overpaid them after). Same for Scott, Green, Rambis and Nixon with Magic, or Ainge, Maxwell, Robey and Henderson with Bird.
60. The good news: Chicago could throw out a frightening whitewash—the twin vanilla towers of Wennington and Longley, with Kukoc, Kerr and Jud Buechler flanking them and Jack Haley cheering them on from the bench in streetclothes. That was almost a blizzard.
61. I just pulled a Paul Maguire there: started an argument with you, then debunked your point even though you never said anything. “Watch how I made you look bad, watch how I did that, watch this … bam! Right there!”
62. Seattle’s ’96 bench: Vince Askew, Nate McMillan, Frank Brickowski and Ervin “No Magic” Johnson (one of my favorite nicknames ever). Ervin had a long, Shannon Sharpe-like face that was perfect for the “Hey, Ervin, why the long face?” heckle. That reminds me, I spent a lot of time heckling during the M. L. Carr and Rick Pitino eras in Boston (mostly out of drunken bitterness). This was before the “let’s keep noise going for three straight hours” NBA arena era, so if you were sitting within ten rows of a depressing game, you could hear every sneaker squeak, play conversation, and heckle. During one dead Miami game, I screamed, “You never won without Magic!” from 20 feet away at Pat Riley for four solid quarters. (You heard me, Pat. I know you heard me.) As for referee insults, I was always partial to “Hey ref, bend over and use your good eye!” Never failed to bring the house down.
63. Of the hundreds of tapes I watched, no postmerger player had an easier time scoring playoff points than ’86 McHale: 39 MPG, 24.9 PPG, 58% FG, 79% FT, 16.1 FGA, 7.8 FTA. He barely broke a sweat. The Panda Express post-up menu was churning out orders like clockwork. “Who wants a no. 3? Can I interest you in a combo no. 2? Please, try an up-and-under egg roll, I insist!”
64. They went 15–0 vs. Milwaukee, Atlanta, L.A. and Houston and 3–2 vs. Philly (one loss by 6 points, the other by Doc’s banked 3 at the buzzer) but lost ten games to sub-.500 teams, including 26-win Indy, 29-win Cleveland, 30-win (and MJ-less) Chicago and the 23-win Knicks. Peter May’s The Last Banner has one recurring theme: the players bemoaning after the fact that they blew a chance to win 70 by getting bored too often. They also blew four OT games and two more at the buzzer, with Bird clanking FTs in two of them even though he led the league in FT percentage. So it was a slightly fluky 67-win season; they easily could have reached 71 or 72.
65. Assistants Jimmy Rodgers and Chris Ford had ghastly perms this season. Just ghastly. They were right from the Mike Fratello Collection. Ford even threw in a porn mustache and a variety of ’80s suits that looked like they came from a Philip Michael Thomas estate sale.
66. In the regular season, Atlanta went 0–6 against them but every game was close (between three and seven points). There was a memorable game in early January when the Hawks raced out to a 24-point first-half lead, did some trash-talking and got Keyser S?ze’d in the second half, with Boston prevailing in OT behind Bird’s 41 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks. You did not talk smack to the ’86 Celts.
67. When Wedman broke two ribs during Game 3 of the Bucks series, they played small-ball for an extended stretch in Game 4 (Sichting, Ainge, DJ, Bird and McHale), then switched to giantball in crunch time (Ainge, Bird, McHale, Parish and Walton) to pull away. That’s ridiculous.
68. Funniest chemistry story from that season: Bird thought he had clinched the FT title, but Ainge realized before a meaningless Game 82 that if he went 13 for 15, he’d qualify with enough attempts and pass Bird. In the second half, Danny started driving to the basket recklessly, up-faking and trying to draw fouls—totally uncharacteristic—only nobody knew what was going on until the fourth quarter, and KC Jones couldn’t remove him because Ainge kept getting to the line. Finally McHale decided he would intentionally commit lane violations to stop Ainge, who was getting heckled by his own bench, but that was averted when there was a whistle and Jones pulled him. And by the way, all of this was for fun and everyone was laughing the whole time.
69. I’m not kidding: when the ’86 Celts were feeling it, every time Bird tossed it in to Walton, it was move-up-to-the-edge-of-your-seat exciting. What are they gonna come up with this time?
70. One more reason: because I needed an excuse to hit up my boy Hirschy at the NBA for as many ’86 Celtics tapes as possible. If I ever get divorced, I guarantee you “He made me watch too many ’86 Celtics tapes” will be part of the Sports Gal’s irreconcilable differences case.