TWO
RUSSELL, THEN WILT
THE GREATEST DEBATE in NBA history wasn’t really a debate. I think this is strange. For instance, you might believe that the greatest television drama of all time was The Sopranos. I believe it’s The Wire. If we knew each other and this came up after a few drinks one night, I would refuse to talk about anything else until you conceded one of three things:
“You’re right, I am an idiot, the greatest television drama of all-time was The Wire.”
“I don’t know if you’re right, but I promise to plow through all sixty-five episodes of The Wire as fast as possible and then we can continue this debate.”
“You’re bothering me. I need to get away from you.”
Those would be the only three acceptable outcomes for me. Still, it’s a subjective opinion—I might believe The Wire can’t be approached, but ultimately I can’t prove it and can only argue my side. That’s it. But if we were arguing about the greatest debate in NBA history—Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain?—I can prove Russell was better. There’s a definitive answer that involves common sense, firsthand accounts, relevant statistics and the valuable opinions of teammates, fellow players, coaches, and educated writers who watched them battle for ten straight seasons.1
You know what it’s like, actually? Writing about O. J. Simpson’s murder trial. A few days after the Goldman-Brown killings, when the Juice made his aborted attempt to flee to Mexico, an overwhelming majority of Americans assumed he was guilty. His criminal trial started and we learned about a pattern of corruption and racism within the L.A. Police Department. We discovered that much of the blood evidence was mishandled. We watched the overwhelmed prosecution team unforgivably botch its case. But none of it mattered because this guy had to be guilty. After all, his blood dripped all over the crime scene, he didn’t have an alibi during the time of the murders, he had a mysterious cut on his left middle finger that matched the drips of blood from someone who fled the crime scene, he had a history of threatening and beating his wife, there were no other suspects, and it seemed proposterous that so many inept policemen and forensic scientists could collaboratively conspire to frame someone on such short notice.2
Smartly, if not reprehensibly, the defense team battered the race card home—that was their only chance to get a guilty person acquitted, even if it meant splintering the country and damaging the relationship between blacks and whites in the process—and lucked out because many of the dense jurors couldn’t understood the damaging DNA evidence in the pre-CSI era. To everyone’s disbelief, O. J. Simpson walked. Facing more competent attorneys and a lesser level of proof one year later, the Juice was pulped in a civil trial and ordered to pay the Goldman/Brown families $30 million in punitive damages. Fifteen years later, even though we haven’t convicted anyone for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman—shit, we haven’t even found a potential suspect—more and more Americans believe Simpson was innocent or not conclusively guilty. Give it another fifteen years and even more will believe he was framed. By the year 2035, nobody under forty will remember the details, just that O.J. walked and that maybe, just maybe, that meant he was innocent. None of this changes the fact that O.J. either killed two people himself or was “involved” with the dirty deed in some other way. It’s impossible to come up with any other reasonable conclusion. Unless you’re insane.
Same goes for the Russell-Chamberlain debate. Wilt was more talented; Russ gave his teams a better chance to win. Wilt had a greater statistical impact; Russ had a greater impact on his teammates. Wilt peaked in the regular season; Russ peaked in the playoffs. Wilt shrank from the clutch; Russ thrived in the clutch. Wilt lost nearly every big game; Russ won nearly every big game. Wilt averaged 50 points for one season; Russell was voted Most Valuable Player by his peers that same season. Wilt was traded twice in his career; Russ never would have been traded in a million years. Wilt was obsessed with statistics; Russ was obsessed with winning. Wilt cared about what fans, writers, and critics thought; Russ only cared what his teammates thought. Wilt never won a title in high school or college and won only two as a pro; Russ won two in college and eleven in the NBA. Wilt ignored The Secret; Russell embraced it. I shouldn’t have to waste an entire chapter on them for two indisputable reasons: Russell’s teams always beat Chamberlain’s teams, and Wilt was traded twice. Right there, it’s over. And really, it was over when Russell retired in 1969 as the greatest basketball player ever.
But a few years passed, and then a few more, and then a few more. Chamberlain’s numbers started to look more and more implausible. The “debate” heated up again. Now I have to waste a whole chapter debunking the six most common myths of the Chamberlain-Russell debate. So here we go.
MYTH NO. 1:
RUSSELL HAD A BETTER SUPPORTING
CAST THAN WILT
There isn’t a simpler team sport to understand than basketball: if two quality opponents play a seven-game series, the dominant player should prevail as long as the talent level on both sides is relatively equal. We have sixty years of hard-core evidence to back this up. The ’84 Celtics were dead even with the ’84 Lakers, but Bird played better than Magic in the Finals. The ’93 Suns were better than the ’93 Bulls, but Jordan played out of his mind. Moses Malone was the dominant player in the ’81 Finals, but Houston’s collective talent couldn’t handle Boston’s collective talent. This isn’t rocket science. Since the 1976 merger, only one Finals result still doesn’t make sense on paper: when the ’04 Pistons soundly defeated a more talented (but quietly imploding) Lakers team,3 a wake-up call for a league that had been slowly gravitating toward lower-scoring games, fewer possessions, swarming, physical defenses and a much slower pace. As long as the talent level between two teams is relatively equal, the team with the best player should win. So the supporting-cast card works with Russell and Wilt only if we prove that the talent disparity was not relatively equal. Right off the bat, it’s almost impossible because the NBA didn’t expand to ten teams until 1967, giving everyone a good supporting cast (even the crummy teams). People seem to think Russell played with only Hall of Famers and poor Wilt was stuck carrying a bunch of beer-bellied bums; not only is that erroneous, but it would have been impossible given the numbers. Imagine the current NBA if you removed every foreign player, chopped the number of black players in half, then cut the number of teams from thirty to eight. Would every team end up with three All-Stars and four or five solid role players at worst? Of course. Welcome to the NBA from 1956 to 1966.
(Warning: If I just wrote, “Wilt’s teammates were better than you think and Russell’s teammates weren’t as great as you think,” you wouldn’t believe me, so we’re covering each season in painstaking detail the way Barry Scheck clinically took apart the DNA evidence in the O.J. trial, and if we kill a few thousand trees in the process, so be it. To keep you entertained, I loaded the bottom of the pages with dumb footnotes.)
Here’s how the seasons shook out after Russell entered the league:
1957. Russell joins Boston mid-January after banging out military duty,4 then the Celts squeak by Philly (featuring Hall of Famers Paul Arizin and Neil Johnston) in the Playoffs and meet St. Louis in the Finals. Boston has two stud guards in their prime (Bill Sharman and ’57 MVP Bob Cousy) and three terrific rookies (Russell, Heinsohn, and Frank Ramsey), while St. Louis has Bob Pettit (two-time MVP), Macauley (Hall of Famer) and Slater Martin5 (Hall of Famer, second-team All-NBA that season), as well as Charlie Share, Jack Coleman and Jack McMahon (three highly regarded role players). Since Boston won Game 7 in double OT,6 it’s safe to say these two teams were equally talented.
1958. The Hawks exact revenge thanks to up-and-comer Cliff Hagan (second-team All-NBA, Hall of Famer) and Russell’s badly sprained ankle.7 Again, even talent on both sides.
1959. Boston starts to pull away: three All-NBA first-teamers (Russell, Cousy, and Sharman), two promising guards (Sam and KC Jones), the best sixth man (Ramsey) and one of the best scoring forwards (Heinsohn). Even then, they needed seven games to get past Syracuse (led by NBA Top 50 members Dolph Schayes and Hal Greer) before easily sweeping Elgin and the Lakers. Through three years and two titles, Russell and the Celtics had the most talent exactly once.
1960. Boston handles Philly in six and needs seven to defeat a Hawks team with four Hall of Famers (including newcomer Lenny Wilkens). Meanwhile, Wilt wins the MVP as a rookie playing with Arizin (ten straight All-Stars), Tom Gola (five straight All-Stars, Hall of Famer), Guy Rodgers8 (four All-Stars) and Woody Sauldsberry (’58 Rookie of the Year, ’59 All-Star). Boston had more firepower, but not by much. Wilt wasn’t exactly stuck playing with Eric Snow, Drew Gooden, Sasha Pavlovic, Larry Hughes, and Turdo Sandowich like 2007 LeBron.
1961. We’re kicking off a two-year stretch for the most loaded NBA team ever: Boston easily handles Syracuse and St. Louis for title number four. Meanwhile, Philly gets swept by a weaker Nats team in the first round, leading to Wilt throwing his first coach under the bus after the season (a recurring theme).9
1962. Still loaded to the gills, Boston needs seven games to defeat Wilt’s Sixers and an OT Game 7 in the Finals to defeat Baylor, Jerry West and the Lakers. I’m telling you, everyone had a good team back then.10
1963. The first sign of trouble: Sharman retires, Cousy and Ramsey are slipping, and rookie John Havlicek isn’t Hondo yet. Boston needs seven games to hold off Cincy (led by Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson, Jack Twyman, and Wayne Embry) and another six to beat the Lakers.11 Meanwhile, Philly moves to San Fran, finishes 31–49 and misses the playoffs with Wilt, Rodgers, Tom Meschery (an All-Star), Al Attles (KC Jones’ equal as a defensive stopper) and Willie Naulls (four-time All-Star). But hey, if they’d won more games, maybe Wilt wouldn’t have averaged 44.8 points that season.12
1964. Cousy retires and no Celtic makes first-team All-NBA, but that doesn’t stop Boston from beating a stacked Cincy team (led by Oscar and rookie of the year Jerry Lucas) and easily handling Wilt’s Warriors in the Finals (the same group as the ’63 Sixers, only with future Hall of Famer Nate Thurmond aboard). Boston won without a point guard or power forward this season—other than Russell, they didn’t have a top-twenty rebounder or anyone average more than 5 assists—but we’ll give them a check mark in the “most talent” department for the last time in the Russell era.13
1965. Ramsey retires and Heinsohn fades noticeably in his final season. Undaunted, the Celts finish with their best record of the Russell era (62–18) and smoke L.A. in the Finals thanks to their Big Three (Russell, Havlicek, and Sam Jones) and a bunch of role players (including a monster year from Satch Sanders). As for the Warriors, they self-destruct and lose seventeen in a row, eventually trading Wilt for 30 cents on the dollar to Philly midway through the season.14 For the first time, Wilt’s team matches Boston’s talent with shooting guard Hal Greer (ten straight All-Star games), Lucious Jackson (an All-Star power forward who finished eighth in rebounding that season), swingman Chet Walker (seven-time All-Star), point guard Larry Costello (six-time All-Star) and two quality role players (Dave Gambee and Johnny Kerr). That’s why the Sixers-Celtics series comes down to the final play of Game 7 at the Garden, with Havlicek stealing the inbounds pass as Johnny Most screams, “Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball!”
1966. Heinsohn coughs up a fifteen-pound oyster and retires, KC Jones is fading fast, and the Celts are forced to rely on aging veterans (Naulls and Mel Counts)15 and castoffs from other teams (Don Nelson and Larry Siegfried) to help the Big Three in Auerbach’s final season. For the first time with Russell, they don’t finish with the league’s best record as Philly edges them (55 wins to 54). As usual, it doesn’t matter—Boston beats Philly in five and wins Game 7 of the Finals against L.A. by two points. Philly had more talent this season. On paper, anyway.
1967. KC retires, another veteran castoff comes aboard (future Hall of Famer Bailey Howell), and Russell struggles mightily to handle the first year of his player-coach duties.16 From day one, it’s Philly’s year: given an extra boost by rookie Billy Cunningham and Wilt’s sudden revelation that he doesn’t need to score to help his team win (more on this in a second), the Sixers roll to their famous 68-win season, topple the Celtics in five, and beat the Warriors in six for Wilt’s first title. This was the perfect storm for Wilt—his strongest possible team against Boston’s weakest possible team.
1968. Wilt leads the league in assists. And Philly finishes eight games better than the Celtics. The aging Celts rally from a 3–1 deficit in the Eastern Finals to advance, then beat a really good Lakers team for Russell’s tenth title. After the season, Philly trades Wilt to L.A. for 40 cents on the dollar.17
1969. With Russell and Jones running on fumes, everyone writes the Celtics off after they finish fourth in the East. In the first round, they beat a favored Sixers team in five. In the second round, they beat a favored Knicks team in six—the same group that wins the 1970 title and gets blown for the next twenty-five years by the New York media as the Greatest Team Ever. In the Finals, as 9-to-5 underdogs to Baylor, West, Wilt, and the Lakers, they rally back from a 3–1 deficit and win Game 7 in Los Angeles.
So here’s the final tally: Over a ten-year span, Russell’s teams clearly had more talent than Wilt’s teams for four seasons (’61, ’62, ’63, and ’64) and a slight edge in Wilt’s first season (1960). In ’65, Philly and Boston were a wash. From ’66 through ’69, Wilt played for stronger teams, making the final record 5–4–1, Russell. For six of those ten seasons, you could have described the talent disparity as “equal” or “relatively equal.” After Russell retired that summer, the ’70 Lakers lost the famous Willis Reed game in Game 7 of the Finals; the ’71 Lakers suffered a season-ending injury to Jerry West and lost to the eventual champions, the Bucks; the ’72 Lakers won 69 games and cruised to Wilt’s second title; and the ’73 Lakers lost a Finals rematch to the Knicks. Wilt retired after a ten-year stretch in which he played in the 1964 Finals and lost, then played for teams talented enough to win a championship every single year for the next nine. So much for Russell being blessed with a better supporting cast than Chamberlain. If there’s a legitimate gripe on Wilt’s behalf, it’s that Russell was lucky enough to have Auerbach coaching him for ten years. Then again, Red is on record saying he never could have coached a prima donna like Wilt. Also, if you’re scoring at home: Russell played with four members of the NBA’s Top 50 at 50 (Havlicek, Cousy, Sharman and Sam Jones); Wilt played with six members (Baylor, West, Greer, Cunningham, Arizin, and Thurmond). And Russell’s teammates from 1957 to 1969 were selected to twenty-six All-Star games, while Wilt’s teammates from 1960 to 1973 were selected to twenty-four. Let’s never mention the supporting-cast card again with Russell and Chamberlain. Thank you.
MYTH NO. 2:
RUSSELL WASN’T A VERY GOOD OFFENSIVE PLAYER
Here’s where history treated Russell unfairly. We glorify the unselfish passing of the ’70 Knicks, Wes Unseld’s one-of-a-kind outlets and Walton’s altruistic play on the ’77 Blazers, yet Johnny Kerr was the league’s first great passing center and Russell came next. Remember how Portland’s offense revolved around Walton’s passing in ’77?18 The Celtics ran every half-court play through Russell after Cousy retired because they lacked a true point guard or a Jordan-like scorer. When you watch Russ on tape, his passing jumps out nearly as much as his defense—not just his knack for finding cutters for lay-ups, but how easily he found streaking guards for easy fast breaks directly off blocks or rebounds. Here’s what Havlicek wrote in his imaginatively titled 1977 autobiography, Hondo, about the first post-Russell season: “You couldn’t begin to count the ways we missed [him]. People think about him in terms of defense and rebounding, but he had been the key to our offense. He made the best pass more than anyone I have ever played with. That mattered to people like Nelson, Howell, Siegfried, Sanders and myself. None of us were one on one players…. Russell made us better offensive players. His ability as a passer, pick-setter, and general surmiser of offense has always been overlooked.”
So why doesn’t Russell get credit for his passing? BECAUSE WALTON WAS WHITE AND RUSSELL WAS BLACK! Just kidding; I was doing a Stephen A. Smith impersonation.19 Actually, Russell doesn’t get credit for the same reason that everyone thinks he played with eight Hall of Famers every year for thirteen seasons, or that his teams were always more talented than Wilt’s teams: because people don’t know any better, and because it’s easier to regurgitate something you heard than to look it up. Four things stand out when watching Russell on tape: his passing (superb), his shot blocking (unparalleled), his speed getting down the court (breathtaking), and his unexpected talent for grabbing a rebound, taking off with it, and running the fast break like a point guard (has to be seen to be believed). Russell was like a left-handed, infinitely more cerebral Dennis Rodman, only if Rodman had Walton’s passing talent, David Robinson’s athletic ability and Michael Jordan’s maniacal drive, and if Rodman could block shots like Josh Smith unleashed on the WNBA for an entire season.
(Would you have enjoyed playing with such a player? I thought so.)
MYTH NO. 3: STATISTICALLY, WILT CRUSHED RUSSELL
Wilt’s first nine offensive seasons were unlike anything that’s happened before or since. He averaged 37.6 points and 27.6 rebounds as a rookie, then 38.4 and 27.2; 50.4 and 25.7; 44.8 and 24.3; 36.9 and 22.3; 34.7 and 22.9; 33.5, 24.6 and 5.3 assists in ’66; 24.1, 24.2 and 7.8 with a record 68.3% FG shooting in ’67; and 24.3, 23.8 and a league-leading 8.6 assists in ’68. For his career, he averaged 30.1 points, 22.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists in the regular season. On paper, it’s staggering.20 Russell’s career offensive numbers can’t compare except for rebounds—he averaged 15.1 points, 22.5 boards and 4.3 assists per game, peaking in 1960 (18.2 points, 24.0 rebounds) and 1964 (15.0 points, 24.7 rebounds and 4.7 assists). In their head-to-head matchups, Wilt handed it to Russ statistically, although Auerbach and the old Celtics swear that Russ played possum for three quarters, allowed Wilt to accumulate stats and then smothered him in the fourth; he’d also relax during blowouts and allow meaningless numbers that didn’t matter (knowing that Wilt was obsessed with stats). Russell played 911 games in the last ten years of his career, with an astounding 142 of them coming against Wilt (15.6 percent) in a tiny league. By all accounts, Russ pulled a perpetual rope-a-dope against Wilt along the lines of Ali in Zaire, when Ali allowed Foreman to punch himself out, then finished him off later in the fight. Russ saved most of his anti-Wilt tricks for big games and big moments.
Here are their head-to-head stats in 142 games (including playoffs):
Wilt: 28.7 points, 28.7 rebounds
Russ: 14.5 points, 23.7 rebounds
At this point, you’re thinking, “Come on, Simmons, this is crazy. You have no case.” Well, here are some more stats for you:
Wilt’s record against Russell: 58–84
Russ’s record against Wilt: 84–58
Hold on, we’re just getting started. Check out their playoff numbers.
Wilt: 160 games, 22.5 points, 24.5 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 47% FT, 52% FG
Russ: 165 games, 16.2 points, 24.9 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 60% FT, 43% FG
Hmmmmmmm. Russell’s numbers jumped and Wilt’s numbers dipped dramatically when there was money on the line, even though Wilt was routinely his team’s number one scoring option and Russ was number four or five. Sure, Wilt averaged three more baskets a game, but everything else was even and Russell happened to be a superior defensive player, teammate, basketball thinker and crunch-time guy. Which is how we end up with the following statistics:
Wilt’s record for the Conference Finals and NBA Finals: 48–44
Russ’s record for the Conference Finals and NBA Finals: 90–53
And these:
Wilt’s record in Game 7’s: 4–5
Russ’s record in Game 7’s: 10–0
And these:
Wilt’s record in elimination games for his team: 10–11
Russ’s record in elimination games for his team: 16–2
And these:
Wilt: 2 championships
Russ: 11 championships21
So yeah, by any statistical calculation, Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest regular season player in NBA history. I concede this fact. For the playoffs? Not so great.
And then there’s this: since the Celtics didn’t need his scoring, Russell spent his energies protecting the rim, helping out defensively, controlling the boards, getting good shots for teammates and filling the lanes on fast breaks. In the process, he became the most dominant defensive player ever—nobody comes close, actually—and it’s statistically impossible to calculate his effect on that end.22 Russell routinely swallowed up the extended area near the rim, handling all penetrators and displaying a remarkable knack for keeping blocks in play. Whereas Wilt famously swatted shots like volleyball spikes for dramatic effect, Russell deflected blocks to teammates for instant fast breaks; not only did those blocks result in four-point swings, but Auerbach’s Celtics were built on those four-point swings. That’s how they went on scoring spurts, that’s what stands out every time you watch those teams, and that’s why they kept winning and winning—they had the perfect center to launch fast breaks and the perfect supporting cast to execute them. Opponents eventually gave up challenging Russell and settled for outside shots, which doesn’t sound like a big deal except this was a notoriously poor era for outside shooting.23 So Russell affected every possession even without swatting shots, almost like a bouncer at a rowdy bar who kicks ass for a few weeks and eventually lowers the fight rate to zero just by showing up. If that weren’t enough, Boston’s scorers famously saved their energies on defense because they had Russell lurking behind them to cover every mistake, so offense-first guys like Cousy, Sharman, Heinsohn and Sam Jones found themselves in the dream situation of worrying about scoring and that’s it.
Can you capture that impact statistically? Of course not. It’s impossible. They didn’t start keeping track of blocks until 1973, so there’s no quantitative way to prove Russell’s dominance on the defensive end; it’s like trying to measure Chamberlain’s offense dominance if nobody kept track of individual points, so we were forced to rely on stories from writers, teammates, and opponents, like, “There was this one game in Hershey, Pennsylvania, when Wilt really had it going against the Knicks. I swear, he musta had 100 points!”24 Wilt matched Russell’s rebounding numbers and probably blocked more shots than any non-Russell center, but his defense couldn’t compare for two reasons. First, he wasn’t a natural jumper like Russell, someone who sprang up at a moment’s notice and jumped multiple times on the same play. (Since Wilt was carrying more weight, he was forced to set his feet, bend his knees and then jump, almost like someone leaping over a moving car. Many opponents learned to time those jumps and float shots over his considerable reach.25 You didn’t have the luxury of timing anything with Russell.) Second, Wilt was continually obsessed with a bizarre streak—for whatever reason, he wanted to make it through his entire basketball career without fouling out, so he’d stop challenging shots with four or five fouls even if he was hurting his team in the process. I’m not making this up.
(Seriously, I’m not making this up.)
(Wait, you don’t believe me? Here’s what John Havlicek wrote in Hondo: “Wilt’s greatest idiosyncrasy was not fouling out. He had never fouled out of a high school, college or professional game and that was the one record he was determined to protect. When he got that fourth foul, his game would change. I don’t know how many potential victories he may have cheated his team out of by not really playing after he got into foul trouble.”)26
Translation: Wilt cared about statistics more than winning. If they kept track of blocks in the sixties, the Dipper would have become obsessed with those numbers (especially as they compared to Russell), dumped the never-fouled-out streak and inadvertently turned into a dominant defensive player, almost by accident, possibly someone who won five or six titles instead of two. But there was no statistical rush from defense. So Wilt settled on raking up offensive numbers, spiking blocked shots like volley-balls and pursuing his inane streak of never fouling out. It wasn’t until the ’66–’67 season that Wilt realized his teams were better off if he concentrated on rebounding, passing and defense. Here’s how he described that epiphany in his autobiography, Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door (now that’s a title!):27
I was 30 years old when the ’66–’67 season began, and I was maturing as a man, and learning that it was essential to keep my teammates happy if I wanted my team to win.
[As far as epiphanies go, that ranks somewhere between Pete Rose admitting that he had a gambling problem and John Holmes glancing down at his fourteen-inch schlong and realizing he needed to try porn. Better late than never, I guess.]
I not only began passing off more and scoring less, I also made a point of singling my teammates out for praise—publicly and privately.
[Wow! What a sacrifice! What a guy! So wait … if you’re trying to win basketball games, it’s a good idea to be unselfish and to act like a good teammate instead of hogging the ball and blaming everyone else when you lose? Are we sure? Do we have confirmation on this?]
I realize now that this is the kind of thing that helped make O. J. Simpson’s teams at USC and Bill Walton’s teams at UCLA so successful. The same is true of Joe Namath and the Jets.
[Um … Wilt? The same was true for Bill Russell—you know, number 6 on the Celtics, the team that knocked you out of the playoffs every spring?]
O.J. and Bill and Joe always praise their teammates. They remember the name of every key guy who throws a key block or makes a good assist or a good defensive play, and they tell the player—and the press—all about it. That can’t help but make the player try even harder the next time, instead of maybe letting down, subconsciously, because he’s tired of being ignored and hearing how great you are all the time.28
[I don’t know, Wilt—this sounds too crazy. I thought basketball was an individual sport. They don’t keep stats for praising your teammates. I think you’re wrong.]
I was just learning this lesson in 1966, and it was reflected in my statistics.
[“Granted, I threw away the first seven years of my career and everyone hated playing with me, but you have to hand it to me—I did learn the lesson.”]
Instead of me averaging 40 points a game, we had a great scoring balance. Hal Greer averaged 22.1, Chet averaged 19.3, and Billy averaged 18.5. Luke Jackson and Wali Jones also averaged in double figures. That’s the kind of balance Boston always had.
[The Celtics won the title every year for Wilt’s first seven years in the league. Only in 1967 did it occur to him that his teams should start emulating what worked for the best teams? Yeesh. Nobody ever said Wilt was a brain surgeon.]29
After he embraced “unselfishness” and won his first title, in classic Wilt fashion, he lost interest in winning and became obsessed with his assist numbers. Suddenly Wilt was passing up easy shots to set up teammates, checking the scorer’s table multiple times per game, complaining if he felt like he hadn’t been credited for a specific assist, lambasting teammates for blowing his passes and taking an inordinate amount of delight in leading the league in ’68 (a record he bragged about more than any other).30 As with anything else he did, Wilt failed to strike the right balance and settled into a bad habit of being too unselfish, taking only two shots in the second half of Game 7 against Boston while his teammates floundered around him. The heavily favored ’68 Sixers blew a 3–1 lead and choked in Game 7 at home, but as Wilt pointed out in his book, “Hal hit only eight of 25 shots. Wali hit eight of 22. Matty hit two of ten, Chet hit eight of 22. Those four guys took most of our shots and hit less than a third of them. But I got the blame.”
So much for the lessons of Walton, Namath and Simpson. What did we learn about Russell, Chamberlain, and statistics? Well, Wilt’s teams revolved around his offense and Russell’s teams revolved around his defense. Wilt coexisted with his teammates; Russell made his teammates better. Wilt had to make a concerted effort to play unselfishly and act like a decent teammate; Russell’s very existence was predicated on unselfishness and team play. In the end, Russell’s teams won championships and Wilt’s teams lost them.
Russell 11, Chamberlain 2. Those are the only two numbers that matter.31
MYTH NO. 4:
WILT WAS A GREAT GUY
Was Wilt a great guy to approach in the airport? Absolutely. Was he great to interview for a magazine or a talk show? You betcha. Did the people who knew him have great stories about him? No question. Was he generous with his money? Of course. If you were a stewardess, was this someone you would have wanted to blow under an airplane blanket? Apparently, yes. For such a good guy, it’s bizarre that Wilt sucked so much as a teammate. He just didn’t grasp the concept. For the first six years of his career, he hogged the ball, became infatuated with scoring records and demanded to be treated differently than his teammates. When things finally fell apart on the ’65 Warriors, legendary L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray wrote, “[Wilt] can do one thing well—score. He turns his own team into a congress of butlers whose principal function is to get him the ball under a basket. Their skills atrophy, their desires wane. Crack players like Willie Naulls get on the Warriors and they start dropping notes out of the window or in bottles which they cast adrift. They contain one word: ‘help.’”32 Even when Wilt played more unselfishly and copied Russell’s game, he couldn’t maintain it for more than a year and became smitten with assists. He openly clashed with every coach except two—Frank McGuire (who let him shoot as much as he wanted, leading to the 100-point game) and Alex Hannum (and only because Hannum challenged him to a fight to get him to listen).33 He blamed teammates and coaches after losses, feuded with teammates who could have helped him (most famously, Elgin during the ’69 season) and demeaned opposing players to the press to make himself look better. He had a nasty habit of distracting his own team at the worst possible times—like the ’66 Eastern Finals against Boston, when Sports Illustrated released a controversial Chamberlain feature before Game 5 in which he ripped coach Dolph Schayes and destroyed the morale of his team.34
Some believe that Wilt achieved too much too soon, that he never understood the concept of teamwork because he’d been the center of attention (literally) since he was in high school. In his Chamberlain-Russell book The Rivalry, John Taylor writes that Auerbach believed Warriors owner Eddie Gottlieb “spoiled Wilt something fierce. A lot of times, Wilt didn’t even travel with his teammates. He was out of control. Auerbach doubted that he himself would have been able to coach Wilt…. Wilt spent that year with the Globetrotters, tasted the big money and stardom, and he began thinking that he was more important than his coach or teammates. Goty, afraid of losing the big draw, let him get away with it. Chamberlain had become convinced that people came to games in order to see him and that, therefore, the point of every game was to give him an opportunity to play the star. There was a certain box office logic to this thinking, but it made Chamberlain uncoachable, in Auerbach’s view, and as long as he was uncoachable, any team he played on would never become a real winner.”35
If you’re wondering how Wilt was regarded around the league, here’s the ultimate story: When San Fran shopped him in ’65, the Lakers were intrigued enough that owner Bob Short asked his players to vote on whether or not he should purchase Chamberlain’s contract. The results of the vote? Nine to two … against.
Nine to two against!
How could anyone still think this was the greatest basketball player ever? In the absolute prime of his career, a playoff contender that had lost consecutive Finals and didn’t have an answer for Russell had the chance to acquire Wilt for nothing … and the players voted against it!36 Would they have voted against a Russell trade? Seriously, would they have voted against a Russell trade in a million years?
(Note: if this were the O.J. trial, that last paragraph would be the equivalent of O.J. trying on the bloody glove.)
MYTH NO. 5:
A COUPLE PLAYS HERE AND THERE
AND WILT COULD HAVE WON JUST AS MANY
TITLES AS RUSSELL
Nearly every NBA champ had a pivotal playoff moment where they needed a big play and got it, but that doesn’t stop Wilt’s defenders from ignoring this reality and making excuses for every one of his near-misses: the ’60 Eastern Finals (Wilt injured his right hand throwing a punch in Game 4); Game 7 of the ’62 Eastern Finals (a controversial goaltending call proved the difference); Game 7 of the ’65 Eastern Finals (Russell nearly wore goat horns37 before Havlicek saved him); Game 1 of the ’68 Eastern Finals (right after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, when Sixers coach Alex Hannum never had his team vote on whether or not they should play, allegedly killing the morale of the team, even though they won Games 2, 3, and 4); Game 7 in ’68 (when Wilt’s supporting cast went cold); Game 7 of the ’69 Finals (when Wilt “injured” his knee in crunch time); and Game 7 of the ’70 Finals (when Willis Reed’s reappearance ignited the MSG crowd and Walt Frazier destroyed West). That’s all fine. Just know that Wilt’s teams sucked in the clutch because Wilt sucked in the clutch. The fear of losing overwhelmed him in big games. Terrified of getting fouled because of his dreadful free throw shooting, he played hot potato or settled for his patented fall-away (the one that landed him fifteen feet from the basket and away from rebounds), and he didn’t want to foul anyone if he had four or five fouls because, you know, it would have interfered with his laughable no-fouling-out streak. That made him nearly useless in close games, like a more tortured version of Shaq from 2002 to 2007, only if Shaq was afraid to foul anyone and had a persecution complex.38
Here’s what NBA great Rick Barry wrote about Wilt in his autobiography, Confessions of a Basketball Gypsy, which has the worst cover in the history of sports books:39
I’ll say what most players feel, which is that Wilt is a loser…. He is terrible in big games. He knows he is going to lose and be blamed for the loss, so he dreads it, and you can see it in his eyes; and anyone who has ever played with him will agree with me, regardless of whether they would admit it publicly. When it comes down to the closing minutes of a tough game, an important game, he doesn’t want the ball, he doesn’t want any part of the pressure. It is at these times that greatness is determined, and Wilt doesn’t have it. There is no way you can compare him to a pro like a Bill Russell or a Jerry West … these are clutch competitors.
Holy smokes! Some harsh words from a guy who wore a wig for an entire NBA season four years later. But let’s examine those Game 7’s in ’68, ’69, and ’70 again. In the first one, Wilt took two shots after halftime and steadfastly kept passing to his ice-cold teammates, then blamed them afterward because they couldn’t make a shot. In the second one, Wilt banged his knee and asked out of the game with five minutes to play, enraging coach Butch van Breda Kolff (who refused to put him back in, even if it meant costing the Lakers the title) and Russell (who uncharacteristically slammed Wilt that summer, launching a feud that lasted nearly twenty-five years). In the third one, Willis famously limped out and drained those first two jumpers, only it never occurred to Chamberlain, “Wait, I have a one-legged guy guarding me, maybe I should destroy him offensively!”40 He just didn’t get it. Wilt never understood how to win; if anything, losing fit his personality better. Here’s how Bill Bradley described Wilt in Life on the Run:
Wilt played the game as if he had to prove his worth to someone who had never seen basketball. He pointed to his statistical achievements as specific measurements of his ability, and they were; but to someone who knows basketball they are, if not irrelevant, certainly nonessential. The point of the game is not how well the individual does but whether the team wins. That is the beautiful heart of the game, the blending of personalities, the mutual sacrifices for group success…. I have the impression that Wilt might have been more secure with losing. In defeat, after carefully covering himself with allusions to his accomplishments, he could be magnanimous…. Wilt’s emphasis on individual accomplishments failed to gain him public affection and made him the favorite to win the game. And, simultaneously, it assured him of losing.41
Here’s another way to look at it: nobody has any clutch stories about Wilt Chamberlain. If they existed, I’d pass some of them along. His three finest moments were probably Game 7 against the ’65 Celts, when Wilt was magnificent in defeat with 30 points and 32 rebounds; the clinching game of the ’67 Boston-Philly series, when he ripped Boston apart with a ridiculous triple double (29 points, 36 rebounds, 13 assists); and the clinching Game 5 of the ’72 Finals, when he destroyed an undersized Knicks team with a near-quadruple double (24–29–9 and 8 blocks). He’s the same man who once explained to Sport magazine, “In a way, I like it better when we lose. It’s over and I can look forward to the next game. If we win, it builds up the tension and I start worrying about the next game.” Would Russell have ever said something like that? What do you think? Here were some of the famous clutch Russell games:42
Game 7, 1957 Finals. As a rookie, Russell notches a 19–32 and makes what everyone agrees was the most phenomenal play of his career—scoring a game-tying basket near the end of regulation that carried him into the stands, regrouping and somehow chasing down Jack Coleman from behind and blocking Coleman’s game-clinching layup. This whole sequence ranks incredibly high on the I Wish We Always Had TV Coverage for Sports scale.
Game 7, 1960 Finals. Russell scores 22 points and grabs 35 rebounds in a blowout of the Hawks. Ho-hum.
Game 7, 1962 Eastern Finals. In the year Wilt averaged 50 a game, Russell holds him to 22 in Game 7 (and scores 19 himself).
Game 7, 1962 Finals. Russell scores 30 points, makes 14 of 17 free throws and grabs an NBA Playoffs record 44 rebounds in an overtime win over the Lakers (the Frank Selvy game). Everyone agrees this was the definitive Russell game—near the end of regulation, every forward on Boston’s roster fouled out (Heinsohn, Sanders and Loscutoff), so Russell had to protect the basket and handle the boards by himself. Unbelievable: 30 points and 44 rebounds?
Game 7, 1965 Eastern Finals. Although Havlicek saved him from goat horns, Russell submitted a near triple double (15 points, 29 rebounds and 9 assists) that nearly would have been a quadruple double if they’d kept track of blocks back then.43
Game 7, 1966 Finals. Celts beat L.A. by two, Russell notches 25 points, 32 rebounds and God knows how many blocks.
Game 7, 1968 Eastern Finals. Russell scores 12 but holds Wilt to 14 … and for good measure, he coached the winning team.
Looking back, Wilt had five chances to knock Russell out of the playoffs in ’68 and ’69 with a superior team—including two Game 7’s at home—and only needed to submit one monster performance to pull it off. Each time, he couldn’t do it. Each time, Russell’s inferior team prevailed. Each time, Wilt whined about it afterward. If Jerry West was Mr. Clutch, then Wilt was Mr. Crutch.
MYTH NO. 6:
PLAYERS AND COACHES FROM THE ERA ARE
SPLIT OVER WHO WAS A GREATER PLAYER
You have to believe me: I read every NBA book possible to prepare to write this one. No stone was left unturned—during the summers of ’07 and ’08 I spent more time on www.abebooks.com than Abe did. While poring over these books, I searched for insight on the Russell-Chamberlain debate and kept a tally of every player, coach and media member willing to go on the record. (You can see a complete list of those books at the end of this one.) And I’m not sure what was more amazing—how many of them praised Russell, or how many of them crushed Wilt (including people who played with him and coached him). Since we could fill this entire book with quotes from people praising Russell’s unselfishness, competitiveness and clutchness, let’s narrow it down to six Wilt-related quotes that explain everything:
Butch van Breda Kolff (in Tall Tales): “The difference between Russell and Wilt was this: Russell would ask, ‘What do I need to do to make my teammates better?’ Then he’d do it. Wilt honestly thought the best way for his team to win was for him to be in the best possible setting. He’d ask, ‘What’s the best situation for me?’”44
Jerry West (in Goliath): “I don’t want to rap Wilt because I believe only Russell was better, and I really respect what Wilt did. But I have to say he wouldn’t adjust to you, you had to adjust to him.”
Jerry Lucas (in Tall Tales): “Wilt was too consumed with records: being the first to lead the league in assists, or to set a record for field goal percentage. He’d accomplish one goal, then go on to another. Russell only asked one question: ‘What can I do to make us win?’”45
Jack Kiser (in Goliath): “Russell pulled the con job of the century on Chamberlain. He welcomed Wilt to the league. He played father-figure. He told him, man, you’re going to better all my records, but you have things to learn and I’m going to teach you because I admire you.46 He made friends with him. He got Wilt to the point where Wilt worried about making him look bad…. Wilt hated to lose, but he liked Bill so much that he didn’t like losing to him. Wilt could destroy Russell when he was inspired. But he held back just enough to get beat. He tried to win over Russell, but he wasn’t driven like he was against guys he disliked. I might point out Russell never said a bad word about Wilt until the night he retired and he hasn’t stopped rapping him since.”
Bill Russell (in Second Wind): “It did seem to me that [Wilt] was often ambivalent about what he wanted to get out of basketball. Anyone who changes the character and style of his play several times over a career is bound to be uncertain about which of the many potential accomplishments he wants to pursue. It’s perfectly possible for a player not to make victory his first priority against all the others—money, records, personal fame, and an undivided claim to his achievements—and I often felt Wilt made some deliberate choices in his ambitions.”
Wilt Chamberlain (in Wilt): “To Bill [Russell], every game—every championship game—was a challenge, a test to his manhood. He took the game so seriously that he threw up in the locker room before almost every game. But I tend to look at basketball as a game, not a life or death struggle. I don’t need scoring titles or NBA championships to prove that I’m a man. There are too many other beautiful things in life—food, cars, girls, friends, the beach, freedom—to get that emotionally wrapped up in basketball.47I think Bill knew I felt that way, and I think he both envied and resented my attitude. On the one hand, I think he wished he could learn to take things easier, too; on the other hand, I think he may have felt that with my natural ability and willingness to work hard, my teams could have won an NBA championship every year if I was as totally committed to victory as he was…. I wish I had won all those championships, but I really think I grew more as a man in defeat that Russell did in victory.”
That might be true. But I’d rather have the bathroom puker on my team, the most beloved teammate of his era, the guy who didn’t care about statistics, the guy who always seemed to end up on victorious teams in close games, the guy who finished his career as the greatest winner in sports, the guy who was singularly obsessed with making his teammates better and doing whatever it took to prevail. I’d rather have Bill Russell. And so would anyone else in their right mind.
The defense rests.
1. FYI, you can use this same set of factors to prove that nobody was more whipped than Lionel Richie on the day he wrote “Truly.”
2. O.J. intersected with NBA lore in 1994, when we watched helicopter footage of his white Bronco driving through southern California (in a botched attempt to evade police) split-screened with a crucial Game 5 of the Rockets-Knicks Finals. Here’s how bad that Finals was: even Knicks and Rockets fans were more interested in the car chase.
3. Rule changes in place by 2005: no hand checking (making it easier for quick guards to penetrate); 8 seconds to advance the ball over midcourt (not 10); resetting the shot clock to 14 seconds instead of 24 in certain situations; whistles for offensive isolation plays (no overloading players on one side); a relaxing of illegal zones; and an implicit understanding that moving high screens were now okay (as long as you didn’t stick your knee or foot out on the pick).
4. Imagine if this happened now and we had to wait three months to see ballyhooed rookies like Blake Griffin or Derrick Rose because they were going through basic training in East Bumfart, Texas. I think Nike would raise a stink.
5. One of my favorite NBA names: Slater Martin. Just reeks of the ’50s, doesn’t it? He played with Whitey Skoog, Dick Schnittker, Dick Garmaker, Vern Mikkelsen, Lew Hitch, George Mikan and Ed Kalafat on the ’56 Lakers. Now those were some white guys! As far as I can tell, that’s the only two-Dick team in NBA history.
6. My vote for the most underrated NBA game: double OT, Game 7. It ended with Boston scoring with 1 second left, followed by St. Louis player-coach Alex Hannum calling time out to set up a play from underneath his own basket, where he’d whip a full-court football pass off the other backboard, then it would ricochet to Pettit at the foul line and he’d quickly shoot. What happened? Hannum threw the ball 90 feet, it bounced off the backboard right to Pettit and he missed the game-tying shot. This actually happened. Can’t we put Gus Johnson in a time machine and have him announce this one?
7. The Hawks won their four games by six points total. I’m guessing a healthy Russell would have made a difference in two of those.
8. Another great ’50s sports name: Guy Rodgers. I actually tried to convince my wife to name our son Guy, but she couldn’t get past making cutesy talk with a baby named Guy. I thought it would be cool because we could have said things like “Look at the little Guy” or “He’s been a good Guy.” Regardless, we need more Guys. Some other classic NBA names from the ’50s that would work for dogs at the very least: Woody, Archie, Bo, McCoy, Harry, Clyde, Forest, Nat, Arnie and Elmer.
9. Coaches Wilt threw under the bus: Neil Johnston, Dolph Schayes, Alex Hannum, Frank McGuire, Butch van Breda Kolff.
10. Weirdest fact from this season: Russell won MVP but didn’t make first-team All-NBA.
11. One of Boston’s greatest achievements of the Russell era: never losing to a team that featured West and Baylor in their prime (two of the best seven players of the NBA’s first thirty-five years). Everyone just casually overlooks this one.
12. In The Last Loud Roar, Bob Cousy writes that Cincy gave Boston everything they could handle; he headed into the ’63 Finals expecting the Lakers would beat them. The X-factor was Tommy, who quit smoking a few weeks before the playoffs, dropped 14 pounds, and destroyed Rudy LaRusso in the Finals. You have to love it when NBA Finals were decided by things like “somebody quit smoking.”
13. Hidden fact from the Russell era: KC Jones was abominable offensively. Playing 30 to 32 minutes a game post-Cousy, KC averaged 7.8 points and 5.3 assists, shot 39 percent from the field, and didn’t have to be guarded from 15 feet. How can a defensive specialist make the Hall of Fame by playing 9 years, starting for 4, and never making an All-Star team? Was he better than Al Attles? Was he even half as good as Dennis Johnson? Of the post-shot-clockers who’ve made the Hall of Fame, he’s the single strangest selection, just ahead of Calvin Murphy.
14. At one point they were 10–34. Would a healthy MJ have ever played for a 10–34 team? What about a healthy Bird or a healthy Magic?
15. Underrated aspect of the Russell era: Five aging vets signed with Boston hoping for a free ring (Naulls, Carl Braun, Wayne Embry, Clyde Lovellette and Woody Sauldsberry). Nowadays, these guys would just sign with Phoenix or Miami because of the weather.
16. Russell’s inadequacies as a player-coach emerged as a dominant theme that season: he’d forget to rest guys or bring them back in and basically sucked. The next year, Russell delegated to teammates and named Havlicek and Jones as his de facto assistants, turning it into a professional intramural team where players subbed themselves and suggested plays during time-outs. This worked for two straight titles. Naturally, no NBA team since 1979 has tried it.
17. Wilt was traded twice in his prime: once for Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking, Lee Shaffer, and cash, once for Archie Clark, Darrall Imhoff, Jerry Chambers, and cash. Wilt defenders stammer whenever this gets mentioned.
18. Walton averaged 5.5 assists per game in the ’77 Playoffs. Russell averaged five assists or more in seven different playoffs, including 6.3 a game in the ’65 Playoffs (when it was much tougher to get credited for an assist). For his career, Russell averaged more playoff assists (4.7) than any center who ever played more than 30 playoff games.
19. For anyone reading this after 2030: Stephen A. Smith was an ESPN personality whose gimmick answered the question “What it would be like if somebody argued about sports with their CAPS LOCK on?”
20. Bob Cousy wasn’t as staggered. Here’s what he wrote in 1964’s The Last Loud Roar: “Basketball is a team game. When it becomes a one-man operation, as it did after Chamberlain came to Philadelphia, it just doesn’t work. You cannot expect nine other guys to submerge themselves and their abilities to one man. It particularly doesn’t work when the man everybody else is feeding isn’t helping the others whenever and wherever he can … the argument can be made that Chamberlain only suffers from a poor supporting cast. If you have a man who makes better than 50 percent of his shots, the argument goes, why shouldn’t you concentrate on getting the ball to him whenever possible? Carrying that to its logical conclusion, I would have to ask why you should ever let any other player on the team shoot at all. No, statistics mean nothing in basketball.” Amen, Cooz! I love when a Hall of Famer proves my point.
21. And if you’re looking for a degree of difficulty, Russell coached himself for the last two titles. Why doesn’t that ever get factored in? Imagine MJ winning those final two titles in Utah as a player-coach.
22. In Terry Pluto’s Tall Tales, Heinsohn claims that Russell’s defense was worth 60 to 70 points per game. Take that one with a grain of salt because he’s the same guy who compared Leon Powe to Moses Malone. It was only a matter of time before Tommy was interviewed for a book called Tall Tales.
23. This was before the three-point line, basketball camps, and picture-perfect jump shots, when teams took a ton of shots and threw up a ton of bricks. Of the great guards who peaked in the ’50s, Cousy was a 37.5% shooter; Sharman, 42.6%; Slater Martin, 36%; Bob Davies, 37%; Guy Rodgers, 38%; Richie Guerin, 42% and Dick McGuire, 39%. Only when Sam Jones, Jerry West, and Hal Greer emerged did the prototypical two-guard take shape; long-range shooting specialists didn’t start making a mark until the mid-’70s. So someone who protected the basket had an even greater effect back then.
24. It’s exceedingly possible that Russell was good for 8 to 15 blocks per game in the playoffs. Just researching this chapter, there were three different playoff games in the ’60s when an author or narrator casually mentioned in their summary that Russell had 12 blocks.
25. Sam Jones made an art form of this, adding little insults with each shot like “Too late” or “Sorry, Wilt” every time he sank a jumper. One time Wilt flipped out and chased him around the Garden, so Sam grabbed a photographer’s stool to fend him off. If this happened in 2009, I’m almost positive it would lead Around the Horn.
26. Hondo’s take on Russ: “There was never a player who could control a game defensively like him. You could see the shooters just cringing every time they got within his range. Sometimes he would start out very strong, in order to discourage his man completely. Other times he would allow a man to score some early baskets, then later on, when the guy wanted to attempt the same move in a crucial situation, he would find that Russell would prevent him from doing it…. The end of the game was really Russell’s time. In a close game, he was incredibly alive.”
27. This is an entertaining book that includes stories about Wilt getting blown by stewardesses on airplanes and stuff. Here’s one case where Wilt really didn’t get enough credit for something. Wilt should have won a Pulitzer, or at least a National Book Award.
28. Later in life, Wilt executed this unselfish mind-set to perfection on the set of Conan the Destroyer, which went on to become the most unintentionally funny action movie of the ’80s other than Gymkata. Even as an actor, Wilt was breaking records.
29. In A Few Good Men, this would be the trial scene when Cruise grabs the rule book from Kevin Bacon and asks Noah Wyle to find the part about going to the mess hall for dinner. In other words, I just scored major points with my case by digging up these Wilt quotes. Even better, I got to read the story about Wilt getting blown by the stewardess again.
30. From Bill Libby’s enjoyable 1977 biography of Wilt (Goliath): “A couple of times he went to a teammate with a hot hand and told him he was going to give him the ball exclusively because the other guys were wasting his passes and he wouldn’t win the assists title this way.” What a team player, that Wilt. In that book, Libby mentions that, for all the hullabaloo about Wilt being such a ladies’ man, “a surprising number of players and reporters say they’ve never seen Wilt with a woman.” Come on, Wilt couldn’t have been gay! He was a lifelong bachelor, he loved clothes and he loved cats! Where is this coming from?
31. Although, again, Conan the Destroyer was a great freaking movie.
32. That’s the same Willie Naulls who landed on the Celts one year later and won two straight titles with Russell. Hmmmmmm.
33. Wilt played for 9 coaches in 14 years. I love that stat.
34. Even Wilt admitted this in his book, writing, “The stories created quite a furor, and I’m not sure the 76ers ever got back in stride during the playoffs.” Although, in classic Wilt fashion, he blamed the magazine for not waiting to run the piece.
35. One thing Wilt can’t be blamed for: during a 1965 game in Boston, 76ers owner Ike Richman died of a heart attack while sitting at the press table next to Philly’s bench. If you had to pick a superstar whose owner might drop dead during a big game, you’d have to pick Wilt, right? Strangest part of the story: they carried Richman out and the game kept going. How heartless was that? Nowadays, I’d like to think we’d postpone a game even if one of the Maloofs dropped dead. Although nobody would be able to tell for about a quarter.
36. The best part of this story? I found out about it from Wilt’s autobiography. He didn’t even seem that bitter, explaining, “I guess guys like Elgin Baylor and Jerry West were afraid I’d come to L.A. and take some of their glory away.” Yeah, Wilt, I’m sure that was it.
37. With five seconds left, Wilt cut Boston’s lead to one. Russell’s ensuing inbounds pass hit one of the wires that held the basket up, a fluke play that doubled as an automatic turnover and nearly cost Boston the season. Wilt loved to bring this up afterward, pointing out again and again that Russell was as capable of choking as anyone. This is like Lindsay Lohan hearing that Dakota Fanning sipped champagne at a wedding one night, then screaming, “See, see, I’m not the only messed-up one!”
38. One of the hidden subplots of Game 7: Hondo said later that he jumped the inbounds pass for Hal Greer partly because he was waiting for it; he knew Wilt wasn’t getting the ball because Wilt never wanted to get fouled in big moments (so there was no way they were running the play for him).
39. It’s a photo of Barry standing in an airport and holding a bag and a basketball. He’s not even really looking at the camera. He looks put out, like he’s posing for a picture for an Asian tourist who didn’t know who he was and just wanted a picture of a tall white guy. It’s spectacular.
40. When Reed limped off early in Game 5, Wilt somehow got shut down by a woefully undersized Dave DeBusschere and New York’s pressure defense during their rousing 16-point comeback. Wilt finished with 22 points but took only three shots in the second half. Three shots? The fact that he threw up a 45–27 in Game 6 only made it worse.
41. Bradley’s book double as a psychological profile of Wilt’s loserdom. No joke.
42. Thanks to Elliott Kalb’s informative book Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball for the stats you’re about to read. If you’re an NBA fan, buy this book. It’s great. Even if I disagreed with almost all of it and he painfully overrated Shaq.
43. Which raises a question: why the heck didn’t they keep track of blocks back then? How hard would that have been? This is the first of 79 times I will complain about this.
44. Butch benched Wilt for the last five minutes of Game 7 of the ’69 Finals knowing that if the Lakers lost the game, he’d get fired. And he did. That’s how strongly he disliked Wilt.
45. I couldn’t fight off Grumpy Old Editor from chiming in any longer. His take on Lucas: “Lucas should talk—he never met a stat he didn’t squeeze until it was dead.”
46. According to SI’s Frank Deford, Russell once told Wilt, “I’m probably the only person on the planet who knows how good you really are.” I’m almost positive that Mario Lopez never said this to Mark-Paul Gosselaar.
47. That sentence easily could have been Vince Carter’s high school yearbook quote.