The Book of Basketball (14 page)

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.
⁴⁷
I 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.