The Book of Basketball (63 page)

For whatever reason, this series provoked some of my angriest writing ever. I belted out the following rant after Game 5:

Here’s what happens if Miami wins the title: New Jersey will say to themselves, “Hey, maybe this could happen to us with Vince”; Washington will say the same about Arenas; Boston with Pierce; the Lakers with Kobe; New Team X with Iverson; and so on and so on. But that’s just the thing … we went through this last decade. There was only one MJ; the formula couldn’t be replicated. Same with Wade; only LeBron can match him. And everyone else will fail trying, which means we can look forward to another decade of perimeter scorers going 11 for 32 in big games, teammates standing around while stars dribble at the top of the key waiting to challenge two defenders at once, and refs deciding every big game (like in Game 5) by how they interpret contact when the same guy is recklessly driving to the basket over and over again. Does any of this sound fun to you? As much as I enjoy watching Wade, a Heat title would erase all the progress of this spring…. Nothing against Wade (after all, it isn’t his fault his team sucks and he has to play this way)
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but seeing an individual triumph over a team YET AGAIN would erase every positive outcome from the 2005–6 season. Basically, the team with LeBron or Wade will win the next 10–12 titles, and it will come down to which guy made more 20-footers with two guys on him and which guy got the most cheap calls from the most spineless referees. That’s not basketball, it’s a star system. When my wife was asking why I was so ticked off after Game 5, it wasn’t because I had money on the game (I didn’t),
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or because I liked one team more than the other (I don’t). If Miami wins, we may as well go back to box haircuts again, because it’s going to be 1991 all over again—the “New and Improved” NBA will have been defeated, and the Old-School NBA will reign supreme.
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You know how things turned out: Miami prevailed in six as Wade attempted a startling 97 free throws. The combined effect of this disastrous Finals and Tim Donaghy’s scandalous firing made the powers that be finally realize that officials held too much sway. If you watched the 2008 Finals carefully, you noticed that Kobe never benefited from those star system calls that he absolutely would have drawn had the series been played two years earlier. (If anything, Kobe became so frustrated that it took him out of his rhythm to some degree.) In 2006? We hadn’t made
that progress yet. Before the series, I wrote in my Finals preview that “no team depends on the refs quite like the Heat. When the refs are calling all the bumps on Shaq and protecting Wade on every drive, they’re unstoppable. When they’re calling everything fairly, they’re eminently beatable. If they’re not getting any calls, they’re just about hopeless. I could see the refs swinging two games in Miami’s favor during this series, possibly three. In fact, I’m already depressed about it and the series hasn’t even started yet.” That was an eerie prediction considering how it played out. Down two games to none and trailing by double digits in Game 3, Wade drew every call and willed Miami to a comeback victory. In Game 5, Wade attempted as many free throws (25) as the entire Mavericks team—how the hell does that happen?—and scored the game-winning points after Wade got sent to the line on an out-of-control drive where Bennett Salvatore called Nowitzki on a barely perceptible nudge from 40 feet away.
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There were your two swing games. So yeah, Wade did the best MJ impersonation of all time in that series. But we can’t forget what happened with the shoddy officiating. I won’t let you. For as long as I have my “Sports Guy” column, I plan on referring to that 2006 Heat team as the “Miami Salvatores.” And that’s that.

52. DENNIS JOHNSON

Resume: 14 years, 10 quality, 5 All-Stars … ’79 Finals MVP (23–6–6) … top 5 (’81), top 10 (’80) … All-Defense (9x, six 1st) … started for 3 champs (’79 Sonics, ’84, ’86 Celts) and 3 runner-ups (’78, ’85, ’87) … 3-year peak: 19–4–5 … ’87 Playoffs: 19–4–9, 41.9 MPG (23 G) … never played fewer than 72 games, missed 48 games total

Yet another reason why we need to blow up the Hall of Fame: Poor DJ passed away in 2007 before Springfield found a place for him, leading to the inevitable ceremony when he makes it posthumously and his peers
pay tribute with a series of “It’s just too bad DJ couldn’t have been here to see this” comments. I hate when that happens. Either you’re a Hall of Famer or you’re not. This isn’t the Oscars or Emmys, where only a certain number of nominees can win each year. You shouldn’t have to “wait your turn.”

Here’s what we know for sure:

1. Johnson was the greatest defensive guard of his era, making nine straight All-Defensive appearances from 1979 to 1987 (first or second team) and becoming one of the only players ever described as “destructive” on that end. The Celtics traded for him before the ’84 season
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   because Andrew Toney had been torturing them every spring. The Sixers never beat them again. And every Celtics fan remembers how the ’84 Finals turned when DJ demanded to guard Magic before Game 4,
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   as well as DJ’s singular obliteration of Robert Reid in the ’86 Finals. An All-Defensive team for the past thirty years can only include four guys—DJ, Payton, Pippen and Hakeem—as well as a juicy argument between Garnett, Rodman and Ben Wallace for the power forward spot.
   

2. For the short list of best big-game guards, it’s Frazier, West, Miller, Jordan, Sam Jones, DJ and maybe Isiah (depending on how much you want to blame him for Bird’s steal). DJ played in six Finals and two other conference Finals, going down as the best all-around guard for 11 straight seasons on teams that won 47, 52, 56, 57, 46, 53, 62, 63, 67, 59 and 57 games. He averaged 17.3 points, 5.6 assists, and 4.3 rebounds for his playoff career, including an astonishing 23-game run for a banged-up ’87 Celtics team on which he averaged a 19–9 and 42 minutes per game guarding the likes of John Lucas, Sidney Moncrief, Isiah Thomas, Vinnie Johnson and Magic.
   

3. Larry Bird called him the greatest he ever played with, which seems relevant since the Legend played with McHale, Parish, Walton, Archibald, Cowens and Maravich (all Hall of Famers). Although I do feel like he was sticking it to McHale a little. More on this in a few pages.
   

4. In fourteen seasons, DJ played in 1,100 of a possible 1,148 regular-season games, missed more than 5 games just once (missing 10 in the ’89 season, near the tail end of his career) and played in another 180 playoff games (eleventh on the all-time list). The guy was built like an Albanian oak.
   

5. He made the all-time “We’ll never see anyone like this specific guy again” team. There’s never been a guard like DJ before or since.
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The last paragraph should have clinched his Hall of Fame spot. Could you compare Dennis Johnson to anyone else on the planet? He splashed onto the scene as a high-flying, physical two-guard for the Sonics, evolved into a scorer for Phoenix, reincarnated himself as a heady point guard in Boston and peaked as the ringleader of a loaded ’86 team that scored 114 points a game. He could defend anyone shorter than six foot nine and lock them down. He was such an intelligent player that Bird and DJ had a secret ESP play for six straight years, in which Bird would linger near the basket like he was waiting for someone to set him a pick, then
DJ
would whip a pass by the defender’s ears and Bird would catch it at the last possible second for a layup (and the only way that play happened was if they locked eyes). He was one of those classic only-when-it-counts shooters who could be riding a 3-for-14 game into the final minute, then nail a wide-open 20-footer to win the game. Every Celtic loved playing with him because of his competitiveness and the way he carried himself in big games with a noticeable swagger. Other than Bird, I can’t remember following anyone who enjoyed the actual process
of winning more
than him. There’s a great scene in the ’87 team video when the Celts are boarding the bus after a Game 6 shellacking in the Pistons series. Still sulking about
Dennis Rodman’s antics, DJ sarcastically waves his hand over his head and says something like, “Yeah, okay, we’ll see what happens on Sunday.” Sure enough, the Celts pulled out an absolute slugfest of a seventh game, with DJ following Rodman around in the final seconds and sarcastically mimicking Rodman’s high-stepped gait while waving his hand over his head. The lesson, as always: don’t mess with Dennis Johnson.
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On a personal note, I loved so many things about watching him play: the way he’d suddenly strip an unsuspecting guard at midcourt (you
never
see that anymore) like a pickpocket swiping a wallet; the ESP plays with Bird; the supernatural way he rose to the occasion in big moments (like the game-winner in Game 4 of the ’85 Finals); his unsurpassed knack for grabbing big rebounds in traffic; the way he always made one huge play in a must-win game (my personal favorite was in Game 7 against the ’87 Bucks, when he went flying full speed out of bounds to save a loose ball in the final 90 seconds, then somehow whipped it off Sikma as he careened into the entire Bucks bench). Every time I get sucked into an old Celtics game from the eighties on ESPN Classic or NBA TV, there’s always a point in the game where I find myself saying, “Holy crap, I forgot how good Dennis Johnson was.”

Few remember his defining moment: the waning seconds of Game 5 in the ’87 Eastern finals, when Bird picked off Isiah’s pass and found DJ for the winning layup. Right after Bird snatched the ball from Laimbeer’s grimy hands, as everyone else was still processing what had happened, DJ started cutting toward the basket with his hands up. From the mid-seventies to right now, I can only pinpoint a handful of players who would have instinctively known to cut toward the basket there: MJ, Magic, Frazier, Stockton, Reggie, Mullin, Barry, Isiah (ironically, the one who threw
the pass), Horry, Wade, Kidd, Iverson, Nash, Kobe and that’s about it. Nobody else starts moving for a full second after that steal happens. And by the way, if DJ had never made that cut, Bird would have been forced to launch a fall-away 10-footer over the backboard to win the game … which he probably would have made, but that’s beside the point. Don’t forget that DJ was chugging full speed as he caught the pass from his left, with Dumars charging from the right, meaning he had to shield the ball from Dumars, turn his body and make an extremely difficult reverse layup that came within a hair of missing (believe me, I was there). Of course, few people remember this, just as few remember how great a basketball player Dennis Johnson was. As my father said on the phone when DJ died, “He was the best guard on the best team I ever watched in my entire life.”

Agreed. DJ should have made the trip to Springfield when he was still alive. At least he lives on in this book.

51. BILL SHARMAN

Resume: 12 years, 8 quality, 8 All-Stars … top 5 (’56, ’57, ’58, ’59), top 10 (’53, 55, ’60) … started for 4 champs in Boston (’57, ’59, ’60, ’61) … leader: FT% (7x) … 3-year peak: 21–3–4 … best Playoffs FT shooter, 75+ games (91.1%)

The NBA’s best two-guard until Jerry West showed up; the first shooter to regularly crack 40 percent from the field and shoot 90 percent from the line; half of the most successful backcourt in the history of the league. Factoring in team success, individual careers, statistics and total games played together, we haven’t seen anything approaching Cousy and Sharman. (Lemme know when we’ll see two guards from the same team make first-team All-NBA for four straight years.)
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When Sharman retired in 1961, only twenty-two noncenters had played 500 games or more at that
time. Of those twenty-two players, Sharman ranked first in free throw percentage (88 percent) and second in shooting percentage (42.6 percent, just behind Bob Pettit); he was the only guard to crack 40 percent from the field. So Sharman was
significantly
better than any other two-guard from his era; the numbers, awards, and titles back this up, as does the fact that Sharman held off Sam Jones for four solid years. The six-foot-two Sharman even moonlighted as a third baseman in Brooklyn’s farm system from 1950 to 1955, getting called up at the end of the ’51 season and being thrown out of a game for yelling at an umpire, becoming the only player in major league history to get ejected from a game without ever actually appearing in one. Bizarre. But that gives you an idea of his athletic pedigree. He was also infamous for being the first player to (a) study opponents’ tendencies and keep notes on them and (b) create a daily routine of stretching, exercising, and shooting and make a concerted effort to stick to that routine.
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What doesn’t live on historically was Sharman’s defense. By all accounts, he was that decade’s best lockdown defender and a feisty competitor who had more fights than Jake LaMotta. Jerry West once remembered being a rookie and making seven straight shots against an aging Sharman, then Sharman preventing an eighth shot simply by taking a swing at him. As West told the
L.A. Times
years later, “I’ll tell you this, you did not drive by him. He got into more fights than Mike Tyson. You respected him as a player.” Sounds like my kind of guy. I’d tell you more, but Sharman retired when my mother was twelve.

50. DOLPH SCHAYES

Resume: 15 years, 11 quality, 12 All-Stars … ’58 MVP runner-up … top 5 (’52, ’53, ’54, ’55, ’57, ’58), top 10 (’50, ’51, ’56, ’59, ’60, ’61) … leader: rebounds (1x), FT% (3x), minutes (2x) … career FT: 85% … 5-year peak: 23–13–3 … best player on champ (’55 Nats)

You have to love the days when NBA superstars had names like Dolph. Schayes excelled in two different eras (pre-shot-clock, post-shot-clock), won an Imaginary Playoffs MVP and a ring for the ’55 Nats, stuck around for an abnormally long time (fifteen years, which was like twenty-five years back then), exhibited a startling degree of durability (missing three games total in his first twelve seasons) and finished as the second most successful forward of the pre-Elgin era. Still, we have to penalize him for excelling as a set-shooting, slow-as-molasses power forward during an time when black players were few and far between. When Russell entered the league, Syracuse and Schayes won only two Playoffs in the next seven years. What would happen if he played now? Whom would he defend? How would he score? Would he have been better than Danny Ferry? I also couldn’t shake his shooting stats—Schayes only shot 40% in a season twice and finished at a deadly 38% for his career, well behind contemporaries such as Hagan (45%), Twyman (45%), Ed Macauley (44%), Pettit (44%), George Yardley (42%) and Arizin (42%). Maybe Cousy’s shooting stats were equally brutal, but his playmaking skills would have translated nicely to today’s game. In short, I’m just not seeing the Dolphster. But you can’t argue with five top fives and six top tens, so he had to crack the top fifty. Barely.
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