The Book of Basketball (64 page)

49. ELVIN HAYES

Resume: 16 years, 12 quality, 12 All-Stars … top 5 (’75, ’77, ’79), top 10 (’73, ’74, ’76) … second-best player on 1 champ (’78 Bullets) and 2 runner-ups (’75, ’79) … missed 9 games in his entire career … traded once in his prime … ’75 playoffs: 26–11 (17 G) … ’78, ’79 playoffs: 22–14 (40 G) … 3-year peak: 28–17 … 25K-15K Club

The Big E played 50,000 minutes exactly. (Yes, it was intentional.) He missed 9 games in a sixteen-year career and never played fewer than 80 games in a season. He scored over 27,000 points and grabbed over 16,000
rebounds. And in the last three minutes of a huge game, you wouldn’t have wanted him on the floor. We’ll remember Hayes as his generation’s Karl Malone, a gifted power forward with terrific numbers who played differently when the bread needed to be buttered … although Malone carried a little more weight with his peers and weaseled his way into two MVP awards, whereas Hayes never cracked the top two in the balloting. It’s worth mentioning that the Big E played his first four years for the Rockets,
⁵⁰
averaged a 27–16, and doubled as their franchise player when they moved to Houston, the same city where he memorably starred in college, only things deteriorated so badly that they gave him away before the
’73
–’
74
season for Jack Marin and cash considerations.
⁵¹
Jack Marin and cash considerations? That was the whole trade? Other than eye-opening numbers and a memorable no-show in the ’75 Finals, Hayes stands out for five reasons:

1. My favorite basketball writer growing up, Bob Ryan, openly detested Elvin’s game and took shots at the Big E any time he could. Any time someone choked in the clutch or shrank from a big moment, regardless of the sport, you could count on Ryan to compare that player to Hayes. Since Ryan is one of the more rational writers around, as well as the best hoops writer of my lifetime, I’m trusting his judgment here.
   

2. You know the annoying “Emm Vee Pee!” chants that get serenaded on every top-twenty player in the league? All empirical evidence suggests that Elvin Hayes and the Bullets fans are to blame. Down the stretch of the ’79 season, when there were three favorites to win the award (Malone, Gervin and Hayes), Washington fans started chanting “Emm Vee Pee!” every time he made a good play. Now we get to hear that chant when the likes of Joe Johnson makes a three. Awesome. By the way, with players voting for MVP for the majority of Elvin’s career, the Big E cracked the top six only three times—fifth in ’74, third in ’75, third in ’79—which makes me wonder if the other guys respected him that much. I’m guessing no.
   

3. He certainly didn’t distinguish himself in the ’78 Finals, scoring 133 points in the first six games but only 19 in the fourth quarters, earning derisive comments in Curry Kirkpatrick’s
   SI
   Finals feature, like “Individualism overcame Elvin in yet another big contest,” “Hayes once more disappeared in the moments of crisis,” “In between his hiding and complaining to everybody about the officials,” and “[It’s] imperative for the Bullets that their only real ‘name’ player and 10-year All-Star justify his status by not dissolving at the end of the seventh game.” What happened? Elvin scored 12 points in Game 7 and fouled out with 10 minutes to play in a close game. They won the title on the road without him. I find this interesting.
   ⁵²
   

4. According to Filip Bondy in
   Tip Off
   , before Hayes’ final season with the Rockets in ’84, he made a big deal about mentoring prized rookie Ralph Sampson, causing Houston coach Bill Fitch to pull Sampson aside and tell him, “You stay away from that no-good fucking prick.” Elvin Hayes, everybody!
   

5. Hayes’ signature shot? The fall-away/turnaround. My theory on the fall-away: it’s a passive-aggressive shot that says more about a player than you think. For instance, Jordan, McHale and Hakeem all had tremendous fall-aways—in fact, MJ developed the shot to save his body from undue punishment driving to the basket—but it was one piece of their offensive arsenal, a weapon used to complement the other weapons already in place. Well, five basketball stars in the past sixty years have been famous for either failing miserably in the clutch or lacking the ability to rise to the occasion: Wilt, Hayes, Malone, Ewing and Garnett. All five were famous for their fall-away/turnaround jumpers and took heat because their fall-aways pulled them out of rebounding position. If it missed, almost always it was a one-shot possession. On top of that, it never leads to free throws—either the shot falls or the other team gets it. Could you make the case that the fall-away, fundamentally, is a loser’s shot? For a big man, it’s the dumbest shot you can take—only one good thing can happen and that’s it—as well as a symbol of a larger problem, namely, that a team’s best big man would rather move away from the basket than toward it. Of the handful of differences that led Tim Duncan to become more successful than Garnett, the biggest has been their mind-set in close games. Duncan makes a concerted effort to plant his ass down low, post up and take high-percentage shots (either jump hooks, drop-step layups, mini-fall-aways or “I’m putting my shoulder into you and getting to the rim” layups) that might also lead to fouls, tip-ins, or putback layups, whereas Garnett mostly settles for 18-footers and fall-aways.
   

So here’s my take: the fall-away says, “I’d rather stay out here.” It says, “I’m afraid to fail.” It says, “I want to win this game, but only on my terms.” In a related story, Elvin Hayes attempted more fall-aways than anyone who ever played in the NBA. Draw your own conclusions.

48. JAMES WORTHY

Resume: 12 years, 8 quality, 7 All-Stars … ’88 Finals MVP … top 15 (’90, ’91) … 2nd-or 3rd-best player for 3 champs (’85, ’87, ’88 Lakers) and 3 runner-ups (’84, ’89, ’91) … 2-year peak: 21–5–4, 55% FG … playoffs (143 G): 21–5–2, 54% FG (5th-best ever, 100+ games)

If you made an All-Star team of Guys Who Made a Jump Historically Because They Were Fortunate Enough to Play on Some Really Good Teams, here’s your starting five: Parish, Worthy, Scottie Pippen, Walt Frazier and K. C. Jones (who snuck into the Hall of Fame even though he couldn’t shoot). At the same time, each player had skill sets and personalities that lent themselves to semicomplementary roles on winning teams (we covered the benefits in Parish’s section), so it’s tough to penalize them for being that way. You can win titles with guys like Pippen, Frazier and Worthy. You know, as long as they aren’t the best guy on your team.

Worthy stood out for his athleticism (off the charts), transition finishes (as good as anyone), and signature freeze-the-ball-high-above, swooping one-handed slam (one of the five memorable signature dunks of the eighties, along with Doc’s tomahawk dunk, Bernard’s running two-hander, ’Nique’s windmill and MJ’s tilt-the-body one-hander). I already made this joke, but let’s tweak it: anyone who had a Nerf hoop in the eighties and claims he didn’t attempt Worthy’s swooping dunk or Bernard’s two-hander at least five hundred times is lying. Worthy had an unstoppable first step and absolutely abused slower defenders. Defensively, he played Bird better than any quality offensive player and helped swing the ’87 Finals that way. He wasn’t the greatest rebounder but had a knack for grabbing big ones in big moments. And you can’t forget Game 7 of the ’88 Finals, when he carried the Lakers with a 36–16–10 against a superior defensive team and rightfully earned the nickname “Big Game James.”
⁵³
Had he developed a three-point shot—and it’s unclear why he didn’t
⁵⁴
—Worthy would have been unstoppable. We also can’t forget that he spent three years at Carolina and another seven playing for Pat Riley, a notorious practice Nazi, which explains why Worthy’s legs went so quickly after just ten quality NBA seasons. You can’t penalize him for a lack of longevity.

You also can’t discuss Worthy without mentioning the Wilkins/Worthy what-if and Worthy’s thank-God-it-never-happened Clippers career, which would be neat to simulate
Sliding Doors-
style if we had the ability to do so.
⁵⁵
One thing’s for sure: had Worthy gone second in the ’82 draft, he wouldn’t have cracked the top fifty of the Pyramid. You need
some luck with this stuff and he had it. While we’re here, I’d like to honor him for two other things: being a starting forward on the All-Time Bearded All-Stars,
⁵⁶
and being the subject of Peter Vecsey’s funniest joke ever, after Worthy was arrested for soliciting two prostitutes and arranging for them to meet him in a Houston hotel room (Vecsey cracked in his
New York Post
column, “James always did have trouble scoring against double teams”). High comedy for 1991, I’m telling you.

47. BILLY CUNNINGHAM

Resume: 11 years, 8 quality, 5 All-Stars (1 ABA) … ’73 ABA MVP … ’69 BS MVP … top 5 (’69, ’70, ’71), top 10 (’72), top 5 ABA (’73) … 5-year peak: 24–12–4 … ’73 ABA: 24–12–6 … ’73 Playoffs: 24–12–5 (12 G) … career: 21.2 PPG, 10.4 RPG (both top 40) … Playoffs: 20–10–4 (54 G)

Billy was the starting small forward on the Guys I Would Have Loved if I Had Seen Them Play Team: a lefty small forward who played bigger than his size and had a game best described as a cross between Manu Ginobili’s and Shawn Marion’s, only with that superintelligent hoops IQ of a kid weaned in the New York schoolyards. Like Bernard’s, his career was derailed by a major knee injury. Unlike Bernard, he never really recovered. But Cunningham was the sixth man for one of the greatest teams ever (the ’67 Sixers) and the NBA’s best small forward for a five-year stretch (’68 to ’72) before winning the ABA MVP … and then he got hurt and that was that. Billy C.’s calling card was his Manu-like drives. He grew up in Brooklyn and played on an outdoor court where it was so windy that everyone was afraid to take 20-footers, so everyone adjusted by taking the biscuit to the basket in any way possible. (After researching this book, I’m convinced that the guy who surpasses MJ will be a poor kid with two parents and two older brothers who grew up playing on a clay court where it was too windy to shoot 20-footers. Mark my words, he will break every record in the book.) Billy also
may have been MVP of the White Guys Who Played Like Black Guys team (we made it!), a massively important topic for Jabaal Abdul-Simmons. You can’t really define what it takes to make this hallowed team; it’s more of a “you know it when you see it” thing, although here are three good rules of thumb: Could the player in question have pulled a C. Thomas Howell in
Soul Man
and just pretended he was black without anyone noticing? Had the player actually been black instead of white, would his career (and the way we enjoyed it) have made more sense? In other words, did it almost seem like a mistake that he was white? And could the player do Billy Hoyle’s routine on an inner-city playground court and immediately win the respect of everyone there? Here are the Billy Hoyle All-Stars:

Starters.
Dave Cowens, Chambers, Cunningham, Westphal and Jason Williams,
⁵⁷
or as I like to call them, the Honorary Brothers. You know what’s appealing about this group other than a complete lack of White Man’s Disease? They would have made a fantastic starting five! What would have been more fun than watching White Chocolate running the fast break with Cunningham and Chambers on the wings, or Westphal and Cowens running high screens in crunch time?

Sixth Man.
Bobby Jones, among the confusing players in NBA history—a skinny, unassuming diabetic who played above the rim as much as any player black or white. Other than Big Shot Rob, no forward mastered the “run-the-floor, defend-the-rim, shut-down-a-hot-scorer, crash-the-boards, don’t-take-anything-off-the-table” role better than Bobby Jones. Even his name made him sound black.

Bench.
Dan Majerle, Brent Barry, Bobby Sura, Raef LaFrentz (before his knee injury), Andrei Kirilenko and Chris Andersen. This would have been an entertaining nucleus for a modern team even if they would have given up 125 points a game.
⁵⁸

Coach.
Doug Collins, who would have edged out Westphal for a starting spot had he stayed healthy as an NBA player. He’ll have to settle for coaching the Billy Hoyle All-Stars and serving as Mike Fratello’s assistant (along with Dick Versace and Jimmy Rogers) on the What the Fuck Did He Do to His Hair? All-Stars.
⁵⁹

46. HAL GREER

Resume: 15 years, 11 quality seasons, 10 All-Stars … top 10 (’63, ’64, ’65, ’66, ’67, ’68, ’69) … 5-year peak: 25–5–4 … 2nd-best player for one champ (’67 Sixers) … ’67 Playoffs: 28–6–5 (15 G) … Playoffs: 20–6–4 (92 G) … 20K Point Club

During three summers spent researching this book, I loved learning about forgotten greats who played before my time—guys with whom I had no history whatsoever—and how after-the-fact portraits of them were colored by a collection of anecdotes and stories that always skewed one of six possible ways from players, coaches, and reporters who were there.

1. Gushing overcompensation.
   Everyone from Star X’s era feels like Star X doesn’t get his proper due, so their stories include hard-to-believe anecdotes like “One time, we were trailing the Hawks by two in a Game 7. They got a fast break and Russell sprinted full-court to block the game-winning layup, only he was going so fast that he landed in the twenty-seventh row of the stands—I swear to God, Sam Jones and I counted the rows after the game!” and impossible-to-prove statements that ignore all contrary evidence to the fact, like, “Look, if Oscar played now, he’d still be the best guard in the league, I can guarantee you that one.”
   ⁶⁰
   You’ll also see this happen with druggies like Micheal Ray Richardson, Roy Tarpley and Marvin Barnes—yeah, we know those guys would have been good, but as the years pass, the ceiling was lifted for them, so now you’ll hear “as good as Magic” (for Micheal Ray), “as good as Barkley” (for Tarp) and “coulda been the greatest forward ever” (for Barnes). Pop a Quaalude and settle down.
   

2. Backhanded compliments.
   Everyone praises everyone else from their era (that’s just the way it works), but sometimes you find sneaky digs strewn in. Bird would always say things about McHale like, “If Kevin wanted to, he could be the top defender in the league” and “He’s so awesome on some nights, then other nights he’s just average. He makes it look so easy.” Translation:
   I wish he gave more of a shit.
   Or ex-teammates would describe a mercurial guy by saying something like, “Hey, what can I tell you, Wilt was Wilt.” Anytime you say someone’s name twice as a way to describe him, that means he was either annoying, unpredictable, a complete asshole, a blowhard, as dumb as a rock, or some combination of those five things. If there’s ever a documentary about me and someone says, “Hey, what can I tell you? Simmons was Simmons,” I’ll kill myself.
   

3. Outright potshots.
   Only reserved for renowned cheap-shot artists (like Laimbeer or Clyde Lovelette), selfish gunners (like Mark Aguirre), holier-than-thou pricks (like Rick Barry), moody enigmas (like Adrian Dantley) and, of course, Wilt Chamberlain.
   

4. Totally biased evaluations of a teammate or former player.
   My favorite: Pat Riley deciding upon James Worthy’s retirement that Worthy was “the greatest small forward ever.” Had he said something like, “If you came up with twenty-five qualities for the perfect small forward, James would have had the highest number of them of anyone ever” or even “When God came up with the idea of a small forward, He was thinking of a guy like James Worthy,” I’d accept that. But you can’t tell me that James Worthy was better than Larry Bird, Rick Barry or Scottie Pippen and expect me to take you seriously after that. You just can’t. Same for Bird repeatedly claiming that DJ was the best player he ever played with. Um, you played with McHale at his zenith. You’re not topping that one, Larry. Sorry.
   ⁶¹
   

5. Enlightening evaluations.
   Sadly, this never happens enough. Here’s an example of a wonderful critique of Marvin “Bad News” Barnes by Steve Jones, a former teammate of News in St. Louis, for
   Loose Balls:
   

   Marvin just attacked the ball on the glass. If he was on the right side of the rim and the ball went to the left, he didn’t just stand there like most guys and figure he had no shot at it, he went across the lane and got the ball. When he was in the mood, he could get a rebound, throw an outlet pass to a guard, then race down the court and catch a return pass for a dunk as well as any big man in basketball. He had an 18-foot range on his jumper and a good power game inside. He had every physical ingredient you’d want in a big man and he had the killer spirit to go with it. He didn’t just want to beat you, he wanted to embarrass you. But so much of what Marvin did was counter productive to his career. He disdained practice. He stayed up all night. He didn’t listen to anyone about anything, but then he’d come out and play a great game. You’d see that and know that the gods had touched this man and made him a great player, only he had no idea what he had. And he kept pushing things and pushing things, like a little kid trying to see what he could get away with. He was the star and he knew it. Also, management gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted, and what he wanted to do was run amok.
   

   You can’t do better than that. Steve Jones just summed up every memorable/tantalizing/tragic quality of Marvin’s career in exactly 248 words.
   ⁶²
   The only way Jones could have done better is if he said, “Look, when you come into the NBA with the nickname ‘Bad News,’ you’re probably headed for a disappointing career.”
   ⁶³
   Then again, that was the perfect storm of subject and speaker—Barnes messed up in the least forgivable way possible, which meant Jones could be candid about him, and Jones was an eloquent guy who worked as a broadcaster for thirty years (and counting). If our ninety-six Pyramid guys had Jones wrapping up their careers in 248 words, this book would have been much easier to write.
   

6. I-can’t-think-of-anything-memorable-to-say Cliché Bukkake.
   And now we’ve come full circle to Mr. Greer. By all accounts, he was either the second-or third-best guard of the sixties (depending on your feelings about Sam Jones), playing in ten straight All-Star Games, making seven second-team All-NBA’s, serving as a prototype for modern two-guards, hitting a high percentage of outside shots (career: 45 percent), rebounding a little (career: 5.0), scoring 23–25 a night in his prime, draining 80 percent of his free throws, playing good defense and taking as little off the table as possible. Greer retired in 1974 as the all-time leader in games played (1,122) and averaged a sterling 28–6–5 in the ’67 Playoffs for the Sixers. So it’s not like he lacked a top-fifty resume or anything. But check out these quotes from his “Top 50” profile page on
   NBA.com
   (the first three) and
   Tall Tales
   (the fourth one).