The Book of Basketball (110 page)

Larry Bird: $20 million (6 years, $120 million)
Robert Parish: $15 million (5 years, $75 million)
Dennis Johnson: $13 million (5 years, $65 million)
Danny Ainge: $9 million (5 years, $45 million)
Scott Wedman: $5.5 million (5 years, $27.5 million)
Sam Perkins: $4 million (4 years, $16 million)
Derek Harper: $3 million (4 years, $12 million)
Jerry Sichting: $1.8 million (2 years, $3.6 million)
Sam Vincent: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
Greg Kite: $1.7 million (4 years, $6.8 million)
David Thirdkill: $1.2 million (1 year, $1.2 million)
Rick Carlisle: $400K (3 years, $1.2 million)
Cap total: $77.3 million

Translation: Even after the above moves, they’d be guaranteed a $10-$12 million loss unless they made the second round. If their owners were afraid of taking that hit, maybe they would pursue
another
cap-friendly trade of Wedman or Ainge for a cheaper player or expiring contract that
would weaken the team even more. This is all an elaborate way of saying that if they had been playing under the 2009 rules, there’s no way in hell I would be bouncing my grandkids on my lap someday and telling them about the 1986 Boston Celtics. And that’s why we had to discount twenty-first-century teams in this chapter. The rules were and are stacked against them. Literally.
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Without further ado, the ten greatest teams of all time.

THE ELITE TEN

10. THE ’91 BULLS

Regular season (61–21): 35–6 at home … 9.0 SD (110–101) … 51% FG, 76% FT, 36% 3FG … 9–12 vs. 50-win teams … 56–15 (last 71 games) … winning streaks: 11 + 9

Playoffs (15–2): 8–1 at home … 11.7 PD (109.9–92.2) … 51.4 FG (1st), 45.0 defensive FG (2nd), 9.5 steals…. 9 double-digit wins … 2 losses by 4 points total … closeout margins: 9 + 5 + 21 + 7… following season: won title (beat Portland in 6)

Cast and crew: Michael Jordan (super-duper star), Scottie Pippen (super-duper-wingman), Horace Grant (wingman), Bill Cartwright, John Paxson, B. J. Armstrong, Stacey King, Cliff Levingston (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)

Gaining steam historically because their playoff record and point differentials were accomplished during an extremely competitive season and featured the following facts: they swept the back-to-back champs and murdered the Isiah era; they won the last four Finals games and helped
kill Showtime;
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and of their two playoff losses, one happened in overtime (Game 3 against Barkley and the Sixers) and the other happened on a last-second three by Sam Perkins (Finals, Game 1). Do you realize that Jordan missed wide-open jumpers to
win
both of those games? We always hear about Philly’s “Fo-Fo-Fo” postseason, but it wasn’t as impressive as what the ’91 Bulls accomplished. We’re penalizing them for the aforementioned Level One reason: you can’t be great when you don’t know if you’re great until the very end, and the ’91 Bulls didn’t know until the six-minute mark of their last game.
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9. THE ’72 L.A. LAKERS

Regular season (69–13): peak of 67–12 … 37–5 at home … 12.3 SD (121.0–108.7) … led league in points, rebounds, and assists, 2nd in FG (49%) and defensive FG (43%) … 20–6 vs. 49-win teams … longest winning streak: 33 (all-time record).

Playoffs (12–3): 6–2 at home … 3.3 SD (106.6–103.4) … 6 double-digit wins … 3 double-digit losses … 42.9% FG, 75.0% FT … closeout game margins of 11, 4, and 14 … following season: runners-up (lost to Knicks in 5)

Cast and crew: Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain (superstars), Gail Goodrich (super wingman), Jim McMillian, Leroy Ellis, Happy Hairston, Pat Riley (role players), Bill Sharman (coach)

If you kept the 2008 Celtics intact, removed every foreigner from the league, relocated twelve teams to a competing league, allowed them to wreak havoc in a diluted NBA and gave them a Finals opponent missing its center and captain (the 2008 equivalent of Willis Reed), would they
have finished better than 81–16? Yes. The answer is yes. So you can’t forget how incompetent that era was. In a three-season span, the ’70 Knicks, ’71 Bucks and ’72 Lakers ripped off four of the seven longest winning streaks of all time (33, 20 and 18).
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If you were even a
little
loaded, in a watered-down league struggling to replenish its young talent that made you super-duper-duper-duper loaded. With that said, their 33-game streak remains dumbfounding, and they certainly took care of business in the regular season. The playoffs? Not so much. It’s also hard for me to reconcile the fact that their best two players—West and Wilt—were at the tail end of their careers. Not even their primes
… their careers.
It’s a little reminiscent of the Stockton-Malone era peaking late for reasons that had nothing to do with Stockton or Malone. Anyway, I would have bumped them to honorable mention if not for that inconceivable streak. When nobody can approach 70-percent of your record, that record probably isn’t going anywhere for a while.

8. THE ’83 PHILADELPHIA 76ERS

Regular season (65–17): peak of 57–9 … 35–6 at home … 7.7 PD (112.1–104.4) … 13–7 vs. 50-win teams … winning streaks: 14 + 10

Playoffs (12–1): 7–0 at home … 5.9 SD (105.8–99.9) … 4 double-digit wins … closeout game margins of 3, 12 + 7 … following season: lost in round one (Philly in 5).

Cast & Crew: Moses (super-duper star); Julius Erving, Andrew Toney (super wingmen); Mo Cheeks (wingman); Bobby Jones (6th man); Clint Richardson, Clemon Johnson, Marc Iavaroni (role players);
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Billy Cunningham (coach)

My vote for Most Overrated Great Team. You had the following things in play: The Celtics turned against acerbic coach Bill Fitch
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… James Worthy broke his leg and missed the last four months of the Lakers season
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… Larry Brown killed a 49-win Nets team by bolting to Kansas with six games left in the season … the other three 49-plus win teams (Milwaukee, SA and Phoenix) weren’t even remotely threats … cocaine had ravaged the league and sapped the talents of some key stars … and the Sixers were a textbook Level One team. I’m not arguing the season itself as much as its ceiling; when you consider that Philly had Moses in his prime, Doc and Bobby at the tail end, Toney emerging as an unstoppable offensive force, and Mo Cheeks doing Mo Cheeks things, as well as an overwhelming amount of motivation,
of course
they were going to look splendid that year. Especially when they were handed a gift-wrapped decimated Lakers opponent missing Worthy, Nixon
and
McAdoo by Game 4 of the Finals. You know, only three of their five best players.

Here’s the question we need to ask: removing the Sixers from that season and matching them against other superteams, what would happen? They certainly weren’t great defensively; only Cheeks and Jones were above average and Jones was almost cooked. (Don’t ask me who would have defended McHale, Duncan, Jordan, Kobe or Bird on this team because I have no clue.) Moses may have been one of the best rebounders ever (averaging a sterling 26–16 in the Playoffs), but any team with size (like the ’86 Celts, for instance) would have toyed with Philly since they didn’t have any other big guys. Their outside shooting was more than a little sketchy; only Cheeks and Toney could make anything beyond 15 feet, and nobody had three-point range. Not to belabor the point about their crummy supporting cast, but did we mention that the ’83 Sixers started
Marc Iavaroni, a homeless man’s Kurt Rambis who wouldn’t have sniffed a nine-man rotation on a contender even six years later?
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How do we know for sure that the ’83 Sixers were overrated? Look at their title “defense,” when they returned everyone from their top eight and couldn’t get out of the first round. And it’s not like the ’84 Celtics knocked them out. Nope, it was the ’84 Nets with Mike Gminski, Albert King, Buck Williams and a sober-for-a-few-weeks Micheal Ray Richardson … and the Nets fought back from a 2–0 deficit to win three straight (including Game 5 in the Spectrum). Part of being a great champion is defending that title, right? What’s worse than bowing in the first round to Sugar and the Nets when you’re healthy? Was there a more appalling title defense in the past thirty-five years with the possible exception of the Iron Sheik losing the WWE title in five weeks?
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And since the league was considerably stronger in ’84—L.A. had Worthy back (and rookie Byron Scott), the Celtics were running on all cylinders again, Bernard and Sugar had rejuvenated the New York–area teams, younger athletic foes like Detroit, Dallas and Atlanta were starting to get frisky—the turd that Philly dropped in the ’84 punch bowl has to count for the legacy of the ’83 Sixers. They were the classic “right place, right time” team and you can’t tell me differently.

7. THE ’71 MILWAUKEE BUCKS

Regular season (66–16): peak of 64–11 … 34–2 at home … 12.2 SD (118.4–106.2) … led league in FG% (51%), defensive FG% (42%), points (9,710), assists (27.4) … 13–8 vs. 48-win teams
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… longest winning streaks: 20 + 16

Playoffs (12–2): 8–0 at home … 14.5 SD (109.1–94.6) … 11 double-digit wins … 49.7% FG, 72.1% FT … closeout game margins of 50, 18, + 12… following season: lost in Western Finals (Lakers in 6)

Cast and Crew: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (super-duper star, 32–16–3); Oscar Robertson (super wingman); Bobby Dandridge (wingman); Jon McGlocklin, Greg Smith, Bob Boozer, Lucius Allen (supporting cast); Larry Costello (coach)

Start to finish, this was the greatest NBA season
on paper.
You can’t do better. They had two of the ten best basketball players ever, one juuuuuust past his prime (Oscar), the other nearing the height of his powers (Kareem). During the regular season, they led the league in every relevant category, finished with the third-highest point differential ever and ripped off two killer winning streaks; they easily could have gotten 70 if they hadn’t clinched the top seed so early. They destroyed every playoff opponent and set a record for postseason point differential that still stands.
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They swept the Finals and won every game by at least eight points. And they only blew two home games in Milwaukee all year, second only to the ’86 Celtics. Now that’s a resume! Nobody seriously challenged them for nine solid months. Of course, that stupid Silver Anniversary panel voted for the ’67 Sixers over the ’71 Bucks as Best Team of the First 25 Years because … umm … I couldn’t possibly tell you why. That was a doubly indefensible pick in that Russell’s Celtics were the only logical choice, but if you were dumb enough to look elsewhere, then you
had
to take the ’71 Bucks.

So why not stick them higher? Because that diluted era from 1969 to 1976 rewarded any team with two great players (Kareem-Oscar, Wilt-Jerry, Cowens-Hondo, whomever). Because basketball just wasn’t fast enough or athletic enough yet. Because they caught a few significant
breaks that year: the Lakers lost Elgin
and
West for the playoffs, the Celtics weren’t ready yet, the defending champs choked away the Eastern Finals at home and the 42–40 Bullets played in the Finals without an injured Gus Johnson. Add everything up and the team probably wasn’t as great as it looks on paper. No matter. We can’t stick them lower than seventh.

6. THE ’97 CHICAGO BULLS

Regular season (69–13): peak of 68–10 … 39–2 at home … 10.8 SD (103.1–92.3) … 19–9 vs. 50-win teams … winning streaks: 12 + 9

Playoffs (15–4): 10–1 at home … 5.5 SD (92.5–87.0) … 6 double-digit wins … 43.2% FG, 31.9% 3FG … closeout margins: 1, 15, 13, + 4 … following season: won title (beat Jazz in 6)

Cast and crew: Michael Jordan (super-duper star), Scottie Pippen (super wingman), Dennis Rodman (wingman), Toni Kukoc, Brian Williams, Luc Longley, Steve Kerr, Ron Harper (role players), Phil Jackson (coach)

Ineligible for the top five because of a “can’t include teams from back-to-back years” rule that I just made up ten seconds ago. Although they
were
worn down by the Finals after playing 200 games (not counting exhibition) in twenty months. With an oversized bull’s-eye on their backs. With every contender gunning for them. With a gargantuan media horde greeting them in every city. With sold-out arenas of fans around the country saying happily, “I’m going to see the Bulls tonight!” When you remember how colossal Jordan (and the team to a lesser extent) was compared to the other sports at the time—hockey was dying, baseball was still recovering from a damaging strike, college hoops was getting murdered by underclassmen leaving too soon, tennis had nobody, Tiger was just breaking onto the golf scene but wasn’t Tiger Woods yet, and only football had real star power (Elway, Favre, Sanders, and others)—that ’97 Bulls team meant more to the sports landscape than anyone remembers. If they were like
rock stars (and they were in many respects), then that two-season stretch was like one of U2’s twenty-month concert tours that spans two hundred cities and thirty-five countries. They were clearly wearing down by the end of the tour (or in this case, the ’97 Finals). You can see it in every Jazz-Bulls replay on ESPN Classic or NBA TV. Look for this when you’re not concentrating on how rattled Karl Malone was.