The Book of Basketball (49 page)

1. He’s the starting power forward on the White Guys Who Played Like Black Guys Team. Of the ten greatest in-game dunks ever, Chambers is the only white guy who makes the cut: for the two-hander where he dunked over Mark Jackson, got propelled upward, ended up on Jackson’s chest and looked like he was throwing down on an eight-foot rim.
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2. Not only was Chambers named MVP of the greatest All-Star Game ever (1987), scoring 34 and outscoring MJ, ’Nique, Barkley and Hakeem combined, but Magic kept pick-and-rolling with him down the stretch and the Eastern stars couldn’t stop it. Now I’m wondering what would have happened if Chambers and Worthy had switched teams in 1982 and Chambers had spent the ensuing decade playing with Magic. Would he have taken the ’88 Finals MVP, made the Hall of Fame and cracked the NBA’s top fifty instead of Worthy? It’s not inconceivable, right?
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95. JO JO WHITE

Resume: 12 years, 7 quality, 7 All-Stars … ’76 Finals MVP … Top 10 (’75, ’77) … 3-year peak: 22–5–5 … Playoffs: 22–5–6, 83% FT, 42.9 MPG (80 G) … 3rd-best player on two champs (’74, ’76 Celtics)

A postseason ace whose career playoff averages exceeded his three-year regular season peak, Jo Jo finished as the best guard on two title teams plus a 68-win team. Two things stood out other than his playoff heroics and overwhelming evidence that he may have knocked up Esther Rolle to create David Ortiz. First, he logged seven straight regular seasons of 3,200-plus minutes
and
averaged 600 playoff minutes from ’72 to ’76.
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From ’72 to ’77, Jo Jo averaged 43 minutes while playing 90, 95, 100, 93, 100, and 91 games. No wonder his legs gave out after ’77 and robbed him of two or three twilight years of stat padding. And second, Jo Jo finished with a 33–9 in the legendary triple-OT game, played an obscene 60 minutes and sank one of the most dramatic free throws ever.
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Right after Havlicek “won” the game in double overtime with his running banker, everyone charged the court and the happy Celtics hopped to their locker room. Even as a full-scale celebration/riot was unfolding around them, the referees decided that one second remained on the clock. By this time, Jo Jo had already taken off his uniform and removed the tape from his ankles. After everyone returned to the court, Paul Westphal hatched the brilliant idea to call an illegal timeout, sacrificing a technical but allowing them to inbound the ball from midcourt—meaning a cooled-down Jo Jo had to sink the technical after a fifteen-minute delay in which everyone already thought they won, with nobody else on the floor and a mob of drunken maniacs crammed around the court. If he missed that freebie, the Celtics would have lost on Gar Heard’s ensuing miracle turnaround at the buzzer. Nope. Swish. All things considered, that has to be one of the ballsiest free
throws ever made. Jo Jo also sank the clinching freebies in the third overtime, even though he was so exhausted by that point, he was
sitting down on the court
when Phoenix shot free throws. If your life depended on it, you wanted Jo Jo out there. Period.

(His biggest problem in retrospect: it’s tough to take a grown man named Jo Jo seriously as one of the greatest players of his era. If his name were Luther White or Julius White, he’d be remembered the same way Walt Frazier was remembered. Instead, he sounds like one of LC’s catty friends in
The Hills.)

94. JACK TWYMAN

Resume: 11 years, 7 quality seasons, 6 All-Stars … top 10 (’60, ’62) … season leader: FG% (1x), FT% (1x) … 3-year peak: 29–9–3 … 3-year Playoffs peak: 20–8–2 (26 G)

One of my favorite random moments writing this book: spending a solid hour picking between Cliff Hagan and Twyman for the “white forward from the fifties and sixties” cutoff spot, then deciding Hagan was slightly better because he won a title and was elected to the Hall five years before Twyman in 1978 (even though he retired four years
after
Twyman). Honestly, those were my only two reasons. Besides, Twyman’s finest contributions came off the court: after teammate Maurice Stokes was felled by a career-ending illness, Twyman and his family took Stokes in, cared for him, raised money to pay his bills and were eventually immortalized in the 1973 movie
Maurie
, as well as a phenomenal Twyman/Stokes video exhibit in Springfield that I watched during every visit as a kid.
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Throwing in the racial wrinkle (Twyman was white, Stokes was black) and social climate at the time, this has to rank among the better feel-good sports stories. So how does everyone remember
Brian’s Song
and nobody
remembers
Maurie?
Well, one movie had Billy Dee Williams and James Caan; the other had Bernie Casey and Bo Svenson. ’Nuff said.
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Twyman also became the league’s first recognizable former star turned below-average TV analyst—I mean, when you’re the first on that storied list, you know you’ve had an impact, right? The man paved the way for Russell, Magic, Isiah, and everyone else. Although he
was
fortunate enough to interview Russell right after the ’69 Finals, when Russell couldn’t answer “How does it feel?” and eventually just broke down. Since it’s my single favorite championship moment other than Boston mayor Ray Flynn’s teenage son somehow interjecting himself in the middle of the entire ’86 trophy celebration,
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you have to give Twyman credit for being involved.

93. KEVIN JOHNSON

Resume: 12 years, 7 quality, 3 All-Stars … top 10 (’89, ’90, ’91, ’94), top 15 (’92) … 4-year peak: 22–4–11 (50% FG, 85% FT) … 2-year Playoffs peak: 22–4–11 (28 G) … 2nd-best player on one runner-up (’93 Suns) … 5th in most Playoffs assists (8.9 APG, 115 G)

My father and I attended a Cavs-Celts game during Johnson’s rookie year when KJ played like a terrified ninth-grader bombing in a varsity game. Given that he was the seventh pick, we were stunned by how helpless he looked compared to teammate Mark Price.
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A few months later, we thought Cleveland fleeced Phoenix when they swapped KJ in a megadeal for Larry Nance.
How could they turn that stiff into Larry Nance?
KJ transformed Phoenix into a playoff contender within a year, leading them to the ’89 Western Semis and the ’90 Western Finals and matching nearly everything we’ve seen from Chris Paul these last three
years. And that’s how my father and I learned never to give up on young point guards.
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Two things submarined KJ historically. First, he couldn’t stay on the court, missing 15-plus games in five of eleven seasons and sparking rumors that his dysfunctional hammies were made out of papier-mâché. (Important note: If there was a Fantasy Hall of Fame for the most frustrating roto basketball players ever, he’d be the point guard. By the mid-nineties, if you took KJ in the first five rounds of your draft, the other guys openly mocked you. Soon only a rookie franchise would pick KJ within the first ten rounds of a fantasy draft, and whenever it happened, everyone else would smile knowingly. KJ was like the high school slut who spends time with everyone on the football team … then a new transfer comes in senior year, starts dating her and everyone on the team gets a big kick out of it. That’s what KJ was like. We all went a few rounds with KJ. I miss having him around for comedy’s sake.) And second, he helped blow the ’93 Finals by choking so memorably during Phoenix’s first two home games, Suns coach Paul Westphal actually had to bench him for
Frankie Johnson
in crunch time at the end of Game 2. By the time KJ pulled it together in Game 3, the Suns had squandered their home-court advantage and had no realistic chance of coming back—nobody was beating MJ in four out of five games during Jordan’s apex.

Now, many have gagged in the Finals (John Starks in ’94, Nick Anderson in ’95, Magic in ’84, Elvin in ’75, Dirk in ’06, etc.), but I can’t remember someone melting down to the degree that it seemed as if he was throwing the game like Tony in
Blue Chips.
That’s how awful KJ was. Since it happened during his defining showcase as a player, we have to penalize him for it. On the other hand, no point guard brazenly attacked the basket, dunked on bigger guys and destroyed guys off the dribble quite like KJ in his prime; it wasn’t that opponents couldn’t stay in front of him as much as how they instinctively backed up before he made a move. Had KJ peaked post-2004—when they started whistling hand check fouls, stopped whistling moving screens and made it so much easier for guards to get into
the paint—he would have averaged a 30–15 and beaten out Steve Nash for consecutive MVPs. Well, unless his hammies exploded first.

92. BOB LANIER

Resume: 14 years, 8 quality, 8 All-Stars … 4-year peak: 24–13–4 … Playoffs: 19–9–4 (67 G) … won 2 Playoffs in his prime … 20K Point Club

Lanier and his size 21 sneakers narrowly edge Sikma
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and his kick-ass blondafroperm for the cutoff center spot, only because Sikma was blessed with talented Seattle/Milwaukee teams and poor Lanier was stuck in NBA hell (Detroit) for the entire seventies. He even introduced Dick Vitale to friends as “my coach and GM” for two especially putrid years.
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By the time Milwaukee traded for Lanier during the ’80 season, the NBA community reacted the same way Texans react after a trapped child is rescued from a well. The Lanier-Sikma battle comes down to this: Both were traded to Milwaukee right after their primes. Lanier’s price was Kent Benson (the number one pick in ’77) and a 1980 number one; Sikma’s price was Alton Lister and number ones in ’87 and ’89. In other words, Lanier was worth more. But not by much. We’ll remember Lanier for his tough lefty hook, his sneaky fall-away, those giant sneakers and how he replaced Willis as the league’s premier “I’m a nice guy, but if you cross me, I will beat the living tar out of you in front of everyone” center.

(To recap: Our Hall of Fame cutoff guys are Chambers, Jo Jo, Twyman, KJ and Lanier, or as they’re known from now on, the Cutoff Guy Starting Five. For future generations arguing about this stuff, make sure any potential
Hall of Famer was at least 0.000001 percent better than these five guys. Thank you.)

91. DWIGHT HOWARD

Resume: 5 years, 4 quality, 3 All-Stars … top 5 (’08, ’09) … 2-year peak: 21–14, 2.5 blocks, 58% FG … ’08 + ’09 Playoffs: 20–16, 2.9 blocks (33 G) … All-Defense (2x) … Defensive Player of Year (’09) … leader: rebounds (2x) … career RPG: 12.5 (highest since Rodman and Moses) … best player on 1 runner-up (’09 Magic)

90. CHRIS PAUL

Resume: 4 years, 4 quality, 3 All-Stars … top 5 (’08) … top 10 (’09) … Bill Simmons approved MVP (’08) … MVP runner-up (’08) … 2-year peak: 21–5–11, 2.7 stl, 49% FG, 4:1 asst/TO ratio … All-Defense (2x) leader: assists (2x) … ’08 Playoffs: 24–5–11, 50% FG (12 G)

We’re bringing in the Young Guns right away. Howard’s shot blocking improved so dramatically (from 2.1 blocks in ’08 to 2.9 in ’09, not to mention all the shots he challenged) that I expanded the Pyramid from 95 to 96 just for him. He’s clearly the most important under-thirty center right now, as well as his generation’s “Good God, that guy is a freaking specimen” big man. I will believe he’s serious about winning a title once he stops competing in the Dunk Contest, stops smiling so much and stops swatting blocked shots into the fourth row instead of tipping them to his teammates. Somebody please make him read the first chapter of this book and Russell’s
Second Wind.
Thank you.

(Mid-June addition: Howard led Orlando to a shocking cameo in the 2009 Finals. I probably would have nudged him into the mid-eighties had I known this was going to happen. Then again, I wouldn’t have gotten slaughtered gambling on the ’09 playoffs either.)

Meanwhile, the Evolutionary Isiah (Paul) just spent the last two years submitting the best statistical stretch of any point guard since
Oscar.
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He played the position with particular pizazz, controlling the tempo of every game, getting to any spot he wanted and converting a dizzying number of alley-oop passes with high degrees of difficulty. My favorite CP3 moment happened in 2008: after blowing clinching free throws in Orlando and sweating out a Turkoglu miss at the buzzer, Paul was too disappointed in himself to celebrate. His teammates and coaches trickled over and rubbed his head, slapped his back and did everything else possible to let him know how important he was to them. There’s a difference between genuine affection (the way Paul and his 2008 teammates interacted) and contrived affection (the way Kobe and his 2008 teammates interacted), and over everything else, that’s what stood out about Paul as much as his talent. Nobody meant more to his teammates. When Paul appeared on Kimmel’s show near the end of last season, the other Hornets sat in the audience to support him. After the show, when Kimmel asked him to film a comedy bit and Paul agreed, his teammates tagged along and attended the shoot instead of hitting Hollywood for a night out. They all left together. These are the stories I want to hear about my Pyramid guys. He’s only twenty-four. We will see where this goes.

(Request for the Pyramid gods: please give Paul and Howard the longevity of Stockton and Kareem instead of Penny and Sampson. We don’t ask for much.)

89. SHAWN KEMP

Resume: 14 years, 8 quality, 6 All-Stars … top 10 (’94, ’95, ’96) … 3-year peak: 19–11–2–2 … ’96 Playoffs: 21–10–2–2, 57% FG … ’96 Finals: 23–10, 55% FG … best player on 1 runner-up (’96 Sonics)