ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Bill Russell celebrated his 82nd birthday on Friday, and Sports Illustrated gave him a present to mark the occasion.
They told him he was the eighth-greatest player in NBA history.
I guess a whoopee cushion didn’t seem appropriate as a gag gift for an 82-year-old man — though it would have been less insulting.
Somehow, since the last time Russell stepped on the court as an NBA player — since he won 11 championships and earned five MVP awards and 12 all-star selections and a host of other awards and honors — he has fallen to the eighth-greatest player in league history.
That means he is closer to dropping out of the top 10 than he is in the debate for No. 1.
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Who will be the players that knock Russell out of the top 10? Blake Griffin? DeMarcus Cousins? He will drop, as the center position becomes a dinosaur exhibit at the Basketball Hall of Fame.
You may laugh, but the premise that dropped Russell towards the bottom of the top 10 is based in part on the notion that has accomplishments — including the 11 league titles that no one has come close to, nor ever will — have somehow diminished with time.
What makes Sports Illustrated’s latest revised list of the top 50 players in NBA history so maddening is that it was done by someone who should know better — longtime NBA reporter Jack McCallum.
He isn’t some punk in the mailroom at ESPN with a slide rule and a YouTube account. The well-known and respected McCallum was born in 1949 and saw Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and the other players that existed before the sports world began with ESPN.
Still, he named Russell the eighth-greatest player in NBA history.
“I ask for your indulgence here,” McCallum wrote. “On almost every all-time team I’ve ever been asked to select, I choose Big Russ as the center, figuring that, with other immortals around (Jordan, Bird, Robertson, Baylor, Magic et al), he wouldn’t have to score, and his gifted defense would be most valuable. But we’re talking about players here, and I simply don’t believe that, despite his 11 rings, he is as good a player as the two centers listed above him. I know he would disagree forcefully, and I respect that.”
Ask for your indulgence? The Catholic Church specifically described indulgence as “a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins.”
Sorry, Jack. You committed a mortal sin here.
You want to debate the greatest player in NBA history among Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Magic Johnson and Russell, that is fine. The case could be made for each and every one of them.
But to put Larry Bird ahead of Russell? You think if you asked Bird if he thought he was a greater player than Russell, he would say yes?
The most unforgiveable sin by McCallum, though — the one for which there is no indulgence — is putting LeBron James ahead of Russell at No. 5.
“It’s extraordinary that the King really doesn’t have a position,” McCallum wrote. “That speaks to his versatility but I also wonder: Would he have been better off had he concentrated on being a small forward, a two-guard or a point? Either way, he’s one of the most dominant players to ever take the court.”
Sometimes he has been dominant. And sometimes, in the heat of battle, he has been missing in action. Unlike Russell, who turned players around him into Hall of Famers, James opted to go to a team with a lock future Hall of Famer in Dwyane Wade, who McCallum has at No. 25 on the list, and another potential one in Chris Bosh to win his two titles — less than 20 percent of the championship rings Russell has. If “The King” doesn’t win one in Cleveland, those two championships will not validate his career for his championship success. They will define it for championships failures.
The bottom line is that if LeBron James was on the court with Bill Russell, he would have to change his shorts.
Now, my personal beef: New York Knicks center Willis Reed was listed at No. 40. The center who came a decade after him, Patrick Ewing, was one place ahead at No. 39. Knicks fans made the same mistake when the ones who weren’t born for the franchise’s golden years — when one of the greatest teams in NBA history took the floor — voted Ewing ahead of Reed as the No. 1 center in team history.
Reed won every MVP award you could — NBA MVP, All-Star Game MVP, and not one, but two NBA Finals MVPs, going against Wilt Chamberlain in each of those finals. Ewing — one of the 50 greatest players in league history — won zero MVPs of any level in the NBA.
Russell once called Reed, who he faced later in his career, the “backbone” of those great Knicks teams.
But what does Russell know? He’s only the eighth-greatest player in NBA history — and on his way down the list.
⦁ Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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