ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It seems like everyone would just as soon see Bill Russell go away. He complicates the whole “greatest NBA player of all time” debate, which is heating up again with the performance of LeBron James going home to Cleveland and winning his third title.
There he was, off to the side on the stage where commissioner Adam Silver was presenting James with the NBA Finals trophy — you know, the Bill Russell award — and he was ignored.
Later, there were photos of James on the court after the awards ceremony with Russell. “You paved the way,” James reportedly told Russell, who later told reporters, when asked about James winning the award named after him, “He’s deserving. I can’t think of a better player to have it.”
That certainly went better than two years ago, when, after James tried to carve out his own place on basketball’s Mount Rushmore by speaking it into existence, he named his own personal candidates — Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Oscar Robertson — while declaring that he “for sure” will be one of the top four who ever played the game.
To which Russell replied, in a quote read by sideline reporter Craig Sager, “Hey, thank you for leaving me off your Mount Rushmore. I’m glad you did. Basketball is a team game, it’s not for individual honors. I won back-to-back state championships in high school, back-to-back NCAA championships in college. I won an NBA championship my first year in the league, an NBA championship in my last year, and nine in between. That, Mr. James, is etched in stone.”
Now, yet again, as the arguments ensue about the greatest of all time — is James better than Michael Jordan? — Russell is being ignored, as is his rival during his time in the NBA, Wilt Chamberlain, who has faded from view since his untimely death in 1999 at the age of 63.
Why? Why, when basketball fans engage in this argument, do they forget the names of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain?
How about because the two of them are in a class by themselves — so far ahead of those who followed that it is just too difficult to accept? It is too hard for the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird generation, the Jordan generation and now the James fans to acknowledge that two men played this game at such a high level of excellence and dominance that it dwarfs everyone who came before or who followed?
As much as Silver and those who worship at the altars of Jordan and James would like to ignore them, there is no argument to have when Russell has won 11 titles — two more than Jordan and James combined. Russell was the NBA MVP five times. He didn’t win the NBA Finals MVP because they weren’t giving out that award when he played for the Boston Celtics from 1958 to 1969. When he retired, they created the award and named it after Russell.
He led the NBA in rebounds four times, and is still second all-time in total rebounds and rebounds per game.
When Russell wasn’t winning the MVP award, Chamberlain was — four times. He dominated the game like no one ever had before — or since. He is the only player to score 100 points in a game, or average 50 points per game in a season, followed by another season of 44 points per game, two more seasons of scoring 38 points per game, and then you get to Jordan, who averaged 37 points per game in the 1986-1987 season.
From 1959 to 1973, Chamberlain won seven scoring titles, nine field goal percentage crowns and 11 rebounding titles. Just for laughs, he led the league in assists for a season. He is the only player in league history to average at least 30 points and 20 rebounds per game in a season — something he did seven times.
Given the state of the game today, none of this is going to change. No one is going to pass by either Russell or Chamberlain in these measures of excellence. Yet they are dismissed, with one rationalization after another to explain how two men could dominate the league so much for so long.
We’ve come to this conclusion that evolution has been on steroids for the past 50 years — that players are dramatically bigger, stronger and faster than the days of Russell and Chamberlain, as if they are prehistoric man.
Nevermind that a Cambridge University study in 2011 said humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. Not only that, our brains are getting smaller.
So, contrary to what we have all talked ourselves into, we are not in the age of the “Superman.” That age, in fact, may have happened 50 years ago, when two of them ruled the NBA like no one before or since.
It’s funny — we dismiss the notion that Russell or Chamberlain are the two greatest basketball players of all time and discount their numbers as a product of a lesser era — yet most of us readily embrace Jim Brown as the greatest who ever played the game, even though he competed and put up his dominant numbers in the same era as Russell and Chamberlain.
The game was different then. The talent pool was smaller. Players weren’t as developed. On and on and on — rationalizations to explain how two players could be so far more remarkably dominant than any other players who have come after them. There have to be reasons, formula, analytics, of course. It can’t simply be that Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain — 50 years later — remain the greatest players in NBA history.
It’s not as much fun arguing who is fighting for third place.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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