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by
Bill Simmons
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August 16, 2021 - June 1, 2022
Heart in champions has to do with the depth of your motivation, and how well your mind and body react to pressure. It’s concentration—that is, being able to do what you do under maximum pain and stress.33
So really, repeating as champions (or winning a third time, or a fourth) hinges on how a team deals with constant panic (not wanting to lose what it has) and pressure (not only coming through again and again, but trusting it will come through).
Wilt captured one title (’67) and was traded within fourteen months. He only cared about winning one title; defending it wasn’t as interesting, so he gravitated toward another challenge (assists). Meanwhile, Russell still ritually puked before big games in his thirteenth season. He had enough rings to fill both hands and it didn’t matter. He knew nothing else. Winning consumed him. Merely by being around Russell and feeding off his immense competitiveness, his teammates ended up caring just as much. You can’t stumble into that collective feeling, but when it happens—and it doesn’t happen
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What cemented their legacy wasn’t the first five titles but the last one, when they were running on fumes and surviving solely on pride and Jordan’s indomitable will.
You don’t learn about a great team or great players when they’re winning; you learn about them when they’re clawing to remain on top.
It’s not about statistics and talent as much as making teammates better and putting your team ahead of yourself.
I couldn’t find that answer just through statistics. I needed to immerse myself in the history of the game, read as much as I could and watch as much tape as I could. Five distinct types of players kept emerging: elite players who made themselves and everyone else better; elite players who were out for themselves; elite players who vacillated back and forth between those two mind-sets depending on how it suited their own interests;37 role players whose importance doubled or tripled on the right team; and guys who ultimately didn’t matter.
I care about guys who ralphed before crucial games and cried on television shows because a simple replay brought back pain from years ago. I care that someone walked away from a guaranteed title (or more) because he selfishly wanted to win on his terms, and I care that someone gave away 20 percent of his minutes or numbers because that sacrifice made his team better.
when we measure teams and players against one another in a historical context, The Secret matters more than anything else.
The term “pulling the goalie” means “eschewing birth control and letting the chips fall where they may.” Usually couples discuss pulling the goalie before it happens … unless it’s Bridget Moynahan. In my case, I made the executive decision to speed up plans for kid number two. This did not go over well. I think I’m the first person who ever had a positive home pregnancy test whipped at them at 95 mph.
It’s never a bad thing when “European” is involved—that word always seems to involve nudity or debauchery. Even in porn (which is centered around those two things, anyway), you throw the word “European” in the title and the movie suddenly seems ten times more appealing.
The thing about European-style pools is that most of the uninhibited women who go topless are usually people you’d never want to see topless
It’s never been clear if the overdose was intentional or not. Can you tell my editors told me, “Write this footnote carefully”?
He’s like a cross between Obama, Jay-Z and Cyrus from The Warriors.
His funniest-in-retrospect explanation was for the hideous Jerome James signing. As Isiah spun it, he signed James to be his center, then had a chance to land Curry a few weeks later and went for it. A bummed-out James felt betrayed and never dedicated himself, but hey, Isiah had a chance to get a young low-post stud like Curry and it was worth the risk. I swear, this made sense as he was saying it.
The “Disease of More” ranks right up there with The Tipping Point and the Ewing Theory as one of the three greatest theories of the last 35 years. No sports theory gets vindicated more on a yearly basis. The complete list of “Disease of More” NBA champs: ’67 Sixers, ’71 Bucks, ’75 Warriors, ’77 Blazers, ’79 Sonics, ’80 Lakers, ’92 Bulls, ’00 Lakers, ’04 Pistons. And let’s throw in the following NBA Finalists: ’67 Warriors, ’81 Rockets, ’86 Rockets, ’93 Suns, ’95 Magic, ’96 Sonics, ’99 Knicks, ’03 Nets.
That’s the biggest killer of aging champions, because it works on your concentration and your mental toughness, which are the margin of victory; it prevents you from using your mind to compensate for your diminished physical skills.”
It’s never been explained why the same legends who embraced The Secret or at least understood it (Russell, MJ, Bird, Magic, Cousy, Baylor and McHale, to name seven) couldn’t apply that same secret to teams they were running.
But if we were arguing about the greatest debate in NBA history—Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain?—I can prove Russell was better. There’s a definitive answer that involves common sense, firsthand accounts, relevant statistics and the valuable opinions of teammates, fellow players, coaches and educated writers who watched them battle for ten straight seasons.1
His criminal trial started and we learned about a pattern of corruption and racism within the L.A. Police Department. We discovered that much of the blood evidence was mishandled. We watched the overwhelmed prosecution team unforgivably botch its case. But none of it mattered because this guy had to be guilty.
Smartly, if not reprehensibly, the defense team battered the race card home—that was their only chance to get a guilty person acquitted, even if it meant splintering the country and damaging the relationship between blacks and whites in the process—and lucked out because many of the dense jurors couldn’t understand the damaging DNA evidence in the pre-CSI era.
Fifteen years later, even though we haven’t convicted anyone for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman—shit, we haven’t even found a potential suspect—more and more Americans believe Simpson was innocent or not conclusively guilty. Give it another fifteen years and even more will believe he was framed. By the year 2035, nobody under forty will remember the details, just that O.J. walked and that maybe, just maybe, that meant he was innocent.
Wilt ignored The Secret; Russell embraced it. I shouldn’t have to waste an entire chapter on them for two indisputable reasons: Russell’s teams always beat Chamberlain’s teams, and Wilt was traded twice. Right there, it’s over. And really, it was over when Russell retired in 1969 as the greatest basketball player ever.
if two quality opponents play a seven-game series, the dominant player should prevail as long as the talent level on both sides is relatively equal.
If there’s a legitimate gripe on Wilt’s behalf, it’s that Russell was lucky enough to have Auerbach coaching him for ten years. Then again, Red is on record saying he never could have coached a prima donna like Wilt.
Actually, Russell doesn’t get credit for the same reason that everyone thinks he played with eight Hall of Famers every year for thirteen seasons or that his teams were always more talented than Wilt’s teams: because people don’t know any better, and because it’s easier to regurgitate something you heard than to look it up.
That’s how they went on scoring spurts, that’s what stands out every time you watch those teams, and that’s why they kept winning and winning—they had the perfect center to launch fast breaks and the perfect supporting cast to execute them. Opponents eventually gave up challenging Russell and settled for outside shots, which doesn’t sound like a big deal except this was a notoriously poor era for outside shooting.
There was a certain box office logic to this thinking, but it made Chamberlain uncoachable, in Auerbach’s view, and as long as he was uncoachable, any team he played on would never become a real winner.”34
That’s all fine. Just know that Wilt’s teams sucked in the clutch because Wilt sucked in the clutch. The fear of losing overwhelmed him in big games.
WHILE TRYING TO absorb six-plus decades of NBA history, one question keeps popping up: How do we put everything in perspective?
patch laid out from 1946 to 1984. Why stop there? Because that’s when the NBA, for better and worse, became the league it is now. Stylistically, creatively, fundamentally and talent-wise, you could transport any good player or team from 1984 to 2010 and they would be fine (and in some cases better than fine).
Lots of mugging, lots of easy jokes, some cross-dressing, more mugging, tons of self-flagellation, even more mugging. It’s bewildering that they were considered geniuses at the time. But they were. Nobody was bigger. (Kinda like George Mikan and Dolph Schayes, right?) When Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Bob Newhart and the Smothers Brothers pushed comedy in a different direction in the sixties—astute observations, hyperintelligent premises—they were considered geniuses of the highest order. (Kinda like Oscar, Elgin, Wilt and Russell, right?) But you know what? If you YouTubed any of those guys in
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all funny movies fueled by drugs, recklessness and individualism. (Kinda like the NBA when it was being led by the likes of Pete Maravich, George Gervin, David Thompson and Micheal Ray Richardson.)
By the mid-eighties, the comedy world had figured it out and reached the place it needed to be. But it didn’t just happen. The civil rights struggle, three assassinations (JFK, RFK and MLK) and a growing discontent about Vietnam altered the comedy scene in the sixties; people became more serious, less trusting, more prone to discuss serious issues and argue about them. That’s how we ended up with Woody and Lenny.
The comedians of the late seventies and early eighties learned from everyone who had pushed the envelope—what worked, and more importantly, what didn’t work—and developed a more somber, reflective, sophisticated attitude stemming from how the previous generation’s pain shaped their perspective.
Were Bird and Magic better in ’84 than LeBron and Wade are right now? It’s a nice debate. Was Eddie Murphy funnier in ’84 than Chris Rock is right now? It’s a nice debate. But if you’re asking me whether a Get Smart episode from 1967 is funnier than a South Park episode in 2009, no. It’s not a debate.
How did he arrive at 24? Biasone studied games he remembered enjoying and realized that, in each of those games, both teams took around 60 shots. Well, 60 + 60 = 120. So Biasone settled on 120 shots as the minimum combined total that would be acceptable from a “I’d rather kill myself than watch another NBA game like this” standpoint. And if you shoot every 24 seconds over the course of a 48-minute game, that comes out to … wait for it … 120 shots!
Red anticipating in 1956 exactly where the sport was heading—to a T—remains his single greatest accomplishment. Well, that and living into his mid-eighties even though he lived on Chinese food and went through cigars like breath mints.
Frustrated by low wages, excessive traveling and the lack of a pension plan, the ’64 All-Stars make one of the ballsiest and shrewdest decisions in the history of professional sports, telling commissioner Walter Kennedy two hours before the All-Star Game that they won’t play without a pension agreement in place. With ABC televising the game and threatening Kennedy that a potential TV contract will disappear if the players leave them hanging in prime time, Kennedy agrees fifteen minutes before tip-off to facilitate a pension deal with the owners. Attica! Attica! Attica!
Even during far-reaching labor disputes, Wilt did whatever was best for him. Classic.
The Celtics became the first to routinely play five blacks at the same time as opponents emulated their aggressive style—chasing the ball defensively, keeping a center underneath to protect the rim, and using the other defenders to swarm and double-team. With the degree of difficulty rising on the offensive end, the athleticism of certain players started to flourish.
“What ABC has to prove to a disbelieving national public, [Arledge] believed, was that this was not simply a bunch of tall awkward goons throwing a ball through a hoop, but a game of grace and power played at a fever of intensity. He was artist enough to understand and catch the artistry of the game.
matchups … he intended to exploit as best he could the traditional rivalries, for that was one of the best things the league had going for it, genuine rivalries in which the players themselves participated.
Like everything Red did, the move worked on both fronts: Boston rallied to win the ’66 title, and Russell turned out to be the perfect coach for Russell (although not right away).
Auerbach lowballed his players by convincing them they’d make the money back in the playoffs; he knew that if they bought into that bullshit, then he’d never have to worry about motivating them. Once salaries started climbing past a certain point, you couldn’t play the playoff-money card. Like always, Auerbach read the league’s tea leaves perfectly and left at the perfect time.
Red determined where the sport was heading, embraced the influx of black players and capably handled the enigmatic Russell, a ferocious competitor, lazy practice player and overly sensitive soul who was affected by everything he couldn’t control: the plight of African American athletes, his lack of acceptance in Boston, the lack of a labor agreement, Wilt’s reported salary, even the civil rights movement and his place in it.
As an ABC executive joked in Breaks, when they put in a clause in the 1965 TV contract allowing ABC to cancel if any NBA team folded, they should have gone the other way and placed a limit on the number of expansion teams. After all, nothing ruins a sports league faster than overexpansion, diluted teams and the death of rivalries, right?
becoming the first of dozens of talented young NBA players who didn’t reach their potential partly because somebody paid them too much too soon.
So you could blame Haywood for the eventual influx of underclassmen and teenagers who nearly submarined the NBA in the 1990s, as well as the NBA preventing more dangerous Haywood signings by arranging a merger in May 1971.
Haywood left tread marks fleeing for the 1970–71 Sonics after realizing his quote-unquote three-year, $450,000 Denver contract only paid him $50,000 per year, then another $15,000 annually for twenty years starting when he turned forty. He had been victimized by a brilliant ABA trick called the Dolgoff plan, in which they offered contracts with deceivingly high dollar figures but backloaded most of the deals.
