Is Simmons Right About Russ & Wilt’s Supporting Casts?
Posted by Neil Paine on December 14, 2009
One of the long-held NBA aphorisms used to explain the gulf in championships between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, arguably the two greatest centers of all time (OK, Kareem & Shaq might dispute this notion, but that's another argument for another day), is the idea that Russell played on Celtics teams stacked to the rafters with All-Star and/or Hall of Fame talent, while Chamberlain suited up with lesser teammates who held him back. Certainly that's the impression you'll get from our Quality of Teammates post, where we found that Russell played with the 10th-most talented set of teammates (weighted by career minutes played) of any player in NBA history, while Chamberlain's teammates were average at best, and hardly spectacular like Russell's.
In fact, according to career Win Shares per minute, Russell's teammates were worth 8.10 WS/3000 MP over his career, while Chamberlain's were worth 6.06. So if both men played 3,300 minutes per season, with a schedule of 80 games and 48.3 MPG (the NBA's all-time average), that gives roughly 16,000 minutes to each center's teammates in total for each year:
((8.10 - 6.06) / 3000) * 16000 = 10.88
In other words, Russell's teammates alone were worth approximately 11 more wins than Chamberlain's per regular season... And in the playoffs since 1957, teams with 10-12 more regular-season wins than their opponent won 71 of 85 series (83.5%). So should it have been any surprise that Russell and the C's were coming out ahead of Chamberlain's Warriors & Sixers?
Bill Simmons disagrees. In The Book of Basketball, Simmons tries to make a case that Chamberlain's teammates were in fact closer to Russell's than anyone thinks, going through the rosters on a year-by-year basis to see who had the stronger supporting cast. He finishes by saying:
"Russell played with four members of the NBA's Top 50 at 50 (Havlicek, Cousy, Sharman, and Sam Jones); Wilt played with six members (Baylor, West, Greer, Cunningham, Arizin, and Thurmond). And Russell's teammates from 1957 to 1969 were selected to twenty-six All-Star games, while Wilt's teammates from 1960 to 1973 were selected to twenty-four. Let's never mention the supporting-cast card again with Russell and Chamberlain. Thank you."
Er, sorry Bill, but I'm going to have to take a closer look... Let's go through and see how many minutes Russell and Chamberlain played alongside fellow members of Simmons' own Pyramid, his top 96 players of all time. We'll calculate "minutes together" like this: In 1960, Wilt played 3,338 minutes, or 92.1% of the Warriors' total court time. Tom Gola played 2,870 MP, or 79.2% of the Warriors' total. The probability of Wilt and Gola being on the court at the same time is given as p(Wilt_Gola) = 0.921 * 0.792 = 0.729, and therefore the expected # of minutes Wilt and Gola played together would be 72.9% of Philadelphia's 3,624 total MP, or 2,644 minutes. We can do this with every teammate the two great centers ever had, and see how much court time they logged alongside members of Simmons' Pyramid over the course of their careers.
First, Wilt:
Now Russell:
What does this tell us? Well, not much at first glance, except that Russell's teammates were a bit better. But let's turn those rankings into points, giving 96 for 1st place, 95 for 2nd, etc. until 0 for unranked players. Then take a weighted average by minutes played:
Now you can see Russell's "score" is more than twice that of Wilt, but I think we're also overselling the unranked players by this method -- in essence, we're tying every unranked player as the 97th best of all-time. However, 3,902 players have suited up in NBA history, meaning the typical unranked player's ranking should be more like 2000th overall. So, finally, what if we took another weighted average ranking but assigned #2000 to all unranked players?
Obviously this is just a fun exercise, and far from scientific, but you can still see that Chamberlain's teammates were in fact significantly less talented than Russell's, by both our Quality of Teammates metric and even by Bill Simmons' own ranking method. So I don't think it's quite fair to say, "let's never mention the supporting-cast card again with Russell and Chamberlain," because it's still pretty obvious that Wilt's supporting cast was inferior to Russell's by a good margin.
December 14th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Thanks.
That's one of the more egregious ways that Simmons' book shows a huge pro-Celtics bias. The funny thing is that the one time he tries to show the book isn't biased - picking Magic over Bird for #3 all-time - he's completely wrong.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Another fact people always make to support their argument that Russell was better than Chamberlain is that Russell won more rings. Jim Loscutoff, who also played on the Celtics in the '50s and '60s, won 7 championships. His career numbers: 6.2 points and 5.6 rebounds. I don't think there's a single aspect of the game that Russell was better than Chamberlain at.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:43 am
Yeah, Russell wasn't better than Chamberlain, except with winning and playing superb defense. Wilt was great, but I agree with Simmons: Chamberlain was stat-hungry. He didn't lead the league in assists for a season out of altruism.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:54 am
And yes, rings do matter. Bill Russell's rings are more important than Jim Loscutoff's, just like MJ's are more important than Steve Kerr's. Not to go all cliche, but Russell was the greatest winner of his era (and possibly ever) in any sport: 2 NCAA championships, a Gold Medal, and then 11 titles in 13 years. It is no coincidence he dominated every level of the game.
And sure, he had great supporting casts, but most winners do. The Bulls won 55 games after Jordan's first retirement, but I'm pretty sure no one would be willing to argue that his success was defined by his teammates (as important as they were).
December 15th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Neil, I think you are fundamentally missing the forest for the trees here (and most of the problem is likely attributable to shortcomings in the estimated WS). Before dis then reaggregating the estimated contributions of teammates, let's look at the big (Bill Russell) picture.
Question: were the Celtics above average or below average on offense throughout Russell's career. The fact is that the available data strongly suggests that the Cs were only average at best. At best! Though we don't have TO and OR data to confirm the point, we can calculate TS%, and this confirms what is actually readily apparent by looking at the FG(A) and FT(A) data. This might be shocking to some, but the Celtics' offensive prowess was an illusion. They only scored more points because of their faster pace and were at best average in terms of efficiency. (And, to be clear, this conclusion about Russell's "supporting cast" cannot be overturned by separating out his offensive contributions.)
And how does this inform the question at hand? Well, the true fact of the matter is that the Celtics were only great because of defense. Period. Now, perhaps the story can be modified to say that Bill Russell won a lot because he had teammates who were great on defense, but if that is the story, there is no point to the Wilt vs. Russell question to begin with. For if the Celtics defense is not attributable to Russell, what positive contribution is he left with?
December 16th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Two questions to add to the discussion.
Q1. If you divide the career stats of Russell's individual teammates between:
A. When they played with Russell's teams;
B. When they played on teams without Russell;
Is there a significant disparity to be found? If there is ... What do you think might account for this distinction?
[i.e. other than the advanced age of those ones who played with Russell's teams early in their career and then moved on at a later point, once they'd begun to decline physically]
Q2. Might the supposed superiority of Russell's teammates properly be attributed to the fact that they each had the opportunity to play with the greatest single basketball player in the history of the game ... rather than the other way around?
[i.e. perceived as, "Russell was only better than Chamberlain because HE had the opportunity to play with a series of superior teammates compared to Chamberlain's inferior supporting cast."]
----------------------------------
IMO, when using the classical assessment of individual greatness ...
i.e. Can he beat YOURS with HIS, and, then, take YOURS and beat HIS, in return?
if Mr. Chamberlain's teammates had been fortunate enough to play the bulk of their careers alongside of Mr. Russell, instead of alongside of Mr. Chamberlain, then, they might well be considered today, as superior individual players in their own right, in comparison to the teammates on the dynastic Boston Celtics who were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to play the bulk of their careers alongside the Great Man, himself.
Point 1. Keeping the proper score for both teams is a fundamental component to the game of basketball.
Point 2. The objective of the game is to score more points than the opposition team.
Point 3. Winning games and championships, therefore, is a fundamental component of the game.
Point 4. Mr. Bill Russell is very simply The Greatest basketball player Of All-Time.
Point 5. Mr. Russell's teammates were blessed with the opportunity to play alongside of someone with his personal attributes, as a player and a person ... and, vice versa.
Cheers
December 16th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
If Simmons ranked Russell's teammates so highly because they were "made better" by Russell, then he should have given that credit to Russell instead (which surely would have pushed him ahead of Jordan for #1) and knocked his teammates down lower, perhaps even off the list entirely. You can't have it both ways, you can't say Russell should get all the credit for making his teammates great but also credit those teammates for being great at the same time. Either they were great on their own and are justifiably ranked highly (which calls into question Russell's ranking), or Russell deserves the credit for "making" them great, in which case the teammates' rankings are questionable.
December 16th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I read the Book of Basketball too, Neil, and found a lot of the conclusions, while entertaining, felt predetermined - like he knew exactly what he wanted to prove and executed his research to verify his opinions.
In this particular case, I think the Wilt fans have another leg to stand on in this argument which Simmons glossed over. Red Aurbach was the coach of the day. The game as we know it was still being formed, and all the equalization that has gone among in terms of scouting, play-books, and player development was not there yet. In an era when the game had not developed yet to where team offenses were good at scoring against team defenses, he came up with the plan to get more attempts. Sure he drafted well, but his early offense strategy was a big deal. Did Wilt have a coach like that? You can qualify the argument by quoting Red when he said he didn't believe he could get Wilt to play his style, but that doesn't change the fact that the Chamberlain did not have the stylistic advantage that Russell had.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Jason J wrote:
I read the Book of Basketball too, Neil, and found a lot of the conclusions, while entertaining, felt predetermined - like he knew exactly what he wanted to prove and executed his research to verify his opinions.
Of course, that happens all the time. Unfortunately, many people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
A quick look at players who had years with and without Russell (Cousy, Sharman, Havlicek, Siegfried, Nelson, Sanders and, looking at the Celtics' late-career additions, Naulls, Lovellette, Braun & Embry) reveals no strong "Russell effect" where he lifted up their stats consistently. Some people's mixes changed because of the Celtics' needs with and without Russell, but things like FG% remained consistent. Havlicek's statistics even improved without Russell, since he had to carry more of the load.
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Same for Bailey Howell, who I inadvertently omitted, before & after Russell.
October 14th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Copied from a poster named bastillion:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tc2seC-qi36vDqnIMcmNdvQ&hl=en#gid=0
sorry for the chaos... these are team adv stats copied from B-R. team DWS is on the right (colums U and V). I did 57 first because I forgot 56 could be useful too so like I said, sorry for the chaos.
nevertheless results are extremely impressive considering all-time defenders:
KAJ:
Code:
year combined DWS
70 20.7
71 23.7
72 28.8
73 33.3
74 30.6
75 19.4
76 19.1
77 21.8
78 20.0
79 22.7
80 23.6
Hakeem
Code:
year combined DWS
84 19.1
85 24.0
86 19.5
87 26.8
88 25.9
89 27.6
90 31.7
91 29.6
92 20.4
93 27.1
94 31.8
Thurmond:
Code:
year combined DWS
64 37.3
65 25.0
66 22.2
67 29.7
68 28.7
69 28.7
70 24.5
71 17.3
72 29.7
73 29.0
74 18.7
75 29.6
Eaton:
Code:
year combined DWS
82 9.3
83 19.8
84 19.9
85 30.9
86 26.6
87 30.8
88 31.5
89 34.9
90 26.6
91 26.8
92 26.5
Wilt
Code:
year combined DWS
60 31.3
61 23.8
62 22.1
63 17.1
64 37.3
66 28.5
67 22.5
68 33.6
69 19.5
71 17.2
72 31.3
73 30.0
and let's take Russell now, for comparison:
Code:
year combined DWS
56 14.0
57 32.0
58 32,5
59 34,3
60 35,9
61 45,2
62 45,7
63 46,8
64 55,7
65 50,1
66 41,2
67 33,7
68 33,5
69 40,6
70 22,2
Russell didn't play in 56 and 70.
the advantage Russell has is just too overwhelming to describe it. Celtics were winning ~40 games a year because of their defense alone. their offense pretty much sucked though. they were winning about 15 games with their offense.
you have to wonder about how much Cousy/Sharman/Heinsohn meant to these teams if they were winning solely because of their defense and were horrifically bad on offense. 64 season is the greatest individual season in league history, perhaps. Celtics have a ridiculous 55.7 DWS (an estimated DRtg of -14, compared to Celtics 08 at -8) while being absolutely retarded on offense (6.8 OWS is the lowest I've seen so far... of any team)... and they still won.
January 30th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Oh, and yes, Russell's teammates are quite overrated by Simmons. Cousy particularly, not only had a rep for weak defense and was a poor efficiency scorer even for his day, but his playoff numbers decline during the championship years pretty consistently. Yes, he was the first great assist man, but that hasn't historically correlated strongly with winning. Heinsohn too had a rep for weak defense and mediocre efficiency. Only Sharman turns out to be an above average shooter on those early teams, though Frank Ramsey (never a starter, never an All-Star) had some terrific playoffs. Those teams won with defense despite having guys with poor defensive reps around Russell.
The later teams were more legitimately stacked, but were facing opposing teams that were also much more stacked (late era Wilt played with Greer/Cunningham/Walker or West/Baylor for example). Their best player, Havlicek, was a terrific defender but again, ever for his day he was a below average shooter. He didn't develop his on the ball game until the team needed him to carry it and just wasn't a great shooter for the catch and shoot, work without the ball style he focused on in the 60s. KC Jones was another great defender but had virtually no offensive impact -- less than Chris Duhon; same for Satch Sanders. The real offensive threats were Sam Jones and Bailey Howell, both very good offensive players -- again, but with poor defensive reps (particularly Howell).
Those teams won because of Russell and most of those reps were made by playing with Russell. Outside of him, Havlicek is a legit top 50 player, possibly top 25, but mainly for his defense and early 70s heroics. Jones and Howell are probably not top 100 players without the rings; Sharman a bit higher if you look at era differential. And Cousy, while undoubtably a guy that changed the game of basketball, did so in a Pete Maravich way -- without Russell, he's not a guy you count on for winning, just for highlights. So, yeah, the teammates are overrated, Russell isn't.