"If bill russell"

[King Jane]

cut tha crap

bill russell was tmac size playin center ( ) against 6-6 unathletic white guys like bob "bounce pass" cousy and jerry "slick set shot" west. he wasnt even skilled he was just basically the first black guy on tha floor playin against lesser white guys before the game was even known how ta be played can we pls get back to threads discussing hoops TODAY. nothin billy "block shots" russell or pete "chest pass" maravich did would work today dat weak shit would be sent to tha third row



guys who stock boxes at walmart today were willing teams to championships in tha 50s and 60s

[LAZERUSS]

cut tha crap

bill russell was tmac size playin center ( ) against 6-6 unathletic white guys like bob "bounce pass" cousy and jerry "slick set shot" west. he wasnt even skilled he was just basically the first black guy on tha floor playin against lesser white guys before the game was even known how ta be played can we pls get back to threads discussing hoops TODAY. nothin billy "block shots" russell or pete "chest pass" maravich did would work today dat weak shit would be sent to tha third row



guys who stock boxes at walmart today were willing teams to championships in tha 50s and 60s

Agreed.

You would never a see a 37 year old white guy, playing 33 mpg, leading THIS era in apg. Nor would you see a 6-11 white guy leading the league in bpg in THIS era. And you certainly wouldn't see a 6-8 white guy with no vertical, leading the NBA in rebounding (and doing so in 35 mpg) in THIS era.

Nope, today's basketball players are light years better than those of the 60's.

[rhowen4]

Bob "bounce pass" Cousy

[fpliii]

Definitely better and greater than your favorite player (unless it's MJ).

[Soundwave]

The OP lacks eloquence, but the truth is, he's not entirely wrong.

The NBA was not fully integrated in the 50s or even the 60s, most black players playing then even knew basically the unspoken rule of all the teams was no more than 3-4 blacks per team max. I think there was a fear of alienating fans so no team wanted to do that.

It was a majority white league and a lot of the players were given spots over black players simply because they were white and no one wanted to go over a set quota.

This is the St. Louis Hawks that the Celtics beat for 4 of their first 5 championships:



Here's the 1961 Lakers:



The NBA simply was a very different place in the 60s and even moreso in the 50s.

Russell and Wilt were the first black superstars the league had and their athleticism was simply head and shoulders above the average white player. There's just no two ways around that.

We're naive to what life was like in the 50s/60s ... it wasn't all rainbows and lollypops, hell consider that most of these white guys didn't even play basketball with black people growing up. How would they? You think white people just went off to black neighbourhoods to play basketball? Running into a player like Russell was a revelation to some of them for sure.

It's not like today where kids of every ethnicity hang out at the Y or local gym shooting hoops all day practising moves of players they see on TV all day.

It's not that they were just white, they were guys who had never played against players even remotely that athletic and big before.

[King Jane]

wilt "camp-in-the-paint"-berlain wont even make a roster today tha rules n tactics today wont allow him to play dat lumbering game let alone tha bigger stronger athletes den him dat now fill tha league... u cant be skinny an be a center today sorry but he would get broken in half his fragile legs wuld snap like twigs... dats why durant aint a center, wilt was durant minus, ya kno, skill to dribble n shoot

[Roundball_Rock]

The 60's were not fully integrated but the league also was not global in the 80's and 90's and that is not held against players from those periods. The NBA did not truly become a global league until the 2000's. The 2014 Spurs' rotation was majority foreign; the 1994 and 1984 Spurs did not have a single international player.

[kennethgriffin]

i got russell in my top 3 all time. arguable goat with kareem and jordan


what a player does in their respected era's is given nearly full credit

but what i will never admit is the seamless transition guys 50-60 years ago would make to todays nba according to older posters on this board


i like russell, wilt, west, baylor... but their games would take a major hit


when a 6-5 guy like baylor is averaging 20 rebounds. you know somethings wrong


bill russell in todays nba might have a big impact... but not nearly as great as he did in the 60's

he would be a terrific defensive player and average 12-13 rebounds at the power forward spot. but he would cost his team allot of points down low. he struggled scoring in the 60's.. imagine how badly he would struggle in an era with actual defensive systems


IMO wilt would be a 20/13 player today

a guy like bob cousy wouldnt even make a d-league roster though


big men can translate to todays game a bit easier due to the position not advancing as much. but any guard/ball handler/ outside player from the 60's would have a fard time beating out smush parker for a spot on some team overseas

the guard position is lightyears ahead of their day

[LAZERUSS]

wilt "camp-in-the-paint"-berlain wont even make a roster today the rules today wouldnt allow him to play his lumbering game let alone the bigger stronger athletes then him that now fill the league... u cant be skinny an be a center today sorry but he would get broken in half his fragile legs wuld snap like twigs

I want YOU to do a search on Wilt's STRENGTH. And then do another search on Shaq's STRENGTH. Sorry to tell you this, but Wilt was the STRONGER man. And to be honest, even Artis Gilmore was stronger than Shaq. You can ask Robert Parish, who faced both of them.

[Soundwave]

The 60's were not fully integrated but the league also was not global in the 80's and 90's and that is not held against players from those periods. The NBA did not truly become a global league until the 2000's. The 2014 Spurs' rotation was majority foreign; the 1994 and 1984 Spurs did not have a single international player.

It's not nearly the same thing and you know it. The best players are still by and large American and black. The main driver of the NBA style of play is still from these players. European players more or less fill out some supporting roles in the league, but the primary players are still by large American.

Not only that in the 60s, if you're a black player are you going to run down the court and dunk every time? No. You would probably get called a bunch of things I'm not going to repeat here, but that was a different time, I think black players back then wouldn't think of doing some of things guys do today.

If LeBron played in that era and dunked every time down the floor and snarled at opponents after dunking on them, I'm not even joking in saying he'd probably get death threats from stupid fans for making the white players look too bad.

Russell brought 11 titles to Boston and he still dealt with things like local people breaking his windows, breaking into his home and defecating on his bed (no joke), etc.

The 50s/60s is far different than people really want to acknowledge.

[GOBB]

Why do people compare eras and always want to argue today's is better than yesterday's? Retarded. Bill greatness is defined for his dominance in the era in which he played. Because you don't think he could back it in today's game doesn't change that. 50 years from now this era will be laughed at the same way you do bill Russell's.

[Soundwave]

Why do people compare eras and always want to argue today's is better than yesterday's? Retarded. Bill greatness is defined for his dominance in the era in which he played. Because you don't think he could back it in today's game doesn't change that. 50 years from now this era will be laughed at the same way you do bill Russell's.

Maybe, maybe not.

At some point I think the human body can only push itself so much physically that there's a levelling off process for a sport.

But maybe I'm wrong and in 50 years you'll have a 7'4 player who can dunk from the free throw line in a game and guys will have nano-injections that let them play into their 40s without a problem.

The game really hasn't evolved *that* much in the last 25 years, the last big "revolution" in the game IMO was the Pistons style of defence wins championships that put an end to the Lakers/Celtics free wheeling style of play. Most championship teams since then basically use that as their blue print (defence first).

Once it becomes a billion-dollar money making sport, then there really are no secrets anymore either. Teams all study each other down to the most minute details, all looking for any small edge they can get. There's no offence or strategy that really catches anyone off guard any more.

[fpliii]

The 50s/60s is far different than people really want to acknowledge.

As I've said before, and this is just my opinion, but the difference from the NBA from when I started watching in Shaq's rookie season to the present league is like night and day (went from a tiny fraction of the league being comprised of international players to nearly a quarter, illegal defense outlawed and Thibs' impact on D, the three being widely adapted and modern spacing theory coming into play). On the other hand, watching after the fact, games from the late 60s/early 70s have much more in common with games in the early/mid 80s IMO.

It would be one thing if Russell's impact tailed off when the league was integrated (went from a few black players to almost two-thirds of the league over the course of his career; the present NBA is ~70% black), but he was consistently dominant, from the late 50s to the late 60s.

[Roundball_Rock]

It's not nearly the same thing and you know it. The best players are still by and large American and black.

Yeah but full integration represented the first phase of expansion of the talent poll; the international expansion in the 21st century represented the second phase. Combined, the modern game has a much deeper talent pool than that in past eras. Yet, while people diminish 60's players due to playing prior to full integration no one follows the logic vis-a-vis modern players and give Duncan, Kobe, and LeBron a boost for thriving in a truly global era. It seems to me this again is largely agenda-driven with the idea of making the 80's and 90's the GOAT eras.

Yeah, the top players are predominantly American but you can't ignore that the Spurs' were majority international. That team simply would not have existed in the 90's and 80's. This has no significance? There also are premier international players, most notably Dirk and Nash, who won a combined 3 MVP's. Dirk was a top 5 player for several seasons. You are making it seem as if international players are simply playing 6th man roles.

If people want to diminish the 60's for a weaker talent pool they need to be intellectually consistent and acknowledge the 21st century NBA as being the pinnacle in terms of talent that we have seen. Yet people want to act as if the golden age of basketball ended in 1998.

[Bless Mathews]

Russell wouldn't start on half teams today.