Jun 04 2008
Good Ol’ Days…
All this week on Classic Sports we’ve been watching the great match-ups between the Celtics and Lakers. And the one thing that keeps coming to my mind is how great those teams really were. I’m not one of those people that says everything older is better, because I don’t care what my Dad or his friends tell me about Oscar, Wilt and those older guys, Michael Jordan is the best ever. But team wise, the teams today can’t compare to yesteryear.
The Celtics starting 5 in the 1986 Finals was Larry Bird, Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. And if you want to feel sorry for the Lakers don’t, they only had Magic, Kareem, James Worthy, Byron Scott and Kurt Rambis. So you have on the Celtics 3 top 50 all time players and a 4th coming off the bench in Bill Walton. And Dennis Johnson is a hall of fame player. The Lakers also have 3 top 50 all-time players and guys like Scott, Rambis and AC Green who were above average NBA players.
When you compare those teams with what we are going to be watching the next week you will understand why interest in the game has declined. The Lakers have one player who probably will be in the updated list of top 50 players, Kobe Bryant. And besides Kobe you have no one on that team who will make the hall of fame unless their play dramatically improves. The Celtics by my count have no players who would be in the top 50 NBA players of all time, but do have a couple of sure fire hall of famers. So in 1986 we got to watch a series with 6 of the greatest 50 players of all time compared to 2008 where you only have 1.
No one is to blame for this except for expansion. The reason those teams were so much better is that they weren’t as many teams. So teams who didn’t win as much as Boston or LA still had teams with multiple hall of famers and or multiple top 50 players such as the 76ers with Moses Malone, DR. J, Maurice Cheeks and Andrew Toney. That great 76ers team with 2 top 50 players only won one title. But now you have recent expansion teams like The Grizzlies and Raptors that dilute the talent base all over the league. So those teams have maybe one superstar on their team that if added to another superstar on another team then you could go back to those great teams again. A perfect example of this is Pau Gasol leaving the Grizzlies where he was being wasted and added with Kobe and now you have a championship caliber team. But if Gasol stays in Memphis and keeps winning 20-40 games a year that really doesn’t show the overall quality of him as a player. And what’s even more depressing is we miss out on the days of quality teams with a plethora of quality players, which makes for high quality basketball.
I will watch these finals, but will long for the Good Ol’ Days…
