72 Wins? Big Deal.
NOVAK, ROBERT D.
Sports 72 Wins? Big Deal. By Robert D. Novak On Sunday afternoon, April 21, I watched the Chicago Bulls mop up the meaningless season finale against the Washington Bullets, collecting their 72nd...
...Guard Ron Harper is a streaky player who never regained his offensive mastery after serious knee surgery...
...Years before the Lakers-Globetrotters games, there was the 1942 "professional championship" sponsored by the Chicago Herald-American, which brought together eastern teams with midwestern NBL members and produced the closest thing to a national titleholder in those days...
...By Robert D. Novak On Sunday afternoon, April 21, I watched the Chicago Bulls mop up the meaningless season finale against the Washington Bullets, collecting their 72nd victory in the process...
...Starting in 1959, the Celts won eight straight championships, aided from 1963 onward by the unquenchable energy of forward John Havlicek...
...The team that broke the Celtics' streak in 1967 was another contender for best-ever efforts: the Philadelphia 76ers, who won a record 68 regular-season games that year...
...only his offensive rebounding prevents him from being an actual liability...
...So if the Bulls are not the greatest team-and even Jordan says they cannot yet be placed in the same category as the "three-peat" Bulls he led in '91, '92 and '93- what team is...
...Mikan left the Gears to join the Minneapolis Lakers, the first powerhouse of the new National Basketball Association...
...I think that is nonsense...
...But the twelve players who make up the '96 Bulls have not even won their first championship together, much less established themselves as a team for the ages...
...The team has not one center but four, and the best of them is only modestly talented...
...He has helped put the Bulls among the all-time top defensive teams and has made it by far the best now playing...
...Once Magic Johnson joined Kareem Abdul-Jab-bar on the Lakers for their 1980 championship team, the Lakers took titles in 1982, 1985, 1987, and 1988...
...This made possible the 72 wins...
...The Bulls who won three championships straight from 1991 to 1993 featured only two of the same players as the '96 squad (and the same coach...
...Russell's defensive play transformed the game...
...The first biracial team to qualify for all-time honors was the Boston Celtics, when it brought together the great white ball-handler Bob Cousy with the great black center Bill Russell...
...These Laker teams are, I think, the best NBA team of all time...
...The most intriguing Bull is the fifth starter, forward Dennis Rodman, he of the kaleidoscopic hair and bizarre behavior...
...No team in the National Basketball Association had won as many as 70 games before-thus suggesting to many that the 1996 Bulls are the greatest professional basketball team of all time...
...Robert D. Novak last wrote for The Weekly Standard about James Stewart's book Blood Sport...
...Rodman fascinates not because of his cross-dressing and past dalliance with Madonna but because of his brilliant defense and otherworldly rebounding...
...And the very best...
...I am tempted to go back to the prehistoric-that is, pre-NBA- days of professional basketball when as a small boy in Chicago I saw the National Basketball League...
...New Yorkers may talk about the gritty Knicks championship teams of '70 and '73, but they are just not in the same class...
...But the real focal point of that Lakers team was all-star guard Jerry West...
...But no one-man team can be called great, which becomes apparent for the Bulls on those rare nights when Jordan shows he is only human after all...
...That record lasted just five years, because in 1972 the Los Angeles Lakers won 69 games thanks in part to- yes, he had moved West-Wilt Chamberlain...
...Chicago had one of the few big-city franchises in the NBL, and because of that I was privileged to see a truly wondrous team from Fort Wayne, Ind., called the Zollner Pistons (forerunner of today's Detroit Pistons...
...He has surpassed my previous choice, Oscar Robertson, for the simple reason that Jordan can do something the Big O could not: He can carry a team on his shoulders, a task usually reserved for centers...
...Bears...
...The 72 wins can be attributed in no small part to an NBA whose talent has been terribly diluted by expansion-a league that includes at least four teams that can be described as "dogs" and many more of only marginal quality...
...The winner in 1942 was a traveling team of African-Americans calling themselves the Washington, D.C...
...They all were lily-white...
...Now, there is no question that Bulls forward Michael Jordan is the best professional basketball player ever, with no close second...
...The best years came between 1980 and 1988 when a fierce competition between the Celtics and Lakers led to the teams' alternating championships (a very good Philadelphia team won in '83...
...Mikan was joined by all-star forwards Jim Pollard and Vern Mikkelsen and point guard Slater Martin, and together they won five out of six NBA championships between 1949 and 1954...
...The Celtics won in 1981, 1984, and 1986 behind Larry Bird-and while the 1984 team did not win anything close to 72 games, the masterful play that year of Bird, center Robert Parish, forward Kevin McHale, and guard Dennis Johnson makes them my candidate for second-greatest NBA team...
...The team's only other offensive star, forward Scottie Pippen, represents a considerable drop-off in talent...
...Their key was player-coach Bobby McDermott, who bombarded the hoop with outside shots so far away that today they would routinely be worth three points instead of two...
...Pretty much the same players played under the better-known name of the New York Renaissance, or Rens...
...That team included Chet Walker, Hal Greer, and Bill "The Kangaroo Kid" Cunningham, but the 76ers really rode the back of the greatest basketball center of all time: Wilt Chamberlain...
...Only those that come from watching pro basketball for more than 50 years and suffering as a Bullets season-ticket holder for two decades (which has proved an exercise in character-building for the past 10 years...
...When World War II ended, McDermott moved over to the Chicago American Gears...
...There he joined the great center George Mikan (picked by the Associated Press as the player of the first half of the century...
...What credentials does a political columnist have in making such an evaluation...
...The Lakers were played to a standstill in wonderful "exhibition" games by the much shorter, much quicker Harlem Globetrotters, not yet exclusively the traveling clown show they became later...
...But none of these teams can be called great because of a fatal failing...
...While I'd root for Michael Jordan and the 1996 Bulls, I don't think they would have a prayer against Magic, Kareem, and company...
...But he is problematic on offense...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 37
