ESPN's Fans Suddenly Insane: All-Time Bulls beat All-Time Celtics

I stared at the lineup in the matchup card for, like 10 minutes, trying to figure out how

this         could beat        this ???

Rodman          PF         McHale

Gilmore         C          Russell

Pippen          SF         Bird

Jordon          SG         Havlicek

Van Lier        PG         Cousy

The mythology is that Jordon was soooo great that you could put him on the floor with 4 clowns and he’d still win the NBA championship. But that is not what happened. He did NOT win until he finally had some decent talent around him. In fact TWO of the teammates that he needed to win the late-90s NBA title are on that list up above. Are they clowns or ‘all-time-greats’?

So the Bull’s team of ‘All-Time-Greats’ up above is basically 3/5 from a single NBA title team? Gilmore and Van Lier were great – but they are totally, completely out-classed by Russell and Cousy. Russell was simply a god and easily one of the 3 greatest basketball players ever and arguably THE greatest (I won’t pretend that he’s not my pick.). People overlook how freakin’ awesome Cousy was because of how long ago he played. But just think, for all the great teams and players – including PGs – that Boston has had since Cousy, only finally, this last year did someone (Rondo) break that assists record!!! 50 freakin’ years!!!!

 In relative terms, that Bulls team up there might as well just replace Gilmore and Van Lier with Longley and Harper and just be the 96-99 Bulls.

And hey – that was arguably indeed one of the greatest NBA championship teams. No doubt.

But there is no freakin’ way any single title team would stand a chance against that Celtics lineup above. In their prime, McHale was far better than Rodman. There is just no way Rodman would have been able to stop McHale in the post. Bird and Pippen don’t even belong in the same conversation. Ditto for Cousy over Van LIer.

And Russell v Gilmore? That’s a joke. Look, Gilmore was a great player. A case can be made that he should be in the Hall of Fame. But he’s not. That right there says that he’s at best a marginal HoF player. Russell in his peak quite simply is in a completely different class.

So that leaves us back at the mythology that Jordon was so much better than Havlicek that it didn’t matter that his teammates were individually out-classed. Right.

Wait? What’s that? Jordan had 6 championships? Surprise! Havlicek had EIGHT.

Havlicek is in many ways the perfect matchup for Jordan. In his prime he was arguably the second best defensive basketball player in the NBA – behind only Bill Russell! And easily the best defensive guard of his time. And oh yeah, he scored a few points.

If Jordan in his prime was better than Hondo in his prime, it wasn’t by much. It wouldnt be like the way Jordan was so much better than his peers in the late 90s.

Whereas Russell, Bird & Cousy probably WOULD be dominant over Gilmore, Pippen and Van Lier. I’ll give that Rodman would probably get his rebounds, but he’d still be overmatched by McHale.

Ah man – the whole thing is just so silly. But it is kinda fun to talk about some of the history.

One last comment. Some folks like to claim that maybe the teams way back when weren’t as good as ‘modern’ teams. That is somehow used to discredit the achievements of Havlicek, Cousy and Russell. To that I can’t help point out that Havlicek and Russell won championships spanning a huge breadth of years. Russell won 11 rings spanning 1957 to 1969. Havlicek won 8 from 63 to 74! That means they were going up against the best talent across a wide span of eras. They didn’t just beat up the same group of punks across a short span of seasons during a ‘down’ era.