Winning the NBA Without a Hall of Famer Would Make History

Assertions around which this blog will revolve :

• Atlanta, Memphis, and Toronto each currently occupies first-place in its NBA division. None of the three teams has a 20-points-per-game scorer on its roster.

• Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, and Kobe Bryant will earn election to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame when they become eligible.

• Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, and Paul Millsap probably won’t join them in the Hall.

The Hawks’, Grizzlies’, and Raptors’ presences among the league’s elite has given rise to a new theory : You don’t need a superstar to win a championship.⁽¹⁾

This runs contrary to the sort of traditional thinking that led to the Heat’s three-headed monster taking its talents to South Beach, Jerry West’s machinations to acquire Shaquille O’Neal, and the Knicks’ recent run to the top with Carmelo Anthony. OK, that last jab wasn’t very nice. As Charles Barkley, Bob Lanier, and Stockton/Malone know, it does take more than a superstar (or even two) to win a ring. But historically, you’ve pretty much had to have at least one to do it.

No NBA champion whose complete roster has become eligible for the hall won the title without at least one Hall-of-Fame player on the team. Assuming we’re correct about our list of future inductees (which could also include Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and others), that trend will continue among all the recent winners, save one.

The Detroit Pistons of 2003-04 will likely become the first NBA champs with no playing inductees (Hall-of-Fame coach Larry Brown doesn’t count). They had a great mix of stars who put up some outstanding years and went to consecutive finals, but Billups, Wallace, Hamilton and company seem real long shots to enter Springfield’s shrine without a ticket.

Historically, those Pistons show up as an amazing aberration. HoFers George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Slater Martin, and Vern Mikkelson led the Minneapolis Lakers to a non-showtime title in the NBA’s first season, 1949-50. For good measure, one of their forwards, Bud Grant, later earned election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.⁽²⁾ That core set a precedent with three more titles.

Actually, the precedent had already been set. The Lakers, whose nickname made sense in those days, had won a title the previous season in the third and final year of the NBA-precursor Basketball Association of America. Both previous champions of the BAA boasted Hall of Famers, and half those of the league with which they merged, the National Basketball League, did. The latter number would rise if you believe one can make a Hall-of-Fame case for Oshkosh All-Stars standout Leroy Edwards.⁽³⁾

All those teams competed before there was a Hall of Fame, but they knew you needed superstars. Heck, even in the ABA, only the ’70-'71 Utah Stars won the title without a Hall of Fame player. The likes of Julius Erving, Artis Gilmore, and Roger Brown proved needed components for championships in that league, too.

Just making the final seems to require a transcendent player. Pending what Dwight Howard does the rest of his career, the ’75-'76 Phoenix Suns may stand as the only NBA runners-up without a Hall-of-Fame player (although 4.6 ppg-man Pat Riley did achieve that status for his post-playing accomplishments).

Since the beginnings of pro basketball, then, “nice" teams, plucky bands of no-names, and Don-Nelson-matchup-nightmare squads have struggled to break through a wall composed of Russells, Chamberlains, Jordans, Birds, and Magics.

Hall of Famers have traditionally stood tall, in this case Wilt Chamberlain with the author's father (left)

With only ten competitors on the playing surface at any one time, the game lends itself to individual brilliance. What could change it? How about big data?

Brett Koremenos of Sports on Earth wrote that "in today's NBA, it's becoming increasingly possible to compete for titles without elite players.”⁽⁴⁾ He did so while making the case that the Celtics might be adopting a new-school Moneyball approach to building his team.

As an aside, I feel old because I just used “new-school” to modify “Moneyball.” I remember interviewing former Oakland A’s assistant GM Grady Fuson about player evaluation tools back when there was only a book, not a Brad Pitt movie.

The last decade, however, has seen an explosion of fresh statistical evaluation approaches, ala the Moneyball premise, across all sports. The baseball A’s needed to find a way to compete with the Barry Bondses and Alex Rodriguezes. Have some of these newly successful hoops teams found market weaknesses they can exploit?

If so, you might offer the widely-imitated Spurs some credit, as they found ways to discover Kawhi Leonards and Danny Greens to take up the slack as their core closed in on aging out of MVP contention.

Better information on how a player's activity contributes to winning may result in superior player evaluation. Coaches willing to incorporate such data into their substitution patterns and floor sets may further improve their teams’ chances to get past star-laden opposition.

Innovative salary cap management can play a role, too. Paul Georges, Bill Waltons, and Derrick Roses get hurt sometimes, and superstars do cost a lot. Not every all-NBAer will injure himself, however, so a new power can still expect to face its share of Stephen Currys and Chris Pauls come playoffs.

Can the upstarts deal with the powerhouses? They might. The ’03-’04 Pistons did. So did the ’70-’71 Stars (their coach, Bill Sharman, had been a Hall-of-Fame player) and the ’48-'49 NBL champs Anderson Duffey Packers.

Still, a one-year wonder might prove possible. The trick, I think, might be how to make it more than a limited phenomenon, since teams that have big-time players can take similar approaches. In baseball, the big-market franchises began to pay attention to Bill James, good teams started to spend big on prospects, and defensive shifts began to reduce BABIPs across the big leagues. History does not rest comfortably on the side of the Hawks, Grizz, and Raptors.

Unless, that is, you go back to the Akron Firestone Non-Skids. No Hall-of-Famers, back-to-back champs.

They did it in the NBL. In 1939 and 1940.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

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Footnotes

Note : Statistical records drawn from http://www.basketball-reference.com/

⁽¹⁾ Ian Levy  “Does A Team Really Need A Star To Get To The NBA Finals?,” FiveThirtyEightSports.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/does-a-team-really-need-a-star-to-get-to-the-nba-finals/ (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽²⁾ Andrew Astleford “From hardwood to pigskin: Bud Grant understands basketball skills translate to the NFL,” Fox Sports Florida. http://www.foxsports.com/florida/story/from-hardwood-to-pigskin-bud-grant-understands-basketball-skills-translate-to-the-nfl-051714 (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽³⁾ “NBL alums snubbed by Hall,” apbr.org. http://www.apbr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2058 (accessed February 25, 2015)

⁽⁴⁾ Brett Koremenos “THE CELTICS' INNOVATIVE REBUILD,” Sports On Earth. http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/109916244/boston-celtics-veteran-contributors-nba-draft-isaiah-thomas (accessed February 25, 2015)