Grampa Celtic: 1995-96 Bulls are not the Best

Give the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls a seat at the table.

In this mythical gathering of the Greatest Teams Of All Time, the newly crowned NBA champions are now in the discussion for the cherished title of Greatest Of All. That in itself is a tremendous honor for a team with an Australian Timberwolf discard as its starting center.

There are two compelling arguments to make the Bulls No. 1. Trump Card A: They are coming off the best season ever. They played 100 games and won 87. No one has ever done better. They exceeded the NBA's previous regular-season victory high by three (72, to the '71-72 Lakers' 69). Trump Card 1A: They've got Michael Jordan.

Sorry. It's not enough.

You keep hearing about their defense, and it is indeed a spectacular defensive team. But it just so happens there was an even better defensive team not so very long ago. In this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? era we live in, it probably shouldn't surprise me that people already have forgotten about the Detroit Bad Boys of the late '80s. Let me tell you something: They were bad. If you even thought about going to the hoop, you'd better have made damn sure your Blue Cross-Blue Shield payments were au courant. And has it occurred to anyone currently salivating over Dennis Rodman that he was a demonstrably better defender (I said defender, not rebounder) seven or eight years ago than he is today?

Ask yourself, furthermore, just whom are they beating? This is a 29-team NBA in which nobody but nobody has a decent bench. Pop quiz for you: What do the following have in common -- Bobby Jones, Kevin McHale, Bill Walton, James Worthy, Jamal Wilkes, Bob McAdoo, Mitch Kupchak, Mychal Thompson, Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Vinnie Johnson, Michael Cooper, Dennis Rodman, John Salley and Jerry Sichting? The answer is that each of these gentlemen regularly came off the bench at one time or another for the four teams that gobbled up all the championships in the '80s. Pick your best 12 from this group, give it to a qualified coach, and I honestly believe that team could defeat the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls in a seven-game series.

This isn't the Bulls' fault. This is a simple testament to the ravages of expansion.

They say it's hard to compare eras. Yes and no. I believe we can eliminate the '40s and '50s from this discussion, yes. But be careful when you start lumping in the '60s. People have an idea that the '60s were the '40s, that the NBA was populated exclusively by landlocked white guys who threw up two-hand set shots. People may have seen some grainy films from the '40s and somehow thought that covers all basketball, pre-Dr. J.

That is 1,000 percent, flat-out, no-way-Jose wrong.

Michael Jordan aside, you think there is a guard in the NBA today as good as Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, John Havlicek or Sam Jones? The answer is NO. Now let's throw in Earl Monroe, Dave Bing, Lenny Wilkens, Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Guy Rodgers and Archie Clark. They would all be equally great today. There is no question about inherent ``athleticism.'' Again, with Michael inhabiting his own little private athletic universe, I maintain that the guard with the greatest first step in the history of the game was Sam Jones, who last bounced a ball in 1969.

Shaquille O'Neal is interesting, but he is no Wilt Chamberlain. And as anyone over the age of 40 knows, the wait for another Bill Russell is comparable to hanging around the art museum hoping to bump into another da Vinci. Kiddies, you may be ``Inside Stuffed'' to the max, but you just don't know what you don't know. There was NBA life before ``Rock 'n' Roll, Part II.''

The best basketball I've ever seen in my life was played by the 1985-86 Celtics at their best. The team that hit the Atlanta Hawks with a 36-6 third period in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals put basketball on an almost spiritual level. No team ever had more weapons, which is why they would win any seven-game series against anyone.

Anyone with a scintilla of NBA knowledge knows this was the greatest frontcourt ever assembled. No forward could guard McHale. Period. No, exclamation point. Bird was Bird, and in 1986, he was often transcendent. If you want to see how one man can impose his personality on every aspect of a basketball game, check out the first half of Game 6 in the Finals. I've seen the best of Michael and the best of Magic, but neither has ever had any more overall impact on the conduct of a game than Larry Bird had on the afternoon of June 8, 1986. Larry says it was his favorite performance, and do you need to know anything more?

The 1985-85 Celtics could pound you to death in the half-court with the Bird-Parish-McHale trio, could bombard you from the outside with the likes of Bird, Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Sichting and Wedman, could rebound with anyone, could defend (as good a defensive team in the last five minutes as the NBA has ever seen), could pass better than any team today can even conceive of and could run, run, run.

Now comes the best part. What separates the 1985-86 Celtics from the pack is the simple fact that this was the only team in the recorded history of Man to bring a reasonably healthy Bill Walton off the bench. Bill Walton alone gave you a second unit. Bill Walton and Larry Bird also constituted the most fiendish assault duo on slow-thinking, slow-reacting defenders in the history of the NBA. A full healthy Bill Walton (if indeed there ever was such a thing) was the most influential player, at both ends, who has ever laced up a sneaker. To have him as a gleeful auxiliary player was a sinful luxury, and it was one K.C. Jones employed expertly.

And let's give K.C. his due. This was one course for which he was the perfect horse. His decidedly laissez-faire approach was the appropriate style for this collection of savvy veterans. K.C. made about three decisions all year, but he knew which three to make. His basic task was to make sure everyone knew what time the bus left for the arena.

The Greatest Series That Never Was did not take place between the 1985-86 Celtics and the 1986-87 Lakers. A series between the aforementioned Celtics vs. the Lakers of Kareem-Magic-Worthy-Scott-Cooper-Thompson would have shaken the rafters. Alas, the '86 Lakers didn't have Thompson and the '87 Celtics didn't have Walton. Such is life.

So in the final analysis, I'm slipping the Bulls into the Top 5 out of respect for Michael. If anything, I'm being generous.

RYAN'S TOP 10

What we're trying to establish is which team would stand the best chance of winning a seven-game series against all the other great teams in history. Included are the team's regular-season and playoff records. It goes without saying that all on the list won the championship.

Reg. season Playoffs Comment

1. 1985-86 Celtics 67-15 15-3 Choose your weapon and theirs would be better

2. 1986-87 Lakers 65-17 15-3 Consummate ``Showtime''

3. 1966-67 76ers 68-13 11-4 Wilt's finest hour

4. 1971-72 Lakers 69-13 12-3 33 straight and a 51-ppg West-Goodrich backcourt

5. 1995-96 Bulls 72-10 15-3 Came out snarling 99 percent of the time

6. 1982-83 76ers 65-17 12-1 Moses a major monster; ``Fo-Five-Fo'' club

7. 1964-65 Celtics 62-18 8-4 Russell at his peak

8. 1988-89 Pistons 63-19 15-2 Bleep you, Buddy

9. 1969-70 Knicks 60-22 12-7 Personified concept of T-E-A-M

10. 1976-78 Blazers 50-10 14-5* Jack Ramsay hoop fantasy come to life

* The NBA's All-Time ``What-If?'' aggregation. Team found itself in '77 playoffs to win title. Got off to 50-10 start in '77-78 and would have won as many subsequent titles as it chose, but Walton and three other starters got hurt before the playoffs, and the team was never the same again.