Basketball Talk from Big O

Oscar Robertson may have been the greatest guard ever to play the game. Jerry West, John Havlicek and Bill Russell all thought so.

Oscar: " I was taught to think basketball, to know where my teammates were on the court, where they should have the ball and where they shouldn't. Do you want to run, and when should your offense run the fast break? In virtually every game I played, the opposition pressured me full court. I don't care who you are - Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Magic Johnson, anybody - you don't like to face a pressure defense. But that became a challenge to me. They thought that pressure would wear me down, but I believed I had the greatest stamina of anyone who ever played. So I felt, "You come at me, I'm coming right back at you and we'll see who's still going 100 percent at the end of the game."

" I could dunk, dribble around my back and all that flashy stuff. I dunked once in high school and my coach got all over me, so I never did it again. Dunking is overrated, a showboat play. All the stars in my era could dunk, but we saw no reason to do it. We had too much respect for each other to try and dunk in each other's face. The dunk, the behind-the-back garbage - those aren't great plays and they aren't skilled plays. I never played that way and I never changed my game from high school to college to the NBA. In high school, I learned to take a good shot, to get as close to the basket as possible before you shoot, and that each possession was important. You didn't waste a possession by forcing a shot from too far out or with two guys on you."

" I was a forward in college. I should have been a guard and I handled the ball, but the team needed me on the boards. So I came into the NBA with the idea that I was there to rebound, too."

" I played the total game because we weren't into specialization like they are today. We didn't have all this point guard and off guard nonsense. A guard was a guard. If you were a guard, you were expected to be able to handle the ball, to score and to play defense. Now the shooting guard is really a 6-6 forward from college who can't dribble and all they do is run him off picks to get him open. Pass him the ball and he shoots it. No one ever made my life that easy."

" I wish I had played in a wide open style like guys do now and where guards don't even bother to try for rebounds. If I could have shot every time I felt like it, I would liked to have seen the numbers I would have put up. In my first seven years in the league, I don't think I ever got a basket off the fast break because I was always the guy in the middle, running the break and passing off to someone else. Come playoff time, I was on the court for all 48 minutes. That was a given, and today no one can imagine doing it."

" The triple-double is blown out of proportion. No one noticed it when I played. Today, they are so cheap. An assist used to be a pass that led to a basket without a dribble. Now, you pass to a guy, he takes a dribble, makes a 25-footer and that's an assist. Guys worry about getting one more rebound or assist for the triple-double - it's ridiculous. What matters is a guy who plays the total game. He's not after stats, but because that's how you should play the game, period."

Spike,

It's hard not to agree with most of what Oscar says—from stamina to the value of having multiple skills to the assist rule, etc. I've always thought he was the most methodical guard I ever saw. He had his very conservative way of doing things, and he almost never varied it. He sometimes seemed obsessed with backing in, turning, faking, and hoisting an eight-footer...and he scored on the great majority of those attempts.

He doesn't seem to mention defense, at which I felt he was only satisfactory or maybe a little better.

I assume his derogatory remarks about the "flashy" stuff are thinly veiled attacks on Cousy. They never liked one another after The Cooz became Oscar's coach. Oscar calls that stuff "flashy;" I call it "creative." When the game was in doubt, Cousy used the behind-the-back dribble/passes, the air dribble, the around-the-neck passes, and other feats of legerdemain primarily with a strategic purpose in mind—not to show off. Heck, he adopted the behind-the-back dribble out of necessity during game action in college, when an opponent was overplaying him to his right.

I saw Oscar in countless games. In all that time, I never once saw him do anything creative. Perhaps he could have done so but his conservative approach was so successful he didn't have to. Think about it. What particular move or play do people immediately associate with Oscar Robertson? Then think about what particular moves or plays people (even young people half a century after his retirement) immediately associate with The Cooz. Which guy was more creative?

One more thing. The Royals' style was well-suited to Oscar's game, and the Celtics' style was well-suited to Cousy's game. But they were very different styles. To wit:

• The Royals were always a more conservative team than the Celtics. Cincy brought the ball up quickly, but they not explosive in transition like the Celtics'. Cincy used more short, crisp passes, whereas Cousy often ignited the break (after receiving an outlet pass) with a pass traveling at least half the court. (Of course, he never received even one assist for gaining an open court advantage for his teammates.) The Royals focused on field goal accuracy, and the Celtics focused on volume basketball (getting as many shots as possible as early in the shot clock as possible).

Just look at these contrasting stats that relate to volume basketball vs. high percentage basketball. The figures are for the 1960-61, 1961-62, and 1962-63 seasons—the only seasons that Cooz and Oscar overlapped (Cousy's last three years and Oscar's first three years):

1960-61: Celtics 9,295 FGA, Royals 8,281 FGA
1961-62: Celtics 9,109 FGA, Royals 8,414 FGA
1962-63: Celtics 8,779 FGA, Royals 7,998 FGA

1960-61: Celtics 40% FG%, Royals 44% FG%
1961-62: Celtics 42% FG%, Royals 45% FG%
1962-63: Celtics 43% FG%, Royals 46% FG%

But, in terms of which player contributed more innovation to the game, Cousy wins in a walk—or more correctly in a run.

In all fairness, I don't believe The Cooz and Oscar should be compared because Cousy was a playmaker first and a scorer second; and Oscar was the reverse—a shooting guard who drew a lot of attention and accordingly handed out a lot of assists (particularly on short half-court passes that were highly likely to be scored as assists).

Sam

Hi Sam. I concur that Oscar was trashing Cooz, although I don't know what happened in Cincy to cause it. Maybe Cooz critiqued his defense! Regarding flashy play, I remember an all-star game, not sure which year, when the starting backcourt was Cooz and O and there was more razzle dazzle than at a Globetrotters game.

Characteristic Big O moves? There's this from Pete Newell: "I coached Oscar on the 1960 Olympic team and he was the first player I saw who consistently used the pump fake. He continually had his defender off his feet and that move became his trademark."

And this from Russ Grinker: "Oscar had a big behind and he used it to get in position for the shot he wanted - he just used his butt to back thye defender out of the way."