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Posted on 10/26/2013 10:15:38 AM PDT by EveningStar
Bill Sharman helped the Boston Celtics win championships as a player and led the Lakers to their first NBA title in Los Angeles as a coach in 1972. He spent 35 years with the team...
Sharman — who died Friday at 87 — will be remembered as the man who molded the Lakers into an elite franchise, guiding the 1971-72 squad to a historic 33 consecutive victories and an NBA title, their first in Los Angeles...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
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He made good toilet paper too!
You would think Chuck Dressen would have at least used him once as a pinch runner during September.
Four championships and his number retired with the Celtics, pro baseball for a few years, great coach (the first to get Wilt to play something approximating team ball). The Lakers may claim him now but he’ll always live in Celtics Valhalla.
Four championships and his number retired with the Celtics, pro baseball for a few years, great coach (the first to get Wilt to play something approximating team ball). The Lakers may claim him now but he’ll always live in Celtics Valhalla.
The Lakers might have had a good run but Wilt and West were near the end of the line. If Sharman had been coaching the Lakers when Wilt got there and Elgin Baylor still had some good games left, he might have won multiple titles.
That's a myth. When Wilt went to the Sixers he gladly cut down on his offense to help win championships. When he first came into the league, his owner demanded that Wilt score a lot of points for the benefit of league publicity. What was he, Wilt, supposed to do? Nobody regular had ever shot 50% from the floor before Wilt came into the league. Nobody could stop him one on one...not even Russell. And the fact was even though the Celtics had superior teams to Wilt's teams before the Sixers, several of his pre-Sixer teams came close to dethroning the Celtics in the semis. If Wilt had started his career with West and Baylor at the beginning of the decade, the history of the sixties would have been a lot different.
Sharman was not the first to get Wilt to buy into the concept of full on team ball in my opinion. I would submit that distinction goes to coach Alex Hannum during the 76ers 1966-67 season.
Many times it simply comes down to which team is the healthiest. Russell badly sprained his ankle in the '58 finals against the Hawks. The Celtics lost. In '73 with the Celtics the best team in the league, Havlicek hurt his shoulder in the playoffs, and the Knicks (fourth best team in the league) won the title. The Lakers, who easily defeated the Knicks in the finals the previous year, had West suffering from hamstring pulls to both legs in the '73 finals. The Lakers won the first game, West scored over 30 points, but lost the next four all by close scores with West severely hobbled.
The most famous or notable case of Wilt's bad luck is when he badly twisted his knee with six minutes to go in the '69 finals. He tried to play on it but had to leave for a few minutes to get it worked on. Then Van Breda Kolff, who hated Wilt, refused to put him back in the game when Wilt asked to go back in. The Lakers lost the seventh and final game by two points. There were quite a few other instances of injuries to Wilt or his teammates or lucky plays by the Celtics in the last moments. Wilt is the unluckiest great player in history.
Also a “phantom” Major League Baseball player, one who was on the roster but never got into a game.
He did, however, get thrown out of a game in which his team’s entire bench got ejected. He is thus the only player to have been thrown out of a game without ever appearing in one.
I grew up watching Wilt v. Russell. As individual players Wilt was unquestionably the dominant one. But the strategy was always to let Wilt try to win on his own. It always worked.
Wilt doesn’t get enough respect as a plausible greatest player of all time. I’d pick him over Jordan.
Physically dominant. Played pro volleyball at age 50 and claimed he could still play nba
However when wilt was in la they also had west and Baylor. West developed the nickname, mr clutch. Because of hitting game winning jumpers and drives. So wilt was not always go to guy.
RIP.
It didn’t always work. The Sixers did win the title in ‘67 and would have won in ‘68 if a slew of injuries hadn’t befallen the Sixers in the playoffs. Billy Cunningham broke his wrist and didn’t play at all. Other key players were severely hampered by injuries including Chamberlain who suffered from shin splints during the semis. The Sixers blew a 3-1 lead and lost the seventh game by four points. But a number of earlier series between Wilt’s teams and the Celtics were decided by last second plays. Again, the Celtics were the team of the sixties. But the breaks also went their way.
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