Promised lists of overrated books, movies, athletes, presidents, &c make for pretty tempting click bait on the internet. Something about us loves to see the mighty fail, fall, or at least suffer a few insults. Moreover, some self-styled expert is hardly going to gain street cred by parroting conventional wisdom. But what if you can sully the reputation of Lincoln? The compilers of these lists tend to be like the irritating smart kids in school who signed up for debate and loved to be assigned the bad side of some argument, because only then could they demonstrate their ingenuity and genius.
I think something like that must be going on with whoever is behind the above video making the case for Oscar Robertson being overrated. I took especial offense because he is my own "surprising" candidate for GOAT--greatest of all time. Probably debating the GOAT grail isn't even a worthwhile venture, as how can you compare Wilt Chamberlain to . . . anyone really? You know what I mean. You can't compare pitchers to hitters and you can't compare post players to point guards, either. But it's a fun pastime.
When I was first interested in basketball, one of the networks televised an NBA game every weekend. It was the late 60s, Russell-Chamberlain days, and the Celtics and 76ers were on a lot, but once in awhile the lowly Cincinnati Royals would be playing someone, like maybe the Lakers, because then fans could see the two best guards in the game, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. My affectation was to profess no opinion about who was better between Russell and Chamberlain while insisting that Robertson was superior to West (who was admittedly great). I think some of my buddies in the neighborhood liked West, maybe because their dads did, a preference that might possibly have been explained by race, and so naturally I had to go the other way. I loved the Big O.
Actually, thinking about it now, Robertson's game defied racial stereotypes. He was not a high-flying dunker, a long range gunner, or a stylish acrobat like Dr J. If he's not the greatest ever, he's for sure the greatest who never made anyone say, "Wow, did you see that?!" He was the master of the practically extinct mid-range game. Six-five, over 200 pounds, thick-limbed, barrel-chested, not a "clever" ball handler but as they say in the trade "strong with the ball"--you couldn't take it away from him--he'd use the dribble and his strength to force his way into his scoring zone, often somewhere near the corners of the lane by the ends of the foul line, and then jump up, not very high but a little backwards, creating space, the ball in his right hand high above his head, and he'd flick his wrist causing one low arcing shot after another to thunk in, scraping the inside of the back rim on its way through the basket. That's how I remember him. There really wasn't a way to stop him. Guarding him must have felt like being an overmatched defensive lineman in football. You know they're coming off tackle. You also know they're going to gain at least five yards, this time, next time, every time. Gang tackling is the only solution, but that's when Robertson, head up, would start zipping passes to post players and cutters. He led the NBA in assists seven times.
If you know one thing about Robertson, it's probably that he once averaged a triple double over the course of an entire season--30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11.4 assists per game during the 1961-62 season, his second in the league. Maybe more amazing--and this rebuts the claim in the video that he flamed out in his late 20s--he averaged, over the course of his 14-year professional career, 25.7 points, 9.5 assists, and 7.5 rebounds per game. It's not dispositive, but here are the corresponding career averages for other great players of similar size: West 27.0/6.7/5.8; Jordan 30.1/5.3/6.2; Barkley 22.1/3.9/11.7. The video seems so determined to prosecute a weak case that it charges Robertson with offenses that at least tend toward the mutually exclusive: his numbers were padded by being the best player on a poor team, he couldn't lead his team to victory in the playoffs, he won an NBA title with the Bucks (because he had Kareem Abdul Jabbar as a teammate).
Here is another video of Robertson in action. It generally confirms my memory of his unsensational efficiency. I hate how old and grainy things that happened in my youth look nowadays.
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