First, thanks nick, I love engaging in debate with you on pretty much any topic. I feel like the offseason is the best opportunity to engage in these conversations which is why I post frequently in the summer and almost never in the season.
The point I'm trying to make is what difference does it make if you are the second best player on a team or third or fourth as long as that team couldn't do without you.
In my mind, in an exercise titled "Greatest", it makes a big difference, especially when it comes to first v. fourth. The fourth best player might just be good, not great. This is about the greatest, and by my definition (which nobody needs to follow), true greatness for a relatively short period outweighs being just good for a longer period of time. I'll just make my choices based on my personal feelings about how good or great the players are. I think Garnett is truly great. I think he's one of the 3-5 greatest players ever to play for the Celtics. But I'm limiting myself to contributions as a Celtic, which is why I'd put him down in the 10-14 range right now. As much as greatness is a key to me, there is a sliding scale where being less great or even just very good for a significant period of time outweighs true greatness for a short period.
For me, replaceability is also a factor. A guy who was the fourth best player on a team may be necessary to that year's title (or in the cases of some 60s guys, 3-4 titles) but that player may also be quite replaceable, and that's where I have issues with some of the people nominated ahead of Garnett. While a lot of those guys were cogs in championship machines, a lot of them were also very replaceable. And I'm not talking about the Sam Joneses and Bill Sharmans (who I admittedly underrated) and Robert Parishes. I'm talking about the Jim Luscotoffs and Ed Macauleys (may have been a great player, but never won a title, and his biggest contribution was being the guy we traded for Russell) and Don Nelsons. Yes, they did important things and played well and did what was asked, and certain titles would not have been won without them. But we don't win the title last year without James Posey, does that mean he's as great a Celtic as Kevin Garnett? Or, for that matter, Reggie Lewis, who never won a title? No. Is Sam Jones a greater Celtic than Bob Cousy because he won more titles? Obviously, by this poll, not.
Kevin Garnett filled a role that nobody else (maybe Tim Duncan) could have filled. To look at another team - the Lakers would not have won a couple of their titles without Derek Fisher. Derek Fisher played more years and won more titles as a Laker than Shaquille O'Neal. Does that mean he's greater as a Laker than Shaq? No. Because other guys could have done for the Lakers what Derek Fisher did, or they could have found a way to do it somewhat differently. But Shaq was irreplaceable, so he's greater. Same with Garnett v. a lot of these guys. I'll bet there were several guys who could have come and done what Jim Luscotoff did, or if nobody could have done exactly that, there would have been a different way of doing it that would have brought the same results. That's not to take anything away from what Jungle Jim actually contributed, which was clearly important, that's just to say that when I'm choosing the "Greatest" of anything, I don't take people who were good over people who were truly great just because they were good for a longer period of time than somebody was great.
Like I said, with a sliding scale, guys who were not as great as Garnett but were on the upper level of their teams and did it for longer will get more credit. I'm thinking that I'll put Sharman and Parish ahead of Garnett, too. And DJ is my all time favorite Celtic and I also think he's underrated, so I'll probably put him above Garnett, and Jo Jo too. I fully admit that putting Garnett 10th was a little rash, but part of this is planting the seed for other people to consider the true greatness of Garnett as these rounds roll on, something they may not have been considering since he wasn't nominated. And I think the concept of "great" is something people should think about.
You're young and what you know and have lived are the last 25 years. I respect that. But in this sense you are justifying KG's Celtic greatness with your appreciative heart and not your knowledge. His slightly more than 100 games played in no way should count more than those years of toil by great players in their own right who's contributions were absolutely necessary for their teams to win championships.
Well, really, that's just opinion. I absolutely can count Garnett's 150 games as a Celtic above the 1000 games because I think those 150 games of greatness are better than 1000 games of good. It depends on objective measures of greatness. I also think he contributed more in 150 games than a lot of these other nominees contributed in their entire careers.
You are a truly appreciative green blooded fan that unfortunately grew up during the C's worst era ever. You love KG and point to him being the reason you are counting championships in your lifetime. But putting him ahead of, not just one or two, but several major contributors to multiple championships who's absence could well mean those championships never happened, is a misplaced appreciative gesture. It comes from your heart and I respect and respect your opinion. I think though that doing some research and looking at video and quotes from other players and you may have a different opinion afterward.
Yes, I'm absolutely biased by my age. As many old games that I watch on NBATV or ESPN Classic (and I watch as much as I can) and as many books about Red Auerbach and the old Celtics that I read (I love reading that stuff), that's still not something I experienced first hand, year after year. And it can't be, it just never will be. I can only go from my experience. But I still strive to remain objective, and on the whole, I think I'm being pretty objective with Garnett by saying he should at least be considered, while I think a lot of you are actually being less subjective by arguing for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th best players on the teams you identify with - all good players and big contributors to Celtics lore, of course - ahead of the truly great player from the current era, simply because he didn't have the opportunity to be in Boston from the start.
Kevin Garnett is the guy who made the team I love great again. While he didn't come in as a young player, what he did seems to me to be much more similar to what Bill Russell did, or what Dave Cowens did, or what Larry Bird did, which is to come in and lead a team to greatness, than what the role players on earlier championship teams did. Again, I'll harp on it, if it's called "Greatest" I'm looking for greatness. Many to most of the guys remaining on the list simply aren't good enough players to do it - Garnett not only is good enough, but he actually did it.
So for me, it really comes down to the parameters of this exercise. What makes the Celtics such a great franchise, those major contributions and sacrifices from non-stars - as opposed to LA which always just had stars - is what makes this exercise almost futile. Once you get to a certain point (and it might be right about where we are, the 9-12 range) every player gave everything they had and their ultimate success depended on how great the players that they played with were. So what's greater? Are we judging the players, which is what to me the title of "Greatest Celtics of All-Time" implies we should do, or are we judging the circumstances under which they played?
This comes back to my difficulty with cross-comparing eras like this. I've said this a lot with respect to Red Auerbach v. Phil Jackson. I can't say who was the greater coach because they did entirely different jobs despite having the same title. Each did his job about as well as it could be done for his era. So what's "greater"? If Phil had to build the team from scratch as GM and coach with no assistants or scouts, and didn't have the ability to just jump on the team with the best top level talent, could he have done it? I highly doubt it. If Red had to give away control to other people, focus on just a couple of areas, deal with a different roster every season due to the affects of free agency and prepare for/compete against 29 other teams instead of 8, could he have had as much success? Frankly, I doubt that too. But for what each coach had to do at their time, he was perfect.
So too, it's impossible to compare greatness in different eras. The fact is, back in the 60s, there weren't things like free agency and salary caps to tangle with. So some of these guys were the 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th best players on numerous championship teams - in the modern era, those guys don't stick around, so the old guys have an inherent advantage under the criteria most voters here are using. And that's an inherent bias that is below the surface, not the above the surface bias that is obvious in younger voters who simply can't have as much knowledge of past history.
It just seems that a lot of those guys are higher on a list of all time greatest Celtics because circumstances allowed them to play relatively minor roles for full careers on teams that had the greatest players (Russell, Cousy, Sharman, Heinsohn followed by Russell, Jones, Havlicek). Yeah, they contributed year after year, but frankly, when I see "Greatest" Celtics, I vote for the people who I think are truly great ahead of those who were just good and helpful, with less regard to the longevity of the respective contributions. Maybe, since the greatness of the franchise is not in stars, but in teamwork, this exercise simply goes against everything it means to be a Celtic, great or good.
Topic: 25 Greatest Celtics of All-Time : #9 (Read 9341 times)