Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty

Ron Boone is still alive. Damn.

 

Corky Calhoun
Johnny Davis
Herm Gilliam
Bob Gross
Lionel Hollins
Robin Jones
Maurice Lucas
Clyde Mayes
Lloyd Neal
Larry Steele
Dave Twardzik
Wally Walker
Bill Walton

 

Any team in the NBA would have killed to have prime-seasons Maurice Lucas.

The NBA era between the merger and the arrival of Bird/Magic was weird. The 76ers should have been the superteam, but couldn't get themselves on the same page. The Trail Blazers and the Sonics each had their brief shining moment, but couldn't keep it going. In the middle of all that the Unseld-Hayes Bullets snuck off with a title. The Lakers had Kareem but little else, and kept spinning their wheels.

During those years, a handful of other teams hung around in semi-contention. The Celtics drifted downhill after the 76 title as Cowens and Havlicek got old. The Suns were kinda good for a couple seasons, and Houston was ok for a couple seasons with a young Moses. But nobody was really good more than one or two seasons in a row.

 

Or his post-prime elbows.

 

I was wondering who the white guy was
I forgot all about Mark Landsberger

 

Landsberger's the one who got scooped hard on by Dr. J in that iconic clip.

 

Rambis doesn't arrive for another season in the timeline.

 

Walton’s legs stopped Portland.

Lucas was good, but not an all-timer.

 

If anything, the 76ers were sunk by their allowing fringe sideshow characters like World B. Free and Darryl Dawkins too much influence on the direction of the team rather than falling in line behind Dr. J.

Hell, Julius had been the leader of the whole fuckin league in the ABA; maybe he was just tired of carrying the whole load, so he decided, in turn, to defer to McGinnis and then the second level clowns like Dawkins and Free.

McGinnis had some leftover resentments toward the Doctor dating back to the ABA, and wanted to move outside where he could produce swooping highlight film moments of his own; if he'd been content to stay down low, bang bodies on the boards, and reinforce the interior defense, he'd probably have been fine and the Sixers could have grabbed a couple of those late Seventies titles.

Everybody remembers the 77 Finals against the Trail Blazers as the Sixers' big moment of failure, but that's a crock: the Blazers, with Walton healthy, were really a great team. It was the next year, 1978, when the 55-27 Sixers laid a turd against the 44-38 Bullets in the ECF, that was really disgusting (so much so they shipped McGinnis out of town shortly afterward).

 

Any correlation between those Sixer teams and the Process Sixers?

 

No. That team reached at least the conference finals (I think) five or six straight years. They averaged 56 wins a season.

Fun fact: Stipulating that The Process started with Michael Carter-Williams and ended with Markelle Fultz, those teams won a combined 75 games in four years.

 

This really brings home the point.