RIP, Walt Bellamy

Cool.

 

What a great irony. Lucas could memorize entire phone books yet you could not
remember his first name.

Always one of oddest skills / anecdotes I've ever read about an athlete.

 

Couldn't he also take practically any word and instantly put the letters in alphabetical order?

 

Riordan and Marin were both examples of the Frank Ramsey-inspired "Sixth Man" style of player which swept the NBA in the early-mid 60s after the Celtics had such great success with the original. (Although frankly the early Celtics' success had a hell of a lot more to do with Russell on defense and the boards and Cousy running the break than Ramsey.)

Combo guard-forwards, back in the day when individual position roles were not so strictly defined, these guys were 6-3 to about 6-6 and could swing between guard and forward. Bill Bradley and Cazzie Russell both assumed variations of this role with the Knicks.

Today when most teams are basically built on the 1-2-2 blueprint, the idea that #2's and #3's can be more or less interchangeable is old hat, but in those days it was considered kind of remarkable.

The role of the "Sixth Man" per se kind of faded in the early 70s when it became apparent teams needed to go deeper in their benches, so instead of a heavy rotation of 6 players and 2-3 others seeing spot duty as had been common in the 60s, teams started going 8-9 deep more frequently.

Havlicek of course followed Ramsey into the sixth man role with the Celtics and Billy Cunningham broke in with the Sixers in that capacity, but both those guys became All-NBA first teamers as starters.

 

Red Auerbach came up with the 6th man concept.

I never thought of Marin as a 6h man. He was starting small forward with The Bullets. Riordan with the Knicks was the
designated player to give a foul when The Knicks were under the limit. Garden fans really got into in when Riordan came in
They knew exactly what he was suppose to do. So the the visitors which made it fun to watch Riordan run around trying to give his foul.

Outside of Havilchek I always viewed The Sixth Man role as one to provide a spark to team.

 

Well I wasn't born when the Celtics won their first title and I was too little to be paying attention to strategic details in the early 1960s, but my impression from reading contemporary stuff and talking to people old enough to remember was that in the 1950s and earlier, most teams had 5 starters who played the vast majority of the minutes, and then you usually had 1-2 guys who were not quite good enough to start or had lost their previous starting spots, so you stuck them in for a few minutes if a starter got hurt or into foul trouble and mainly hoped they didn't screw up too much while they were in.

Supposedly Auerbach came up with the idea of the 6th man being an upgrade in energy or athletic ability or scoring firepower from the starters. Before then bench guys were considered stopgaps you played when you effectively had little choice.

 

I'm not saying that there was intentional "fiddling around", but rather a game that had not yet grown up, was INCOMPARABLY and virtually unrecognizably different from what we think of as NBA basketball today, and in which it was IMMEASURABLY easier to rack up crazy stats than in later eras.

Just a few of the utterly insane, inconceivable today, things that happened in 62: Wilt scores 100 in a game, and averages over 50 ppg, Oscar Roberston AVERAGES a triple double, and not just any triple double, but a mindbogglingly preposterous 31, 12 and 11 type triple double average, Russell and Wilt each average over 24 rebounds per game, hell the Lakers had TWO guys (Baylor and West) who averaged over 38 and 31 on the SAME DAMN TEAM. Think we'll ever see that again? And that's hardly the end of it. Nearly every team in 62 had guys throwing up bizarro statistical nights that could never be replicated today.

And why did all this lunatic statistical shit happen the SAME DAMN SEASON? It wasn't coincidence, and it wasn't because the players were so good back then, but rather because of the style of play, rules and comically porous defenses of that era. For whatever reason, every team was essentially playing a Loyola Marymount shoot-every-few-seconds run n gun style in 62 (teams averaged an astounding number of shots per game back then, nearly 110 per game, nearly 30 more per game than in later eras), except with FAR less athletic and well conditioned defenders than in the modern game; the narrower lane rules back then made it SO much easier for big men to get in scoring position, and although I don't believe there was a "gentleman's pact", the fact is that defenses were INCREDIBLY soft, porous and unsophisticated during that era compared to today. Don't believe me? Go find some extended game footage from that era and watch for yourself. It is enlightening to say the least.

Again, I didn't bring up this opposing view with the intent to bash Bellamy. But I've just grown weary over the years of people trying to make a case for guys like Wilt or Oscar (or, in this case Bellamy) over today's stars based upon their crazy early 60s stats, without any acknowledgement or apparent understanding of how incomparably different the game was back then. Bellamy is a guy who went from averaging 31 ppg as a rookie in 62 to only around 11 ppg in 70 when he was only 30 and still should've been around his prime. The reason why his averages took those huge drops after his rookie year wasn't because he got worse, instead it was simply because the League itself, both in terms of quality of play and level of defensive competition, changed SO dramatically in the intervening years.

And, frankly, in Bellamy's case, those big stat early seasons at the very beginning of his career are the ONLY thing really supporting his HOF admission. Other than that, he was essentially just a journeymen center on a bunch of woeful losing teams, was never All NBA, and never really had any special moments that stick in the NBA fans' memory banks.

 

Bellamy was never all-NBA because he was stuck behind 2 of the 5 greatest centers of all time, by pretty much everybody's rankings.

Yeah, most of his career value is based on his big-number production of his first couple of seasons. So what? Those count, too.

I don't think anybody is seriously arguing Bellamy is a towering all-time great player (some are but I am not sure how serious they are).

But he was a pretty good one for about a decade.

 

Well put Starman. He's deserved of the HOF.