Now that Greg Oden is out for the season and Kobe Bryant seems stuck in Los Angeles, at least for a few more weeks, now that Amare Stoudemire is ready to go and Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson will be when their latest suspensions are over, now that the Spurs are working on their fourth try at a repeat, Shaq is working on his seventh playoff elimination by sweep and there appears to be just one tainted referee, it seems all is as it should be in the NBA.
So we can all try to figure out if this Boston Celtics thing can work.
“Anytime you get a chance to get three future Hall of Famers, you’ve got to take that opportunity,” Bucks guard Michael Redd said recently. “It’s a great move for them.”
Probably the biggest basketball story for the 2007-08 NBA season, which opened with the Spurs’ ring ceremony Tuesday night, is the Celtics’ acquisitions of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to go with Paul Pierce. They have a combined 21 All-Star Game appearances.
And zero games played in the NBA Finals.
“I don’t know what the limit is,” coach Doc Rivers said when the players were introduced together. “The sky, I guess. I don’t know. We’ll find out. We have to go through that process. As far as pressure and expectations, well, last year we had low expectations or no expectations, and we didn’t meet that. This year we have high expectations, and that is phenomenal to have.
“It’s an opportunity, and that’s the way we view it. We have an opportunity to do something. That doesn’t mean we have the right to believe or think we’re going to do it, but we do have an opportunity, and that’s all you want as a coach. That’s all Kevin and Paul and all of the players want as players.
“A lot of people, especially here — and I’m one of them — think it’s going to work. You hear all the outside talk, including the players, saying that it won’t work. Three guys; there’s no way it’ll work. I hear that a lot. So it’s an event whenever they play, because people are curious. When they play, people want to watch them. They want to see how it works.”
They’re the new Big Three.
Once that was Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in Detroit. It was once just ABC, NBC and CBS, and then it was Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish with the Celtics team of 1985-86, which some consider the best ever.
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McHale already has gone on record as saying the Celtics should win the East, though it’s not like Garnett, Allen and Pierce have had much success in their NBA careers.
Despite the gaudy statistics and individual honors — Garnett was the MVP in 2004 — their history of even making the playoffs is poor.
Garnett, regarded at times as the league’s top player, has been in the playoffs eight of his 12 seasons, but none of the last three. Pierce has been in four of his nine seasons and Allen four of his 11 seasons, but neither Allen nor Pierce has made it the last two seasons.
There’s also the question of the fit.
It’s generally believed that the two most vital positions for an NBA team are point guard and center, or at least a ballhandling perimeter player and a post player. Garnett is considered a power forward and Pierce and Allen either big guards or small forwards. None is considered a great ballhandler or playmaker or a true post-up player. In fact, the criticism of Garnett during his career is he hasn’t been a finisher because he tends to fade away and shoot jumpers and doesn’t relish contact.
Still, for this era, they are stars.
There has been mixed success with these kinds of combinations in NBA history.
Of course, in Boston, where there’s true excitement about the NBA for perhaps the first time since Bird retired, the talk and comparisons are to the great Big Three of the 1980s. That’s unrealistic, because that team was winning titles from virtually when it came together and in a much stronger league.
The Garnett-Allen-Pierce combination reminds many of when the Atlanta Hawks in the late 1980s, frustrated by the failure to get past the second round of the playoffs despite regular 50-plus-win seasons, acquired Moses Malone and Reggie Theus to go with All-Star Dominique Wilkins.
Current Celtics coach Rivers was on that team, which was 52-30 its first season together. But the Hawks were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, were quickly broken up and were a .500 team the next season.
Generally, high-scoring threesomes haven’t enjoyed great success.
Run TMC — Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond — was entertaining but never a big winner, even when all three averaged more than 20 points per game. Seattle had Dale Ellis, Tom Chambers and Xavier McDaniel averaging more than 20 per game in the late ’80s, and Denver had Kiki Vandeweghe, Alex English and Dan Issel in the early ’80s, and both struggled to be .500.
The difference in this case is Garnett, a legitimate big man and generally considered a great teammate who is unselfish.
The most interesting such experiment was when the Lakers with Jerry West and Elgin Baylor in 1969 acquired Wilt Chamberlain. They made it to the Finals the first two seasons. But it wasn’t until Baylor retired and Chamberlain became more a rebounder and facilitator that they won the championship in 1971-72.
The 76ers won a title with Chamberlain, Hal Greer and Chet Walker in 1967, though again it was with Chamberlain curtailing his offensive effort. The Lakers got to the Finals when they added Karl Malone to go with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, but they self-destructed, as teams have when putting together big scorers who were each accustomed to being the leaders and the top scorers on their teams.
With the deals the Celtics had to make to acquire Garnett and Allen, they start with questionable talents like Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins in the starting lineup, both of whom are extremely limited offensive threats. Will that put even more pressure on the new Big Three?
“It’s like we’ve been teammates forever,” Pierce said. “I feel like it’s all coming together.”
Garnett said: “The three of us have carried teams, and it feels good to have help — to know that you’re not always front and center. I’m going to bring what I bring to the table, but it’s great to know that you’ve got two other guys that have not only the experience but the know-how.
“And these are two humble people. That probably makes it even more tasteful. The game is fun.”