A Forgotten Decade: Reminiscences of the 1970s

The off-season is a good time for looking back.  NBA history has largely been defined by its great dynasties: first George Mikan’s Minneapolis Lakers in the ’50s, the Russell’s Celtics (11 championships in 13 seasons!) through the ’60s, Magic’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics in the ’80s, Jordan’s Bulls in the  ’90s, and finally Duncan’s Spurs and Shaq’s Lakers/Heat between ’99 and 2007.  For that reason, people tend to forget the decade of greatest parity in NBA history, the 1970s.  In that decade, eight different teams won NBA titles—the next closest decade for parity was the 50s with six different champions (yet Minneapolis won four of them, whereas no team in the 70s won more than two). 

People tend to think of the 70s as having been a weak decade, and I guess television ratings were down before Magic and Bird revived them, but I came of age as a basketball fan and young player in the 1970s, and those guys were my heroes.  Come 1980, I was as entranced as everyone else by the Magic v. Bird show (and sided with Magic), and while I was never as enamored of Jordan (I felt he shifted the game from the team focus of Magic and Bird to more of an individual taking over type of game), I was as duly impressed by the guy’s iron will to win as anyone.  But for me it was not a question of reviving a flagging interest.  I had found plenty of dramatic basketball to watch in the 70s, and this article is for those of you who remember those years fondly as well (I suppose you have to be about my age, approaching 50). 

The best player of the decade, far and away, was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  And yet Jabbar’s teams won just one title in the decade.  Why?  That’s part of the fascination of basketball.  If you saw this season’s Cavs v. Magic Eastern Conference Finals, you got a perfect demonstration of how the team with by far the best player on the court can nevertheless lose because the rest of his team gets outplayed and possibly the opposing coach has a better game plan.  It’s the same reason Chamberlain’s teams didn’t win the title every season in the 60s.

But if you only remember the Kareem of the Lakers in the 80s, you have no idea what Kareem was like in his heyday (and I know he was good in the 80s).  He was just a phenomenally gifted basketball player.  There’s never been anyone that tall with that combination of agility, wiry strength, quickness, and above all shooting accuracy.  The skyhook was unstoppable.  And if anyone thinks it’s an easy shot, I invite him to go on the court and shoot it from 10 to 15 feet out (where Kareem would hit almost every time).  Jabbar was just awesome in the 70s, a giant among boys, and more dominant than Jordan ever was in the 90s (sorry, Jordan fans, but if you didn’t see the 70s Jabbar, you don’t know).

The two teams that managed to win more than one title in the 70s (with two apiece) were the Knicks and the Celtics.  Both were beautiful examples of the team concept.  The Knicks are remembered as Willis Reed’s team, and certainly Reed was great in 1970 (much less so in 1973).  But it was Walt Frazier who was the really skilled, sometimes even dazzling player.  People tended to overlook it because Clyde the Glide was so adept at getting the fullest possible contributions from the Knicks’ assortment of role players: DeBusschere, Bradley, Lucas (in ’73), etc.

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