Yahoo Sports fantasy analyst Andy Behrens and Yahoo Sports senior NBA writer Vincent Goodwill break down their selections of competing fantasy rosters from the NBA’s 75th anniversary team, choosing specific seasons for each player to build the ultimate fantasy basketball squad.
Video Transcript
[THEME MUSIC]
ANDY BEHRENS: Welcome to a special “Yahoo Fantasy Draft” of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team. I’m Andy Behrens, “Yahoo Fantasy” analyst, here with Vincent Goodwill. He is Yahoo’s Senior NBA Writer, and, you probably know this, a two-time Fantasy Football champion.
Here was our mission. In honor of the NBA’s 75th season, we selected the best single seasons from the anniversary team, toward the goal of building the most dominant Fantasy basketball roster as possible. Vince and I each drafted a standard Yahoo roster.
I’ll just say for starters that I loved this exercise. Number 1, because it gave me a chance to draft Kevin Garnett again, which was a thrill, and I didn’t think I’d ever get to do it. And 2, because it just takes you down some rabbit holes historically. It was really fun.
It was a fun examination of different eras in basketball history. A reminder of some just obscenely great, forgotten seasons. Vince, I want to start off by saying that you showed the discipline of an elite Fantasy manager here, because you’re a Pistons guy. But it’s not like you opened the draft with Dave Bing and Isaiah Thomas. Right? I was impressed.
VINCENT GOODWILL: I’m a Pistons guy from, like, back then. Not now. You know what I mean? Let’s make that clear before people lose their minds.
ANDY BEHRENS: [LAUGHS]
VINCENT GOODWILL: But yes, I am a child of the bad-boy Pistons. I felt like Andy. I did, like, a really, really good job of discipline. And modern. I felt like I went a lot more modern than you.
ANDY BEHRENS: You did.
VINCENT GOODWILL: You went deep in the crates. Like, I got my Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” vinyl up there–
[DING]
ANDY BEHRENS: [LAUGHS]
VINCENT GOODWILL: –and you literally picked guys 10 years younger than that album, which came out in, what, 1974?
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah. I didn’t go, like George Mikan deep. But I went pretty deep and took a lot of guys from, like, the ABA era. We’re going to talk about that a little bit. I also had– I had the first pick in the draft. And some might argue that I assigned myself the first pick in the draft.
VINCENT GOODWILL: You
ANDY BEHRENS: It’s possible. Who can remember? But– yeah. But–
VINCENT GOODWILL: I remember. But go ahead.
ANDY BEHRENS: [LAUGHS] I obviously– I took the season in which Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 and 25. Because that’s just stupid. But what I thought was really interesting is that, actually, three of the first four individual seasons that we drafted, it’s Wilt, it’s Elgin Baylor, and it’s Oscar Robertson’s triple double season, they’re all 1961, ’62.
That’s the year that Wilt scored 100. Again, big O with the triple double. What is it about that season that led to such crazy outlier performances?
VINCENT GOODWILL: A lot of missed shots.
ANDY BEHRENS: [LAUGHS]
VINCENT GOODWILL: That’s what that was, a lot of missed shots. Like, we could glorify a lot of the– all these numbers. But when you’ve got Elgin Baylor averaging, like, 18 rebounds a game, Oscar getting all the rebounds, all the assists, ridiculous. And of course, Wilt, who always shot, like, over 50% from the field. I don’t know if he shot, like, 60 that year.
ANDY BEHRENS: He was prolific in all aspects. Picking the right season for some of these guys is so difficult. I thought there was a clear right answer for Garnett. There’s a clear right answer for Wilt and a handful of other guys.
But, like, finding the best Michael Jordan season is almost a nightmare when you’re going through this exercise. So you picked a year in which he actually– it’s, like, his fifth-highest scoring average of all time. It’s nowhere near his highest-scoring effort.
But I also feel like it was maybe the right season. Because he’s also averaging 8 and 8, which is ridiculous, with 30 points a game. So just tell us about MJ in 1988, ’89.
VINCENT GOODWILL: This is the year after he averaged 35. In the two years after, he averaged 37. Like, he went from 37, to 35, to 32. So he was on the decline, from a scoring standpoint.
But eight rebounds, eight assists. He had played a lot of point guards that year. He had, like, nine triple doubles in 12 games, trying to carry a dog-[BLEEP] Bulls team that had really overachieved the year before. Now they underachieved this season.
He was trying to carry them to the playoffs and still leading the league in steals. Or at least second in steals. I think [? he was averaging ?] almost 2 and 1/2.
So I felt like, from a statistical standpoint, it was the best version in this Fantasy. I don’t think 1989 Michael Jordan, the year he didn’t win MVP, Andy, I don’t even know if that’s the top five of Michael Jordan’s best seasons, like, from Michael Jordan’s standpoint. But from a Fantasy standpoint, I felt like it was the most complete, [? statistically. ?]
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah. That’s, like, a perfect storm for Fantasy, when the supporting cast is really sketchy, and you’re just good enough to drag a team to the postseason. Right? Like, you know the stats are going to be great.
I took a couple of those seasons. I have, like, a Tiny Archibald season where he just dragged some dogs up and down the floor and averaged 34 and 11 for the year. It’s just an absolute perfect scenario for Fantasy.
I thought Larry Bird was another guy where– you know, you drafted him. Like, there was a moment where– a couple guys that come to mind. Larry Bird is one.
LeBron James is another, where I– you know, I just got tired looking at their game log, at their season stats. I’m like, I don’t know which season to pick. These are all the same. And they’re incredible.
So, like, Larry Bird has this– he’s got this four-year peak that is just so good, and the seasons are so similar. It is impossible to choose. From ’85 to ’88, he was a 40-50-90 guy. Which is stupid, of course.
He averaged 28, 10, and 7, almost two steals per game. So I’m just– number 1, how did you pick? And number 2, I’m interested to hear what you think his numbers would look like today. Because I feel like he’s the perfect example of a guy where, like– man, today they’d ask him to just shoot 10 or 12 3’s every night.
VINCENT GOODWILL: Yep. I think– I chose ’85 Bird because the efficiency was at its highest. And think about it. You said the four-year stretch. The three– the amazing part is about this, Andy, he won MVP three straight years. ’84, ’85, ’86.
But I think he shot, like, 43% from 3 that year. And I want to say he maybe took 2 and 1/2 3’s. Maybe.
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah. That’s wild.
VINCENT GOODWILL: It was wild. So when you go to– the way that we see LeBron James– take the athleticism out of it. But the way that we see LeBron James is the way that you would see Larry Bird, except with a better jump shot. And he’s shooting six or seven 3’s a game, and he’s rebounding and leading the break.
As soon as he gets that defensive board, he’s looking up, and that is starting to break. And if you slow down, he’s the trailer on a 3 at the top of the key. Who’s leaving him open? Someone stupid. Someone will.
And he’ll get three of those top of the key, above the break 3’s per game. He would be illegal in today’s basketball. Illegal, I tell you.
ANDY BEHRENS: Another thing I want to hit– and I feel like the– and I’m almost calling myself out with this.
VINCENT GOODWILL: OK.
ANDY BEHRENS: I feel like the late ’60s and early ’70s, the ABA years, were, like, a cheat code in is draft, to a certain extent. I took a Kareem season in which he averaged 35 and 17– like, I have Dr. J’s second season. I’ve got Bob McAdoo. I mentioned Archibald. The numbers from this era are just absolutely silly. But it’s also an era in which the talent is spread across two different professional leagues.
VINCENT GOODWILL: Yeah.
ANDY BEHRENS: So literally, every team had, like, five guys who probably shouldn’t have been playing pro basketball at its highest level. Right? When you hit the best years of Bob McAdoo, they’re crazy. And if people don’t know why he’s on this list, well, it’s because he averaged, like, 32 and 15 in his best years, with, like, three blocks a game.
Tiny Archibald had one of only two seasons in NBA history in which a guy led the league in points and assists. That’s crazy. So really, I just focused in on these two seasons from McAdoo and Archibald.
And I was like, oh, man. I have to draft these. They are, like, the most sneaky, great, forgotten seasons in NBA history. And I want to write about them. That’s basically how that went.
VINCENT GOODWILL: And you know what’s funny? The James Harden season you picked, I almost came really, really close to falling into that– oh, no. You didn’t pick the Harden season that came close to being a Tiny season. You picked the Harden season where he had the 30-point streak.
ANDY BEHRENS: Yes.
VINCENT GOODWILL: There was a season, I want to say ’16-’17, where he came ridiculously close for a long stretch of time of leading the league in scoring and assists. Like, Harden led the league in scoring, I want to say. And I want to say he averaged, like, around nine assists or something.
It wasn’t a triple double. But I feel like he came really close to pulling a Tiny. And I voted for Harden for MVP that year, even though who– people say I hate James Harden. I voted for him for MVP, and not Russell that year. I felt like that– you came really close to taking that year. Because I came really close to taking that year for James Harden.
ANDY BEHRENS: I feel like that vote actually stands up really well in hindsight. And that is a good segue to, actually, the last thing I want to ask you about, which is the biggest snubs in this draft. Because I kind of sort of can’t believe that we didn’t draft the Russell Westbrook MVP season.
It’s the first triple double average in forever, since Oscar Robertson. We also left– we left Jerry West in the green room, which is kind of crazy. He’s the logo. We didn’t draft Giannis. I don’t know. Who do you think the biggest snub is?
VINCENT GOODWILL: The biggest name might be Hakeem Olajuwon.
ANDY BEHRENS: Mm. Mhm.
VINCENT GOODWILL: Because I picked Moses Malone. Olajuwon had a couple of years– it was no perfect year to take him. He had a couple of years where he averaged, like, four blocks. A couple years where he averaged 14 rebounds.
A couple years where he was really close to that 27-, 28-point mark. But he never had that year in one. So I felt like, statistically, Olajuwon might have been the best dude that would be left sitting in the green room.
ANDY BEHRENS: Oh, that’s a good call. I hadn’t even thought about it. It’s probably Hakeem. Could be Hakeem. Could be Jerry West. I don’t know.
People, let us know. Let us know what we screwed up here. Tweet us at @YahooFantasy, along with the hashtag #NBA75. Thanks for playing along, Vince. Thank you to everyone for watching.