Jae wrote:Wow I didn't know that, good stat
That "stat" is being used in a slightly misleading way. As Masilo admits. Take a look at the top eight minute guys on each of the teams.
1979->1980
1. Maxwell (75.4% of minutes, 19.9 PER) -> Bird (74.3%, 20.5)
2. Ford (66.8%, 14.3) -> Archibald (72.0%, 15.3)
3. Cowens (63.9%, 15.2) -> Maxwell (69.0%, 19.0)
4. Archibald (42.2%, 13.1) -> Cowens (54.3%, 14.8)
5. Judkins (38.6%, 14.5) -> Ford (53.2%, 13.0)
6. White (37.0%, 10.2) -> Carr (50.2%, 14.6)
7. Rowe (31.0%, 7.7) -> Robey (48.2%, 12.7)
8. Chaney (27.3%, 9.7) -> Henderson (26.7%, 12.7)
Not only did the top eight guys play over two thousand more minutes , the average PER went from 14.2 to 16.2. Maxwell the teams best player became the teams second best player and fell to third in minutes. Only three players cracked 50% on the 1979 team, six did on the 1980 team (and Robey was close) while only one guy cracked 67% on 1979, three did on 1980. Cowens and Ford (second and third on 1979) fell to fourth and fifth. The upgrades from White and Rowe to Carr and Robey combined with more minutes for a better Archibald is almost as big as adding Bird for nobody.
The team also went from 19th on defense to 5th. 19th on offense to 1st.
Though, if you want to make the case that Bird made his teammates better, here's a good place for that argument. Using Dean Oliver's ORtg (the guy works for the Sonics if you want his to know his street cred) look at the changes in Bird's teammates from 1979 to 1980:
Maxwell: 121 -> 124
Ford: 102 -> 111
Cowens: 103 -> 104
Archibald: 100 -> 115
Judkins: 106 -> 110
(Of course...replacing White (90), Rowe (91) and Chaney (93) with Carr (105), Robey (109), Henderson (101) probably helped a ton...as did adding Bird's 109 for free...)
Bird certainly made the team better, and as I said he's certainly better than Pierce, but giving him all the credit for that turn around is like blaming Carmelo Anthony, Jason Kidd or Steve Nash only for their teams respective turns from lottery to good/great.
