Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Beyond The Bad Tattoos And Bad Decisions

So lately I have been feeling kind of crazy, and whenever I feel crazy my mind tends to drift to the quasi-heroic men I've followed throughout my life who seemed to be also somewhat unhinged. Without fail, these thoughts always manage to make their way to Dennis Rodman, a true champion of the weird and wild.

It may be pretty hard for us to remember today in 2009 that there was a once point when Dennis Rodman was not a bizarre and pathetic D-list celebrity making noise for nothing, but instead a great basketball player--a fierce defender, a prodigious rebounder, and a GREAT team player, who literally threw himself around the court doing whatever he could to make his teams win.

Say what you want about the guy, but--leaving aside a final non-year of 12 games on the Mavs in 99-00--it is no coincidence that in only ONE of his thirteen seasons did he play on a losing team. In fact, Rodman didn't just play on winning teams but on GREAT winning teams: over these thirteen years, his teams finished 1st seven times and 2nd four times (rounded off with a 3rd and 6th place). I don't have the numbers in front of me, but if I had to guess, I'd think he would be up there among players with the all-time highest game team winning percentage. But unlike many winning players, Rodman can also claim to have been a member of five NBA champions--two with the Pistons in '89 and '90 and then three with the Bulls from '96-'98. Again, if I had to guess, I'd say that there are very few NBA players in the annals of the game with five championships who not members of the Celtics or Lakers.

Obviously basketball is a team sport and it's silly to assume that one player, especially one who scored as little as Rodman did, could be the single deciding force on a team's fortunes. However, unlike baseball or football, one great player CAN make a huge difference in the NBA (as Chris Paul's '08-'09 Hornets will attest to) and I think it is hard to deny that Dennis Rodman impacted the game like few others.

But going back to a point I've just made, what fascinates me about him is the fact that he was one of the rare players to impact a game so completely without being an offensive star; and specifically, by being so unbelievably great in one facet of the game as to elevate the rest automatically.

This "one facet" was of course his rebounding ability, the likes of which we have been duplicated by no one since he left the league, or even in the the many years before. Once upon a time, the game moved very very quickly--in the days of Wilt's 100 point game, 50 pts/game season; Oscar's triple-double averages--and league leading rebounders averaged 20+ boards per game. However, since 1972 and Wilt and Bill Russell's reign over the rim ended, no one has averaged over 18.1 boards per game in the NBA--and only once over 15.3 since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976--no one, that is except Dennis Rodman.

Behold the numbers below:

Obviously the column worth focusing on here is "TRB", where you will see that for seven straight seasons from 92-98, Rodman led the NBA in rebounding, including jawdropping years of 18.7 and 18.3 per game(!!!). And he was not just leading the league in rebounds--he was crushing it, averaging 15+ rebounds when no one else was even above 13. So good was he that five of these seven seasons make up five of the six best rebounding years of any player in the NBA since the '76 merger (with Moses Malone in '79 making up the lone non-Rodman year).

And to top it all off, check out the second column to the left: here you see that not only were Rodman's accomplishments impressive, but that they didn't even begin until he was 25, with his seven-year reign beginning at age 30--an age when many players begin tapering off. Basically, there was literally no other player in the NBA remotely like him, and the only players who have even sniffed at Rodman reboundwise are the far inferior and one-dimensional Danny Fortson and Reggie Evans.

So the next time someone talks about how great of a rebounder Dwight Howard is--and yes, he is great--remind them of Dennis Rodman, who while often seeming like he was in a land of his own, was also, always, in a league of his own.

Dennis Rodman, 1990

Labels: basketball, heroes

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 5/20/2009 04:15:00 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

E-BAD said...: So... I had a dream this weekend wherein Dennis Rodman took me in a NASA shuttle in order to attend an All Star game being played in a space station. Call me crazy- but the whole time I was waaaaay nervous cause all I could think about was getting back to Brooklyn so as to tend to my pot plants so as to pay rent. Britney Spears was there too. But no one cares about your dreams unless you're dreaming about them, right? Here we go tomacco!; 5/21/2009 03:44:00 AM