Some nuggets of truth, some solid observations and just a touch of bitterness....
In his own words: Oscar Robertson
The 6-foot-5 Robertson may have been the greatest perimeter player in history. During his 14 years with the Cincinnati Royals and Milwaukee Bucks, the "Big O" scored 26,710 points, second among guards only to Michael Jordan. In his second year he averaged a triple of double of 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists a game. As president of the players' union in 1970, he filed the landmark "Oscar Robertson suit," challenging the NBA's proposed merger with the ABA as well as the legality of the draft and the reserve clause that prohibited free agency. Six years later the league settled the case, allowing unrestricted free agency as well as a one-year deadline for teams to sign first-round picks, giving players the freedom to re-enter the draft a year later if they couldn't come to terms with their original team. Here Robertson offers his view of today's game and its future.
On the modern NBA:
"It's a commercial, it's what you can sell. That's just where the game is. People like to see the dunks and the three-point shot, so that's all you're going to have anymore.
"If you look at college basketball, especially with the zone [defense], it's either outside shooting and no penetration or you go inside and dunk. There are very few guys who can penetrate, very few indeed.
"Look at [Dwyane] Wade: He can dribble the ball. Look at [Steve] Nash. You'd think a lot of guards would learn how to dribble. But coaches don't teach it anymore."
On the dearth of big men in today's game:
"How many great centers are there? I saw a game the other night, and this kid was averaging three points a game, and the coach had the defensive guy playing in front of him. I said, 'Why is he doing that? Let the guy get some baskets first.' But they gave the guy seven or eight baskets because they'd lob it over his head.
"Coaching is a problem, even though nobody wants to really get after it and talk about it. There are no fundamentals being taught anymore. You go to a basketball camp and what do they emphasize? Shooting the ball. If you go to a really good basketball camp, it's so boring, but when they go back to their teams they'll say, 'What a great camp.' But while they're there it's boring, because they work on fundamentals. You don't work on shooting per se because you can do that on your own.
"If no one teaches fundamentals, how can it get any better?"
On the invasion of European players in the NBA:
"You can always look at the other guys' backyard. I'll say this about Europeans -- and I played against a lot of Europeans: When it gets to be crunch time and a real playoff-type game, that's when you want somebody to come and play, whether they're European or not. Have they come to the forefront? I ask you.
"I think you have the best players in the world here in America."
On concerns about the future of basketball:
"As long as people come to the games, as long as they buy the hats and the headbands and the shoes and the jerseys, you have no worries. But if you look on a comparative basis, maybe four or five teams can win and the rest of them can't win at all. So what are they there for? To fill in the gaps, I guess.
"You're always going to have talent because as long as you're paying big money you're going have people wanting to get into the game of basketball. Because money is tremendous incentive."
On Steve Nash's emergence as league MVP:
"Steve Nash has done a great job, but this shows the lack of true defense, especially on the pick-and-roll. I didn't think the pick-and-roll was that difficult to guard against, but it must be, because [the Suns are] doing very, very well against other teams with it.
"Phoenix has done a good job with their offense, but it's a simple offense: All they do is run one play. I don't see why it baffles these teams. They set a high pick, and guys go to the three-point line and nobody guards them."
On the fact that teams in 1964-65 averaged 100 shots per game, as opposed to the 79 field goal attempts teams average today:
"It's because guys don't get up and down the court like they used to, although they say that they're greater players and in better condition today. That remains to be seen. Years ago if you didn't [score] into the hundreds, you weren't going to beat anybody, you weren't going to beat anybody at all."
On how his game would translate in today's NBA:
"I never was allowed the opportunities to put up numbers, because they wanted me to do certain things. So I was never allowed to just shoot the ball anytime I wanted to. If I could shoot anytime I wanted to? Well, I shot about 49 percent from the floor, 80-something [percent] from the line. So if you're shooting 40 times and you make 20 of them...."
On the triple double, which wasn't recognized as a stat during his era:
"The triple double came about because when Magic [Johnson] and [Larry] Bird came in, [observers] tried to say, 'Oh, my God, these guys invented this, they did all these wonderful things.' But then they go back into the archives ... and I don't think they got all of mine anyway. I'll tell you why: If I threw [you] the ball and you dribbled it, it wasn't an assist. But now everything is an assist. No matter if you dribble eight or nine times, it's an assist. When I played, it was not like that."
