A new benchmark

Sporting News, The, April 10, 1995 by Jackie Krentzman

In assessing the teams most likely to succeed during the playoffs, forget the obvious. Every top team in the NBA has a go-to guy. They all have point guards with outstanding assist-to-turnover ratios. And they all - well, almost all - play with great defensive intensity.

Instead, the benchmark of a championship team is its bench.

No matter that Hakeem Olajuwon had an MVP season, the Rockets would not have won the NBA title last season without Sam Cassell, Mario Elie and the team's other reserves, who easily outscored the Knicks' bench in the Finals. The Bulls had an able supporting cast for Michael Jordan's supporting cast during their championship run. The Pistons had Dennis Rodman and Vinnie (Microwave) Johnson. The Lakers had Michael Cooper. The Celtics seemed to resurrect a veteran every season they won the title - Bill Walton, Scott Wedman, M.L. Carr, Paul Silas, Don Chaney, et al. Get the picture?

Bench play is always critical, but even more so during the playoffs, as the mental intensity and the physical wear and tear of the long season lead to more fouls and fatigue. Even though teams pare down their rotations to eight or nine players for the playoffs, those three or four reserves can determine the outcome of a season.

"The best teams in the league have the best benches in the league," Lakers Coach Del Harris says. "No matter how talented your starting five is, that's not enough."

The ideal is to have one man, the sixth man, who comes off the bench to energize his team and often finishes the game instead of one of the starters. This season, Kendall Gill, Kenny Smith, Hersey Hawkins and Charles Smith are starters for their teams. But come crunch time, these high-paid veterans are often sitting and watching. In their place you will see Nate McMillan, Sam Cassell, Dell Curry and Anthony Mason.

There are other reserves who finish out games - Roy Tarpley for the Mavericks, Brian Shaw for the Magic, Chuck Person for the Spurs and several current and former All-Stars for the Suns frequently come off the bench in the fourth quarter to replace a starter. All but Tarpley compete for playoff-bound teams.

The top NBA teams are deep enough to have reserves who would start for other teams. These finishers have the ego to handle coming off the bench, the skills to provide a quick pick-me-up and the reliability to play smart basketball. "I don't care if I'm not starting," says Mason, who is an erratic player. "I like having the responsibility of picking the team up when I come in. I'd be happy to come off the bench my entire career."

Of course, when a team offers Mason, a free agent, $4 million per to start for them next season, he just may be able to find other ways to make himself happy. It is the fate of the quality sixth man to become a starter. It happened to John Havlicek, Kevin McHale, Dennis Rodman, Detlef Schrempf and Cliff Robinson. The only All-star caliber reserve to spend his whole career as a reserve is Golden State's Ricky Pierce.

The sixth man, like many NBA innovations, began with Red Auerbach. The Celtics' first great finisher was Frank Ramsey. Although he averaged only 13.4 points per game from 1954 through '64, Ramsey was the first sub to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Ramsey gave way to Havlicek, the greatest sixth man ever. The best sixth men of the 1970s included Calvin Murphy with the Rockets, Downtown Freddie Brown with the Sonics and Bobby Jones with the 76ers. But it was McHale in the early 1980s who picked up where Havlicek left off, fitting the mold of a versatile player who put up big numbers.

"We (the Celtics) were unique," Havlicek says. "People didn't think much of the sixth-man concept the first years we were doing it, so we were the only team that always had one. But we won so much that eventually every team tried to copy us."

In 1982 the NBA created the Sixth Man Award, to give bench players some recognition. Winners include players who were stars - Jones, McHale, Pierce, Schrempf, Robinson and Walton.

But although bench play today is as important as ever, there are fewer prestigious sixth men now than perhaps any time in the past 20 years. Top contenders for the 1994-95 award will be Curry, McMillan and Tarpley. Nice players, to be sure, but hardly All-Stars.

The primary culprit is expansion. In the past, a team such as the Celtics had enough depth to carry a Havlicek or McHale on the bench. But when the league added four teams in 1988 and '89, bench players moved into the starting lineup.

"The league has softened up," McHale says. "I don't know if there is the talent any more for most teams to have true sixth men."

And just wait until next season, with the addition of Toronto and Vancouver. "It will be worse," Mavericks Coach Dick Motta says. "Lousy teams will have to play their starters more."

The league is also experiencing a sixth-man void because coaches aren't using their reserves as consistently as in the 1980S. When playing the Lakers, an opponent knew that when Magic Johnson or Byron Scott took a breather, Cooper would be coming in. With the Suns, when Tom Chambers came out, Eddie Johnson went in. But now coaches are frequently substituting by feel. Sonics Coach George Karl may put in McMillan, or he may call on Vincent Askew or Sam Perkins. Game circumstances dictate whom coaches bring in first, as well as who is on the floor at the end of the game.