Nba Talent Pool Deepened When New Doors Opened

So, where do these Chicago Bulls rank on the cosmic scale of greatness? Particulars are skewed and blurred by time’s passage, so there can be no answer in black and white.

But that’s a beginning.

At this moment in 1966, the Boston Celtics were closing in on their eighth consecutive NBA championship. Fly a helicopter over team buses 30 years ago, and what would you have seen?

That season was the last for Boston’s legendary coach, Red Auerbach. It was also noteworthy in another respect. He used the first all-black starting five in league annals. They thought Auerbach had choked on his cigar, but all he wanted to do was win.

The centerpiece of that Celtics dynasty was Bill Russell, before whose arrival there had been six black players in the entire NBA. Now, league rosters are composed of about 80 percent blacks.

Yes, the NBA is diluted. Historians conveniently forget that when the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers recorded their 69 victories in an allegedly robust 17-franchise league, there existed an entire 11-team American Basketball Association.

Fine. At one point recently, three different weak links - Vancouver, Dallas, Philadelphia - were carrying double-digit losing streaks, an uncommonly strong clue about the raging imbalance of power in the NBA.

But, put all that aside. Can there be any doubt about the relative merits of talent pools then and now? Try this. Also in 1966, for the NCAA men’s basketball title game, Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, who had never suited up a black player, put his all-white Wildcats against Texas Western, whose best seven players were black.

Texas Western shocked Kentucky 72-65. More eyes opened - and more doors, too. The NBA eventually benefitted from this increased feeder system to become what it is today. Generations of more able bodies created the supply to meet the demands of expansion.

Think about it. Can we honestly anoint the 1927 New York Yankees as the best baseball team when it wasn’t until 1947 that Jackie Robinson broke the major-league color barrier? Too distant? Too sensitive?

Let’s go to hockey, where the Detroit Red Wings last week achieved a record 61st victory, surpassing a mark of the 1976-77 Montreal Canadiens. The Bulls are a unit of nations - United States, Australia, Croatia and Canada - as are the Red Wings, who are liberally sprinkled with Russians.

The Montreal dynasty of two decades ago, like the National Hockey League itself, was predominantly Canadian. Europeans played hockey in Europe, Americans played hockey in America and by all means, the Soviet Union was a rink unto itself.

It was a mega-happening when the U.S. Olympic team stunned the Soviets in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980. We’ll never know what might have occurred had they played a seven-game series instead of one, but the Americans won and it was referred to as the “Miracle on Ice.” Repeat, miracle.

But now, the Red Wings can start a game with five Russian skaters, and the opposition composed of North Americans will think nothing of it, besides how to stop them. Different arena, same point.

It matters not anymore whether you are of a certain race, creed, nationality or skin pigmentation. It matters only whether you can play the game. There are many things wrong with sports in the 1990s, but absence of opportunity for the best available athletes is not among them.

If the Bulls can rise above the debate on a single count, it is this: Regardless of how insignificant the game against a foe however feeble, they come to play. That work ethic could not be diminished, were the NBA a 100-team league.

But the Bulls are correct when they say none of it counts without a championship. We can both be right, too. You say there are more bad teams than ever in all sports, we’ll say there are more good players than ever.