At the end of the Celtics’ Game 7 win at Milwaukee County Arena, in which Robertson was held to 2-for-13 shooting and just six points, White took a moment away from the Celtics’ celebration to visit the Bucks’ locker room. Robertson had been his hero as a kid, and White wanted to let Robertson know he was the best player he’d ever faced.
“There was no one tougher,” White recalled. “He was just very determined, he wanted the ball in his hands, and he had so many ways he could beat you. It was never a one-on-one thing when you were guarding him. The whole defense had to be on him, you had to pressure him from end to end because if you let him set up where he wanted to, no matter what you did, he was going to find a way to score. He controlled the tempo, he controlled the team, he was either going to set himself up or one of his teammates up. He could control the entire game.”
It’s been more than four decades since Robertson retired, but he has surged back into the national conversation in recent weeks thanks to the exploits of Thunder guard Russell Westbrook, another star guard with the power to control a game. After a 27-point, 18-rebound, 14-assist performance on Monday, Westbrook is now averaging a triple-double: 30.9 points, 10.3 rebounds and 11.3 assists. The last guy to do that this late in a season was Robertson, for the Cincinnati Royals in 1961-62.
Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 11.4 assists and 12.5 rebounds that season, but that’s hardly the whole story. In the era, no one thought much about triple-doubles, a statistical accomplishment that did not gain recognition until the exploits of Magic Johnson in the 1980s. As Robertson once said, “I didn’t realize what I was doing. They didn’t keep those stats.”
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Robertson tended to dominate a stat sheet because it was the best way to get his team to a win. “Oscar was probably the best I played against,” said Hall of Fame guard Jerry West, whose career overlapped with Robertson’s. “He did just about everything he could to get the most out of what he had. He had a lot of intelligence and will and determination. I don’t think there is a player today who really compares to him directly, except that he wanted so badly to win, and you find great players like that with that approach today.”
Westbrook and Robertson share a position and a penchant for racking up big numbers, but they are vastly different in style. Westbrook beats foes with speed, athleticism and fearlessness. Robertson beat them with strength, shooting and cold calculation. But as this season progresses, if Westbrook continues to produce, the two names will be closely linked.
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Jim Barnett, the Warriors analyst who was a guard in the NBA from 1966 to 1977, recalled facing Robertson in 1967, playing for the expansion San Diego Rockets. Robertson had been coached by San Diego’s Jack McMahon in Cincinnati for four seasons, but McMahon watched helplessly as the Rockets’ guards struggled to contain Robertson. McMahon turned to Barnett, then deep in the rotation as he readjusted to the league following a Vietnam stint at Fort Dix.
“Oscar put it behind and above his head when he shot,” Barnett said. “It was very deliberate, and I just simply — instead of staying in front of him and letting him shoot over me — I moved to his right side, and I reached with my left hand and took it right out of his hands. I did that maybe three times, and I remember Mendy Rudolph, the head of all the officials, I remember Oscar saying to him, ‘Goddammit Mendy!’ and Mendy saying to him, ‘What can I do, he’s getting all ball!’ I blocked the first few, then he made an adjustment and started going up and under on me, things like that. He was smart, he was going to make adjustments.”
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Robertson’s cerebral approach was one of his advantages. But he used every physical advantage he had.
“Oscar was 6-5 and very strong, and liked to back you down,” Barnett said. “He was very deliberate, totally different than Westbrook, who tries to go by you and through you with speed and athleticism. Oscar was very different. Oscar would pass up an 18-footer — wide open, no one around — to wait for you to get on him and then move to a spot off the elbow, a 14-footer or 15-footer, with you hanging all over him.
“He wanted contact. He used to take his off hand and put it on my hip and thigh, and pull himself around and move you out of the way. He got away with it because he was Oscar Robertson.”
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There are significant differences between Robertson and Westbrook, beginning with the debate over the relative value of their statistics. Robertson himself brought up the fact that he played 44.3 minutes per game in his triple-double season, where the modern game allows coaches to rest players more. Westbrook plays only 35.4 per game, which happens to be a career high. The pace of the NBA was significantly accelerated in Robertson’s era, too: His Royals averaged 124.9 possessions per game , compared to 98.7 for Westbrook’s Thunder . More minutes and possessions would yield bigger numbers for Westbrook.
At the same time, official scorers were much stingier with awarding assists in the 1960s than they are today: A basket had to be much more directly the result of a pass to earn an assist. Robertson led the league in assists in seven of his first nine NBA seasons, but those assists were still harder to come by.
Still, there is some hope among those who faced Robertson that the season Westbrook is having will bring more attention to the exploits of the league’s past greats. Robertson’s triple-double season stands in the record books, for example, but he averaged 30.3 points, 10.6 assists and 10.4 rebounds in his first five seasons combined. Westbrook’s triple-double chase is a good reminder of just how remarkable Robertson was upon his entry into the league.
“There are so many good young players now,” White said. “I love watching players and seeing what they accomplish, and knowing that what they are doing is built on what we did in the 1960s and 1970s and seeing it grow. The game is different now, though. I love watching (Westbrook) play. He plays with a lot of energy, and it is hard to keep him in front of you if you are a defender because he has so much speed. That is what he does. But in our day, someone like Oscar was so tough because the game was more physical and he wanted it to be that way. It’s different now. You can hardly touch anybody defensively.”
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Defensive hand-checking has been removed from the modern NBA, and that might have benefited a crafty scorer like Robertson, but probably not as much as a player who relies on athleticism like Westbrook. It’s not only Westbrook’s athleticism that makes him a difficult defensive assignment, though, but also it is his snap decision-making, his fearlessness and his ability to take those wildcards and still find ways to finish plays.
“I think Oscar would be much easier to guard than Russell Westbrook,” said Barnett, who faced Robertson 49 times in the regular season and playoffs. “Because Westbrook has that explosiveness coming at you, that change of direction, that guys like Calvin Murphy or Nate Archibald had, those little tiny guys had that. But Russell Westbrook has that at his size. I’ve never seen anyone attack like he does, with the ferocity, the insistence on getting to a spot on the floor come hell or high water. Westbrook is not nearly the shooter that Oscar was, Oscar was more dependable as a shooter. But Westbrook would be fun to guard because you just don’t know what he is going to throw at you.”
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Westbrook and Robertson are very different that way, one a ball of kinetic and unpredictable energy, the other a steady and deliberate force playing whatever sensible angle presented itself. But each shares a common trait: their determination.
“There are only a few players in the NBA that could have told you what they were going to do and how they were going to beat you, and still beat you even after telling you what was coming,” White said. “Oscar is that kind of player, and so is Westbrook.”
