1972 Overview
From Hoopedia
1971-72 NBA Season
Somehow the Los Angeles Lakers made the right changes in 1971, which led to the right results. Finally.
Through the heyday of Elgin Baylor, the Lakers never beat the rival Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals. Baylor had been named to the All-NBA First Team 10 times in his career, but nine games into the 1971-72 season, he decided injuries and age (37) had caught up to him and announced his retirement.
The Lakers’ other big change involved coaches. Out went Joe Mullaney, in came 45-year-old Bill Sharman, the former Boston Celtic who had just coached the Utah Stars to the 1971 American Basketball Association championship. He was a strange mix of fight and quiet innovation, a Southern California boy who was also a Celtic. The Lakers weren’t quite sure what to make of him.
“It was difficult for us to relate to him in the beginning because he was covered with Boston green,” recalled Pat Riley, a Laker sub at the time. “But in time we came around. He was a low-key guy, but very competitive, very feisty.”
Wilt Chamberlain (35) and West (33) approaching the end of their careers, Sharman needed to fit the other players around his aging stars to win now. Forwards Jim McMillan and Happy Hairston and guard Gail Goodrich were the perfect pieces.
Sharman asked the veteran Hairston to concentrate on rebounding, and the 6-7, 225-pound forward complied. While his scoring average dipped from 18.6 points per game in 1971 to 13.1 in ’72, he averaged 15 boards over the last half of the season and became the first forward to pull down 1,000 rebounds while playing alongside Chamberlain.
That was one of a pack of firsts generated by the Lakers in 1971-72. They won more games than any team in NBA history, 69, a record that would stand for almost a quarter-century. They had the most victories in which they scored over 100 points, 81; the most wins on the road, 31; and the most at home, 38.
Best of all, they had a record 33-game winning streak, which ran through January 9, when they lost a road game to Milwaukee 120-114.
Chamberlain led the league in field goal percentage (.649) and rebounding (19.2), while Goodrich (25.9) and West (25.8) finished in the top 10 in scoring.
As the playoffs neared, the team sensed that old Laker luck hovering somewhere nearby. “We were waiting for something to happen, something bad to happen again,” Riley said. “But it didn’t.” Chicago, their First-Round opponent, had won 57 games, but the Bulls lacked a dominating center and were forced to play a control game. They fell in four.
The Lakers’ big challenge came in the Westen Finals against the Bucks and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But Chamberlain outdueled Kareem, and the Lakers dismissed Milwaukee in six games.
The Knicks somehow prospered despite the loss of Willis Reed to injury. New York defeated Baltimore and Boston in the Eastern Conference Playoffs.
But without Reed in the Finals, New York proved no match for the Lakers, who finally got their championship in five games. After seven losses in the NBA Finals since 1962, the eighth worked out just right.
West had been brilliant in defeat for many years in the championship series. It almost didn’t seem right that he was no longer a dominant player when the Lakers finally won the championship.
“I played terrible basketball in the Finals, and we won,” West said. “That didn’t seem to be justice for me personally because I had contributed so much in other years when we lost. Now, when we won, I was just another piece of the machinery. It was particularly frustrating because I was playing so poorly that the team overcame me.
“But maybe that’s what a team is all about.”
