Russell should have at least 90s in all seasons and the only reason he doesn't is because your d-rating equation factors in DPoY and All League Defensive Team designations - which did not exist until the final year of his career - cant you just plug those in as assumed? He would have been voted both every single season if they had existed and that's not even a tiny bit debatable

http://whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?TopicID=485074&TopicsTimeframe=30

I think a lot of his accolades are debateble. The Celtics pretty much got way more credit than they deserved because they won so many games. My example is always the 61-62 season. Wilt averages 50, Oscar averages a triple double but we give the MVP to the guy who shot 45% on a winning team. Russell didn't even make first team all-nba that year but he was voted most valuable. At this point, I think some of his defensive reputation comes from him being the best defender on a team of guys who played defense on another level than the rest of the league. I'm not saying he was sub-80 bad, but he probably wasn't a Hakeem level defensive force either.

most contemporary accounts focus on his ability to control the game with blocked shots and the fact that Celtics defense was predicated on funneling guys into him - on that team he was the lynch pin of the defense - in the 55-56 season the Celts were the #6 ranked team(of 8) in terms of drtg, the next season and throughout to the late 60s they were ranked #1, in 69-70 they were ranked 8th (of 14), it's lazy methodology I know but those details coincide with Russell's arrival and eventual retirement

I guess I'm a bit jaded as a Magic fan. We spent years as a top 5 defense by funneling guys to Dwight as you would say, and now that he's gone, he's pretty much a 70 on D every year. His raw numbers are roughly the same, but I doubt he will ever be higher than 70 in the sim again with the push of an all-D team.

Russell played on a team of guys who played defense on another level than the rest of the league??? The next three best players on those early teams were Bob Cousy, Sam Jones, and Tom Heinsohn. Not one of them was a decent defender. Sam Jones would literally let his guy go by him and start running the other way because he knew Russell would block/pass the shot to Cousy and Jones would have an easy layup. Russell was at least as good of a defender as Hakeem.

you're forgetting KC Jones, he actually was quite a good defender (not to mention Hondo but he came later) - one thing to remember about the Celtics is that while Russell was always surrounded by great players and was fortunate to experience a good deal of stability guys did come and go and the core changed over the years - Russell was the constant

Not forgetting K.C. he just wasn't one of the three top players ever during Russell's years. The Celtics definitely surrounded Russell with some good defenders throughout the years, but saying that Russell's D was just another product of the Celtics as a team was a ridiculous statement.

he was one of the top defenders, that was his specialty and that is what was at issue (and I'm otherwise agreeing with you)

an oldy but a goody

Russell's def settings is by far the silliness thing in the entire basketball sim. I have never been very good at this game and am by no mean a computer guy but it is simple put him at 90 plus every year an be done with it. Simple. move on

Now you're just being logical - stop it. Logic has no place here.

You wouldn't want to see what Bill Rusell would do with his D elevated.

If we could get one small thing tweaked in the NBA sim, I would love for it to be Bill Russell's D rating.

if only we could - Whatif: we could set up a forum for owners to express concerns and then subsequently ignore them? Maybe that could be an episode of our 30 for 30 documentary?

figure backlit, blacked out, voice boxed: "all they'd have to do is script official timeouts, you know, like in real life? that's not even hard programming, it would take maybe 5 minutes if they were competent at all..." figure shrugs, takes a sip from a tumbler, "and, I dont know, maybe one or two of those forty or fifty turnovers goes out of bounds every now and then..?" places tumbler down, lights what might be a cigarette, inhales deeply, coughs, wheezes as he exhales... "I mean it's only been on his desk for like 15 years man..."