Forgotten Superstars: Bob Lanier

  The recent passing of perhaps the most underrated NBA star of the 1970s at 73 years of age made me think that Bob Lanier is a perfect selection for our Forgotten Superstars series.

Bob Lanier never played on an NBA title-winner but he always ranked among the elite centers in basketball during his time in the league with Detroit and Milwaukee and for some fans, Lanier is more remembered for his size 22 shoe (which fans can compare their shoe against Lanier's at the basketball hall of fame.) than his career, which saw his college program (St.Bonaventure) and both of his NBA teams retire his jersey number.

Much like Nate Thurmond, a half-generation ahead of Lanier, Lanier was a Hall of Fame center that sometimes didn't get the attention that he deserved because he was the third-best pivotman of his day.

In the case of Thurmond, Thurmond's peak saw him trail Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain and then Chamberlain and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before ironically being passed by Lanier for that position.

Lanier's name usually ranked behind Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar at first, then after Chamberlain's retirement behind Bill Walton (when Walton was healthy), maybe Artis Gilmore when Gilmore first arrived from the ABA, and later a young Moses Malone but make no mistake about it, Bob Lanier ranked with the best centers of all-time.

It was Lanier's name along with Walton that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar famously references in the film "Airplane" telling a young fan "Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for forty-eight minutes".

Lanier also had a cameo role as an opposing player in the 1979 Julius Erving film "The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh".

I'm not sure which I would select between Lanier and Artis Gilmore in a hypothetical draft but fans narrowly missed seeing the two talented big men hook it up in the 1970 Final Four but late in Lanier-led St.Bonaventure's East Regional title victory, Lanier injured his knee in a collision with future Detroit teammate Chris Ford and would miss the national semi-final in which the Bonnies would lose to Jacksonville and Artis Gilmore.

If you know anything about college basketball and the size of schools, you'll know just what an achievement it was for a school like St.Bonaventure to make the Final Four, and fans in northwest New York still vow that had Lanier not been injured that the Bonnies would have snapped the UCLA national title string in 1970, not in 1974 by N.C. State.

Their point is well-taken as that Bruins team was the most vulnerable of the seven straight champions as the 1970 team was post-Alcindor/Abdul Jabbar yet before the arrival of Bill Walton with the best players on those teams listing Sidney Wicks, Curtis Rowe, and Henry Bibby as their stars.

If a team such as St. Bonaventure was going to defeat one of the seven consecutive championship teams - 1970 was the one team that could have been vulnerable.

Lanier would be selected as the first pick in the 1971 draft by the Pistons and in his ten seasons with Detroit, Lanier would average a double-double with a scoring average of 22.7 and a rebounding average of 11.8 per outing, despite battling through debilitating knee injuries but Lanier's Pistons never even reached the conference finals as at that time the Pistons were in the Western Conference which was the more balanced of the two conferences.

Lanier played in eight All-Star games and won the game's MVP in the 1974 edition but the Pistons of the late seventies were rebuilding (and desperate to the point of hiring Dick Vitale as their head coach)  and with Lanier's knee continuing to weaken, Detroit traded Lanier to the Milwaukee Bucks, a team that won their division often but couldn't get by Seattle or Portland (Milwaukee also was in the Western Conference) to reach the finals.

Lanier helped to maintain the Bucks at that level but lost to Seattle in his first season and the Bucks last year in the West and couldn't get past Boston or Philadelphia after being moved to the Eastern Conference.

Lanier wasn't the scoring presence as a Buck that he was a Piston (averaging thirteen points a game in five seasons with Milwaukee) but his knees forced him to average ten fewer minutes a game and became a more stationary figure that slowed down any running game that the Bucks would try to use.

Lanier's hook shot wasn't the weapon on the level of Kareem's skyhook but his shorter more rounded hook shot was almost as deadly and Lanier was far from a finesse player on the block with a reputation as an enforcer that ranked him among the elite of the NBA's enforcers as his knockout of Atlanta's Bob Christian and his one-punch left hook that left Detroit's Bill Laimbeer prone on the floor left players smiling long after Lanier's retirement that Laimbeer frustrated throughout Laimbeer's career.

Lanier would serve as an assistant to his Bucks head coach, Don Nelson, with the Warriors and finished the 1994-95 season as Golden State's head coach when Nelson resigned mid-season.

Lanier finished the season winning twelve of thirty-seven games and didn't coach thereafter.

In my opinion, the two most glaring omissions on the NBA's recent 75th-anniversary team roster were Lanier and Bernard King and I have to think that it was held against both players that they never reached an NBA Finals.

It's sad that Bob Lanier never seemed to receive the break that he needed to receive the credit that he truly deserved going back to the knee injury at St. Bonaventure through his early years with the Pistons and his later years with the Bucks playing with teams that were very good but not quite good enough to win a championship.

I certainly think Lanier had a legitimate argument as the most underrated big man of his time and arguably ever and deserves to be remembered as the terrific player that was as we welcome "The Dobber" to the Forgotten Superstars universe.

Cleaning out the inbox

As I still attempt to clean things up after being so far behind, it's time to clean out most of the inbox!

We start with The Athletic and a lengthy oral history article on the 50th anniversary of the St.Bonaventure Bonnies and their run to the 1970 Final Four.
St. Bonaventure lost only one game in the 1969-70 season and won the East Regional, but lost their star center Bob Lanier in the regional final against Villanova to a torn knee ligament.
The injury to Lanier cost viewers a Lanier vs Artis Gilmore showdown at the Final Four as Gilmore's Jacksonville Dolphins would defeat the Bonnies on their way to a title game loss to UCLA.
Lanier would be the first selection of the 1970 NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons and would eventually be inducted into the basketball hall of fame.
The article covers all four seasons of Lanier's time with St.Bonaventure and is very extensive in talking to all the key players of the time.

The Athletic returns with an article written by former major leaguer Lars Anderson on his attempt to use Adderall as a PED when he was playing in Japan.
Adderall is a drug used by baseball players legally only with a valid medical prescription and should you use it without one, a player would be eligible to be suspended.
Anderson, who writes an occasional article for The Athletic, writes about the MLB testing policies, the pros and cons of Adderall, and why it can help players, but not in a physical sense.
It's an interesting article from the players' point of view, which isn't often heard from other than when players deny the use of various outlawed drugs or in talks between baseball and the union.

Many times when writers from larger cities or even national media write about minor league baseball, they miss so many of the details because they already have decided the angle of their feature or they simply don't bother to dig into the facts and as a result miss so much of the actual picture.
I cannot say that about Washington radio station WTOP's website in their article about the campaign of MLB against minor league baseball.
The writer visited both Hagerstown and Frederick, talked to members of the front office of both the Suns and Keys, discussed the issues with fans, organizers of efforts to keep the two teams, and politicians that want to help teams stop the MLB barrage to eliminate 42 teams.
It's very well written and researched and is the type of article on the topic that you don't read very often.

The Athletic is back again with an article on Chris Petersen, who recently resigned from Washington after their Las Vegas Bowl win over Petersen's former school in Boise State.
The Stewart Mandel penned article talks about Petersen's rebuilding work with Washington, his role in building Boise State into its role as one of the group of five powerhouses, his work outside the game, and the grind of being a major college coach in the game today.
Petersen has been overlooked a bit as one of the better coaches in college football over the last decade and as I read more about Peterson the person, I'm not sure that we'll see him on the sidelines again.

The Detroit Free Press writes of the plight of former NHL star Joe Murphy, who lives on the streets of Kenora, Ontario, Canada after an NHL career that ended with what some believe will eventually be diagnosed as CTE.
CTE cannot be diagnosed until after death, so it is suspected and not confirmed in the case of Murphy, but the personality change, drug use, and a lack of life structure certainly point in that direction, especially when you discover that Murphy suffered from concussions many times during his NHL career.
Even if CTE isn't the eventual reason for Murphy's problems, there does seem to be some sort of mental illness issue with Murphy, who like so many in the homeless community, sees "angels and ghosts" and talks to people that aren't there.
Author Jeff Seidel traveled to Kenora and followed Murphy around to see what an average day is like and got a feeling for Murphy's routine or lack thereof.
Murphy was the first overall selection in the 1986 NHL draft by the Red Wings and played for seven teams, scoring 233 goals with his best seasons spent with the Blackhawks.

That cleans out the regular articles from the inbox, although sadly there are plenty of passings still to note.