There are a thousand marvelous stories in 40 years of Sonic history; stories of achievement, delirium, and glory; stories of frustration, betrayal, and despair. But few stories match the one of Gus Williams and The Holdout.
It almost seems impossible in retrospect. An all-star guard, a legitimate superstar, an NBA champion, holding out for all of preseason, then all fall, through Christmas and New Years Day, past Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Passover … through every marker of time you could imagine. Gus Williams - crucial aspect of Seattle’s basketball soul - gone.
The acrimonious story of Williams’ fight with owner Sam Schulman has been told many times (one of my favorite bits: Williams supposedly earned six figures during his holdout year due to pay he was still receiving from the Golden State Warriors and endorsements from Nike and Mello Yello. Yes, Mello Yello). Essentially, Williams, backed by agent Howard Slusher (playing the role Scott Boras, I suppose) wanted the security of a five-year deal, and he wanted $700,000 a year on top of that. Schulman balked, offered fewer years and fewer dollars, and then dared Williams to hold out.
Williams did, and eventually won, as the Sonics imploded without their superstar guard. Schulman, faced with the possibility of marketing a new cable television deal without his best player, caved in and gave Williams everything he wanted. (Among the perks: an annuity that would pay Williams $250,000 a year for the rest of his life, starting at age 38, an inheritance of $2 million to his heirs, a Rolls Royce, and some real estate holdings).
At the time, most of the discussion centered around how much it hurt the Sonics to be without Williams’ services for the year, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about how Williams’ holdout hurt his career, or at least how his career has been viewed in retrospect. Is it possible that by holding out, Gus Williams cost himself a shot at the Hall of Fame?
First, let’s look at Williams’ numbers as they stand. With 14,000 points, 4,600 assists, and 1,600 steals the Wizard is in clear Hall of Very Good territory. If you list all the guards in NBA history with 13,000 points, 4,000 assists and 1,500 steals, you come up with 15 players (see chart), and Williams is clearly at the bottom of that list.
(It’s important to point out that steals were not counted by the NBA until the 1973-74 season, which obviously truncates the amount of history at which we can look; of course everyone with more than 30 points or a year spent in Boston prior to 1974 is already in the Hall of Fame, so that point is mostly moot.)
Now, it’s not a list of lousy players, by any means. But if you sort the players by their career win shares, there is a clear demarcation between those at the top (Jordan, Stockton, Miller, Payton, Magic, Bryant) and those at the bottom (Derek Harper, Rod Strickland, Terry Porter). Not to mention that even with that demarcation Williams is almost in a further subbasement with 68 WS, 12 below Isiah Thomas and 18 below Strickland.
Clearly, as it stands, Gus Williams is not a hall of famer. While his win shares are reasonably close to Thomas’, he had half as many assists and 4,000 fewer points (not to mention the lack of two rings), indicating he’s obviously not in the same ballpark as Zeke.
But what if The Wizard had played in 1980-81? What then?
Fortunately, Gus’ career stats are remarkably consistent, especially for that brief period, making it somewhat easy to create a hypothetical season. It’s important to note that the Sonics were without Dennis Johnson that season as well, indicating that Williams’ assist totals would have increased compared to the previous season when DJ (and John Johnson, for that matter) were handling the passing duties.
Regardless, if we split the difference between the 1979-80 and 1981-82 seasons we can get a reasonable idea of Gus Williams circa 1980-81. If you do the math, you come up with the following career totals:
15,939 points
1,824 steals
5,070 assists
906 games
79 win shares
It’s likely Williams would have been in the All Star Game as well, bringing his career total to three, that he would have made at least Second Team All-NBA (knocking out Tiny Archibald or Otis Birdsong) and possibly First Team (knocking his old teammate Dennis Johnson back to Second Team), and that he would have finished in the top five or six in voting for MVP (note that in 1981-82, Williams finished fifth).
At first blush, it’s not a big difference. Going from 14,000 points to 16,000 points is not a significant change and neither is improving from 4,600 assists to 5,000.
But look what happens when we start comparing Hypothetical Gus’ numbers to the best in NBA history. What would happen if you made a list of all the players in league history with 15,000 points, 5,000 assists, and 1,800 steals? Well, you’d get eight guys (see chart), and seven of them are either in the Hall of Fame or will be soon. The list:
Michael Jordan, Gary Payton, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Derek Harper, Isiah Thomas.
Look, I’m not foolish. Gus Williams clearly does not belong in the company with those other folks. His numbers just barely clear the thresholds I’ve set while the others fly past them and his win shares are relatively paltry.
However, by gaining that extra season, at least now Williams is in the conversation. To my knowledge, Gus Williams has never received any consideration for the Hall of Fame, and nobody ever complained about it. But if you include that missing season from his resume (not to mention what might have happened in the playoffs had he played that season; remember, that was the year the Lakers lost to Houston in the first round and Kansas City almost made it to the NBA Finals; the Western Conference Finals featured two teams with sub-.500 records; I’m guessing the Sonics might’ve had a chance at making it to the Finals), suddenly we’ve got a guy with multiple trips to the NBA Finals, multiple times on All-NBA teams, and top of the line statistics.
You have to remember – in the early 1980s Gus Williams was a star. Talking to Sports Illustrated in 1982, Jack Ramsay called Williams, “the best open-court player in the league. No one else in his class even comes to mind.” In the same article, John Johnson called Williams the most underrated player in the league. He was considered to be either the fastest or one of the fastest players in the entire game – and we’re not talking just speed, we’re talking speed while dribbling through defenders.
Yes, a lot of that is hyperbole and unquantifiable. Joe Rudi was the “most underrated” player of the 1970s, and nobody’s building any statues for him in Cooperstown. Still, you cannot deny that for a period of time Gus Williams was an elite player in the NBA, and that he missed an entire season of his prime, a season which would have propelled him from the also-rans of NBA fame to a slightly higher level.
High enough to make the Hall? Unlikely. But definitely high enough to be in the conversation.
It almost seems impossible in retrospect. An all-star guard, a legitimate superstar, an NBA champion, holding out for all of preseason, then all fall, through Christmas and New Years Day, past Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Passover … through every marker of time you could imagine. Gus Williams - crucial aspect of Seattle’s basketball soul - gone.
The acrimonious story of Williams’ fight with owner Sam Schulman has been told many times (one of my favorite bits: Williams supposedly earned six figures during his holdout year due to pay he was still receiving from the Golden State Warriors and endorsements from Nike and Mello Yello. Yes, Mello Yello). Essentially, Williams, backed by agent Howard Slusher (playing the role Scott Boras, I suppose) wanted the security of a five-year deal, and he wanted $700,000 a year on top of that. Schulman balked, offered fewer years and fewer dollars, and then dared Williams to hold out.
Williams did, and eventually won, as the Sonics imploded without their superstar guard. Schulman, faced with the possibility of marketing a new cable television deal without his best player, caved in and gave Williams everything he wanted. (Among the perks: an annuity that would pay Williams $250,000 a year for the rest of his life, starting at age 38, an inheritance of $2 million to his heirs, a Rolls Royce, and some real estate holdings).
At the time, most of the discussion centered around how much it hurt the Sonics to be without Williams’ services for the year, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about how Williams’ holdout hurt his career, or at least how his career has been viewed in retrospect. Is it possible that by holding out, Gus Williams cost himself a shot at the Hall of Fame?
First, let’s look at Williams’ numbers as they stand. With 14,000 points, 4,600 assists, and 1,600 steals the Wizard is in clear Hall of Very Good territory. If you list all the guards in NBA history with 13,000 points, 4,000 assists and 1,500 steals, you come up with 15 players (see chart), and Williams is clearly at the bottom of that list.
(It’s important to point out that steals were not counted by the NBA until the 1973-74 season, which obviously truncates the amount of history at which we can look; of course everyone with more than 30 points or a year spent in Boston prior to 1974 is already in the Hall of Fame, so that point is mostly moot.)
Now, it’s not a list of lousy players, by any means. But if you sort the players by their career win shares, there is a clear demarcation between those at the top (Jordan, Stockton, Miller, Payton, Magic, Bryant) and those at the bottom (Derek Harper, Rod Strickland, Terry Porter). Not to mention that even with that demarcation Williams is almost in a further subbasement with 68 WS, 12 below Isiah Thomas and 18 below Strickland.
Clearly, as it stands, Gus Williams is not a hall of famer. While his win shares are reasonably close to Thomas’, he had half as many assists and 4,000 fewer points (not to mention the lack of two rings), indicating he’s obviously not in the same ballpark as Zeke.
But what if The Wizard had played in 1980-81? What then?
Fortunately, Gus’ career stats are remarkably consistent, especially for that brief period, making it somewhat easy to create a hypothetical season. It’s important to note that the Sonics were without Dennis Johnson that season as well, indicating that Williams’ assist totals would have increased compared to the previous season when DJ (and John Johnson, for that matter) were handling the passing duties.
Regardless, if we split the difference between the 1979-80 and 1981-82 seasons we can get a reasonable idea of Gus Williams circa 1980-81. If you do the math, you come up with the following career totals:
15,939 points
1,824 steals
5,070 assists
906 games
79 win shares
It’s likely Williams would have been in the All Star Game as well, bringing his career total to three, that he would have made at least Second Team All-NBA (knocking out Tiny Archibald or Otis Birdsong) and possibly First Team (knocking his old teammate Dennis Johnson back to Second Team), and that he would have finished in the top five or six in voting for MVP (note that in 1981-82, Williams finished fifth).
At first blush, it’s not a big difference. Going from 14,000 points to 16,000 points is not a significant change and neither is improving from 4,600 assists to 5,000.
But look what happens when we start comparing Hypothetical Gus’ numbers to the best in NBA history. What would happen if you made a list of all the players in league history with 15,000 points, 5,000 assists, and 1,800 steals? Well, you’d get eight guys (see chart), and seven of them are either in the Hall of Fame or will be soon. The list:
Michael Jordan, Gary Payton, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson, Derek Harper, Isiah Thomas.
Look, I’m not foolish. Gus Williams clearly does not belong in the company with those other folks. His numbers just barely clear the thresholds I’ve set while the others fly past them and his win shares are relatively paltry.
However, by gaining that extra season, at least now Williams is in the conversation. To my knowledge, Gus Williams has never received any consideration for the Hall of Fame, and nobody ever complained about it. But if you include that missing season from his resume (not to mention what might have happened in the playoffs had he played that season; remember, that was the year the Lakers lost to Houston in the first round and Kansas City almost made it to the NBA Finals; the Western Conference Finals featured two teams with sub-.500 records; I’m guessing the Sonics might’ve had a chance at making it to the Finals), suddenly we’ve got a guy with multiple trips to the NBA Finals, multiple times on All-NBA teams, and top of the line statistics.
You have to remember – in the early 1980s Gus Williams was a star. Talking to Sports Illustrated in 1982, Jack Ramsay called Williams, “the best open-court player in the league. No one else in his class even comes to mind.” In the same article, John Johnson called Williams the most underrated player in the league. He was considered to be either the fastest or one of the fastest players in the entire game – and we’re not talking just speed, we’re talking speed while dribbling through defenders.
Yes, a lot of that is hyperbole and unquantifiable. Joe Rudi was the “most underrated” player of the 1970s, and nobody’s building any statues for him in Cooperstown. Still, you cannot deny that for a period of time Gus Williams was an elite player in the NBA, and that he missed an entire season of his prime, a season which would have propelled him from the also-rans of NBA fame to a slightly higher level.
High enough to make the Hall? Unlikely. But definitely high enough to be in the conversation.
1 comments:
DOn't know how I missed this one--great artice, man! One of my saddest Sonics memories, which is really saying something.
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