O No oooooo….

The O stands for Oscar Robertson. For those who are unfamiliar with this NBA legend, shame on you.  Just kidding, I’ll get to him in a second.  The Nooooo represents Oscar Robertson’s advice to Carmelo Anthony to leave the Knicks and seek greener pastures with another NBA franchise.

Let’s start with Oscar Robertson (ahhh the Big O).  I am doing a disservice to this man by including his last name.  If I say Michael, LeBron, Magic, Larry, Wilt and several others, you know who I’m referring to.

The Big O was Michael before there was Michael.  For those unfamiliar with his career, he played shooting guard/point guard for the Cincinnati Royals during the entire 1960’s and for the Milwaukee Bucks from 1970 to 1974.  The Big O was a 12-time All-Star, 11-time member of the All-NBA Team, and one-time winner of the MVP award in 14 professional seasons.  Unfortunate for him the Celtics won every year during most of his career.  Several years ago, he was voted #3 behind Michael and Wilt on the NBA all time 50 players list (some feel he should’ve been first).  He also won an Olympic championship and was instrumental in the NBA obtaining free agency.

He is the only player in NBA history to average a triple-double for a season.  For those unaware of this statistic, a triple-double is a double digit number total in three of five statistical categories in a game – points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocked shots (the most common triple doubles are points, rebounds, and assists).

While his averaging a triple double for a season is very impressive, it is misleading because he just missed this benchmark 4 out of 5 consecutive years.  In other words, if his first five NBA seasons were strung together, the Big O would have averaged 30.3 points, 10.4 rebounds and 10.6 assists.  Furthermore, as evidenced by his 30.3 points per game, we’re not talking about a cheap triple double.  This man was a scoring machine!

Even in his late 20’s, he averaged approximately 30 points, 9.7 to 11.1 assists and approximately 7 rebounds per game.  Thus, if it weren’t for a slight drop in rebounds, he might have had several more triple doubles.

For his career, the Big O had 181 triple-doubles, a record that has never been approached (Magic Johnson is next on the list with 138, followed by Jason Kidd – 107, Wilt Chamberlin – 78, Larry Bird – 59 etc).  These numbers are even more astonishing if it is taken into account that the three-point shot did not exist when he played.   Furthermore, the talent wasn’t as diluted as it is today.

You’re probably thinking - we get the message, the guy was great. Yet why would he advise Melo to leave the Knicks?

Read on and you’ll find out.

During the Big O’s career, he made the playoffs 6 of his first 7 years with Cincinnati.  During that period, he was surrounded by decent talent but after some lean years in the late 60’s, the Big O was fortunate enough to be traded to the Milwaukee Bucks who had a young center by the name of Kareem Abdul Jabbar.  I think you heard of him.  The Big O went to 4 consecutive playoffs with the Bucks and 2 championship series (winning one of them).

So Let’s recap the Big O’s career:

• Great Player;
• Surrounded by decent talent at best during his prime;
• Finally won a championship when he joined Kareem;

You see a pattern…

Ahhh That’s Why He’s Advising Melo to Get out of Dodge!

There’s only one problem.  Melo is not the Big O.