Top 100 NBA Players: #88

Jerry Lucas

(Simmons: #64, BBR: #82)

Jerry Lucas was a statistical giant during his prime, twice recording seasons in which he averaged at least 20 points and 20 rebounds a game. Today, it's a huge headline when a player does it once. But the problem with Lucas is that he was almost always a good player on a bad team, or a bad player on a good team.

Lucas was very well-known during his career for racing down the court at the end of the quarter to grab the rebound when a player heaved it up from beyond halfcourt, which enabled him to pad his rebounding stats in a way that did not benefit his team in any way. While some of his stats were amazing, you have to wonder how much of that was focused on himself.

His two best seasons, 1965-66 and 1967-68, both came very early in his career, but his team was not very successful in either. In 1966 they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, and in 1968 they didn't even reach the playoffs. Even with the lack of team success, his stats in those two seasons were definitely notable.

1966 - 21.5 pts, 21.1 reb, 2.7 ast, .453 FG%, .787 FT%
1968 - 21.5 pts, 19.0 reb, 3.1 ast, .519 FG%, .778 FT%

No player since 1969 has averaged 21 points and 19 rebounds per game, so those numbers may have been partly a result of the style of play back then, but there's no doubt he was a talented player. He toiled away on bad teams in Cincinnati during his prime years, and finally made his way to New York late in his career, where he made the only two Finals appearances of his career.

In 1972, he was the second-best player, behind only Walt Frazier, on the Finals runner-up Knicks, when he averaged 18.6 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 5.3 assists in 46.1 minutes per game, but the following season, when the Knicks broke through and won the title, he was no longer a star, averaging only 7.5 points and 5.0 rebounds per game in the playoffs.

From this chart, it seems obvious that Lucas was a better player than Manu Ginobili (and that they had eerily similar career trajectories), but the reason that the two are ranked so close together in the overall rankings comes solely from their playoff successes. Lucas was only a major playoff player once in his career, while Ginobili has made a splash in the playoffs four different times, three of which were championship seasons. For Lucas, it always seemed to be more about himself rather than his team, and that is why he's only #88 in the all-time rankings.