Top 100 NBA Players: #64

Sam Jones

(Kalb: #42, Simmons: #33, BBR: #111)

Of all the players who have even taken the court in the NBA, only one has won more championships than the 10 that Sam Jones took home, and that player was his teammate, Bill Russell. Russell won one title before Jones arrived in town, but Jones was a big part of the reason that the Celtics continued to win titles throughout the 1960's.

Jones was the second-best player on the Celtics through a large chunk of their unmatched playoff run, but he was well-known for being their best player in the clutch. He was always good during the regular season, better during the playoffs, then unstoppable during a game 7. Below are his stats for the 1960-68 seasons, during which the Celtics won 7 titles.

Jones (Regular Season) - 20.6 pts, 5.1 reb, 2.9 ast, .812 FT%
Jones (Playoffs) - 22.6 pts, 5.1 reb, 2.7 ast, .814 FT%

Jones' numbers remained virtually unchanged during the playoffs, with one exception, he was scoring an extra 2 points in each game. Even more impressive was his scoring average in game 7 over that same time period, which was 30.5, an additional 10 points per game more than he normally scored in the regular season.

Jones started his career playing behind Bill Sharman, so it took four seasons before he was finally able to become a starter and play much of a role in the Celtics' titles, but once he was in the starting lineup, he was always a force. He was the #2 player on four straight championship teams, then he was the third best on the next. In all, he was a top 3 player on 5 of the 10 championship teams he was a member of.

Jones was never the star of his team, like Finley was for three seasons, but Finley was never as successful as Jones was at his peak. Finley definitely rose to stardom a lot faster than Jones, but Jones remained a star for longer and peaked at a much older age, 31, than Finley's 26. Overall, they come out pretty even as far as the regular season is concerned, with a slight edge to Finley, but the contributions to all those title teams puts Jones ahead of Finley as an all-time great.