Wes Unseld

Wes Unseld had no flair, and what made him a great basketball player defies easy description.  I grew up in the D.C. suburbs, so Wes's Washington Bullets were my team, and I saw Wes play several times at the old Capital Centre.  But it was Julius Erving of Philadelphia whose poster I had on my wall. Wes Unseld had no posters or highlight reels to his name.

Burly and immensely strong, he stood about 6’6”, a substandard height for an NBA center. He was a slow runner, a poor outside shooter, and as for leaping, well, he was definitely governed by the law of gravity. But in addition to gravity, Wes had gravitas: his poker face communicated calm intensity. He used his bulk to maximum effect, on defense and box-outs and screens. Also, Wes had great hands, strong but dexterous. He spent little time holding the ball, but when he had it he usually did something positive with it: he grabbed tough rebounds, made quick shots in traffic, putbacks and short hooks mostly, and made purposeful passes.

In particular, Unseld became known as the master of the outlet pass, the one that starts the fast break after a defensive rebound.  Let's face it, if a guy gets to have a superpower, outlet passing is a very esoteric choice. But it combined all Wes's gifts: those great hands, that core strength, his quick mind and aggressive attitude. Outlet passes are hard work, they're "hockey passes" that usually don't show up in the statistics. They're a mark of a winner and a leader.

Clearly, his contemporaries saw something special in him. In 1968-69, his first season with the then-Baltimore Bullets, despite scoring at only a 13 ppg rate, Wes was named NBA Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player, a rare double distinction. Perhaps the voters saw Unseld as an inheritor to Bill Russell: the center whose stardom consisted of defense and rebounding rather than scoring. The most impressive stat may have been the Bullets' won-loss record, which improved by 21 games in Unseld's first season.

But no team would inherit the mantle of Russell and the Celtics. The decade of the 1970s in pro basketball was turbulent. No NBA team even defended their league title successfully (in other words, no repeat champions).  The best player of the ‘70s was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but only in 1971 did Kareem’s team assemble enough talent around him to win a title. (He made up for lost time in the '80s with the Lakers.) Most years, one team had to scrap and claw and limp and enjoy a few lucky breaks along the way to win in the playoffs.

The Bullets best exemplify what I mean. With Wes’s rookie year, they started a run of 12 straight seasons making the playoffs, with a constantly evolving lineup, Unseld the single common denominator of all those teams. Defense was the Bullets' calling card, especially in the half-court and in the paint, in Wes's domain.

They won four conference championships in the ‘70s.  In two of those years, they were favorites to win the Finals, but got knocked off.  But they hung around, and in 1978, after an injury-plagued regular season, several things broke in their favor and cleared their way in the playoffs: 

• Portland were the kings of the West and owners of the best record in the NBA before Bill Walton broke his foot, which doomed their chances.  
• Philadelphia’s run-and-gun team of Dr. J, George McGinnis, and World Free crashed and burned, falling in an upset to the Bullets in the Eastern Conference finals. (McGinnis and Free would be gone the next season.)
• At the end of a grueling Finals between Washington and Seattle, the Sonics' Dennis Johnson shot 0 for 14 from the field in Game 7, a historically bad performance and highly uncharacteristic of DJ.

It’s hard for me to think of Wes’s playing career without thinking of Elvin Hayes alongside him. The Bullets would always need a primary scorer to make up for Wes's shortcomings in that area. In the early years that was Earl “The Pearl” Monroe, who had the playground style and scoring potency that Wes lacked. After Monroe left for the bright lights of New York, the Bullets brought in Elvin.

In contrast to Unseld, Hayes preferred to do things that show up in the stats.  He had a trademark shot, a turnaround jumper, and he dunked and blocked shots. He was more fun to watch, and my 14-year-old self in 1978 considered Elvin the star of the Bullets, not Wes.  Later I would learn that Hayes was often considered a selfish player and was not held in the same respect as Unseld. But on the court E and Wes complemented each other. Both of them were later named to the 1996 list of the NBA’s Top 50 players. Each of them had flaws, but the two of them roughly added up to one NBA championship-caliber center.

In that Game 7 against Seattle in '78, helped by DJ's historic goose egg, the Bullets led by 13 at the end of the 3rd period.  But the Sonics mounted a 4th-quarter comeback, and Elvin Hayes fouled out early. Wes would end up with 5 fouls himself, and would struggle to keep Marvin Webster and Jack Sikma at bay. He posted a classic if unspectacular Unseld stat line: 15 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists.  The Bullets held on, winning the franchise's only NBA title, validating a decade's worth of tough play and persistence, and the NBA Finals MVP award was bestowed onto Wes Unseld.  There is poetic justice there.

Wes Unseld died on June 2, 2020, in Baltimore. The obituaries I saw emphasized his long years of loyal service with the Bullets/Wizards, including stints as head coach and general manager after his playing days ended. He was a one-club man and an outstanding citizen of Baltimore.  But it seemed to me there was a shortage of tributes to Wes’s play. Wes was unique, he competed on a team and in an era that deserves more notice, so I decided to share some impressions.