Hakeem's strong rating probably also depends a lot on his improvements in the playoffs. Otherwise, it's hard to see why he'd rank so much higher than David Robinson based on the criteria the author has laid out thus far.
Definitely agreed. Defense in basketball is also overrated. I say this as a huge Hakeem fan, obviously, and strong strong strong recognizer of someone like Draymond's obvious value add. I'm not saying defense is invaluable, or not important. It's INCREDIBLY important. INCREDIBLY. It's just not so important that you'd take a great "two way player" (cough Kawhi) over a TRULY GREAT offensive player that sucks at defense, like Curry. KG's best offensive years were 03-04 in Minny. Guess what... the TWolves made the WCF that year. Of course they lost in the 1st round the 7 prior years, and didn't make the playoffs at all the next three years. Which puts KG's playoff record in Minny at 7 first round exits, 1 trip to the WCF and 4 misses. The pattern is similar in the playoffs with KG. Again, the dude absolutely DOMINATED the non offensive categories for the most part. Crazy boards. Great great defense. Blocks. Great high post passer. But just one or two years where he truly dominated offensively. Now... what if he was drafted by another team?? Someone mentioned the 76ers. Well if he was drafted by another team with a dominant offensive playmaker, then it'd be even more clear that that wasn't KG's role. Which wouldn't have reduced him to Ben Wallace categories, but would certainly push him that way. Or more to the point, I can't truly understand this guy's methodology, but its insane to me that there'd be any list of top basketball players ever where you'd have KG in the top 10. If KG is your #1 option on offense, you have a 0% chance of winning an NBA championship. That's not based on some probabilistic formula. It's factual. I know it, because I saw it happen over the guy's career.
1994, WCF lol Kidding aside, Dream was a better passer than Robinson and I'd argue that his defense was also better than Robinson's.
I disagree. If you look at their most prolific scoring years, for example, KG (03/04) was assisted on 67% of his shots. Duncan (01/02), 47%. In the playoffs that went down to 54% for KG, 39% for Duncan. KG with the 55% TS%, Duncan with the 58% TS%... not huge, but edge to Duncan, as he has the TS% edge slightly over their careers. I think Duncan definitely had the ability to be the more obvious and better ISO scorer. That wasn't always the case given the Spurs system, but sometimes was...
I'm late to this party, so just jotting down some thoughts. Karl Malone is underrated.... GASP, a Rockets fan giving Malone praise!!! It seems that much of this is due to the guy complaining about Malone's post-season efficiency dropping. Um... ok. Dude still ahve 5 playoffs at 29 ppg or higher. MDA's greatest offensive player he's ever seen has 0 of those so far. He still has 12 years at 25 ppg or higher in the playoffs. 12 years! KG... sorry to keep picking on him, had exactly 1 of those seasons. Was he as efficient as he was in the regular season... where, face the facts, dude was a beast offensively... no, he wasn't. But then.. again, sorry KG, he was still more efficient than KG while much more prolific. Was he the defender KG was? Of course not. But he was a comparable rebounder, passer and in steals, all pace adjusted in the playoffs. In the "what if he played on another team" game... you put Karl Malone on the Spurs in the same time frame and in place of Duncan, then absolutely the Spurs still wreck the league. Maybe they have 3 or 4 championships instead of 5 - because, INDEED, Malone was not the defender and overall presence of Duncan, I'm not putting Malone above Duncan, no way - that's still wrecking the league.
Further thoughts... I think the author says he doesn't play the "time machine" game with his list. As with most advanced stats, he adjusts for stuff like pace as appropriate. But it's crazy to me NOT to adjust for the strength and quality of the league. For one, there were absolutely great, HOF and all time great players from the 60's or 50's or whatever. But on the whole... have you watched full games, clips, etc. from that era. It's not that these guys weren't great. It's just that the league as a whole wasn't great. Like check this out from the 1963 finals featuring Elgin Baylor: Spoiler Click on the guys channel, he has TONS of great stuff. And for the most part, he'll argue that these guys are comparable to current players. Like here's a video where he goes into some depth about that: Spoiler Or here's a video where Bill Russell jumps over a guy from near the FT line for a near dunk: Spoiler And as I said, indeed, those guys themselves were or had the capability to be great. But on his top 6 centers of the 60's video, he'll go on about how great Nate Thurmond was for example, how his size is amazing comparatively to today, how he was in some ways a blend of Wilt/Russell's game, etc. Nate Thurmond show above 45% ZERO times in his career. He was closer to 41% and under most of his career. Here's Bill Russell, again from the 63 Finals: Spoiler And again, the guy who makes thse - on reddit, he is u/dantheman9758 btw, great poster - is "defending" the old players. Someone asks in the comments: "Was defense optional back in these days? most of these guys are barely in a defensive stance and just ball watching" to which he responds noting how the rules were different, yada, yada. And... ok, maybe the rules were different. But the fact of the matter is almost NOBODY played any serious defense. I mean just watch the video. So the greats from that era almost surely would have also been great in this era, if growing up now... but they weren't, and I don't know how one can reasonably use stats to compare. ----- If looking for something more modern... Tim Duncan, yes definitely top 10 all time great... but the 99-late 2000's era was horrible to watch. The Spurs first 4 championships were against the Knicks (an 8th seed), Nets (Kidd + Richard Jefferson, Kenyon Martin???), Pistons (really really solid team, but we're not talking about an all-time great) and a Cavs team that had Lebron and Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden, lol. The East was just bad. The West had 2 dominant teams. And basketball was just "harder" to watch. Long-story short, lol, I think ERA has to be more relevant in any meaningful top players' list.
Another one.... Reggie Miller at 29!!!! He likes to talk about post season performance a lot. And indeed, Reggie does well in the post-season. But with each of his more prolific post-seasons (91/92, 92/93, 95/96, 00/01 - he puts up 27, 31.5, 29 and 31.3 ppg in those years), the Pacers go out in the first round. I mean he was still great in the years his team went further and still amazingly efficient... it's just VERY hard for me to believe Reggie Miller is 29th on any list of the best players in NBA history. Sorry
By that argument, Bill Russell also should not be in the top 10. He was never his team's #1 option on offense.
I personally don't think Russell or Chamberlain should be top 10 (see ERA comments above). Though feel MUCH MUCH stronger about Russell. Even ignoring the "era" comments i made, as you note, he wasn't option a. Dude played with a trillion hall of famers. Every Celtic team from 1954-1969 had at least 4 hall of famers. Every team from 56-64 had at least 5, and all but two of those had at least 7. To your point, they simply didn't rely on Russell to score in the way you'd expect for a top 10er, or even a top 20er or top 25er.. That's a pretty big "flaw" in his game. On his own team, in ppg, he was 4th, 4th, 4th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 4th and 7th in ranking. I'm in NO WAY trying to say let's compare Russell and Clint Capela. But from a scoring perspective, it is kind of comparable... kind of. Clint is VERY important to the Rockets team and offense, and our 4th best scorer. A more "scientific" look at the difference in teammate talent between Wilt and Russell: https://www.basketball-reference.com/blog/index4f3e.html?p=4229
It's got to be the playoff thing, given the author seems to point to that a lot. Take a look at this: Spoiler It's playoffs only, but shows how Hakeem dominated big men matchups in the playoffs.
I wonder how "peers" come into consideration. For example, guys like Kareem, Moses, Hakeem, Ewing, etc. played in a center-dominating era. They were playing against other great centers day in and day out through their whole careers. Shaq, on the other hand, had almost no great centers in their prime during his dominant years. He faced the declining Hakeem and Robinson in the late 90's. He then faced the short peak of Yao in the mid 00's. That's it.
i really just wanted hakeem to be above duncan (and kobe, but the way the guy was ranking it was hard to see hakeem being below kobe). so this is good. i don't know what the reasons will be but to me it's always been hakeem's dominant individual offense, especially in the mid-90's. duncan was too single-team-able for too long to me. hakeem was like 34 or 35 before you could really not double team him. and it's hard to imagine hakeem wasn't as good as duncan defensively. this guy, or his ranking method, seems to value longevity more than i do. or more accurately, he values moderate value per year for a lot of years more than i do as compared to extreme value in the middle 7 or 8 years of a career. and that's fine, we all have our definitions of greatness. based on that, it's hard to believe lebron is ahead of kareem already given kareem's longevity. although lebron's chart will be crazy. should just be a quick jump in year 2 or 3 to mvp/all-time great and then just stays there for 13 or 14 years. they're high. not as high as jordan's, but lebron does have longevity on jordan now. jordan had 15 seasons but 2 of those were super-short seasons (though still very good playoffs in both of them) and 2 of those were washington seasons. lebron's on 15 seasons, 14 of them great.
@JayZ750 great stuff and if I was someone else, I would've thought we're the same person using two accounts to make a point For me, KG was like Pippen if he never had Jordan. Would be higher rated because all the plays would go through him, but not a top 10 player. As they are, I'm more inclined to rate Pippen higher than KG. I was trying to put a quick top 10 to counter who I would put ahead of KG, players I watched only and I had to put, yep, Karl Malone there. Decided against it because I didn't want to defend Karl Malone anymore than I have to put down Kevin Garnett so I bit my tongue. One thing I wanted to add about Hakeem was the story Kenny told in a discussion among other retired players about how they were sitting down and Rudy T was going through the strategies. Hakeem pulled Kenny later and told him to let him establish the first few possessions to let the other team know, and afterwards they could go to the plan. Kenny added that Hakeem only played for real against David, Shaq, and maybe Ewing. I think Reggie Miller asked what about Rik Smits and Kenny said no, he was on a different level. And remember, these are the top centers of Hakeems time, he outplayed DR and edged Shaq. Patrick, Alonzo, Dikembe, Karl, Charles, Kemp. Oakley, Rodman as well to name a few more. If Hakeem chased the regular season stats, he'd be alot better than DRob and I think MJ as well. KG was always the next player compared to Duncan. Team wise we know who came out on top, but even when they were matched up 1on1, I can only remember Tim outplaying KG. KG would sometimes resort to trash talk but Tim would just laugh. Just remember, HOF Stockton and DRob both introduced their teammates as the best power forward to ever play the game. I don't see that happening with KG.
How? It seems impossible. This list did a good job of drawing a subjective line and included very few players from the beginning in the top 40. No Hal Greers, Billy Cunninghams, Nate Thurmonds, Bob Cousys, etc. Then, you get to the question of when... When do you draw the line? 60s? 70s? You go as far as to ding the Spurs for their early 2000s championships. What about the Lakers for theirs in the same era? I don't know about that. Even though I am the biggest Russell fan, over the years I started to sympathize with opinions such as this one. As the game advances, that era seems more and more primitive. It's not fair to directly compare those players with the players of today. Completely different game. The film speaks volumes. As far as the rest of the blasphemy in your post... 1. Check Russell's playoff stats. Increased his PPG, TS%, FTr, and APG. Russell wasn't a great scorer, but he was on important occasions the #1 option, and he was always an important cog in their offense. 2. What people don't realize is that the Celtics won with an immovable defense. To emphasize his role on offense as a way to devalue his impact to the Celtics domination of the sixties then becomes unfair. It's about as unfair to criticize Harden's MVP campaign because he is not a great defender when the Rockets are successful because he makes the offense unstoppable. 3. Russell did play with outstanding players. Sam Jones gave Jerry West more than he could handle and no one talks about him. Bill Sharman was legit, but played four years with Russell. Cousy and Heinsohn were flawed, but also legit. And obviously, John Havlicek who was the only Russell teammate on this list. But I'm not sure if I'm missing anyone else that was truly great from the long list of Hall of Famers Russell played with. Do Satch Sanders, K.C. Jones, and Frank Ramsey get in the Hall of Fame if they don't win 8 championships? None of them made an All-Star team. Clyde Lovellette did make All-Star teams, but by the time he got to the Celtics he was playing less than 10 minutes a game. There are more examples of teammates that are overrated by their Hall of Fame designation. Players who became Hall of Famers based on nostalgia decades after they retired and on the fact that they played and won with Russell.
Remember, guys, this is supposed to be the best CAREERS, not best PLAYERS. It makes sense that longevity plays a big part in a ranking of careers. Team success and playoffs performance too.
A case could be made that players today are on average better than players of yesterday, because of better skills training, coaching, diet, exercise, etc. To me, historical greatness has to be assessed in the context of the era the player played in. In other words, how impactful was the player towards winning against the competition he faced? Bill Russell has to be near the top of the list in that regard for any credible historical list, even if his basketball prowess appears meager when judged by today's standards.
