Give me your top 10 NBA players of all time

[Fastbreak 3886]

GOATs: Jordan, Wilt, Russell, Kareem
Icons: Kobe, Bird, Magic, Shaq, Lebron
Innovators: Duncan, Steph, Jokic, Dirk, Dr J

Top 14 by tiers, no order.

Goats are players who were considered to be the greatest of all time when they played or after.

Icons are guys who are synonymous with the league and can be seen identified by even non-fans.

Innovators are players who changed the game or were totally unique.

Arguments: Hakeem (innovators), KD (innovators), Giannis (innovators), KG (innovators), West (icon)

[Reynolds Woodcock 4585]

On 1/10/2024 at 3:22 PM, dcar00 said:

this is difficult but 

Jordan, Magic, Bird, Kobe, Wilt, Kareem, Russell, Robertson, James, Shaq

next 10 tier Steph, Duncan, West, Hakeem, Mikan, Dr. J, KD, Cousy, Dirk, Petit

Having Kobe above Duncan is some mind-blowing shit to me, and I say that as a Mavs fan that hated Tim Duncan in the moment. 
 

MJ, LeBron, Kareem, Magic, Russell, Wilt, Duncan, Bird, Kobe, Steph

Followed by, in some order, Hakeem, Shaq, Oscar, KD and Jerry West

[Mitch Cumsteen 18326]

On 1/10/2024 at 2:37 PM, dcar00 said:

comparing Bill Russell to Rasheed fucking Wallace is a take I guess.

 

4 hours ago, uoftorange said:

Pretty damn accurate one at that.  Tell me where I'm wrong

Bill Russell was an 11 time champion, 5 time MVP, had his #6 retired by every NBA team, was inducted into the basketball hall of fame twice (once as a player and once as a coach), and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the civil rights movement. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders and winners in the history of sports, not just basketball.

Rasheed Wallace came into training camp out of shape every year, holds the NBA record for technical fouls and ejections, once threw a towel in his teammates face, got busted for weed, challenged a referee to a fight on a loading dock, challenged his coach to a fight in the locker room and charged him, and once held a bitchy press conference where he answered every question with, "both teams played hard."

I'm far from one of those, "back in the old days" guys, but Bill Russell was the ultimate winner and teammate. Rasheed Wallace was a jackass.

[Kermit 3081]

If we’re just shitting all over Bill’s career by having (insert middling player’s name here) ranked higher, why not Shareef Abdul-Rahim? Why not Derrick Coleman? Shawn Kemp? Fucking Rasheed Wallace. That guys claim go fame is being on the poster for two of the greatest shots in NBA history (spoiler: he didn’t take them).

[dcar00 13861]

1 hour ago, Kermit said:

If we’re just shitting all over Bill’s career by having (insert middling player’s name here) ranked higher, why not Shareef Abdul-Rahim? Why not Derrick Coleman? Shawn Kemp? Fucking Rasheed Wallace. That guys claim go fame is being on the poster for two of the greatest shots in NBA history (spoiler: he didn’t take them).

But it is so cool to say "Sheed".

these are people that have only been watching basketball since Panini got the contract for NBA cards.

[Mitch Cumsteen 18326]

I didn't even see Russell play, but I don't need to. I definitely saw Rasheed. If I'm doing my top 10 all time, I'm only doing guys who I saw play. So that's essentially post-ABA merger. A cop out, I know.

Jordan is number 1. It's not even a debate for me. 

I probably go Magic at 2. Nobody controlled a game like him. Lebron is 3, somewhat reluctantly. I could lean Kareem for 4, but I mostly remember him when he was old and bald so I think my memory of him is tainted. So gimme Bird at 4. I hated him but he was an absolute killer.

I have no qualms admitting I'm a Spurs homer, but I have Duncan at 6 unapologetically. 

I'm putting Jokic at 7 and that's projecting a bit on the rest of his career since he's only 28. I think he wins MVP this year and probably rings again, and then the narrative on him goes through the roof. But what happens when he loses a step? Nothing, he never had a step to begin with. He probably plays at this level until he's close to 40 or just gets tired of the hassle and says "fuck it, I'm going bar hopping in Serbia for the rest of my days." 

I have such mixed emotions about Kobe but that fucker was amazing when he was on. I'd probably have him higher if he wasn't such a shitty teammate and ball hog.

Curry changed the game. I'm not sure it's for the better, but he's the best shooter I've ever seen and a champion / winner. I throw Shaq in at 10. He could have been #1 if he cared half as much as Kobe.

1. MJ
2. Magic
3. Lebron
4. Bird
5. Kareem
6. Duncan
7. Jokic
8. Kobe
9. Curry
10. Shaq

 

[uoftorange 1383]

6 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

 

Bill Russell was an 11 time champion, 5 time MVP, had his #6 retired by every NBA team, was inducted into the basketball hall of fame twice (once as a player and once as a coach), and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in the civil rights movement. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest leaders and winners in the history of sports, not just basketball.

Rasheed Wallace came into training camp out of shape every year, holds the NBA record for technical fouls and ejections, once threw a towel in his teammates face, got busted for weed, challenged a referee to a fight on a loading dock, challenged his coach to a fight in the locker room and charged him, and once held a bitchy press conference where he answered every question with, "both teams played hard."

I'm far from one of those, "back in the old days" guys, but Bill Russell was the ultimate winner and teammate. Rasheed Wallace was a jackass.

And if you put Rasheed directly in his shoes he does the majority of that except he's probably still a dick head.  As a basketball player they are a lot more similar than you are stating.  In fact, basically the same guy IMO.  As a person, obviously that's where the conversation stops.  

Bill Russell would not be a "very good" player in this era or the Jordan era or the era before that.  He just wouldn't be.  Yes he won 11 rings, he also had 6 other Hall of Famers and a Hall of Fame coach.  He also played in an era with 8 teams for a lot of that.  And in an era when most teams had 1 or 2 black players, or even none.  

Sorry, Russell is easily the most overrated player in NBA history.  Still a solid guy that cared about people and tried to make a difference.  Doesn't make him a guy that should be considered top 10 all time.  It's all opinion, and that's mine.  

[shadow_operative 15931]

5 minutes ago, uoftorange said:

And if you put Rasheed directly in his shoes he does the majority of that

[Kermit 3081]

Since when do we rate players by what they would do in this era that era? You rate them by what they do in their own era, and Bill was one of the greatest to ever do it. Tim Duncan is the greatest player ever because he would absolutely destroy Bob Pettit in the 50’s. Also I just learned we should discount Kobe and Mike because they too had a great coach and played with HOF type players.

[uoftorange 1383]

1 hour ago, Kermit said:

Since when do we rate players by what they would do in this era that era? You rate them by what they do in their own era, and Bill was one of the greatest to ever do it. Tim Duncan is the greatest player ever because he would absolutely destroy Bob Pettit in the 50’s. Also I just learned we should discount Kobe and Mike because they too had a great coach and played with HOF type players.

That's a lot of jumping to conclusions, but have fun.  And I've always done that but you don't have to.  That's my criteria.  Do I think a guy's game would change given like conditions.  I think Russel, with every advantage of today is Rasheed Wallace.  You don't have to agree, but my belief is educated and has basis behind it.  I think Wilt gets even better in today's game.  Wouldn't have the outlandish statistics, but would still dominate.  

And no Bob Pettit isn't better than Tim Duncan.  There you go

Edited January 16 by uoftorange

[Mitch Cumsteen 18326]

18 hours ago, uoftorange said:

And if you put Rasheed directly in his shoes he does the majority of that except he's probably still a dick head.  As a basketball player they are a lot more similar than you are stating.  In fact, basically the same guy IMO.  As a person, obviously that's where the conversation stops.  

Bill Russell would not be a "very good" player in this era or the Jordan era or the era before that.  He just wouldn't be.  Yes he won 11 rings, he also had 6 other Hall of Famers and a Hall of Fame coach.  He also played in an era with 8 teams for a lot of that.  And in an era when most teams had 1 or 2 black players, or even none.  

Sorry, Russell is easily the most overrated player in NBA history.  Still a solid guy that cared about people and tried to make a difference.  Doesn't make him a guy that should be considered top 10 all time.  It's all opinion, and that's mine.  

I'm having a very, very difficult time separating Rasheed Wallace the dickhead from Rasheed Wallace the basketball player, precisely because his being a dickhead directly and profoundly diminished his impact as a basketball player. You can't polish a turd in any era.

 

16 hours ago, uoftorange said:

That's a lot of jumping to conclusions, but have fun.  And I've always done that but you don't have to.  That's my criteria.  Do I think a guy's game would change given like conditions.  I think Russel, with every advantage of today is Rasheed Wallace.  You don't have to agree, but my belief is educated and has basis behind it.  I think Wilt gets even better in today's game.  Wouldn't have the outlandish statistics, but would still dominate.  

You do realize that Bill Russell won 4 MVPs while Wilt Chamberlain was in his prime, right? How exactly do you reconcile your stance on Wilt vs. your stance on Russell? You think a guy who shot 51% from the FT line and 54% from the field (with a huge physical advantage against his peers) for his career would dominate in a pace and space era where he would see 20x as many guys his size and face an uncountable number of dudes more athletic than his in-era competition? 

[conVINCEd 21468]

Rasheed Wallace is a fucking bizarre hill to die on.

[closetohumping 17258]

27 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I'm having a very, very difficult time separating Rasheed Wallace the dickhead from Rasheed Wallace the basketball player, precisely because his being a dickhead directly and profoundly diminished his impact as a basketball player. You can't polish a turd in any era.

 

You do realize that Bill Russell won 4 MVPs while Wilt Chamberlain was in his prime, right? How exactly do you reconcile your stance on Wilt vs. your stance on Russell? You think a guy who shot 51% from the FT line and 54% from the field (with a huge physical advantage against his peers) for his career would dominate in a pace and space era where he would see 20x as many guys his size and face an uncountable number of dudes more athletic than his in-era competition? 

H2h he did dominate Russell.   Bill was on a better team

[Murfdogg21 4394]

Rasheed Wallace was awesome and would be even more coveted today his ability to D on bigs and rebound as well as handle the ball and shoot outside. But putting him in some all time top 25 list is lolz. 

[Carl Spackler 3455]

I have not assigned an order to this list.  It was fucking hard enough paring it down to only 10 players:

Jordan

Lebron

Wilt

Kareem

Bird

Duncan

Magic

Kobe

Oscar

Dream

 

It was difficult to leave Russell, West, and some others off.

[hobbes2702 12481]

20 hours ago, uoftorange said:

That's a lot of jumping to conclusions, but have fun.  And I've always done that but you don't have to.  That's my criteria.  Do I think a guy's game would change given like conditions.  I think Russel, with every advantage of today is Rasheed Wallace.  You don't have to agree, but my belief is educated and has basis behind it.  I think Wilt gets even better in today's game.  Wouldn't have the outlandish statistics, but would still dominate.  

And no Bob Pettit isn't better than Tim Duncan.  There you go

By your criteria the current best player in the league is always going to be the best player of all time.

Mike couldn’t make it in today’s game, can’t shoot the 3.

Magic couldn’t make it in todays game, can’t shoot.

Kareem couldn’t make it today’s game, he’d get cooked on the perimeter.

And on and on and on. Do you see how dumb that is? All those guys, if raised in different times, would play different ways. Comparing across generations is just incredible dumb and worthless.

Edited January 16 by hobbes2702

[hobbes2702 12481]

How was Rasheed Wallace the guy you chose for this argument? Dudes not even in the top 100 players of the mast 30 years.

[uoftorange 1383]

4 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

How was Rasheed Wallace the guy you chose for this argument? Dudes not even in the top 100 players of the mast 30 years.

Correct?  I think you're getting the point.  

Genuinely don't care if people agree with me.  I'm content in my belief and that's all any of us have because we don't actually know.  But Wilt had half the team and owned Bill.  You can pull some stats up that make you think it was closer, but it just wasn't.  

Rasheed is the perfect comparison, they had very similar games.  Y'all are underrating the hell out of Wallace much more than I'm underrating Bill.

 

4 hours ago, hobbes2702 said:

By your criteria the current best player in the league is always going to be the best player of all time.

Mike couldn’t make it in today’s game, can’t shoot the 3.

Magic couldn’t make it in todays game, can’t shoot.

Kareem couldn’t make it today’s game, he’d get cooked on the perimeter.

And on and on and on. Do you see how dumb that is? All those guys, if raised in different times, would play different ways. Comparing across generations is just incredible dumb and worthless.

Reading comprehension man, that's not what I said.  I said I have to look and see what those guys skills were and what type of game they had.  Do you really think George Mikan could hang with the top 200 guys in 2023?  Wilt absolutely could play in today's era.  So could Oscar Robertson and a number of guys.  Russell was great, and I have him in the top 20, but this "he's the greatest center of all time, or top 5 all time player" is fucking laughable.  

Edited January 17 by uoftorange

[hobbes2702 12481]

1 minute ago, uoftorange said:

Correct?  I think you're getting the point.  

Genuinely don't care if people agree with me.  I'm content in my belief and that's all any of us have because we don't actually know.  But Wilt had half the team and owned Bill.  You can pull some stats up that make you think it was closer, but it just wasn't.  

Rasheed is the perfect comparison, they had very similar games.  Y'all are underrating the hell out of Wallace much more than I'm underrating Bill.

 

Reading comprehension man, that's not what I said.  I said I have to look and see what those guys skills were and what type of game they had.  Do you really think George Mikan could hang with the top 200 guys in 2023?  Wilt absolutely could play in today's era.  So could Oscar Robertson and a number of guys.  Russell was great, and I have him in the top 20, but this "he's the greatest center of all time, or top 5 all time player" is fucking laughable.  

People are certainly laughing…

[uoftorange 1383]

1 minute ago, hobbes2702 said:

People are certainly laughing…

Cool, you have an opinion too.  

If you think Bill Russell is better than Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Dream, Malone, Giannis or Robinson then I don't know what to tell you.  Those guys would eat him up 100 times out of 100.  That's guys from multiple eras and one that actually did.  

[hobbes2702 12481]

1 minute ago, uoftorange said:

Cool, you have an opinion too.  

If you think Bill Russell is better than Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Dream, Malone, Giannis or Robinson then I don't know what to tell you.  Those guys would eat him up 100 times out of 100.  That's guys from multiple eras and one that actually did.  

[uoftorange 1383]

1 minute ago, hobbes2702 said:

Sam Jones has 10, is he also better than them?  Robert Horry has 7, is he better than Jordan?  Stop it man.  Rings are great and they matter.  But again, you and I both know that list of players I wrote are better.  And it's kind of silly to argue it.  If you want to do a "in their era list" then cool, Russel probably goes higher.  I don't do that, and I think it's kind of silly to do it the way you do it.  Either way, there is no basketball skill argument for him over those guys

[hobbes2702 12481]

4 minutes ago, uoftorange said:

Sam Jones has 10, is he also better than them?  Robert Horry has 7, is he better than Jordan?  Stop it man.  Rings are great and they matter.  But again, you and I both know that list of players I wrote are better.  And it's kind of silly to argue it.  If you want to do a "in their era list" then cool, Russel probably goes higher.  I don't do that, and I think it's kind of silly to do it the way you do it.  Either way, there is no basketball skill argument for him over those guys

San Jones and Robert Horry. 
same same

[Kermit 3081]

[dcar00 13861]

Celtics 1946-1956 zero NBA titles

Celtics 1957-1969 11 NBA titles(Bill Russell shows up, lucky for Bill he is on the Celtics or he'd be Sheed Wallace, Russell retires)

Celtics 1970-1980 2 NBA titles

oh and 1954/55 and 1955/56 the San Francisco Dons win the NCAA Basketball Championship(Bill Russell got lucky to make the team of course)

the other 100 years of SF Dons basketball - 1 NIT championship

I know Sheeeed Wallace is better but this resume is not too shabby

 

[Kermit 3081]

21 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

Celtics 1946-1956 zero NBA titles

Celtics 1957-1969 11 NBA titles(Bill Russell shows up, lucky for Bill he is on the Celtics or he'd be Sheed Wallace, Russell retires)

Celtics 1970-1980 2 NBA titles

oh and 1954/55 and 1955/56 the San Francisco Dons win the NCAA Basketball Championship(Bill Russell got lucky to make the team of course)

the other 100 years of SF Dons basketball - 1 NIT championship

I know Sheeeed Wallace is better but this resume is not too shabby

 

Rumor has it that when Wilt missed some of his NBA record 5805 free throws, Bill would whisper “ball don’t lie.”

[dcar00 13861]

On 1/16/2024 at 9:03 PM, Kermit said:

I need AI to create a gif of Bill Russell doing that with cousy, jones, havlicek, heinsohn

[pops 6946]

Rasheed and Russell?  I mean that is some futureman level trolling. And if not,  dudes a regard. 

[hobbes2702 12481]

10 hours ago, dcar00 said:

I need AI to create a gif of Bill Russell doing that with cousy, jones, havlicek, heinsohn

Holy shit someone make that happen

[The_Great_Hornsby 3306]

1. MJ
2. Magic
3. Lebron
4. Kareem
5. Duncan
6. Bird
7. Hakeem
8. Shaq
9. Wilt
10. Russell

[dcar00 13861]

29 minutes ago, pops said:

Rasheed and Russell?  I mean that is some futureman level trolling. And if not,  dudes a regard. 

I believe you meant Sheeeeed sir.

[shadow_operative 15931]

 

[Dbeasy 14733]

1. Tim Duncan

2. George Gervin

3. David Robinson

4. Manu Ginobli

5. Tony Parker

6. Kawhi Leonard

7. Sean Elliott

8. James Silas

9. Larry Kenon

10. Bruce Bowen

[Underdog 27966]

No The Whopper makes invalid list invalid.