The Spirit of Hoops

Everyone has to do this at some point, I guess.  And for the next little while, I’m going to be discussing who I think are the 25 best players in NBA history, to date.

I dither on this topic a lot, usually based on new information or a new way to look at what’s in front of me.  I’m constantly editing these lists.  And that’s the way it should be, really; a list of the best should generally be pretty fluid, with a few exceptions as new blood earns its way up the ladder.  And of course, this is entirely subjective, so I have to begin first by establishing my own special criteria for how I rank these players.  That in mind, I’m using a combination of accolades (awards, records, etc), titles and qualitative stuff like style of play, impact on the game, versatility… just about everything.  I’ll discuss the particulars within my post on each player.

First, and most importantly; this is about the NBA, so I won’t talk about the ABA, or consider anything therein.  Much has been said about the quality of the ABA and the merits of its players and there were indeed many players who came from the ABA to be excellent NBA players.  Moses Malone, Dr. J, George Gervin, Rick Barry… some of the very best players in NBA history came from the ABA.  But those achievements weren’t in the NBA and are therefore not going to be considered herein.

To start with, I’ve got to throw out a bunch of names.  A good start is with the work of Robert McChesney, who posted a three-part series over on NBADraft.net relating to the Superstar Theory (parts 1 , 2 and 3 ).  In it, he outlines a general ranking system to determine the best players in league history.  It’s not meant to be a specific ranking system, but instead to stratify players based on four factors: MVP voting, All-NBA and All-Defensive Team appearances, and Defensive Player of the Year awards.  The articles detail the specifics, and he goes on to limit a player’s ability to be in one of his three categories (Bronze, Silver and Gold) based on the number of seasons a player played at a certain level.

At first crack, this method tosses out the following names as its top-25:

Michael Jordan,  Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, Tim Duncan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Shaquille O’neal, Bob Cousy, Bob Pettit, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Elgin Baylor, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Lebron James, Kevin Garnett, Bill Walton, Dolph Schayes, Julius Erving, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash and George Gervin.

That’s not a bad list, as starts go, but in my own opinion, there are already problems; Moses Malone and Charles Barkley aren’t on there and neither is Walt Frazier.  Mo and Sir Charles happen to be numbers 26 and 27, so it’s not a huge miss, but Frazier is #32.  McChesney didn’t intend for this list to be a final ranking system, only the beginning of a different kind of analysis, but for my purposes, I need to expand the scope of my dredge-netting and get some more names in here.  So the NEXT 25 players on the list are:

Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, John Havlicek, Willis Reed, Tracy McGrady, Jason Kidd, Walt Frazier, Nate Archibald, Rick Barry, Gary Payton, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Allen Iverson, Chris Paul, John Stockton, Dave Cowens, Ben Wallace, Bob McAdoo, Dwyane Wade, Sidney Moncrief, Bill Sharman, David Thompson, Paul Westphal, Gus Johnson and Alonzo Mourning.

That’s getting better, but we’re stilling missing Grant Hill, Billy Cunningham, Elvin Hayes (the next 3 guys), Spencer Haywood,  ‘Nique,  KJ, Isiah, Clyde Drexler, Bernard King and others.  I’ve also ignored Earl Monroe.  We’re also noticing the problem with this system, or rather one of the problems with using this as a system is that younger players are overrepresented because their points average* is higher because of a smaller sample.  Chris Paul’s is at 8.3 because he had a brilliant year this past year.  He was second in the league in MVP voting, which netted him 13 points; he was All-NBA First Team, which netted him 10 points; and he was All-Defensive Second Team, which netted him 2 points, for a total of 25 points.  Over three years, that’s about 8.3 points, the average he has posted on the list.  This defies the basic criteria of not having seven years at this level, which is why Bill Walton doesn’t qualify as a gold star; why Paul does?  Probably because he hasn’t had a chance to play 7 seasons, but that’s inconsistent.

Anyway, this is a great starting point, because it nets a lot of the big names, but it misses out on a few and guys who’ve played under seven years really don’t belong in this discussion, at least in my opinion.  In fact, I’m going to say that guys with under a decade of NBA experience really shouldn’t be considered.  I’m also mostly not interested in discussing players who played the bulk of their career before the 1960s, because the game has evolved entirely too much since then, both in style and in terms of player composition.  How do I determine bulk?  50% or more.  That means Bob Pettit narrowly makes it, because 6 of his 11 seasons were in the 60s.

So in the first place, we knock out Chris Paul, Lebron James, Dwyane Wade,  Dolph Schayes and Bob Cousy.  So I’ve got to add Pearl, Drexler, KJ, Isiah, ‘Nique and King in there for consideration.  Now, before this list gets unmanageable, I cut it off at 51.  That’s twice as many players as spots and should do just fine.  But I’m a sucker for Elvin Hayes and Grant Hill, so we’ll make it 53.  So the list of first potential players looks like this:

Michael Jordan,  Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, Tim Duncan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Shaquille O’neal, Bob Pettit, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Elgin Baylor, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett, Bill Walton, Julius Erving, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, George Gervin, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, John Havlicek, Willis Reed, Tracy McGrady, Jason Kidd, Walt Frazier, Nate Archibald, Rick Barry, Gary Payton, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Allen Iverson, John Stockton, Dave Cowens, Ben Wallace, Bob McAdoo, Sidney Moncrief, Bill Sharman, David Thompson, Paul Westphal, Gus Johnson, Alonzo Mourning, Clyde Drexler,Dominique Wikins, Kevin Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Bernard King, Grant Hill, Earl Monroe and Elvin Hayes.

That’s a big list… and pretty much all of them were outstanding players, but I have to cut this down some.  Each name has to pass the “laugh test” as one of the 25 best players in NBA history; do they really belong at first glance?  What this amounts to is an examination of Gus Johnson and Paul Westphal, because pretty much every other name on there belongs at least in the discussion.  But then a few other names crop up: Alonzo Mourning, Ben Wallace (neither of them top-6 at their position), Bill Sharman and David Thompson.

We find that Westphal doesn’t really belong; he had a great career and a really nice peak but he really doesn’t match a lot of the other guards on this list well enough to be considered one of the 25 best.  Gus Johnson (he of the career 62 games-played average in his first 9 years, before he shuffled off to the ABA in his final season) had a nice career and was an impressive player but he doesn’t really compare at the forward/center spots to most of the other guys on the list.  Great player… but this is a bit outside of his range.  If his knees had been healthier… but then one could say things like that of others as well, such as Penny Hardaway (who is noticeably absent here, despite an excellent peak in his first four years or so).

So we try again:

Michael Jordan,  Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, Tim Duncan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Shaquille O’neal, Bob Pettit, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Elgin Baylor, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett, Bill Walton, Julius Erving, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, George Gervin, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, John Havlicek, Willis Reed, Tracy McGrady, Jason Kidd, Walt Frazier, Nate Archibald, Rick Barry, Gary Payton, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Allen Iverson, John Stockton, Dave Cowens, Bob McAdoo, Sidney Moncrief, Clyde Drexler, Dominique Wikins, Kevin Johnson, Isiah Thomas, Bernard King, Grant Hill, Earl Monroe and Elvin Hayes.

We still have almost  50 players on the list. There are a couple of other players that I feel can be cut off in this initial post, too.  Bernard King and Dominique Wilkins come to mind.  Both great scorers, neither especially good defenders.  ‘Nique languished on some bad teams in the wrong era and doesn’t have the team accomplishments to really set himself up with the truly awesome players of league history and he was never as efficient as the other scorers of his period, which really put a shadow on some of his achievements.  King was obviously riddled with injuries and never managed the accolades as an individual to stand with the rest of these guys.  Like many of the players that I’m shaving off the list, he was a great talent but the 25 best in the history of the NBA must be the absolute peak not only of ability and potential, but of achievement as well. That means I have to can Kevin Johnson, Tracy McGrady, Earl Monroe and Grant Hill as well, leaving us with 40 players.

But yet more can be knocked off: Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Bob McAdoo, John Stockton and Nate Archibald come to mind.  Again, all players with at least fantastic peaks (McAdoo, Archibald) and mostly just plain  great players (the rest), but not really top-25 material.  It’s tough not to include Jason Kidd, especially because he led his team to the Finals twice.  At the same time, I can’t include Steve Nash yet either, because while he’s a 2-time MVP, he’s never been out of the Conference Finals and has really only peaked these last few years.  So he’s gone as well.  Dirk, too, though again we’re talking about an MVP who’s led his team to the Finals (like Iverson).  Dirk may play himself into the top-25 yet, it’s not like he’s slowing down any time soon, but he has to stand next to someone like Barkley (MVP, Finals appearance, 7th all-time in TS%) or Malone (2 MVPs, 2 Finals appearances, 2nd all-time in points scored).  He’s also got to stand against Bob Pettit(2-time MVP, ROY, beat Russell for a title, All-NBA First Team until he was 2nd team in his last year, 2 scoring titles, 3-time All-Star MVP, etc).  So Dirk doesn’t really belong there yet.  Other tough exclusions include Elvin Hayes and Elgin Baylor.  Baylor’s a tough call because he was a pioneer for the above-the-rim style, a big-time volume scorer, top-5 in the MVP voting 7 times and all that.  But he doesn’t have a lot of individual accolades aside from his All-NBA first teams.  Despite his scoring, he never won a scoring title (though he was 2nd three times, he was usually 5th or so) and though he was ROY and All-Star Game MVP as a rookie, he doesn’t have any MVPs (Wilt, Russell and Oscar took them).  He played in a tough era, but this is about ranking players in a certain way and there are always tough losses.  Baylor’s one of them.  And no, I’m not counting his management career in any capacity.

OK, so that leaves us a new list:

Michael Jordan,  Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, Tim Duncan, Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Shaquille O’neal, Bob Pettit, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Karl Malone, Oscar Robertson, David Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett, Bill Walton, Julius Erving, George Gervin, Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, John Havlicek, Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Rick Barry, Gary Payton, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Dave Cowens,  Sidney Moncrief, Isiah Thomas.

I’ve got  31 players there.  Before I go any farther, there are at least two more guys I can knock offf this list: Bill Walton and George Gervin.

Iceman was a brilliant scorer, (3 scoring titles in a row, 4 in 5 years, great efficiency), perennial All-Star and All-NBA 1st Teamer… but he was never an MVP (All-Star Game MVP once), never much of a defender, never made the Finals and consequently doesn’t really stand with the others.  Bill Walton was a top-10 talent, he really was.  He was a better passer and defender than Kareem and more comfortable playing the high post.  He’s got a blocks-per-game title and a rebounds-per-game title, an MVP, a Finals MVP, and two All-Star appearances.  By McChesney’s method, he’d be a Gold star if it weren’t for the lack of durability (career-high 65 games as a starter, then 67 as an L.A. Clipper, 80 as a celtic with his 6MOY and then 10 in his final season).  He was a truly special, gifted player.  But he really doesn’t stack up with the rest of these guys simply because he wasn’t on the floor enough.  So, with a due nod to the fact that Bill Walton would have almost certainly been one of the ten best players in the history of the game had he been healthy, I have to take him off my list.  That leaves 29 guys, which is a lot more manageable.  I still have to cut four guys, and then I can start ranking them.  It’d be nice to just say “there are only 5 guys on this list that have never won a title” and then to take them off (there really are), but among them are Barkley, Karl Malone, Gary Payton, Patrick Ewing and Sidney Moncrief, so you can’t just arbitrarily throw them away.  Having said that, Ewing, Payton and Moncrief are the three leading candidates to drop off the list, along with Scottie Pippen and Rick Barry.

Rick Barry wins the “Siring NBA Progeny” award for having three sons play in the NBA (and Scooter, his fourth son, wasn’t bad either; he played on the ‘88 Jayhawks, in the CBA, the NBL in Australia and around Europe).  He’s one of the greatest FT shooters in NBA history, he’s got an NBA scoring title, he’s an 8-time NBA All-Star, ROY, All-Star and Finals MVP… And he’s got 10 years in the league, narrowly sneaking in there despite 4 years in the ABA in the MIDDLE of his career, after his scoring title.  He was the first player to goto the ABA FROM the NBA.  He earned some notoriety for that, too, because he went to play for his then-father-in-law and a bigger contract.  He had to sit out an entire season, too.  Is he one of the 25 best players in NBA history?  He led the Warriors to a title in ‘75.  During his second stint with the Warriors (72-73 through 77-78), they made the Conference Finals three times (including their title year) and the second round once, missing the playoffs twice.  There was some controversy around him when he was forced by the ABA to play for the Capitals; he didn’t want to and didn’t report for 30-some games before the league compelled him to play.  He was quick, an excellent outside shooter, a great thief, once set the NBA record for single-season FT% at 94.7% and proved to be an outstanding passer in his second run in the NBA (and really, even before then).  He was one of the first point-forwards, before the position was popularized by Don Nelson and Phil Jackson with Paul Pressey and Scottie Pippen.

I’m inclined to leave Barry on the list; there’s just so much about him that compels me to leave him there.  The title, the MVP, the scoring, the passing, the pioneering at his position, it all adds up.

Pippen was one of the best perimeter defenders ever and one of the best passing forwards the game has seen but he was never as individually talented as someone like Barry.  The ‘94 season suggests much of his ability to lead a team but it was never realized, while Barry led a team to a title and swept a 60-win juggernaught Bullets squad in the Finals in the process.  And it with Butch Beard, Jamaal Wilkes before he was Silk, and Clifford Ray.  That’s the 70s equivalent of the ‘03 Spurs or the ‘94 Rockets.

Payton was a DPOY and an amazing defender, lead his team to the Finals… but he never won the ‘chip, he got smoked by the 8th seed Rockets one year, he never broke the top-5 in MVP voting and while he was routinely All-NBA First Team, he really doesn’t have the accolades to stand in the company.  Top-30, surely, but not top-25.  Much the same can be said of Ewing; how much his injuries affected him, we’ll never know but at this level, the reasons don’t matter, only the results.  He’s another top-30 player, though.

Sidney Moncrief was the first Defensive Player of the Year.  And the second.  He was an athletic monster, an outstanding scorer, a legendary defender and so on but injuries really limited him.  Aside from his defensive excellence, he doesn’t have the personal accolades to stand in this company.  He is, like Walton, a guy who stands much taller as a talent than he does in a ranking of overall careers and achievements.  He made the playoffs with the Bucks for a decade straight.  In his fourth year, he made the second round (and lost to the eventual-champion Sixers).  He lost to the eventual-champion Celtics in ‘84 in the ECFs, made the second round in ‘85, got swept by the Celtics in the ECFs in ‘86, lost to the Celtics in the semis in ‘87 (Boston lost to the Lakers in the Finals) and made the second round in his last year with the Bucks.  That’s a lasting legacy of excellence for Milwaukee, but it’s not enough.  No MVP, no title or even Finals appearance, no major statistical titles… Moncrief was great and his talent level definitely goes beyond his  stats and such, but he narrowly misses the top-25.

So who’s the last cut?   For me it comes down to Walt Frazier versus Isiah Thomas and to be honest, I don’t think Zeke really cuts it.  Frazier was more efficient even without the three-point line, a comparable scorer, a better rebounder, a much better defender and an underrated distributor who’s passing numbers were deflated by his coach’s sharing, motion-ish system.  Frazier has two titles, the same as does Thomas.  He has an All-Star Game MVP (Isiah has two) and while he doesn’t have a Finals MVP award, he was playing alongside Willis Reed (who won it both times).  Isiah Thomas didn’t play next to anyone who was better than him.  Dumars was excellent, Rodman was much saner than later in his career, Aguirre was great… but he didn’t play next to another top-25 talent, so the absence of such an award isn’t a detriment to Frazier, more a hallmark of Red Holzman’s system.

So Isiah Thomas is the last cut.  In the next installment, we’ll see #25 on the list of the 25 best players in NBA history.

(* Points here refers to the ranking points in McChesney’s system, not points scored during games)

(BLOG UPDATE)

As I sat here thinking about this, the name ‘Alex English’ came to mind.  He’s not on McChesney’s list, nor mine.  And he’s not one of the 25-best players in league history… but top-30, just maybe; top-35 at worst.  Such a sweet shooter, excellent transition scorer, good iso skills…  He won a scoring title and was a 22/6/4 player on his career (well, 21.5, 5.5 and 3.6) who peaked with 8 straight years at or above 25 ppg.  Wasn’t even a bad defender, either.  Really skilled, really unrecognized.  Just wanted to throw that name out there; if Gervin hadn’t taken it, English would have been the Iceman because he was just as smooth.

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