re: Post your top 15 players in NBA history in this thread

Not much love Hakeem in this thread.

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by dukke v
Not much love Hakeem in this thread.

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Yep. If we are even putting Malone on a top 15 list. Hakeem deserves an automatic position bump.

Also, yay another LeFanBoi who needs reassurance of their obsession starts a MSB thread

same can be said for for most of the MSB LeFanBois who weren't of age to watch Jordan play live.

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1. Michael Jordan
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
3. Wilt Chamberlain
4. Magic Johnson
5. Lebron James
6. Bill Russell
7. Kobe Bryant
8. Larry Bird
9. Oscar Robertson
10. Shaquille O'Neal
11. Hakeem Olajuwon
12. Tim Duncan
13. Karl Malone
14. Jerry West
15. Jacob Hester, cause any list without him is invalid

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Why put Bill Russell ahead of Hakeem Olajuwon?

Because he dominated his era and regularly bested perhaps the most physically gifted player in the history of the NBA (wilt)

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Because he dominated his era and regularly bested perhaps the most physically gifted player in the history of the NBA (wilt)

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His career high in points per 36 min in a season is 15.6.

His career average per 36 is 12.8 pts.

He was great on one side of the ball. And his Celtics teams were loaded.

So why does that put him ahead of a player who was dominant on both sides of the ball?

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Because he was ridiculously dominant on that side of the ball and was asked to sacrifice his offensive game to the other scorers on his team. Hakeem and his Rockets never dominated, they snuck in and won two championships when the Jordan wasn't playing full seasons. BR and his teams won everything for a decade. There's just no comparison. Hakeem was a phenomenal player and a great gentleman from what I know of him - but to compare him to Russell tells me you just don't give older players any credit.

I take it from your point of view and signature picture you are a Rockets fan. You know people who are not big Hakeem fans are not going to share your point of view.

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It's not even about Hakeem specifically or Bill Russell specifically.

I picked those two because you have one player who is one of the greatest of all time on both sides of the ball and you have one who is one of the greatest on only one side of the ball. And don't hand me this "he was asked to sacrifice his offensive game for other players" nonsense. If he was good enough to put up big numbers on the offensive end, no coach would tell him to stop scoring so much and give the other players a turn. That's nonsense that somebody came up with long after to explain away his sub-par offensive numbers.

And if you use the championships argument, then why are there players ahead of Russell with less championships?

Why is team not taken into account? Those Celtics teams were loaded back then. Plus, there were only 8 teams in the entire league.

For example... in 1964, the six players with the most minutes played on the team were Bill Russell, Sam Jones, Snatch Sanders, K.C. Jones, John Havlicek, and Tom Heinsohn.

All 6 are in the hall of fame. Then you had Willie Naulls who was a 4x all-star,

If you have 6 hall of famers on your team with only 7 other teams in the league, how would you NOT win a ton of championships and dominate the league?

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Why? Because he won a lot of rings?

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Well, there's also the minor matter of him averaging 22.45 rebounds per game. That's literally double Hakeem's rebound rate.

Acting like the only way to evaluate players is through eye witness is ridiculous. There's this thing called the statistical record. Your own witness has value, but you're not a scout, and eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable anyway. You act like taking a large sample of other people's opinion is a bad thing, when in fact it is a really good tool for evaluation. Multiple expert evaluations are a GOOD thing.

And it's not like the film has been destroyed. You can watch clips of Russell playing.

All that said, I'd put Hakeem ahead of Russell, but that's because I think Hakeem might be the greatest center in NBA history not named Wilt Chamberlain. He was such a dynamic player.

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Well, there's also the minor matter of him averaging 22.45 rebounds per game. That's literally double Hakeem's rebound rate.

Acting like the only way to evaluate players is through eye witness is ridiculous. There's this thing called the statistical record. Your own witness has value, but you're not a scout, and eye witness testimony is notoriously unreliable anyway. You act like taking a large sample of other people's opinion is a bad thing, when in fact it is a really good tool for evaluation. Multiple expert evaluations are a GOOD thing.

And it's not like the film has been destroyed. You can watch clips of Russell playing.

All that said, I'd put Hakeem ahead of Russell, but that's because I think Hakeem might be the greatest center in NBA history not named Wilt Chamberlain. He was such a dynamic player.

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I'm not saying you have to witness every game a player played first-hand.

But you need to see full games to really get a sense of how they contributed to their team. Clips on Youtube really don't do that.

Why did Russell have so many rebounds? Can we answer that? How do you know he didn't just stand under the rim and purposely miss shots to inflate his rebounding stats? I'm certainly not saying that happened... I'm making the point that stats tell the result, but not how those numbers were achieved.

People are comparing those they have seen play (LeBron, Jordan, Hakeem, etc) with those they have never seen play a full game with their own eyes. They are going off of stats and legend and other rankings they've been fed over the years from ESPN and whatever other publication. "They all put Russell at the top... so it must be true", and they confirm that he was a good player from a highlight clip they've seen on Youtube.