re: The new pantheon rankings

Wilt and Kareem @ 9 and 10 is laughable.

Russell in the top 10 is the stupidest part of this post though.

I personally would put Bird at #4, but I agree with the first 3 and your top 5.

Anyways I can just show you the years they were drafted to prove my point

Barkley: 1984
Olajuwon: 1984
Ewing: 1985
Malone: 1985
Robinson: 1987
Mutombo: 1991
Mourning: 1992
Shaq: 1992

Mourning was younger than I remember, but as you can see Shaq (and Duncan) doesn't quite fit into that great 90s era of big men. He's about half a generation behind. Which is why his most dominant years stretched well into the 2000s unlike the rest of them

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Shaq (and Duncan) doesn't quite fit into that great 90s era of big men.

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People are recognizing that a big reason that era existed was due to how the game was set up and called right? Not taking anything away from those greats but it's not really fair to say Duncan and Shaq get dinged for not being in that era.

Shaq is kinda a big reason why some major rule changes happened even after some other major league revisions already happened to the game. He kinda broke the game and they had to neuter him. Frankly how good Duncan and Shaq remained is more a testament to how good they were more then anything. Able to survive and transition through two eras.

We will never see a dominant era of big men like that again because the game does not look poised to go back to that type of ball and kids growing up today will not be developing for that type of play.

And my point is that the league was much less favorable to big men in Shaq and Duncan's prime and yet they found a way to dominate. Shaq at an insanely high level but Duncan at a high level for an insanely long time.

So IMO you uncouple the shackles that were the slew of modern rule changes that hindered the way those two grew up learning to play basketball and a guy like Shaq especially would straight feast in that era.

Shaq is why we have modern zone defense rules.

Before Shaq, if memory serves me right, you couldn't double team someone that didn't have the ball. Shaq would just force himself down low and there was no one that could deny him the ball. When running a zone, you could have a guy trying to deny Shaq low post position and another guy fronting him to deny him the ball. It was the the way the league managed to change the rules because Shaq was just killing fools.

Even looking at his numbers you can see they took a bit of a hit after the changes. There is a reason guys aren't averaging 3-4 BPG anymore for instance.

The guy was a dominating force the league had to actively work to gimp because he was just unstoppable for all but the few teams that could match up with him.

I'd put Lebron 2

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Bird is often underrated I find (as in put outside the top-5), he was every bit as good offensively as Dirk Nowitzki with none of the defensive issues and great passing ability. He did almost everything at an elite level, at least for his position.

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Larry Legend should also get bonus points for doing everything he did while in a 'Larry Bird' body

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Tier 2
Duncan
Shaq
LeBron
Bird

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You are such a cuck