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

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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.