https://stathead.com/basketball/h2h_..._id2=abdulka01

Pretty good video, well worth the time. Almost my same 12, other than the Shaq/Oscar swap. I may well be unjustified in leaving Shaq off, but I just would take Wilt, KAJ and Hakeem over him for real for the reasons already given, and was also trying to balance the players into a team at least somewhat.

What is the narrators seemingly totally irrational beef with Tom Brady?

I also don't get the backlash against KD for signing with a great team to become a super team. A list of similar type signings might be eye opening. Off the top of my head (how about a little help?) ... Chamberlain, LeBron, Roger Clemens, Oscar, Shaq, Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver ...???

I just don't get why since he is a great player he is limited in who he can sign with, while a sub player it's fine and dandy to pick up a title that way. What is the reason that a great player cannot sign onto a great team without this abuse except simply for fans wanting balance and some drama about who is going to win the title?

Old Chamberlain versus young Jabbar ... and look at the FG attempt comparison.

Bird had some comments, don't know if it was recent/today or just happened to come across my feed today, about Kobe being more about work and winning than LeBron. I found it surprising.

old ?
let talk some facts.

wilt was like between 34-35 years old, was playing all the games and over 40min per games.
during those years they play against each other in 1972 wilt was :
rebounding champion,
all nba second team
first team defensive team
AND
was good enough to be mvp in 1972 nba final,

not because his role changed he was "old" and bad, he was playing with freakn jerry west .


and kareem was good enough to pretty much split with wilt.
yes kareem had oscar i know.

You cant put shaq and wilt in front of kareem, makes no sense to me.
kareem was just a monster.

The backlash against signing with a superteam is whatever. I get it but, by itself, it shouldn’t effect GOAT ranking. Like can you imagine if Jordan signed with the Pistons before he won a title or with the Olajuwon Rockets? It just upsets the competitive balance and it’s kind of blah.

Of course no matter how upset it makes people it shouldn’t effect their all time ranking. What SHOULD effect all time ranking is how they perform on a superteam. How well the team performs when it’s loaded is a fair way to estimate how good a player is (over a sufficient number of seasons). Like if Jordan teamed up with Hakeem or Barkley and only won 2 titles we probably wouldn’t think he’s GOAT.

The thing with Jordan though is that, not only is he all time elite statistically (clearly top tier, arguably GOAT peak), his teams pretty much performed maximally given what they had in every season he played. Two 3 peats. Pushed his teams as far as they could go before Pippen and Grant developed etc. LeBron however only got 2 out of 4 on the Miami superteam. Flamed out a few times in the playoffs before he should have in Cleveland. He doesn’t have the same peak resume Jordan does.

Therefore we can conclude analytically, removing all emotion from the equation, that Jordan is GOAT. LeBron is somewhere on a tier below him. Exception, as you noted, could be for Wilt with huge errors bars - his peak statistics are hard to argue with even though he doesn’t have the team success. Like maybe with the right coach and team he titles every year. But also his play style could have been sub optimal for winning but great for stat whoring. That’s speculation though so I think you have to put Jordan 1 with LeBron somewhere top 6’ish and a tier below.

Of course it has an influence on overall ranking (reurant).

If Durant stays at OKC and wins two chips obviously he would be higher on any list.

It's just hard to rank someone when they have so much talent around them.

So how about versus the Bucks last season? Is it hard to rank him there? How about in the Olympics? How about when any player in the history of the league describes trying to guard him? I'm sorry, this is fail. "We can't tell if he's a great player because his team is so great." Babe Ruth, we can't tell; Wilt Chamberlain, we can't tell; Bill Walton college, we can't tell; Magic, we can't tell; Joe Montana, we can't tell; Tom Brady, we can't tell; Tim Tebow college, we can't tell. Etc.

Great players have contracts too. When the contract is up, there is no defense for this idea they shouldn't go to a great team. By analogy, a great computer tech person should not sign with Apple or Microsoft. LOL. A great surgeon needs to go to an average or below average hospital, maybe above average but not a super elite one, definitely not. And no reason offered. 2LOL.

Like a lot of ex stars say it does make a lot of sense to break them into two camps: centers and non-centers. Just food for thought. Seems helpful.

Centers: 1. Chamberlain/Jabbar tie, 3. Olajuwon, 4. Moses, 5. Shaq

Non-centers: 1. Jordan, 2. LeBron, 3. Magic, 4. Durant, 5. Kobe, 6. Bird

Meanwhile the all-time pigment challenged team:

Larry
Barry
Jerry
Jerry (Lucas)
Ferry (Danny)

You forgot Luka, Manu, Dirk, Pau, interestingly all non USAns

No Duncan? Dirk?

If you include Moses what about Artis Gilmore?

Bird clearly better than Kobe.

that pigment challenged team wasn't serious just all rhymes, Larry/Barry/Jerry etc. ... but it is an interesting subject. If serious Luka, Cowens, Dirk, Stockton, Nash, Jokic, McHale, Havlicek, Cousy, Maravich, Westphal, Collins, Chambers, Cunningham, Jones, Price, Walton (asterisk are a couple years enough?)... who else?

Pau is better than most the guys on that list. He's a clear tier two all time center. Maybe top of tier two. Especially if you give KD credit for winning Olympics.

I learnt more about how great Durant was against the Bucks than anything he did with the Warriors, so I guess that reinforces my original statement.

If Steve Wozniak goes to Microsoft in the 70’s, works in a team of elite programmers, and does some interesting but not groundbreaking work rather than founding Apple, our estimate of how great a software engineer he is goes down because he no longer built Apple from the ground up.

If James Andrews joins some elite orthopedic clinic in his 20’s, and never builds his own practice up, our estimate of how great of a surgeon he was goes down.

If Jordan teams up with Barkley and Olajuwon at age 24, but only wins 2 rings, our estimate of how great of a basketball player he was goes down.

Note that in none of these scenarios has their skill necessarily diminished, but because they accomplished less, we have no way of knowing their “true potential” was actually higher. We have to go with the evidence known. Accomplishments with the resources you have matter.

It seems almost self-evident that Durant would have more rings and better everything had he not played all those years with Russ.

There was another poster on here that claimed those OKC teams were elite elite because they had two MVP’s. I agree that poster seems to be on the low end of the intelligence spectrum because you obviously have to account for actual results, but I’m not sure I would go so far to say those OKC teams were bad and were a negative for Durant’s ring equity.

Russ is pretty much the anti-Durant. Maximally bad decision making, elite inefficiency. Like Kobe he'd need at least Shaq/Pau to win.

He took over that GOAT Woyaz team. That said something. Kerr even said "It's KD's team" before backtracking thinking that might cause a problem.

Just looked him up and he had a way better and longer run than I realized. 18 and 9 or so for 15 years. Not sure if I would take him over Cowens. Cowens was an intense force on the floor, nobody ever argued with him about manning up. Titles. Against young Jabbar. I think he was the MVP of those Celtic teams but many disagree.

So is it between Pau, Cowens, Walton, Jokic for goat (no caps) center in this dubious category?

OKC would have been much more interesting if they never traded Harden.

Hot take: A 7 game series of GOAT teams where one coach can only pick players drafted 2007 or later and the other can take anyone earlier, 2007+ would drop be unlucky to drop 2 games.

Steph
Klay
Kawhi
KD
AD

Absolutely slays anything you could put around MJ and Lebron in current rules/strategy.

MJ, LeBron, Chamberlain, Kobe, Bird. Can't compete with your team? Admittedly any game your team is hot from 3 is an almost insurmountable problem. Almost. So my subs would be dead eye shooters.

Jordan
LeBron
Reggie Miller
Hakeem Olajuwon
Kevin Garnett

LeBron point forward. Jordan guards Steph.

Pre-2007 team is better at every position. They sweep with an average margin of 10+ points.