In any case, he's completely unguardable with HIV, no one is going to be bodying up with that knowledge.

Has to be a pretty big fluke. Even if he's engaging in the most realistically risky behavior possible he's pretty unlikely to get infected.

Centers can be tough to evaluate because as you and others have said, truley dominant centers are rare. Bill Russell's teams were sooo stacked that it really makes it difficult to evaluate his play without having watched him. Wilt's peak was so far and beyond anyone else's which need's to be considered. The only thing I am pretty sure of is that Russell would have to be #5 on the list unless someone saw pretty much all of his games and knew something we didn't. I think I would go...

1.) M.J
2.) Wilt
3.) Shaq
4.) Kareem
5.) Russell

Kareem's longevity is amazing, but I think his top few years give you a worse chance to win a title than #'s 1-3 on the list.

gay buttsecks with prostitue monkeys from africa seems pretty likely to me and that has a super AIDS frequency of 9.7 units of plausibility

People are quick to toss out the "Russell had sick teammates" card, but a lot of people who watched them play often credit Russell as being the "ultimate team player" or whatever. To use a contemporary example, anyone who has watched the Suns over the past couple seasons knew that they're only great because of Nashua, yet if you erase all the records minus the stats, and erased everyone's memories, people would be say something like "he had great teammates." To an extent it's true, but to deny that Nash raises all his teammates' games to another level is ludicrous.

IE, Amare is awesome, but is he as good as his stats (which would make him the best offensive forward in the game the three seasons he and Nash have been together)? No way.

When evaluating teams, aren't we assuming that we still have a normal size roster even if we only draft 9 players?

jeff ruland would've been a god. best passing big man i've ever seen.

love, love, love derrick mckey. looks like aguirre will be getting the 40 shots a game he always wanted too.

Well most teams don't go much more than 9 deep anyway. I just like having versatility.

I was hoping to have Ruland on my bench, get some very nice early years.

i sent bigcat a pm, but he hasn't been active for a week.

McKey is a nice fit.

Now I'm rooting for some story about Magic's freaky sex life to come out just so we can define "realistically risky". Is something wrong with me?

KC and I can affirm that Russell's hook shot was not a high efficiency play.

My vote, and I don't think these three are close:
1. Jordan
2. Wilt
3. Jabbar
I think it gets debatable after that.

yeah but he may very well average 8 blocks per game with a high rate of them leading to TOs.

He isn't averaging 8 blocks per game in this hypothetical league though. Those old school big guys (hell, older players in general) would be extremely difficult to judge in a format like this. Clearly when you adjust for era, they are dominant. However, if they had to match up with a 24 year old Shaq, how good would they be? I don't think you can give them credit for blocking tons of shots in this league because their main advantage, their above average height that no one had a clue how to deal with, is now the norm and every post man in the game either has similar size or some way of attacking a bigger man so that every shot doesn't get blocked. I think it's pretty close to impossible to do a draft like this much past our cut off date, just look at the trouble we're having with things like how much less of an emphasis the 3 point shot had in the 80s, and then exponentially increase the difficulty when trying to compare Wilt to Shaq and Cousy to Nash.

KC and I can also attest that Cousy >>>>>>>>>>>>>> All and Jerry West was the Truth (the Truth without a conscience, but nonetheless....)

and elgin suxxx

truf

Doc Rivers ridiculous steal this late, makes some of the other PG taken look bad imo.

dudd,

i was actually joking mostly. In the '63 game thread Clark posted a link to a good APBR thread trying to guess how man BPG Russell and Wilt averaged. One guy had a pretty good post that estimated between 4 and 5. Slightly more than that wouldn't shock me, but 8 is def too high.

I get jokes.

Comments on the last few picks.

Kelly Tripucka - Seems like a nice solid fit given the makeup of your team.

Jeff Ruland - How good or bad this pick is obviously depends on how you value his injuries. Personally I think this would have been a better pick on a team that is already prone and is trying to win early. Either way, there are plenty of rounds left to pick up a good backup big man.

Derrick McKey - I made a list of 7 players (now grown to 9) that I hoped would be there for the 6th round, and he was #1 on my list (Posey was up there too). As JOA had mentioned, he was the type of versatile, guard anybody type of player that is coveted in the NBA. He was generally the third or at-worst fourth best player on a few excellent teams, and imo makes an even better 4th or 5th best guy here.

RE: 3 Point shooting and spacing

It's more than just spacing, especially if you've got one of those guys that works hard without the ball ala Reggie Miller, Ray Allen, Mike Miller, etc. Covering those guys is so difficult because you pretty much have to follow them step for step, usually getting picked and bumped off along the way. Take the extreme examples of DWade and Reggie Miller:

If you are covering DWade and he decides run from one baseline to the other, then around the key to where he started, you really don't have to move all that much to keep him out of his hot zone. And because there is no urgency in him getting a good look, the defender doesn't have to worry about being screened off nearly as much, and can generally navigate around the bigs whilst still having good defensive position on Wade.

Imagine covering Reggie Miller on the same play. Now the defender has got to keep Reg within a few feet of him, which means his only path is to follow Reggie step for step. Not only does the defender have to cover more ground, but he has to do this whilst getting bumped and chipped the whole time. This is much more difficult to cover imo, and what makes it worse is that the rest of the defenders have to not only bring help when necessary, but that have to know when to stay put and not bring help. I could see this leading to all sorts of favorable match-ups on the offensive end.

I think you misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that its a bad thing that he played more minutes. I was saying that his numbers are overinflated, though, due to him having played more minutes than the others. Look at his per 36 minutes as proof of this.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "pound for pound" argument. Basically the argument that I'm making is that Wilt dominated because he was so much larger than the competition. If he were in this draft, he would no longer be larger than the competition.

Again you keep listing bulk categories. I don't dispute that he put up sick bulk stats due to the facts that he A. Was way larger than the competition, B. Played a ridiculous number of minutes, and C. Was the first, second, and third option on his team. However, that doesn't make him better than the other 4 just becuase he put up great bulk stats.

Over 66% of the people who voted were against coaches, so there will be no coaches.

Please someone bump this post a few times throughout the next few days, so that everyone can see it.

The original question didn't include LBJ and included Russell, but yeah I agree completely with Bobbo here. Who would be next then? I think I'd go with Duncan, but again I can't really argue against the "Russell did things that didn't show up in the boxscore" argument since I never saw him play, and it sure does seem like a lot of people make that argument.

Btw, Jerry West deserves mention too if we're including everyone. Career averages of 27.0 points on 55.0 TS%, 5.8 rebounds, and 6.7 assists. They only kept blocks/steals stats during the last year of his career, but he put up 2.6 steals and 0.7 blocks per game as a 35 year old while only playing 31 minutes per game, so I'd be inclined to say that he was dominant at forcing turnovers as well.