You can't put Bill Russell up there. The guy was only good on one side of the ball. Bill Russell had a career TS% of 47.1. That's pathetic. It's lower than Ben Wallace. Why would a guy who had a worse scoring efficiency than Ben freaking Wallace, be in everyone's top 10? If you adjust for pace, Bill Russell's rebounding numbers aren't that impressive. Dennis Rodman and Ben Wallace are two examples of rebounding machines that are better than Russell. I don't really care much for the championships argument, because those Celtics teams were loaded, in part because of territorial picks. Wilt Chamberlain is a more interesting case, because he was not only a better rebounder than Russell, but also respectable offensively. I think Wilt's a little overrated offensively. For example, in his 50 PPG season, the guy played 48.5 MPG. There are only 48 minutes in a basketball game. Wilt was so obsessed with his own personal stats that he played every minute of every game. In his 30 PPG seasons, he had an average TS% of 52.8, which isn't all that good. So he was scoring a lot, but he was doing it inefficiently. He began scoring efficiently though in the second half of his career, although he only averaged 19.6 PPG a game at that point in his career, which makes him something like 14-16 PPG player after you pace adjust it. Oscar Robertson is something like a 20 pt 6 ast 5 reb guy after pace adjustment. When you factor in lesser competition (Wilt's pet move was a little hook shot where he extended his arm horizontally, any player in the league right now would swat the shit out of that, but a lot of the players Wilt played against had reaction times so slow that they couldn't even get off the ground to contest his shots) and the pace adjustment, these guys exclusions (Russell and Oscar) are no brainers. Wilt is the one guy you could make a case for being in the Top 10. Russell though, should be nowhere close to a top 10 list imo.
Maybe it's better to exclude players like Wilt, Russell, & Robertson since they played most of their career in a different era of basketball. Let's have a top 10 list starting from 1980s to current.
Cool, let's compile a list of top 10 players based on who the awards are named after. Those Celtics teams were stacked. On the first Celtics championship team, there were 6 hall of famers, in addition to Wilt, to make it 7. Put Jordan on a team with 6 hall of famers from his era (lets say Pippen, Shaq, Barkley, Ewing, Stockton, and Malone) and see how many championships Jordan wins. Those teams probably go 82-0 and 16-0 in the playoffs for a good stretch of time.
Not a Bill fan, but I don't get this comparison. While Bill may not be a superstar, the HOFers he played with weren't on that level probably. You still don't seem to understand the nuances of PER calculated for frontcourt players btw. The formula is estimated on assisted buckets.
I never even brought up PER. Bill Russell had a career PER of 18.9. Ben Gordon had a PER of 18.2 in 06-07. PER is not Russell's friend either. 84 players have a higher career PER than Russell. That's really not good for Russell, as PER is relative to the era you play in, and Russell's era is much, much, crappier than the modern era.
