Odom was a good bench player?? That front line of Odom, Gasol, and Bynum was straight up dominant on both ends of the floor. That was a crazy amount of length and versatility. You could have subbed guys in like Wade and Ray Allen in for Kobe, and that team likely doesn't miss a beat. I'm not suggesting that either of them are slouches, but they're also not being included in many top-10 all-time lists. It's weird to me that Kobe was considered highly overrated much of his early career and most of his late career, but now everyone just accepts that he was the greatest Laker ever. Remember how many people thought he was sinking the franchise those last few years?
I watched every player on his list play with the exception of Bill Russell. However, after watching some of his interviews, I think he would probably be one of my favorites if I had seen him play.
Yeah, Russell comes across as a really smart, thinking person in interviews. It's no wonder he's arguably the greatest defensive player ever.
First thing I checked. 5 out of 10. I think of Jabbar as a Buck, his greatest years, where he carried the team, something that overrated Magic Johnson never did because Kareem was the silent engine of the 80s Lakers. Shaq has always said that in Shaq's early years, he was amazed at his main rival, Olajuwon. I thought he'd list him #1. Maybe Shaq ignored Wilt because the two had similar tough guy talk. Chamberlain spoke roughly, but talked more intelligently than Shaq (who doesn't?).
I'm a little less famous than Shaq (but more famous than Travis Outlaw or anyone from the cast of Bones), but I'm bored and thought I'd do a ranked top ten. 1. LeBron James 2. Michael Jordan 3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 4. Wilt Chamberlain 5. Bill Russell 6. Hakeem Olajuwon 7. Magic Johnson 8. Larry Bird 9. Shaquille O'Neal 10. Oscar Robertson The second-hardest call was James over Jordan. I find the two nearly impossible to separate in terms of greatness, but I didn't want to cop out and make them co-number-ones. I went with James because his size and physique gives him a physical dominance that Jordan didn't have. It gave him more styles of play he could adopt and made him far less capable of being battered into exhaustion the way Jordan sometimes was (most famously by the Pistons but also occasionally by Pat Riley's Knicks). James could play like Jordan did, or like the Shaq of perimeter players, playing bully-ball if he had to. James also had the superior passing skills (though Jordan was no slouch as a play-maker). James is probably the most well-rounded basketball player ever. The Jordan mystique is hard to pass up, but I think James is closest to the perfect basketball player the game has ever seen. Separating Magic from Bird was the hardest call. They were easy comparables due to playing at the same time, but they were also incredibly close in ability level. I could go either way on them, I'll admit I put Magic over Bird because I liked Magic's style more. Lots of other hard calls, but those were the ones that immediately jumped to mind as ones I had things to say about.
The algorithm: 1. Just list the best player at each position for each decade. 2. Make one list of Lakers so that Southern Californians won't whine, and a separate list of non-Lakers to get any respect for your list from the rest of the country.
He should have created top ten players by decades category. I would want that format and note these players: Dr.J, Connie Hawkins, Gail Goodrich, Jerry West, John Havelchick (sp), Bob Cousy, Pete Marevich and so on....
Wilt was better in every facet. Also consider how differently they called the game back then. They did not allow backing down. That's why you see Wilt doing all those fade aways
I think it's important to point out that this is not a list Shaq made, despite the title of this thread and some of the posts.
That's beneath me. I am a busy man. It never occurred to me to click on the article. It's the job of you peons to do that, then I figure it out from the context of your posts.
