Also Center and PF, in my opinion, have changed so much over the course of the game's history, their size, the desired skillset, the role they play. It is almost impossible for me to judge even players I thought were extremely dominant like Shaq. Would he be dominant in today's game? I have no idea...
See there's a different argument if you're talking about who you'd prefer. For example, I would probably take Hakeem Olajuwon as my center if I was starting a team but it's tough to put him higher than at best 3rd but probably 4th through 6th.
Alright, let's start with the centers from @PtldPlatypus' spreadsheet. Everyone (c'mon the more participation the better on this!!!!!) rank their top-15 from the list and we'll assign point values and combine everyone's list into a S2 definitive rankings! Rank according to actual NBA career only. These are the 17 centers to rank your top 15 from. Of course feel free to add someone else if you feel someone was left out: Alonzo Mourning Bill Russell Bill Walton Dave Cowens David Robinson George Mikan Hakeem Olajuwon Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Moses Malone Nate Thurmond Patrick Ewing Robert Parish Shaquille O'Neal Wes Unseld Willis Reed Wilt Chamberlain Yao Ming
Yup. I've generally said there's a top tier of centers (in no order): Wilt Chamberlain, Hakeem Olajuwon, Bill Russell, Shaquille O'Neal and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I've ranked them in all sorts of orders over the years. And then there's David Robinson and Moses Malone that you could argue into that tier, based on statistical dominance and defense.
OK, I'm going with this top 15 for centers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Bill Russell Wilt Chamberlain Hakeem Olajuwon Shaquille O'Neal David Robinson Moses Malone Patrick Ewing Wes Unseld Alonzo Mourning Robert Parish Yao Ming George Mikan Bill Walton Willis Reed Really, REALLY tough to figure out what to do with Mikan since he basically only played 6 years, and played in the 50's, but he was absolutely dominant in that time period. I ended up dropping him way lower than he probably deserved.
That would be my list too. I think Mikan and Walton are short-term dominance picks--I could see someone arguing to leave them off, but my view is you can't properly tell the story of the NBA, especially at the center position, without them.
Decided to take a shot at small forwards and point guards. Small Forwards LeBron James Larry Bird Scottie Pippen Elgin Baylor Kevin Durant Julius Erving Kawhi Leonard Rick Barry John Havlicek Dominique Wilkins Tracy McGrady Vince Carter Carmelo Anthony James Worthy Paul Pierce Point Guards Magic Johnson Oscar Robertson Stephen Curry Chris Paul John Stockton Jason Kidd Steve Nash Gary Payton Walt Frazier Isiah Thomas Allen Iverson Bob Cousy Damian Lillard Russell Westbrook Dave Bing
We are dealing with a global pandemic. The NBA is the last thing we should be talking about. Fix your priorities.
While I understand why you did this, it's not even close to the same. I didn't send the NBA an email about this, thinking that the NBA needs to answer my questions about something kind of unimportant. This is a post in a message board where we discus things. Nice try though.
Out of curiosity, I looked up George Mikan’s stats. As a 6’10” center during a time when there weren’t as many bigs, he shot a career 40% from the floor and had a few years shooting 38% and that’s obviously with no three point line. The game has evolved so much since then and a center shooting that low of a percentage would be unacceptable, even against other players their own size or larger. Wondering about context, I’m curious what shooting percentages were like back then. Was he putting up stats because he was the go to player?
Look at Bob Cousys stats. His career best was 39.7% from the floor but his PER was still around 20. It's weird.
That’s because they weren’t that good. Basketball was semi still new at the time so we really didn’t have a large sample size to know what was good or bad stats yet
