Top 10 NBA basketball players of all time? (MVP, game, Magic)
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Jordan #1 for sure; and for kicks, inch-for-inch when rating players, I'd put Isiah Thomas in the top ten long before I would Shaq - insane what Thomas could at heights and the shots he needed to take (and ultimately make), when his team needed him. Magic Johnson and perhaps Oscar Roberston are the only pgs that I can see being ranked higher.
1. Jordan
2. Kareem
3. Magic
4. Wilt
5. Lebron
6. Kobe Bryant
7. Larry Bird
8. Bill Russell
9. SHAQ
10. Duncan
Jordan and Kareem are the only two players I can form a winning argument of over Lebron. So Lebron would be my #3 at worst, #2 at best, but he isn't #1 yet, if ever...
Isaiah Thomas (the real one, not the Celtic) just said last week that Magic never won a title without Kareem. How much of his success was predicated by playing with Kareem? These things have to be weighted when we're splitting hairs on the GOAT list. Magic was great, but was he even really a better player than Bird? What was the lime of thinking watching both in the '80s?
So there has to be a gap between Kareem and Magic, they aren't 2-3. Wherever you put Bird, you have to put Magic and Kobe (in any order). I can entertain an argument for any order. None of these players were really better basketball players than Lebron James, so at best, the highest ranking for any of those guys should be #4...
Wilt and Russell are going to naturally continue to slide down the totem pole. Through no fault of their own, but think of it like this:
The NBA is the youngest league of the Big 4 sports, and being younger, two of its first big superstars were who? Wilt and Russell. So they set the standard for what a great basketball player should be. The game was much more unathletic when they play, much less advanced, with far fewer teams. As the competition and players got better, we began seeing players challenging the "original GOAT's"--in the 70s it was really Kareem, in the 80s Bird and Magic, 90s Michael, so on and so forth. And you have to be a really great player to be compared to Wilt and Russell, so when you account for degrees of difficulty and change in era, we can't just throw those two at the top when The League was 15/20/25 years old when they were dominant. The NBA is over 70 years old now. 45 years of basketball have passed since those two were in their prime. That matters and we can't punish later greats for playing in later times...
Wilt, Russell, Duncan, and Shaq are interchangeable and grouped together. There are 5-7 other guys who could have a case as a low Top 10 (Hakeem and Big O being two big examples, Durant headed towards this territory). I think you have a decent list, better than most!
Probably, but it would be laughable to suggest Westbrook is anywhere near a Top 10. Not close...
We do know he's Jordan's favorite current player, though!
I'm just hitting on the bigger/faster/stronger line. Jordan is basically a much more efficient version of this year's MVP. A better Westbrook would be a very, very, scary sight...the Thunder probably already have 2 rings and maybe a 3rd this year.
I'm just hitting on the bigger/faster/stronger line. Jordan is basically a much more efficient version of this year's MVP. A better Westbrook would be a very, very, scary sight...the Thunder probably already have 2 rings and maybe a 3rd this year.
You mean a much more efficient scorer? Westbrook has the lower FG percentage, but not bad at all. And, he's doing it against better athletes than Jordan faced, night after night.
If Westbrook was as good as Jordan, I think he'd still have zero rings. Edit: Well, maybe one.
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