Post by eric on Oct 20, 2017 9:43:42 GMT -6
I've talked in the past about who the top ten greatest players in NBA history are right now, but I thought it would be interesting to go back in time and see how the list was in any given year.
We're restricting ourselves to the NBA, and we'll start in 1954 with George Mikan: in the first five years of the NBA he won four championships, was All-NBA First Team five times, finished in the top five of Win Shares five times in the regular season (including two outright leads) and four times in the post season (all of which were outright leads). His Lakers led the league in wins over these five years and were the #1 overall seed four times. Neither MVP nor Finals MVP were awarded in this time period but he certainly would have had four Finals MVPs and at least two MVPs.
Was he a goofy white guy in glasses, yes. Would he last a minute in today's NBA, no. But greatness is greatness, and this five year span was undeniably great.
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Now we'll go each year and add the MVP (starting in 1956) and best player on the championship team (Finals MVP isn't around until 1969) until we get a list of ten. Here's how that looks:
1955 - Dolph Schayes leads the Syracuse Nationals to the title. He'll never win MVP or another ring.
1956 - Bob Pettit wins the inaugural MVP but his 33-39 St. Louis Hawks don't even make the Finals as "Pitchin'" "Yes That is My Real Nickname" Paul Arizin pitches the Philadelphia Warriors to the title. Pettit will go on to many further accolades. Arizin's team will draft Wilt Chamberlain, eventually prompting him to go home andbe a family man sell computer components.
1957 - Bob Cousy is the last white player to win MVP and the title in the same year until Larry Bird. He amazingly will never finish in the top five of regular season Win Shares, but he's the first player to ten All-NBA First Teams so he'll be here for awhile.
1958 - Bill Russell is Bill Russell.
1959 - Bob Pettit wins another MVP and either Bill Russell or Bob Cousy would win Finals MVP, so nobody new gets on the list.
1960 - Wilt Chamberlain is Wilt Chamberlain.
1961-63 - Russell wins every MVP and title. Sam Jones and Tommy Heinsohn may have squeaked out a Finals MVP here or there had they been awarded in this era, but neither will ever be All-NBA First Team, so I'm comfortable leaving them off.
1964 - Oscar Robertson wins his only MVP. His regular season performances are phenomenal, with ten top five Win Share finishes and nine All-NBA First Teams. His post season performances are much more modest, with only three top five WS and one lonely ring on the coattails of The Man With Two Names, but for now he is our eighth member of the top ten.
1965-68 - Wilt and Bill win all the MVPs and titles.
1969 - Wes Unseld wins MVP and Rookie of the Year, a portent of great things to come for the Washington Capitol Baltimore Bullet Wizards. Well... things to come, anyway. Jerry West wins FinaLLLLs MVP, and we have our first top ten, at all times given in chronological order:
1970 - Wes Unseld will end his career with a tidy 1 MVP, 1 Finals MVP, 1 ring, and 1 All-NBA 1st. Willis Reed will have matched that in 1970 alone, and while his stats are modest at two top five WS in the regular season and playoffs each, that beats the goose egg Unseld lays in the regular season.
1974 - We know Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is going to end up on this list, but when specifically do we put him on? I opted for 1974, and here's why. He wins his third MVP and goes to the Finals, which is a good time to join the ranks on an all time great list. He's chasing Paul Arizin who had three All-NBA Firsts and five and two top five WS in reg/post season, and in this year Kareem acquires his fourth, fifth, and third in those categories respectively. Now Kareem had two MVPs the year before and Arizin had zip, and they were matched in rings back in 1971, but I think including length of greatness as well as depth is valid.
Of course, Kareem loses in the Finals that year to the Celtics led by John Havlicek. This is Hondo's seventh ring, fourth All-NBA First, and fifth top five WS in the playoffs. Reed has an MVP and one more Finals MVP, but he's also waaaay behind in stats and All-NBA Firsts: incredibly he will only be All-NBA First once in his whole career. It's tough being a center.
1983 - Moses Malone finally reaches the top of Mount O'Brien-Sinai with a Finals MVP to go with his third MVP. This one is pretty close because Dolph Schayes has eight/five top five WS and Moses will only ever get to six/two, and the All-NBA Firsts are six to four in Dolph's favor too, but once they even up on rings I went with three MVPs over zero. If you want to keep Dolph on for a few more years I don't mind, there won't be any argument for the guy who eventually takes this spot.
1987 - Magic Johnson wins his first MVP, fourth title, and third Finals MVP. He's still two rings behind Cousy, but this is the year he gets exactly five All-NBA Firsts behind and five WS ahead in both regular and post season play, which I think evens out and the extra Finals MVPs carry him. He'll finish only one All-NBA First behind and two MVPs ahead, so again it's really only a question of when you want to slide him in.
Larry Bird probably could have gone in the year before, when he wins his third and last MVP, third and last title, second and last Finals MVP, but this is the year he posts his fifth and last top five postseason WS (tying Havlicek) and his eighth All-NBA First (doubling Havlicek), plus it's Bird and Magic so putting them on together feels right.
1991 - Michael Jordan's first title, but also his fifth All-NBA First and third top five postseason WS (one ahead of Moses) and sixth top five regular season WS (tied). He's one MVP behind for now so maybe you'd rather wait until 1992. If you still have Dolph in here maybe you want to wait until 1993, when Jordan ties or surpasses him in every category. It's one of these three years, anyway.
2002 - Shaquille O'Neal ties Oscar's one ring and MVP back in 2000, but it's only his second All-NBA First compared to Oscar's nine so that feels too soon. By 2002 he's up two titles, three Finals MVPs, and a postseason top five WS, so while he's still behind five All-NBAs and will always be behind four regular season top five WSs the time feels right here. 2004 is another reasonable choice when he doubles up Oscar's postseason top five WS, and he does keep getting All-NBA Firsts until 2006, but this is the moment for me.
2007 - It's a little weird to add Tim Duncan to the list when he doesn't win Finals MVP, but giving it to the Fiery Francophile was one of the worst decisions of all time so I'm not too bothered. He will get another All-NBA First in 2013 but that's too late by a pretty wide margin, and he otherwise doesn't do much of note. 2007 is also his fifth postseason top five WS which gives him a tie with Pettit, and they're already tied in MVPs so the All-NBA and regular season top five WS deficit is made up for by the titles and Finals MVPs.
2013 - In the last year of his prime, LeBron James joins Bill Russell and Michael Jordan as the only players to win MVP on championship teams in back to back years and leads his team to what will be the greatest comeback in Finals history until he completely outdoes himself in three years. This is also his fifth postseason top five WS which while still way behind West's nine is at least even with every non-Mikan on the list. I definitely wouldn't put him on earlier, and I can see the argument for waiting until 2016 when he ties West with ten All-NBA Firsts, but by that point he's up two titles, four MVPs, two Finals MVPs, and five regular season top five WS against only one post season top five WS behind, which seems a little late.
.
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So that's the list! Here's where all their accolades stand as of 2017:
Right now the only other active players even worth talking about are Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Curry is at 2 2 0 | 3,2 | 2 and Durant is at 1 1 1 | 5,3 | 5, so clearly they both have a long way to go to catch whichever of Shaq and Bird you think is the low man. They both have (comparatively) weak stats, and I feel like Shaq being the only one with one MVP stands out, but that necessarily means Durant needs another MVP to get in the conversation, which doesn't seem terribly likely. You'd want at least two Finals MVPs from Curry along with another five years or so of elite production, which by comparison is much more attainable but by no means a gimme.
The more players there are, the harder it is to be top ten all time. Let's illustrate this by looking at Kobe Bryant.
He finishes his career with 5 1 2 | 4,6 | 11, and his high point is probably 2010 where he has 5 1 2 | 4,6 | 8. I don't think he's anywhere close to displacing West or anyone else on the list of the time, but if he had been going up against Havlicek's 8 0 1 | 2,5 | 4 he'd have been a shoo-in.
But he wasn't.
So he wasn't.
We could do a rolling period and automatically disqualify players from a certain number of years ago (30? 40?) which has the added benefit of not comparing across vastly different eras, but we set ourselves up there for a retired (or nearly so) player becoming an all-time great by default rather than by accomplishment, which seems dumb. For example, George Mikan retires in 1954. We go through this list like we did before except in 1994 we need to put someone new on. Hakeem Olajuwon has just won the MVP/title/FMVP trifecta and has 1 1 1 | 2,3 | 5 which are very nice numbers, but they're clearly worse than Moses' 1 3 1 | 6,2 | 4, so wouldn't we put Moses back on the list... three years after taking him off? And in a year when he spends 600 minutes stumbling around off the bench for a tanking 76ers team, no less. That seems way worse to me than having a continually rising bar for players to clear. That's what greatness is all about, no?
.
Anyway that's it. If you've got any other players you're wondering about the spreadsheet I have set up makes it very easy to get totals for career and in any given year, so fire away!
We're restricting ourselves to the NBA, and we'll start in 1954 with George Mikan: in the first five years of the NBA he won four championships, was All-NBA First Team five times, finished in the top five of Win Shares five times in the regular season (including two outright leads) and four times in the post season (all of which were outright leads). His Lakers led the league in wins over these five years and were the #1 overall seed four times. Neither MVP nor Finals MVP were awarded in this time period but he certainly would have had four Finals MVPs and at least two MVPs.
Was he a goofy white guy in glasses, yes. Would he last a minute in today's NBA, no. But greatness is greatness, and this five year span was undeniably great.
.
Now we'll go each year and add the MVP (starting in 1956) and best player on the championship team (Finals MVP isn't around until 1969) until we get a list of ten. Here's how that looks:
1955 - Dolph Schayes leads the Syracuse Nationals to the title. He'll never win MVP or another ring.
1956 - Bob Pettit wins the inaugural MVP but his 33-39 St. Louis Hawks don't even make the Finals as "Pitchin'" "Yes That is My Real Nickname" Paul Arizin pitches the Philadelphia Warriors to the title. Pettit will go on to many further accolades. Arizin's team will draft Wilt Chamberlain, eventually prompting him to go home and
1957 - Bob Cousy is the last white player to win MVP and the title in the same year until Larry Bird. He amazingly will never finish in the top five of regular season Win Shares, but he's the first player to ten All-NBA First Teams so he'll be here for awhile.
1958 - Bill Russell is Bill Russell.
1959 - Bob Pettit wins another MVP and either Bill Russell or Bob Cousy would win Finals MVP, so nobody new gets on the list.
1960 - Wilt Chamberlain is Wilt Chamberlain.
1961-63 - Russell wins every MVP and title. Sam Jones and Tommy Heinsohn may have squeaked out a Finals MVP here or there had they been awarded in this era, but neither will ever be All-NBA First Team, so I'm comfortable leaving them off.
1964 - Oscar Robertson wins his only MVP. His regular season performances are phenomenal, with ten top five Win Share finishes and nine All-NBA First Teams. His post season performances are much more modest, with only three top five WS and one lonely ring on the coattails of The Man With Two Names, but for now he is our eighth member of the top ten.
1965-68 - Wilt and Bill win all the MVPs and titles.
1969 - Wes Unseld wins MVP and Rookie of the Year, a portent of great things to come for the Washington Capitol Baltimore Bullet Wizards. Well... things to come, anyway. Jerry West wins FinaLLLLs MVP, and we have our first top ten, at all times given in chronological order:
Mikan
Schayes
Pettit
Arizin
Cousy
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
Unseld
West1970 - Wes Unseld will end his career with a tidy 1 MVP, 1 Finals MVP, 1 ring, and 1 All-NBA 1st. Willis Reed will have matched that in 1970 alone, and while his stats are modest at two top five WS in the regular season and playoffs each, that beats the goose egg Unseld lays in the regular season.
Mikan
Schayes
Pettit
Arizin
Cousy
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
West
Reed1974 - We know Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is going to end up on this list, but when specifically do we put him on? I opted for 1974, and here's why. He wins his third MVP and goes to the Finals, which is a good time to join the ranks on an all time great list. He's chasing Paul Arizin who had three All-NBA Firsts and five and two top five WS in reg/post season, and in this year Kareem acquires his fourth, fifth, and third in those categories respectively. Now Kareem had two MVPs the year before and Arizin had zip, and they were matched in rings back in 1971, but I think including length of greatness as well as depth is valid.
Of course, Kareem loses in the Finals that year to the Celtics led by John Havlicek. This is Hondo's seventh ring, fourth All-NBA First, and fifth top five WS in the playoffs. Reed has an MVP and one more Finals MVP, but he's also waaaay behind in stats and All-NBA Firsts: incredibly he will only be All-NBA First once in his whole career. It's tough being a center.
Mikan
Schayes
Pettit
Cousy
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Havlicek1983 - Moses Malone finally reaches the top of Mount O'Brien-Sinai with a Finals MVP to go with his third MVP. This one is pretty close because Dolph Schayes has eight/five top five WS and Moses will only ever get to six/two, and the All-NBA Firsts are six to four in Dolph's favor too, but once they even up on rings I went with three MVPs over zero. If you want to keep Dolph on for a few more years I don't mind, there won't be any argument for the guy who eventually takes this spot.
Mikan
Pettit
Cousy
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Havlicek
Malone1987 - Magic Johnson wins his first MVP, fourth title, and third Finals MVP. He's still two rings behind Cousy, but this is the year he gets exactly five All-NBA Firsts behind and five WS ahead in both regular and post season play, which I think evens out and the extra Finals MVPs carry him. He'll finish only one All-NBA First behind and two MVPs ahead, so again it's really only a question of when you want to slide him in.
Larry Bird probably could have gone in the year before, when he wins his third and last MVP, third and last title, second and last Finals MVP, but this is the year he posts his fifth and last top five postseason WS (tying Havlicek) and his eighth All-NBA First (doubling Havlicek), plus it's Bird and Magic so putting them on together feels right.
Mikan
Pettit
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Malone
Johnson
Bird1991 - Michael Jordan's first title, but also his fifth All-NBA First and third top five postseason WS (one ahead of Moses) and sixth top five regular season WS (tied). He's one MVP behind for now so maybe you'd rather wait until 1992. If you still have Dolph in here maybe you want to wait until 1993, when Jordan ties or surpasses him in every category. It's one of these three years, anyway.
Mikan
Pettit
Russell
Chamberlain
Robertson
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Johnson
Bird
Jordan2002 - Shaquille O'Neal ties Oscar's one ring and MVP back in 2000, but it's only his second All-NBA First compared to Oscar's nine so that feels too soon. By 2002 he's up two titles, three Finals MVPs, and a postseason top five WS, so while he's still behind five All-NBAs and will always be behind four regular season top five WSs the time feels right here. 2004 is another reasonable choice when he doubles up Oscar's postseason top five WS, and he does keep getting All-NBA Firsts until 2006, but this is the moment for me.
Mikan
Pettit
Russell
Chamberlain
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Johnson
Bird
Jordan
O'Neal2007 - It's a little weird to add Tim Duncan to the list when he doesn't win Finals MVP, but giving it to the Fiery Francophile was one of the worst decisions of all time so I'm not too bothered. He will get another All-NBA First in 2013 but that's too late by a pretty wide margin, and he otherwise doesn't do much of note. 2007 is also his fifth postseason top five WS which gives him a tie with Pettit, and they're already tied in MVPs so the All-NBA and regular season top five WS deficit is made up for by the titles and Finals MVPs.
Mikan
Russell
Chamberlain
West
Abdul-Jabbar
Johnson
Bird
Jordan
O'Neal
Duncan2013 - In the last year of his prime, LeBron James joins Bill Russell and Michael Jordan as the only players to win MVP on championship teams in back to back years and leads his team to what will be the greatest comeback in Finals history until he completely outdoes himself in three years. This is also his fifth postseason top five WS which while still way behind West's nine is at least even with every non-Mikan on the list. I definitely wouldn't put him on earlier, and I can see the argument for waiting until 2016 when he ties West with ten All-NBA Firsts, but by that point he's up two titles, four MVPs, two Finals MVPs, and five regular season top five WS against only one post season top five WS behind, which seems a little late.
Mikan
Russell
Chamberlain
Abdul-Jabbar
Johnson
Bird
Jordan
O'Neal
Duncan
James.
.
So that's the list! Here's where all their accolades stand as of 2017:
C/M/F WS AN 1st Name
4 x x 5,4 5 G. Mikan
11 5 0 9,9 3 B. Russell
2 4 1 13,10 7 W. Chamberlain
6 6 2 12,8 10 K. Abdul-Jabbar
5 3 3 8,10 9 M. Johnson
3 3 2 6,5 9 L. Bird
6 5 6 11,8 10 M. Jordan
4 1 3 6,6 8 S. O'Neal
4 2 3 8,7 10 T. Duncan
3 4 3 11,9 11 L. JamesRight now the only other active players even worth talking about are Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Curry is at 2 2 0 | 3,2 | 2 and Durant is at 1 1 1 | 5,3 | 5, so clearly they both have a long way to go to catch whichever of Shaq and Bird you think is the low man. They both have (comparatively) weak stats, and I feel like Shaq being the only one with one MVP stands out, but that necessarily means Durant needs another MVP to get in the conversation, which doesn't seem terribly likely. You'd want at least two Finals MVPs from Curry along with another five years or so of elite production, which by comparison is much more attainable but by no means a gimme.
The more players there are, the harder it is to be top ten all time. Let's illustrate this by looking at Kobe Bryant.
He finishes his career with 5 1 2 | 4,6 | 11, and his high point is probably 2010 where he has 5 1 2 | 4,6 | 8. I don't think he's anywhere close to displacing West or anyone else on the list of the time, but if he had been going up against Havlicek's 8 0 1 | 2,5 | 4 he'd have been a shoo-in.
But he wasn't.
So he wasn't.
We could do a rolling period and automatically disqualify players from a certain number of years ago (30? 40?) which has the added benefit of not comparing across vastly different eras, but we set ourselves up there for a retired (or nearly so) player becoming an all-time great by default rather than by accomplishment, which seems dumb. For example, George Mikan retires in 1954. We go through this list like we did before except in 1994 we need to put someone new on. Hakeem Olajuwon has just won the MVP/title/FMVP trifecta and has 1 1 1 | 2,3 | 5 which are very nice numbers, but they're clearly worse than Moses' 1 3 1 | 6,2 | 4, so wouldn't we put Moses back on the list... three years after taking him off? And in a year when he spends 600 minutes stumbling around off the bench for a tanking 76ers team, no less. That seems way worse to me than having a continually rising bar for players to clear. That's what greatness is all about, no?
.
Anyway that's it. If you've got any other players you're wondering about the spreadsheet I have set up makes it very easy to get totals for career and in any given year, so fire away!
