Just lol at Wilt being low skill. Likely the best, most versatile athlete ever.

Shaq was the most dominant player of all time. I mean the goal of basketball is to score more points than your opponent, and you can't stop Shaq in his prime. You can't stop the dunk

It's why he's higher than Kobe on my list. You give him any competent level wing and he's bringing you to the Finals (Hardaway, Kobe, Wade)

Ehh Wilt was a super freak but he was also playing in a VASTLY inferior era. He'd still be great, but he got clapped consistently by Russell

Okay...so enough people have continued to submit lists to make a tally update a little worthwhile, as well as a few more quick comments from me, so here goes.

I noticed from another thread conducted here on the Misc, within the last few days, about the ages of posters, that most people on this forum are at least well into their twenties, and that most are in their 30s/40s, and a few older than that. By the time most people are their late 20s, and *certainly* by the time someone is about halfway through their 30s, they should have developed a little more respect for history than to fall completely sway to "recency bias", and I think that applies to most people in this forum to a decent degree. So, it's nice to see that Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain are doing well, as they would and should given the probable age sampling and spread of people participating in this thread. If this was on a comments thread on IG, I think that the results the way I've applied them in my tallying would like quite different. If this was a forum where most were in their 50s and above, I think it would look somewhat different, still, and I think that there would probably be a name or two that come up a number of times to where if they were not squarely within the top 10, they would be close.

The NBA was founded in 1946, the NFL in 1920, and the MLB is actually much older than that, so of the "Big 3" sports for the USA, at least in terms of the trajectory of its development, Basketball is the youngest, so "recency bias" actually applies less to it in 2022 than it would to either the NFL or MLB. For example, if this was a Baseball thread, then you would definitely see names like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron etc, coming up, given the same age spread and sampling that we have here, and those are all names, I think, that registered before 1960, and in Ruth's case, WELL before 1960. That being said, the earliest player among any listed here, except for maybe someone I don't know about whose name has come up only once or twice and who isn't high on this list, is Wilt Chamberlain, who started his NBA career in 1960, and the next-oldest, I think, would be Kareem Abdul-Jabaar who started his NBA career about a decade later. And I think the rest are ones who started their careers in the 1980s or later. So, knowing what I know about the sport of gymnastics and knowing that there are *definitely* names, and more than just 1, of gymnasts who I would put in a Top 10 whose competed before 1970, I am pretty certain that by my standards of appreciation, there would have to be a handful of names that should be on a list like this, (if not in the top 10 overall in votes and quality points, then close), from before Chamberlain's time, as well as a contemporary or two of both his and Abdul-Jabbar's. I would also be curious to know a little bit more about Basketball as it would have been practiced before the NBA existed, because certainly there was something before that, and certainly there would be a few stars from before then to appreciate.ETA: I kinda goofed with these comments, not realizing that BILL RUSSELL was slightly before Chamberlain, so that makes "recency bias" somewhat less applicable here, although it is still applicable. Also ETA, although I think I had heard of Bill Russell before, it was only vaguely, so I would not have been able to tell you anything about him. But Tim Duncan is a completely different story because he is easily one of the top people in this tally, and I had never even HEARD of him, and he is recent enough, even being considerably younger and more recent than Jordan, for me to be shocked that I hadn't heard of him.

All of those qualifications out of the way, I DO have to say that I was looking at a little bit of some of the clips posted earlier that showed Wilt Chamberlain, and man oh man, he just made things look NOT FAIR. I mean, seriously, with his height, which was much more extreme for its time that it would be now, and the fact that it wasn't only his height that made him formidable, but he was good enough to make his height that much more of a dominating factor...well...just YIKES. He essentially treated many of his opponents like they were actually children, despite the fact that they were, indeed, professionals. Ouch.

Okay, enough of my yaddayaddayadda, here is the newest tally:

Jordan, Michael 224 26
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem 119 21
James, Lebron 103 20
Bryant, Kobe 92 22
Chamberlain, Wilt 74 20
Johnson, Magic 54 21
Bird, Larry 54 21
Russell, Bill 51 17
Duncan, Tim 47 19
O'Neal, Shaquille 37 15
Olajuwon, Hakeem 31 11
Doncic, Luka 13 3
Curry, Stephen 12 6
Caruso 10 1
Scalabrine, Brian 10 1
Rodman, Dennis 10 1
Nowitzki, Dirk 8 1
Bradley, Shawn 8 1
Spreewell, Latrell 8 1
Stockton, John 7 3
Walton, Bill 6 1
Dampier, Erick 6 1
Artest, Ron 6 1
Barkley, Charles 5 4
Payton, Gary 4 1
Garnet, Kevin 4 2
Alcindor Jr, Ferdinand 4 1
Robertson, Oscar 4 2
West, Jerry 4 2
Brown, Kwame 4 1
Camby, Marcus 4 1
Pippen, Scottie 3 1
Morrison, Adam 3 1
Jackson, Stephen 3 1
Jokic, Nikola 2 1
Nash, Steven 2 1
Williams, Jason 2 1
Oden, Greg 2 1
Bowie, Sam 2 1
Green, Draymond 2 1
Iverson, Allen 2 1
Antetokounmpo, Giannis 1 1
Miller, Reggie 1 1
Drexler, Clyde 1 1
Durant, Kevin 1 1
Malone, Karl 1 1
Maravich, Pete 1 1
McHale, Kevin 1 1
Yue, Sun 1 1
Diop, Desagna 1 1
Bennett, Anthony 1 1
Allen, Grayson 1 1
Rambis, Kurt 1 1
McHale, Kevin 1 1

1.Michael Jordan

2. Shaq

3. LeBron/Curry/Kobe/Duncan

7. Stockton/Malone/Olajuwon/KD

Honorable mention: Allen Iverson. His game was so aesthetically pleasing to watch

I didn't put Magic/Bird/Chamberlain/Russell/Kareem on my list because I wasn't really old enough to remember them and it's hard judging players from different eras against each otherI hated the Lakers back then and Shaq just made you feel so helpless as a fan. Everybody knew what was coming and nobody could stop it. I almost gave up watching the NBA after the 3 peat lol

No one over 7ft is coordinated enough to have good handles, or has a body quick enough to keep up. There’s always an asterisk, moves well for how big they are*

1. MJ
2. Lebron
3. Kareem
4. Kobe/Duncan
5. Magic Johnson

Anything outside of those can me moved around. This is my list

For the Lebron hate.... Dont let his political views skew your view of him as a player... The dude will be compared to MJ forever, no other player other than Kobe has had that honor. He is the best player among this generation. Not recognizing how good he is is just childish and shows your biased hate against him.

If you'd just take a moment to watch his highlights, you'd delete this immediately out of embarrassment. He was undefeated in shot put, beat prime Jim Brown in a foot race, not only played pro volleyball, but ended up in the volleyball hall of fame.

This is almost as bad as a rentcel thread.

Micheal Jordan

Lebron James

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Larry Bird

Magic Johnson

Tim Duncan

Wilt Chamberlain

Kobe Bryant

Hakeem Olajuwon

Bill Russell

No just watched a highlight reel and it’s all him taking one dribble and doing a bit of footwork then dropping the ball in the hoop or half jumping while being able to stick his wrist on from 4 feet away.

Sorry not a single drive or juke other than a pump fake into a pivot was seen or ever will be seen. People that tall don’t have to learn how to play half the game. Not should they, it would be detrimental to the toolkit they have that makes them valuable. But they don’t need to learn all the skills and so they don’t.

Fukkin lol

Dunno what your trying to show me but if he was a foot shorter I would assume he was in the wnba with that agility and dexterity.

Thanks for proving my point.

The track and field is an even better example. Ever seen Usain bolts starts? Absolute garbage simply because of height, yes you can catch up but you can’t get that big body moving quickly like small people. And when your talking handles with a basketball it’s even more amplified rofl.

Michael Jordan
Kobe Bryant
Wilt chamberlain
Magic Johnson
Kareem
Bird
Shaq
Duncan
Curry
Russel

ok so ur legit retarded, got it.

Kind of insulting you would attempt to attack my intelligence, instead of the perfectly valid viewpoint of effectiveness being more important than toolkit. But “lol ur retard” seems to have the low effort appeal I guess.

TB , I'm assuming KD = Kevin Durant? Also, I'll treat Allen Iverson as a tie for 10th place.

Everybody else, I'll do one more tally if a few more lists are submitted and then I'll add "something special" to it.

Shaq was dominant..... but aint no way in hell he was the 2nd greatest player ever lol

He def had the potential, but even he would admit he was a lazy basketball player who never capitalized on his gifts the same way a Kobe/MJ/Bron have. He knows that he's not even the greatest Center of all time, and will happily tell people the Centers that are in front of him

Nope;





How can you be overrated when you OUTWORKED the goat?

Kobe did similar thins with WAY LESS support, his run with Shaq is a great example of what he could've done with support. MJ has an easy top 30 and likely top 20 player of all time in Pippen

Just did a little more "research". Very quick and very superficial research, but nevertheless "research".

Of course, this thread's title didn't say "Professional Basketball Players" or "American/USA Basketball Players", it merely referenced "NBA".

But to include more predecessors and contemporaries of Chamberlain and Abdul-Jabbar, in order to more fully explore or possibly counteract "recency bias", as well as to share other brief interesting observations, I will share just a little.

From what little research I did, the most obvious choice for anybody to represent the pre-Chamberlain NBA era in such a list (Top 10 or Top 20) would beGEORGE MIKAN, apparently the single-most important player responsible for leading the Minneapolis Lakers (before that franchise went to Los Angeles) to 5 of 6 NBA Championship titles from 1949-1954 (missing 1951). Dude was 6'10", just as a quick FYI and clue-in.

WATARU MISAKAwas actually the first "non-white" player signed to the NBA and played for the NY Knicks in 1947. I don't know how relevant his height of 5'7" would be.

Upon reading the Wikipedia article for the NBA, in talking about when Wilt Chamberlain signed on to the Celtics, they stated thatBOB COUSYwas already on that team's roster, and I know I've actually heard of him, so I’m going to go out on a ledge by saying that maybe with an older demographic participating in a thread such as this, his name would probably come up at least a little bit, at least if it was extended from a Top 10 to a Top 20.

JERRY WEST, whose name I sort of thought was vaguely familiar to me, was actually the player whose silhouette was used for the official NBA logo when they decided to make one, inspired by Major League Baseball's logo. Just a quick read up of the first paragraph of the leader of his Wikipedia bio would make sense for his name coming up on such a list, given the hypothetical older demographic I already alluded to. His name actually coming up more than once on the lists offered here so far makes him one of the less than half of the names mentioned so far whose name has come up multiple lists.

I was very surprised to learn of theNBA-ABA SPLITthat occurred in the mid-late 1960s. That certainly sounds like it was a very interesting development. Judging from the names of a few of its earlier stars, it doesn't seem to have been vastly inferior to the NBA in talent level.RICK BARRYjumped from the NBA to the ABA, andJULIUS "DR. J" IRVINGwas one of their early stars as well. Of course, I have heard of Irving, as well as Rick Barry, and I would say that just by name recognition I would expect Irving to be well within a Top 10, given his superior name recognition to at least a couple of the most-voted on players so far on this thread. "Dr. J" is a more memorable name, as even his regular given name would be - more memorable than "Rick Barry" which sounds more common/generic, but even just his regular given name is famous enough. Barry was about 6 years older than Irving was, so even if one were to draw up a comparison of the two, it wouldn't be a perfect comparison because 6 years' difference is enough of a gap in the sporting world to make them about half a generation removed from each other, or even 2/3 or 3/4 of a generation depending upon what sport and how recent. Seeing as Abdul-Jabbar was born right in the middle of the chronological gap between Barry and Irving, perhaps a comparison of either of them to him would be more appropriate, but seeing as they were playing in completely different leagues, that makes such a comparison far more difficult. Funnily enough, perhaps the only reason I know the name "Rick Barry" is because of a cartoon featuring, specifically, just him and Irving and a group of neighborhood kids, that was featured at the back of comic books around the early 1980s. Interesting interplay/comparison of the two by the cartoonist(s):https://13thdimension.com/wp-content...M-768x1083.png

One last name, made relevant by my mentioning the NBA-ABA, isPETE MARAVICH. Out of all of the names mentioned in the main Wikipedia article for the NBA when it introduced and briefly went over the early years of the ABA and talked about the biggest stars of the 1970s, his was the only name I recognized of the 8 new names that article introduced when it listed 11 names as being some of the biggest stars of the 1970s. Without referring to any external source, I can say that I watched a documentary or special about him once, and it actually held my attention for a while. IIRC, they said that he played for LSU before turning professional and that his professional and/or life trajectory was problematic, somehow, and that he died young. I seem to remember this sounding suspicious and that he might have somehow "drawn an unlucky card". IIRC, he had really freaky skills kind of like a Larry Bird.

I am a AI fan, his highlights are fun, and he played fearlessly for his size. But his overall game was FAR from what I would call aesthetically pleasing to watch.

It was effective for a time tho, before he aged like milk.

Might be the worst list I've ever seen outside of #1