ESPN “Experts” Rank the Top 74 Players in NBA History

Thanks for giving us the cliff's notes so I didn't have to get pissed off.

Any time the NBA has to create on-court rules to take away a player's effectiveness (Kareem, Barkley, Harden, etc.) said player should be in the Top 25. I secretly want this NBA season to be cancelled so that Giannis won't win a ring.

 

Top 10 has to be an exclusive group.

Russell, Jordan, Wilt, Magic, Bird, Kareem, Hakeem, Shaq, LeBron, and Duncan. You gotta do a lot to crack that unassailable 10. ESPN decided to take Dream out in favor of Kobe. Error, but obviously motivated by his passing.

As far as Giannis, Shaq was put into the NBA's Top 50 in his second or third season. He wasn't there yet, but everyone knew he'd get there so they put him in. Ironically, they both dominate through physicality more than talent and skills.

Curry has done more than the people behind him. Like it or not.

 

Pistol Pete way too low...or, too many guys ahead of him that do not deserve it.

So hard to compare players who played in different timeframes. Such as...I don't think Hakeem's defensive numbers would be anywhere as good if he were playing today. Very few bigs today play with their back to the basket. The game is mostly at the three point line...which was not his area of defensive excellence.

 

even before people started putting some respeck on dream's name, he usually was no lower than 11th. wtf is this 12th crap. one spot ahead of steph curry! oh man. that means these guys are starting to think about putting "no, but he was injured all those times he sucked in the playoffs" above hakeem the freakin' dream if he has a few more good years. mr. 5 times in the finals but no finals mvp even though people say it's my team. that guy? there is such a gap between those 2. how many titles would charles barkley have if he showed up to the '93 finals and pippen and grant weren't playing for the whole series, and then after he blew the 2-0 lead to the rockets next year, michael jordan returned from retirement to be a phoenix sun? because that's basically the career of curry so far.

and how is pippen ahead of drob and barkley? have they been watching too much last dance? people underrate carrying a franchise for a decade.

 

exactly, the top 10 is on lockdown until further notice. steph curry had better give me 2 finals mvp's before he even thinks about the top 10. kobe simply did not do enough to get in the top 10. if kevin durant hadn't wasted 3 years of his prime accomplishing nothing of note with the warriors (really, you can win titles when you join a 73 win team? that's so different than all the other greats!) and had joined another team and won a ring, he could have at least been thinking about a move to the top 10 with the incredible accolades he has. now he's coming back from an achilles tear, will he be the same?

giannis certainly has a chance to be in the top 10 one day as his total stats, advanced stats, team point differential, and all-around 5 stat domination will be up there with anything anyone has ever done. right now his resume just says "failed in the playoffs on a great team", but i suppose you can argue he's on some version of lebron's first cleveland teams where there's no real explanation for how they are winning so many games considering the level of the supporting cast and it's not fair to think it's going to translate to the playoffs. middleton is way better than mo williams and the bucks have won games without giannis playing, but the rest of the bucks are not a murderer's row and they are putting up historic point differentials. i sort of think the massive explosion in offense the last 2 year has somehow made it easier for massive blowouts by great offensive teams that play hard every regular season game - see how many blowouts the mavs had without even being good at defense - but still their domination is impressive regardless. they seem to be up 25 in the middle of the 3rd quarter of every game.

but has he? 2 mvp's and 3 titles looks great. but it certainly seems less likely than not that he would have beaten cleveland with kyrie and love healthy (well, not sure how big of a loss love was). his 2nd mvp is practically a mark against him the way malone's was when jordan beat him in the finals. maybe they win a title without signing durant but those 2 titles with durant are certainly about as meaningless as they come in legacy debates (for curry and durant). there's certainly no way the warriors beat the rockets in 2018 or 2019 just based on curry's performances, especially 2019 as he was pretty terrible for most of the series. and then he kind of confirmed our suspicions when kd got hurt and they lost (i know klay got hurt, too). he has james harden level fall off in advanced stats in the playoffs, somehow without any of the notoriety. he had a really good game 7 against okc, but other than that, what's the special curry playoff moment? the series where you say they just couldn't have done it without that superhuman performance? because i feel like it's tough to say you get to vault to #13 without a couple of those moments, much less none.

why is james harden behind guys like drob and barkley, when he's been at least as close to a title as barkley and closer than drob (on his own), shares playoff failure with drob and sort of barkley, and is on his way to a regular season career that will probably eclipse both and that could have easily included 3 mvp's already. presumably because people really hold the playoffs against him (and possibly just having a shorter career to this point). but considering there's very little separating curry and harden statistically in terms of playoff decline (other than curry's teammates are way better or his competition more injured), why does curry get to vault those other guys? there aren't 18 spots between curry and harden, and i'm not saying you have to move harden up. curry has faked his way to the top without the dominant playoff resume to be there.

 

Rodman > jordan in life.

 

but par for the course for ESPN

 

15. Jerry West
14. Julius Erving
13. Stephen Curry
12. Oscar Robertson
11. Hakeem Olajuwon
10. Kobe Bryant
9. Tim Duncan
8. Larry Bird
7. Shaquille O'Neal
6. Wilt Chamberlain
5. Magic Johnson
4. Bill Russell
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2. LeBron James
1. Michael Jordan

 

42 is a joke.

Give me any of Barry/Drexler etc... over Westbrick anyday

They changed the game to eliminate some of Wilt's greatness, this is a joke.

Give me Bird over Shaq with a game on the line.

This list must've been made up by guys with no sense of NBA history.

 

We made the trade because of age. Everyone should be able to agree that CP3 is a much better player than WB. Im surprised the gap wasn't bigger.

 

You actually think Milwaukee is winning a ring? I don't even think their chances are that high. Whoever comes out of the west is gonna take it.

 

I don't see how Curry is better than KD. KD basically carried Curry to those last two rings.

 

yeah, but with 2 more seasons like 2017-18 and 2018-19, he'll only be a little behind shawn marion, so there's that. and winshares 2 most heavily weighted things are efficiency (curry is amazing) and teammates defense, and curry has had amazing defensive teammates. he should be a lot higher up the rankings based on how favorable the stat is to him.

curry at 13 is definitely more egregious than kobe at 10 (well, on the cbs list, we'll see on espn). kobe is probably 12-15 depending on how you want to rate others. curry should not be in the top 20.

 

Curry was the unquestioned leader of that team and of a revolution in offensive basketball. Before Durant got there he was a two-time MVP, champion, and won 73. Running into a monster with an underrated supporting cast in the finals kept him from winning 2.

If he goes lower so too does Durant because Durant's resume isn't on par and Durant is a zero in leadership. I think Curry is in for a decline to finish his career, though. So he'll drop in these ratings when all is said and done. But for now, I think his ranking around 15 is appropriate.

 

maybe, but he certainly wasn't the unquestioned best player, though. we didn't lose last year because of curry.

but a huge part of the reason he lost to that monster was he didn't play well. finals averages of 22.6/4.9/3.7. 4 games under 20. a game score of 13.1! for the unanimous mvp. people kill harden for last year's warriors series and he had a game score of 24.2. and it can't be ignored that if he had run into that monster with a healthy supporting cast, he might have had 0 rings. and it's not like he was brilliant in those finals either.

possibly fair. durant and curry both have similar drop-offs in PER/TS%/WS48 in the playoffs so durant wasn't the greatest playoff performer either. durant does have a larger body of work (8 seasons with 11 win shares compared to 5 for curry) and was only stopped by prime lebron from several extra mvp's (whereas curry won a cointoss mvp to get to 2). durant was very good in his only finals before the warriors, though he obviously blew his own 3-1 lead to curry in the WCF. so they feel fairly similar with one having done it longer.

 

I meant for the first two finals appearances.

He didn't look right in those finals. Don't remember him wrapping his hand up in his wife's scarf or anyone saying that he was injured, though. In the moment, I thought Lebron intimidated him and by extension his whole team. Then, Draymond lost his mind. Bogut got hurt. That team was an all-around mess that he couldn't clean up. That's on him.

Curry was definitely the MVP in 2015, though. Igoudala played well, but it should have gone to Curry. He wasn't Kawhi in 2014.

The 2015 and 2016 championships went to the healthier team both times. I mean, I don't think there was a great disparity between their talent levels. And with the effect playoff basketball has on shooting, the effective strength of both teams was close to even.

Agreed.

 

There’s no ****ing way that Kobe is better than Dream. If Hakeem isn’t in your top 10 than your list sucks. He’s arguably the greatest defensive player of all time paired with an endless supply of offensive weapons. If this guy was a Celtic or Laker, he’d be in the top 5 in every list every time without question.

Looking at the top 10, Kobe is glaringly in the wrong spot. If you swap him and Dream, you have what should be a consensus top 10 for pretty much everyone. I’d go:

6-10 in any order
Chamberlain
Bird
Magic
Duncan

4-6 in any order
Shaq
Dream
Russell

top 3 in any order
LeBron
Kareem
Jordan


That aside, any list that assumes future success and ranks players accordingly can **** right off. Giannis???? Anthony ****ing Davis???

Also ESPN put this together so what should we really expect.

 

Lol Giannis, where is Derrick Rose?