I was bored recently and with the help of basketballreference, I compiled a list of the top 10 scorers of the 80's, 90's and 2000's. The lists look like this. Top 10 Scorers of the 80's Alex English 20979 Mosses Malone 18866 Larry Bird 17906 Adrian Dantley 17654 Kareem Abdul Jabbar 15554 Dominique Wilkins 15263 Magic Johnson 14036 Kiki Vandeweghe 13833 Tom Chambers 13622 Kevin McHale 13395 Top 10 Scorers of the 90's Michael Jordan 17078 David Robinson 16508 Karl Malone 16494 Mitch Richmond 16452 Patrick Ewing 16395 Reggie Miller 16119 Hakeem Olajuwon 15943 Glen Rice 15435 Charles Barkley 14426 Scottie Pippen 13918 Top 10 Scorers of the 2000's Kobe Bryant 21062 Dirk Nowitzki 18880 Paul Pierce 17684 Allen Iverson 16689 Kevin Garnett 16294 Tim Duncan 16273 Tracy McGrady 15984 Ray Allen 15916 Vince Carter 15336 Shaquille O'Neal 14616 A few things jumped out at me and some even suprised me. I knew English was a scorer, but I did not expect him to have the most points in the 80's. Along with English, guys like Dantley, Vandeweghe and Chambers suprised me being on this list. I started watching basketball at a young age in the early 90's. Part of the reason I became a basketball fan were the 69 cent packs of 90-91 hoops cards I used to buy at the gas station. Guys like English, Dantley, Vandeweghe and Chambers' career's were winding down by than and I associated guys like that as being old and washed up players. Not guys who were prolific scorers. With the 90's I was suprised to see Ewing and Robinson scored more points than Olajuwon. That does not mean they are better, but nonetheless I was still suprised. Also Jordan only having 17+ points kinda suprised me. But I guess when you take away a year and a half in the middle of the decade and than all of 99, it makes sense. With the 2000's, I was suprised to see Shaq at number 10. The way he dominated the first 5 years of the decade and had no one close to being an equal I expected his point total to be higher. And while I expected Nowitzki and Pierce to be on the list, I did not envision them #2 and 3 respectively. Now for the fun part. If you can pit the 80's v the 90's v the 2000's, how do you see it playing out? I like the 90's squad but I can admit that I am partial to that era of basketball because those where my childhood and adolescent years. The combo of Olajuwon, Ewing, Robinson, Malone and Barkley is just too much size for the other two era's to compete with. Let's not forget that Jordan who by pretty much all accounts is the greatest of all time is apart of that squad along with deadly shooters like Miller, Richmond and Rice and they have Pipp's defense to lock down the other teams top perimeter player. After the 90's, the battle between old and new school gives us some interesting matchups. It begins with the matchup in the middle between Jabbar and Shaq. It would be interesting to see if Shaq could out strength Jabbar. Then you have a battle at the point between two guys who changed the position in their era's. Magic came along and gave size and strength to the position while continuing the legacy of being a distributor and in Magic's case a good scorer too. While Zeke was the first scoring PG, Iverson made it much more mainstream and the results are appearent when looking at the current crop of PG's in the NBA. Also the matchup between Bird and Nowitzki would be intruiging as Nowitzki is the guy most compared to Bird since Bird retiered. While I know more about the current crop of guys, I would give the edge to the 80's as I can't imagine a Magic/Bird team along with their supporting cast losing to the 2000's squad. So as I see it I would rank them: 1) 90's 2) 80's 3) 2000's Again I will pose the question. How would you rank them?
Michael Jordan didn't play for a large portion of the decade. He had that one injured year, plus 3 retired years. He basically played 3 fewer seasons than David Robinson.
He has the year and a half off in the middle for baseball, than 99 when he retiered the 2nd time. I think the injured year your thinking of is his 2nd season because in the 90's, besides the shortened 94-95 season when he came back from baseball, the fewest games he had in a season was 78 in 92-93.
It was. Sorry about that. Jordan missed: 82 games 93-94 season 65 games 94-95 season 50 games 99 strike season 27 games 99-00 season That is almost 3 seasons. So it would have been 2 seasons fewer than Robinson. Don't know how to check these numbers in an easy manner.
