PER is flawed but it's amazing how MJ routinely shows up at the top in all the advanced metrics and only those which are accumulative is he not #1 all while having no idea about those things during his playing days. Strictly using advanced metrics, Admiral looks routinely better regular season player than Hakeem but Hakeem always upped his stats in the playoffs which is where their legacies started to develop a gap. I actually always said Admiral was more talented than Duncan and I even told people I'd draft him over Duncan through the years so im a big fan. Duncan was the better older player out of all the bigs not named Kareem, though. Duncan went against PF's albeit all time great PFs playing more like a traditional C, while Robinson played against all time great C's. Flip that and maybe Robinsons dominance leads to championships too and Duncan falls short with Vinny, Elliott and Avery Johnson and Ellis and Cummings and even Rodman for a year. Some nice high level role player deep squads but Duncan and Pop had better peak level players that could have been stars in different roles. I would not fault anyone for drafting their favorite player #1 in some fantasy draft. Im taking MJ but if he's not there, im happily going Hakeem and putting tons of consideration into Wilt or Shaq or Kobe or Magic or Bird. Lebron just aint my thing. Mechanical, ugly boring game and youre limited with him having the ball to stuff that stat sheet- a play style proven to only be championship worthy if he stacks the deck with talent. Duncan boring, but he needs far less around him than Bron. Kareem yawn. Not only do I not consider him because I would fall asleep every game, but dude never did anything without Oscar or Magic and a lot more to name. He dominated hs, and college but so did Walton immediately after him which shows the UCLA program was top notch with any great big. Russel? No thanks. I'll take a better 2 way player in Hakeem any day without hesitation and still be able to draft a Ben Wallace later if I wanted defense only big, or a Draymond later if I wanted defense with pushing the ball up the floor like Russell would do. Oscar? Yawn. Selfish. Couldn't win until he teamed up with Lew. Curry. Absolutely id consider him. Too much of a game changer but building around him will be tough to get balance of offense and defense right. Warriors were extremely lucky in how they drafted. KD? I love KDs game. Smooth and easy. He just ain't a killer. He's clutch but he's not a killer and there's a difference... injury prone. If MJ is there, I dont even hesitate for a split second, not even for my guy Hakeem. Im already dreaming of how unstoppable MJ and Hakeem duo would be on both ends and hoping everyone behind takes current players and legacy players like Russell and West and Oscar so it circles back around to me and I make a DR34M a reality. Not one duo you can come up with is going to be better than MJ/Hakeem. Not LeBron and Wilt not Kobe and Kawhi. Not Magic and Shaq. Not curry and kd. Not dirk and Duncan. Not Bird and Russell. Nothing.
Thats not true. Lebron can't win without top tier talent. Jordan just had a single all star teammate his entire career. Pip develops as Pip working with and learning from MJ. Everyone else stepped up to Mjs level even if they were just a lower tier role player. Mj is by far the better leader and being a jerk in that position is far more genuine than LeBron fake nice guy act. He throws his teammates under the bus routinely. He's passive aggressive and the last few years, he's shows his weakness in how he reacts so dramatically and over the top to things not going his way. Just last night he threw his body and head in a childish manner when Russ turned it over. His body language is one of the worst ive seen in any star athlete. That massive tantrum vs the Celtics no call? Unbelievable beta weakness. What else do you expect from a guy who self anoints himself the greatest and the king and the chosen one rather than let others do it for him. Jordan would make this dude crumble so fast.
I mean even Kirby was clearly the better leader by example on the redeem team. Dont give me this lurbron was young, his "leadership" is the same as he was a kid with the fake nice guy act and clowning around. He's Dwight Howard with better talent. LeBron and Kirby on the same team and its Kirbys team all day. LeBron would just be a supped up Pippen on Mj or Kobe team.
True the leader thing is but Wizard Jordan also looked terrible at times. The thing is Jordan couldn't play past 37 years even with the retirements. Jordan without the Bulls and on a mediocre team, it has not been a great look either. The fact is every player looks bad during their careers. Hakeem had bad moments as well. We could go on and on.
I actually didn't think of that when I said better team player. I think his game is better suited for the modern NBA. It's a Swiss Army Knife of play. And yes the NBA is a clown show with or without Jordan or Lebron.
Not really something you could know. The dude was retired and lounging and partying for 3 years lol. He even sliced his shooting finger with a cigar opener and it couldn't move anymore so his shot was altered because of it. He came in his first year with broken ribs and bad knees that needed to be drained. If he stays in playing shape after 98? Who knows what he could have done, but he didn't need to. He had nothing to chase and nothing to prove after 98. And let's not forget Mj came back to the NBA at its slowest pace ever and older than LeBron this year. MJs bday is Feb I believe so he played 1st half at 38 and 2nd half at 39. Then 39 1sr half of the next and 40 the 2nd half. LeBron is half a year behind MJ at some point and just turned 38 after playing most of the season at 37 where MJ was still retired and getting drunk and fishing and golfing every day at same age. LeBron gets major props for staying in incredible playing shape. Cant take that away from him, but he needs this. He's chasing a ghost. MJ had nothing to chase after 93. He became the ghost that would haunt all future players long before you really think he was. Truth is, he's still the goat if he never came back after 93 and kobe 5 and LeBrons 4 wouldn't have been enough still bc Magic had 5 and Bird had 4 and MJ had surpassed them all the same.
Wizards Jordan leadership was probably poor at times, im sure. He probably just didn't care, but there's some crazy stats of when he was healthy and also when Rip was healthy. They were improved defensively so much that they were on pace from last to top 3 or best defensive team and on pace for a top seed all with MJ being the only significant change to the roster. Unfortunately both of them couldn't stay healthy. Mj was upping his scoring up to 30ppg on high efficiency and all around stats before the injury.
I wanna say off tbe top of my head, Mj and Rip together were 14-0 or something like that but they never got to be on the floor at the same time much
I am sure we know more about Jordan and his background than LBJ because a lot of Bron and his inside the locker room info hadn't been worked into books yet.
No doubt. Kobe probably would have done the same if it weren't for his Achilles tear. The commitment is there for these guys, but kobe also was chasing MJs ghost. Mj had nothing more to commit to and his true rivals and peers set the stage for him to walk away young(bird and magic) without changing their perceived legacy.
Never going to be settled. Generational bias, culture bias, popularity, different rules, different league dynamics. Does longevity matter when quantifying the GOAT? Rings? Poise? It's contextual and differs person to person. But there's no disputing that Hakeem is the GOAT center. He would dream-shake, block and strip these modern centers into submission in five minutes.
For sure. All I can think of is that Hakeem's handles could be better for the modern league. 3 pt shot added.
Saw a youtube comment clowning Hakeem and about how Embiid and todays bigs would embarrass Hakeem because Hakeem doesn't know how to dribble, he slaps at the ball like a toddler he said. He saw 1 or 2 highlights of him doing that and i know which play he was referring to, one where Hakeem jumps up to the perimeter to check a pg, rips said point guard, slaps the ball a few times to push the ball ahead as he sprinted for the finish on the break. None of what led to all that was impressive to this kid, just that he saw a goofy ball slap and instantly discredits anything else. That's today's viewer. They have no concept of a different game. They just see it as a worse game because guys like Hakeem weren't going between their legs and stepping back for a 3 like traditional guards did. The degree of difficulty on Hakeems baseline fadeaways with a hand always almost there and basically behind the backboard are insane vs guys today just hitting a 3 with a dead eye clean look at the basket. It's a joke. They can't understand that actually a ton of bigs dreamed of playing like guards even back then. No big actually dreams of playing like Kareem with their back to the basket. It was just the times and coaching enforced a play style for bigs and guards and forwards. Those roles actually meant something back then. Even so, a lot of the PF's coming into the 90s were starting to show that they could do all the things being done today even when it was frowned upon at the time. CWebb, KG, even Duncan and Dirk was dribbling up court when young every now and then before being yelled at not to. Shaq was capable and always wanted to. So all those mid 80s dudes really started to develop their handle by the 90s when things were starting to shift. Point is, just because a guy is doing some fancy dribble and shooting a 3, does not mean a player of the past can't pick up that skill in 1 or 2 summers of training, but that modern guy is going to have a much harder time picking up that older guys post skills with aggressive defense on him and that includes rougher boxing out and rebounding skills and blocking timing. Kenny Smith tells the story of how MJ couldn't' dribble at all when he got to UNC, Kenny would tell him he was gonna check MJ because he couldn't dribble. MJ came back next summer and Kenny was blown away at his improvement and MJ was like yeah, i got a handle now. We've seen the transition of bigs playing like bigs turned into 3 pt campers literally before our eyes not that long ago where guys who couldn't shoot all of a sudden were hitting 3s. Gasols. Ibaka. Brook Lopez lol. Guys that literally wouldn't even attempt a 3 for a lot of their early career and all of a sudden hitting at a respectable league average and some even above league avg. These things can be worked on just 1 summer by pros who really want it, folks! People also have a bias against aesthetics too, imo. They see short shorts and goofy hair/facial hair and outdate play style and immediately think that guy sucks. Clyde gets no respect because he was kinda goofy all around down to his demeanor...that is..until he got in the air and his knees would be giving these dudes black eyes, then you take his goofy ass real serious.
Someone said earlier that Hakeems blocks lead will be passed eventually because of how much players are getting to the basket, but no one is even close. Ibaka and Deandre retired right? So that leaves Brook Lopez and AD and Gobert as active players. Gobert has averaged 2.2 a game for his career and is 30. He still needs to play about 75% equal to the length of his exact career extra on top of what he's done at 30. Except at 30, he's already dipped down to 1.3bpg in 30mpg this year. At 30, Hakeem averaged 4.2 bpg. He didn't dip under 2.5 until he was 37 years old and his minutes dipped to 24mpg, but he still averaged 2.4 per 36. Never going under 2 per 36 even in his twilight. Wemby? We'll see. Absolutely if anyone has the physical tools to do it, he does. Hopefully he stays healthy to find out and hopefully like the Lakers own the all time scoring list basically, Wemby can do it in a Rockets uniform and we will own the blocks list.
The blocks and steals records are not going to be broken by any player currently in the NBA, and they may never be broken. Wemby won't do it -- his block numbers should be much higher than they are right now for me to project that he'd average anywhere close to 4 blocks per game as an NBA pro. Who was the last player to average 3 steals per game or 4 blocks per game? We just don't see that anymore.
The great thing about the block record bigs shoot 3s now and stay away from the paint a decent amount of time. The blocks on attempted 3s are harder to achieve. They don't block that much any longer.
