Greats Of The Past Not Getting The Respect They Are Due

Both those guys are treated with tons of respect in the world of the NBA. The Real world.

Only the internet nerds that factor in every little stat say these guys are overrated losers that played in a weak ERA.

All said and done, their was not a lot of media back then so they didn't get that much hype. I will agree that Russell is so hated and under-appreciated in this world, just because he never got the stats.

 

Kevin Johnson (and Mark Price), I've seen analyst and TV talking heads mention top 5 to 7 point guards. Amazingly, most of the time, his name doesn't come up. Especially with the attention Nash was getting, and these guys had much better numbers.



Hakeem "the Dream" Olajuwon, you hear it all the time on this site. Some say he should be rated #1 as center and possibly the best player ever.

Michael Ray Richardson, pretty good point guard. Not in top 10, but pretty good.


Nate Thurmond, he's probably a obscure center to most youth, but he's easily one of the greatest ever and defintiely close to top 10.

 

Here are players, I also think are truly under-appreciated

Sidney Moncrief - One of the greatest defenders of all-time, 2 DPOYs

Kevin Johnson - Clearly one of the most underrated PGs of all-time, easily Top 10. One of the few 20 points 10 assists season averages guy out there of all-time.

Patrick Ewing - People act like he's not even close to David Robinson because he didn't have the hardware that Robinson had. Not even close, In my opinion Ewing was probably better than Robinson. He never had the awards and stats to show, but if you watched him play you would know how good he was.

There are more, but here are the guys at the top of my head.

 

what are you talking about dude?

people can't even respect the players in the 90s.

 

Michael Ray was considered ON THE SAME LEVEL as Magic. And even Magic said that.

But you know they say about drugs. (I hope you know MRR's story)

 

As much as I respect Russell, his championships came in an era where there were only 8-14 teams in the league and Celtics had all the talent except Wilt. I find what Magic and MJ did much more impressive.

 

Fine, I'm an internet nerd for acknowledging reality -but they did play in a much weaker era when the available talent pool for NBA basketball was far smaller and the incentives to play pro basketball much lesser.

 

I think Wilt and Russell are the very few that DO get respect from that era, even if its more romanticized nostalgia than true respects... There's many other players that dont get talked about like Bob Petit, Elvin Hayes, etc...

Baseball only had 16 teams and 8 teams in a division all the way up until the 60's, yet no one discounts Babe Ruth, Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams legacies...

 

It's pretty simple... time passes, memories fade... there is the magic generation, MJ generation, Iverson generation, Lebron generation... it's basically whoever you watched and loved during childhood/adolescence that you love and cherish to the end, and complain when the next gen comes along... get over it, it's a fact of life.

 

you should check out this new video game with Barkley & Magic - I believe it is tentatively entitled "Old School Legends"

 

I don't think the talent level is greater now in the NBA and if anything it has been watered down. Just look at the great teams of the 1980's and consider that the practically the whole of the 1986 Boston Celtics starting lineup were All stars with the 6th man, Bill Walton, an all star too. The same with the 1980's Lakers team featuring three of the NBA's 50 best players in the same line up. We should all know about the 1986 Rockets but just to refresh people's memories if not for injuries and drugs that lineup might've also been chock full of NBA legends too.

We talk about these days needing two stars to be a contender but in the 1980's you needed at least three. For instance a very good 76'ers team didn't win a title until an already great tandem of Dr. J and Mo Cheeks got Moses Malone.

The talent pool is wider now with the intro of international players but with more teams it is also more diluted.

 

Williams's lifetime batting average isn't far below Russell's career shooting percentage. Which speaks volumes about both.

 

Alternatively, you could make the argument that because Magic and MJ played in the league when there were 24-30 teams, the talent was more diluted and it didn't take as much to win.

 

You could make that argument but it's a pretty bad argument to make if you examine it closely- the talent pool of athletes, as well as the financial incentives to be in the NBA - have increased exponentially from 1959 to 2009 while the number of teams has only increased geometrically.

Again, see above. The number of potential player spots increased by maybe 60-100, the amount of athletes willing/able to ply their trade in the NBA increased by a much, much greater number, probably in the millions. The US population alone has gone from 200mm to 300mm since 1980.

What is your basis for saying that the drop off of those first 60-100 is so great that the talent would be diluted? Becausee when we run the numbers it doesn't appear so.


Not to pick on you personally but I really hate the dilution argument - maybe in the short term (like the year before vs. year after expansion) there is a slight effect (although this would only have an effect on marginal players at the end of the rotation anyway) but over the long term, this argument doesn't hold up.

Think of it this way, you take the 5A state champions in football, it's a high school with 5000 students, you play them against the 1A champions in football, in a high school with a few hundred students - we know who is likely to win, but it's not because kids in the 5A school are inherently better or more talented naturally, it's just a numbers game so you're going ot find more of them.

 

Man, people forget about Andrew Toney already? That pre-Moses team was loaded... Dawkins and Cureton in the post, Bobby Jones a lock down defender on the wing, Lionel Hollins, Steve Mix, Clint Richardson, Mike Bantom as subs.

They were fun to watch.

 

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous.

15 years ago, there's not a current Center who would make first or second All-NBA and probably only 4 or 5 that would start for any team in 1994.

Do you really think a fringe starter at shooting guard today could have been a feature player in the era of Jordan and Drexler?

IIRC, here are the SG starters in 1994:

Majerle
Sprewell
Drexler
Dell Curry
Ricky Pierce
Nick Anderson
Steve Smith
Kevin Edwards
Ron Harper
Hornacek
Stacy Augmon
Gerald Wilkins
Maxwell
Mitch Richmond
Reggie Miller
Dee Brown
Sedale Threat
Rex Chapman
Bryant Stith
Del Negro
Starks
Jordan
Jeff Malone
Dumars
Todd Day
Isaiah Rider
Jim Jackson

Now granted, there are some dogs on that list... but you're saying somebody like Rasual Butler would be a feature player in 1994 when he would at best (and very generously) be the 18th best shooting guard in the league?

You're saying Matt Barnes and Al Thornton and Nocioni would be feature players at SF in 1994? Tell that to Mashburn, Horry, Gugliotta, Aguirre, Wilkins, Ellis, Pippen, Manning, Detlef, Nance, McKey, Rice, LaPhonso, Gramama, Worthy, and The X-Man.

No. Way. The period from 1978-1995 was the apex of professional basketball.

 

But you can't hope to objectively compare the performances of players who played in different eras. All you can do is measure how they dominate their own peers.

 

Put Vince Carter in a time machine and this is what you would see:

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