Was Shaq the omly most dominant player in league history?

I love how all the Yao-bashers can't even define what it means to be "dominant." Really, being "dominant" seems to be STYLE, not substance to a lot of people. It's "dominant" to back a guy down and make a monster dunk in his face, but it's not dominant to make FGs at a similar rate through hooks and turnaround jumpers. Even though they'll make you the same number of points anyway.

 

Well the phrase "being used by someone" is a fairly new one, I think. Certainly other players have been used and abused before. I can only imagine the other guy's feeling the day/night that Wilt scored a hundred points on him. Wilt had a whole season where he averaged 50PPG. Now that is 'using' a whole lot of folks.

 

I wrote something in the main forum to define dominance. Shaq's dominance is 2 + 1, he missed the FT mostly, still the defender would sit on the bench in the 2nd half, thus helping Kobe/Fisher to penetrate. The whole opposing team's defense breaks down.

Yao's 2 points is 2 points mostly. Webber does this all the time, but he is not dominant. Iverson shoots 50%, but still lose, even if he fouls out the opposing guards, so what, the opposing center position is the anchor position. The opposing defense still holds.

So the trick is 2 + 1. The 1 is better on the opposing center.

 

no he is not the most dominant ever, he didnt do sh%^t until he teamed up with kobe, (not tht i like kobe) and then wade so most dominant i thkn not. if u look at history it will show that it is usually true that there is always a side kick to prop them up. i actually just looked at past champs and the only player to really will his team to a championship in the recent past (20+yrs) himself was hakeem (who slapped shaq around might i add b4 he got old, even shaq used to call him the greatest that ever played center) bird had parish and mchale, thomas had dumars, jordan had pippen, the pistons were all semi-allstars, duncan had robinson and then parker and ginobli, and so on and so on. so no he is not the most dominant, he was always surrounded with great talent (oh i forgot penny in orlando) he needs to be a bit more humble and realise he has always played with a perimiter player of allstar caliber, and give some of those around him some credit.

 

He coined the phrase so yeah.

Good point, we have had this discussion a few months ago, and that is one of the age old questions in the NBA. Did Jordan make Pippen better or vice versa? Actually it even goes back farther than you think. It's not like Wilt Chamberlain ever won a championship except when he had fellow HOF players next to him like Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, etc. Same with Bill Russell and the legion of HOF celtics.

In fact the only guys who really "did it alone" that I recall is Duncan, Hakeem in 94, and Lew Alcindor.

 

Bill Russell was the original dominant NBA player and has the rings to prove it.

Wilt was more talented but not as mean and aggressive as Russell.

That tewrm was used for both of them long before Shaq.

 

shaq dominated the game because the whole defense had to watch him. forget double teams, he saw tripple or MORE.

he got anyone on the other team who tried to guard him in foul trouble. teams had to plan on playing thier 3rd string center just to give up a few fouls.

yao can put up great numbers. he sees double teams on most nights, but he doesn't put that kind of pressure on the other team. i doubt he ever will. that doesn't mean that he can't be a HOF player or win a championship. just that his game doesn't put that kind of rediculous pressure on the other team.

 

Well, the reason that Shaq got everyone into foul trouble was because he cannot really make a ft. During his prime, fouling him became the only way to stop him scoring 2 easy points. Teams actually stack up on scrub big men so that they have a lot of fouls to use on Shaq.

When it comes to Yao it is completely different. When yao goes up for a jump hook or anything other than dunking, the big men guarding him would just pray they would not be called for a foul, because that is an automatic 2 points for Yao. Just because of the ft% difference, Yao is never going to get that many fouls as shaq, the other team's coach will simply do everything he can to avoid that.

 

Shaq for a while was definitely the most dominant player in the league, and it wouldn't be crazy to say he was the most dominant player in league history. Size and strength wise...there was no one that could even compete at the time.

 

I would like to research how many centers fouled out while playing against Shaq. Don't know how to get this, though... can someone point me to where I can do that?

Oh, and another thing... a TEAM wins the NBA, dudes... not ONE DUDE.

 

I think dominant should be used for players that completely dominate any of the sides of the court, but mostly both of them. Like be a scoring machine but also scare the opponents of approaching your basket(mostly centers can do that).

So you could say for a time he was the most dominant player. Of course, like said a player doesn't make a team, so he stayed ringless till he played for a team, not a one man show.

 

It was said all the time about Wilt, and the comparisons stick. Both were men among boys, both underachieved on D, both should have had more rings than fingers but didn't always have the dedication; Wilt on the court, Shaq off it.

Evan

 

Jordan dominated more than Shaq. 6 rings in an era when the league was highly competitive with guys like Hakeem, Drexler, Stockton, Malone, Robinson, Barkley, Ewing, etc. in their prime.

 

The word's a word. It's been used in different ways before. "Kareem had a dominating game at both ends tonight." Now, maybe it wasn't used quite the same way, with the same connotations. I think other words were used for the same purpose. After another 3 cups of coffee, maybe I'll think of a couple. A guy was "great, prolific, who recieved accolades for a memorable, legendary performance, a legend in his own time, astonishing, and has dignity and class." Stuff like that. You know... players like Larry Legend. You didn't need words like dominant. They just killed you.

 

The MDE title is a joke, and disrespect to other all-time greats. As I said in another thread, Shaq won his rings pretty much in a clown era.

 

50PPG and 25RPG reflects as dominant of an individual the NBA has ever seen. By miles.

Shaq was the most dominant player over his 5 year or so peak. Duncan was close behind and had the mantel once Shaq started declining. Now the mantel is up for graps.

No serious person can say Shaq was more dominant than Wilt or KAJ or Jordan, either in terms of impact at the top of their games or length of dominance. Shaq is in the mix with Hakeem and Russell and Magic in next tier (though I understand and don't object if persons want to put Russell at the top).

 

I don't think that's what the MDE label is about, or else he'd jsut call himself the greatest.

It has to do with his physical style in close, which, in his prime was more or less unstoppable down low, I mean even a prime Hakeem contained the young shaq, he didn't exactly kill him. When Shaq got the ball down low in his prime, there were two things that you could do: watch him dunk or foul him, in which case he still might dunk anyway. Those were your options, and I think very few players reached a point where you just knew what he was going to do but were absolutely powerless to stop it because of his sheer physical presence and power.

So, whereas Jordan pretty obviously has the greater legacy, Shaq's claim I think is more around the fact that, in his prime, he was simply able to physically overpower every basketball player on the planet more often than not, something that maybe only Wilt Chamberlain could also claim.

 

Omly?

 

But at the end of games most teams chose to foul him, and since he couldn't shoot ft's worth crap he needed someone else to close the game. I don't see how you can be the most dominant when I can't give you the ball at the end of a game.