With virtually any human enterprise, we want to know who’s the best, the most influential, the greatest, and so on. We make lists of the greatest films, greatest guitarists, greatest writers, and so on. The NBA is no different. We talk about greatest players, greatest teams, greatest coaches, greatest shooters, scorers, defenders, draft classes, big three’s, and so on. It’s fun. It’s fun to think about and talk about and read other people’s lists.
Or, it should be fun. It seems to generate a great deal of anger in some people. Any list of greatest players or teams or point guards or whatever that I see is always followed by a series of infuriated disagreements. It’s fine to disagree, but the anger can get so strange and extreme. A pretty average “Top 10 Players Ever” list might look like this: 1. Michael Jordan 2. Lebron James 3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 4. Magic Johnson 5. Larry Bird 6. Bill Russell 7. Kobe Bryant 8. Tim Duncan 9. Wilt Chamberlain 10. Hakeem Olajuwon. That’s not my top 10 list, but it’s a pretty standard list, if you ask me. A lot of lists look pretty similar. But then you have guys that say things like, “If you don’t have Kobe in your top 3, you don’t know anything about basketball!” Really? I don’t know anything about basketball if I put Kobe a few places lower on a top 10 list? I don’t know anything about basketball? Not a single thing about it?
That’s so stupid. The way I look at a top 10 greatest players list is that they’re pretty close. They’re all amazing players, nearly all just as good, so if I put someone at 8 and another person at 2, that’s not a huge gap for me. It’s not worth getting so riled up.
Here’s another thing that happens: people will cite the opinions of NBA greats as being of more value than a non-NBA player’s opinions. It makes intuitive sense. NBA players, especially great ones, know the game better, they’re playing against top competition, so their opinions matter more. And certainly the opinions of NBA legends are incredibly valuable, insightful, and interesting, but their status as a great player doesn’t automatically make their view “correct.” Because, if you listen to enough NBA legends talk about the game, you’ll find they disagree with each other quite a lot. An NBA writer may put Hakeem at #11 while Kevin Durant puts Hakeem at #4, so you’d think that the NBA writer is just wrong because he’s just a writer, but another NBA great may also put Hakeem at #11, so now what?
It’s just all opinions, man. I love hearing other people’s NBA opinions even if they differ drastically from mine. It tells me a bit about them, how they see the game, what they value. It’s fun. We can go back and forth a bit, but in the end it’s just opinions.
Here’s an opinion of mine: I think there is a highlight bias in the collective NBA mind. Highlights are cool. They look sick. They’re exciting. But they don’t necessarily align entirely with a person’s ability to play basketball. There’s some correlation, of course; if a player has a lot of really great highlights, it’s likely that they are a pretty good player. But it’s not entirely related. Highlights, by definition, exclude lowlights. If you watch highlights of a player, it’s not gonna show them missing shots, turning over the ball, or making costly errors on defense. Sometimes people with great highlights make a lot of mistakes.
I know people don’t base their entire opinion’s on a player’s caliber based on his highlights, but the exciting plays stick in a person’s mind more easily.
So it’s my opinion that the highlight bias favors exciting perimeter players over less exciting “bigs.”
Here’s a sub-point to that broader point: it’s not just highlights, but people have a tendency to value “skill” over “ability.” This concept is exemplified perfectly by James Harden’s quote, “I wish I could be 7-feet, run and just dunk. That takes no skill at all.” This is a bit of trash talk about Giannis Antetokounmpo when the pair were MVP rivals. Now I could respond and say that Giannis does have a lot of skill, which is what I believe. But I’d rather take the quote at face value. Yes! If you could just dunk all the time, you would do it! Any player would do that! The dunk is the most efficient shot in the game! It’s like 99% accurate, if you can dunk, you should dunk!
This is what always annoyed me when talking about Shaquille O’Neal. People would say, “He’s just big and all he does is dunk.” I would disagree with that, but even if it was true… SO WHAT? He was the best player at the time. If you want to say that you don’t like his playstyle, that’s fine, but when we’re talking about the best player, the style shouldn’t really factor in. It’s just about who’s best.
Like what was Shaq supposed to do? Was he supposed to say, “Hey guys, I know I’m bigger and stronger than anyone in the game, and I can dunk all the time, but some people might not appreciate that, so I’m gonna take some wild fadeaways and cool step back threes just for fun.” When you’re on offense, you try to score, you don’t get any extra points for scoring in a more “skilled” manner. This also came up with field goal percentage. Shaq led the league in field goal percentage several times while also being near the top in scoring. That’s a good quality, in my opinion, but some would try to deflect the point by saying, “Well, it’s only cause he shoots so close to the basket.” So? He’s able to get close to the basket more effectively than anyone. When you shoot the ball, you want it to go in.
The debate that generates the most emotion is who’s better between Lebron James and Michael Jordan. Personally I think there are a lot of players that could be considered the GOAT, but most people pick one of these two. People are so passionate about this one. It’s funny to me because I think most people who pick Lebron would put MJ at #2, and most people who pick MJ would put Lebron at #2. It’s just one number off, but it’s so desperately important for people.
Sometimes I see people say things like “MJ never won without Pippen,” as part of their argument that Kobe or Lebron or whoever else was better than MJ. It’s fine to think those guys are better than MJ, but this point always seems so silly to me. What was Jordan supposed to do, exactly? Was he supposed to say: “Hey, I just won three championships in a row with my teammate Scottie Pippen. He’s a great player and I’m the best. I retired, came back, and we won two more championships. But you know what? In the future there will be a similar player to me that is part of an amazing duo [Shaq and Kobe], but he’ll separate from his amazing teammate and then win two championships without him, proving that he can win without Shaq. Because I know this, somehow, I need to prove that I can win without my teammate, so I’m going to force management to trade Pippen away for a young Tracy McGrady so I can prove that I can win a championship without Pippen.”?
Ridiculous.
Just one more thing: we talk about underrated players and overrated players. And I used to think of a player like Moses Malone as a really underrated player because the typical 5 best centers are talked about way more often and he’s not mentioned much but he was one of the best players and all that. But then I look at rankings, and I rank him around the same as most lists. Usually he’s #6 or #7 on all-time centers lists and in the 17-22 range on all-time players lists, which is where I’d rank him. So I don’t really think he’s underrated, just not talked about much.
And that’s that. My actual NBA opinions can get very wild, and it’s fun!
Lefty Forrester 