Reworking the NBA's Top 50 list
In 1996 a catalogue of respected voters created the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players list, and for an era with only one-to-two screens per house and 24 hours between van deliveries of printed content, the list made some noise. People complained. Why was Shaq there.
The list hit before Shaquille played a game with the Lakers, let alone won a title, and it upset many that a rappin’ genie with a mean dunk could elbow his way into such august company after only four seasons on the job. Not counting the money he was paid at LSU.
We echo the classic sportswriting of the epoch:
Sniff, sniff. Is that your beloved Celtics team we smell, or just a stale stogie?
SHAQ PHOOEY
Count former Celtics great Bob Cousy among those who don’t think Shaquille O’Neal belongs on the NBA's “50 greatest players of all time” list.
“He basically hasn’t won anything significant, and even his individual numbers (27.2 points, 12.5 rebounds, 2.8 blocks, 2.4 assists) haven’t been that extraordinary,” said Cousy, who was on the selection panel and did not vote for O’Neal.
If you want extraordinary numbers, Bob, try this one: $120 million for a guy who can’t make free throws.
Peter Vecsey, who hates Shaq, put Penny Hardaway (and Mo Cheeks) in his top 50. ESPN and sports talk radio buzzed about the list up to and beyond Feb. 1997’s Top 50 ceremony at the All-Star Game, and SLAM answered the call with its classic rebuttal issue in 1997. Everyone had a shot, except me, we didn’t have internet then.
Internet-less and sharing the same absence of foresight as the voting conceptualists, arguing for Shaq’s inclusion on the basis that they may never write an NBA list again and because O’Neal’s future (the one we all just watched) was clear at the time, he was going to dominate, Shaqly.
Turns out the NBA was always going to crank out another list; stay shocked we didn’t get a Top 60 and Top 70. Voters jumped the starter’s shot with the dunkin’ genie with a mean rap, especially after only four seasons, one performed with shaved head + rockabilly sideburns. Shaq, after 295 NBA games and 18 playoff wins through 1996, shouldn’t be on this list.
Several other candidates deserved representation ahead of Shaq and his (absurdly dominant) Orlando Magic career. O’Neal’s appearance was only slightly less obscene than adding college senior Tim Duncan to the list because by 1996 every sportswriter knew Tim Duncan was going to be the best big man of the 2000s.
In O’Neal’s place? I’ll put the veteran with ten years and three championships under his belt by 1996, the 6-6 shy boy who helped cramp Shaq into a sweep a few months before the Top 50 hit. Dennis Rodman was absolutely one of the top 50 NBA players of all time by the time they voted to create this list.
Toss in the best rebound rate since Wilt and Russell alongside Bird-to-Magic-to-Michael defensive versatility, and you’ve got the NBA’s first big whiff. Rodman also liked Pearl Jam, which is important to prominent sportswriters.
Help my return to prominence. Apparently I have to buy a bunch of Pearl Jam albums and I didn’t know they had nearly this many.
The voters’ Bill Walton tally was bad too. And not just because of Jerry’s Envelope Filter Years.
If I’m selecting a 20th Century starting five to battle with, Walton starts at interchangeable center alongside Russell. When he was healthy, Bill Walton was mostly-Duncan with a little Nikola Jokic to keep the sponsors happy. Walton is a league MVP, a two-time champion, he led the Trail Blazers one season of preeminent NBA basketball.
Barely, one May to next February. There were only 50 seasons to work with in 1996, I grok, but Walton’s outrageous peak months plus anuddah Celtic ring on top aren’t enough.
Not with Artis Gilmore right there.
Now.
It’s a cop-out, but the NBA never merged with the ABA, it simply sold expansion slots to the four existing franchises before buying a fifth out with money skimmed from the other four. That’s this coward’s excuse for declining Connie Hawkins or Mel Daniels or Dan Issel’s options, it’s why Zelmo Beaty isn’t on the imaginary Also Considered list, it’s why I don’t get to type “Netolicky” a second time.
Artis Gilmore entered the NBA in Walton’s championship season and Artis worked 82 games an NBA season eight times, playing 81 games in 1985. Train averaged 20 and 11 with a pair of blocks for Chicago for six seasons and a little less once he was traded to a routine playoff participant in San Antonio. Gilmore led the NBA in field goal percentage four times. He was awesome.
Gilmore scored more NBA points than Issel, Shawn Kemp, Tim Hardaway and Dave Cowens, this inclusion is all off Artis’ NBA time. Even if he didn’t miss a night in 420 potential ABA appearances.
Pride moves me to not even link to his other ABA accomplishments and statistics, working within an association that was clearly superior to the NBA in every way. Boomers, you chose the wrong league.
Gilmore, who airballed a bit with the Celtics in 1988 as Bill Walton’s injury replacement, ousts Walton as the 12th Celtic on the 1996 list. And we’re gonna cut another Celtic, not including Shaq.
Sam Jones stays, but Bill Sharman has to go. Sharman was a lights-out shooter and scorer who helped codify several modern pro basketball head coaching techniques, the guy won four rings as a player and I get it, I hear you, but Alex English.
Alex English, the guy who led a decade in scoring. Yes it was the 1980s. Still counts.
And, yes, Alex English was also a Celtic:
James Worthy didn’t hear from any of us until 1996, when the Top 50’s critics scrolled halfway through the Ws to find “Worthy” but not “Wilkins.”
Luckily, Nique’s old point guard Doc Rivers got in the way of any arrows:
“The difference between James Worthy and Dominique is that James had Magic Johnson and Dominique had me.”
Correct. Nobody ever asked Tree Rollins to be in ‘Slam Dunk Ernest.’
Debbie Allen never dated Spud Webb. Doc Rivers, to date, does not have a variety hour with Sheila E as bandleader and Cliff Levingston wasn’t cast in ‘Forget Paris,’ though Cliff would have been way better at whatever Kurt Rambis did in that movie.
Pushing Lenny Wilkens ahead of Dominque Wilkins isn’t a hoop crime, Wilkens put up some serious numbers that sustained until he quit to become a full-time coach.
Worthy’s stats are a little different in spite of his elevated presence. His was a Sunday afternoon grapnel that dragged you outside with your basketball to learn to spin and flip and catch and toss in.
Dominique Wilkins made you kind of afraid to play the sport of basketball.
The Wilkins erasure was telling.
Between Nique, English, Bernard King and Adrian Dantley, the NBA left off four of its all-time scorers, a quartet of Eighties Guys with zero rings between them. Joe Dumars, a rational Top 50 candidate then and now, was given comparatively more national support 25 years ago.
I would also take David Robinson off. It stinks, but at least Shaq will giggle when the security drags the Admiral out to the same parking lot Shaq, Walton, Bill Sharman and James Worthy are hanging around in. There’s a Tex-Mex place two stores down that might still be open.
Robinson only played seven seasons prior to this list — seven MVP-caliber seasons, we re-assure each other — yet only seven and without any rings, David never had the help.
Neither did Bob McAdoo, and it cost Bob a spot on the Top 50 list in spite of 14 NBA campaigns at 22.1 points per game (irrelevant but Admiral ended up with 21.1 after his 14 seasons). McAdoo won an MVP award, two rings, four scoring titles, hit seven seasons of double-figure rebounds. Bob annoyed each of his teams’ home crowds, offending thousands of boomers at a time, more points for Bob.
Bob Lanier made eight All-Star teams, also in 14 sturdy seasons. The voters were absolutely far too concerned with pace when considering Shaq and Robinson.
The same emphasis on extrapolation likely handed Pete Maravich a spot on the Top 50 list. Pistol was absolutely one of the best NBA players of the 1970s, leading the league in scoring once and averaging over 25 a game until his final, injury-wracked season. Maravich was Bird’s Celtic teammate when Pete retired far too young, and an American sports legend years prior to his entry into pro sports, extra legacy additions that shouldn’t count but probably did.
Yet Lanier and also-Celtic McAdoo accomplished so much more, with the younger McAdoo hanging around long enough to play well in the 1980s and earn with the Lakers the sort of rings as a reserve voters appeared to credit Pete with.
Rodman, in. English, in. Gilmore, in. Lanier, in. McAdoo, in. Dominique Wilkins, in.
We cropped six: Shaq, Walton, Pistol Pete, Bill Sharman, James Worthy, David Robinson. They’ll be fine. They’re all shoved in a booth, chips and salsa already on the table and the server just brought the second round of pitchers. Shaq is telling the food runner about the time David Robinson wouldn’t give him an autograph.
The NBA might take more than six for its 75, and you’ll understand why once you see Monday’s list. It contains the Next 25, the best additions since 1996, all your modern heroes, it’s a very good list, the second post in the series.
The third post is our crack at the Top 75, everyone in the mix, the final count, NBA to argue about in September!
Will the Shaq be back?
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