RealGM

1993Playoffs wrote:

No-more-rings wrote:Nah, more like 6th or 7th for me, but i can see the argument. It’s just hard to ignore how many games me missed during his prime and post prime for that matter too. On top of that he just wasn’t a consistently good defender after like 05 or so.

zero playoffs games missed is pretty impressive though

1993Playoffs wrote:The more and more I evaluate his career I'm left with one prevailing thought.........The amount of pure destruction to opposing teams this guy did in his peak and prime is simply unmatched. Even Jordan and LeBron were never quite as unstoppable as peak Shaq imo.

I also think he was a better basketball player with the better peak and prime than his contemporary who is ranked higher most places in Duncan,

of course he had his faults like FT shooting and pick and roll D but his man to man Defense was pretty great in his career

but do you have Shaq in your top 5? he was such a unique and dominant player its getting hard for me to leave him ouy imo

Pg81 wrote:To me he has no case for top 5 whatsoever. Considering his height and athleticism he was a comparatively poor rebounder compared to all time greats like Kareem, Wilt and Russell. My main problems with him are his attitude which led to him being out of shape at the beginning of the season and not being able to play a lot of minutes comparatively speaking. Shaq only reached 40 mpg once in his career, Wilt for example averaged almost a staggering 46 minutes, Russell a great 42 minutes and Kareem 37 over a 20 year career. I am also not convinced that he has THE greatest peak ever, though he for sure has an argument. Wilt, MJ, LeBron, Kareem and Duncan 03 all have cases for an equal maybe even better peak considering they could play more minutes, played more games and were never out of shape on top of being arguably better defenders, so it depends on what exactly you value. Shaq was an intimidating presence in the paint but so where the others, but Shaq was poor at help defense, especially on p&r. On top of all of that he was a noticeably worse rebounder, never won a rebounding title, unlike Wilt, Russell and Kareem. I do not expect a SG like MJ or SF like LeBron to win a rebounding title, not their job in the end considering their ball handling and passing duties on their team.
Lastly his competition at the center position during the 3 peat was pretty lackluster imho, best being Mutombo who was what, top 50 all time? Otherwise he was mostly competing against slow, old heavily declining centers like Rik Smits and Sabonis who were a shadow of their former self, and it cannot be denied that he was allowed to get away with murder. What he was allowed to do to Mutombo in 2001 was imho a disgrace, hammering elbows into his face, shoulder tackles and just in general barreling through him and the zone with hardly any care for whistles. Was not a pretty sight either.