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Let me start by saying this is not a "Dream Team vs. The Avengers" thread. That being said, watching the Olympics has been a joy, especially seeing Curry, Durant, and LeBron playing up to their legacies and further cementing their statuses as all-time greats. This made me revisit more all-time greats, when they were drafted, and sparked my curiosity about which "era" was greatest.

Because there are several subjective lines of what constitutes different "eras", I decided one easy way to think about it is by draft year. I came up with the following groups based on their "draft era" (note I had to create a larger window for the first group):


Draft Years 1954 - 1974:

Oscar Robertson
Jerry West
Julius Erving
Bill Russell
Kareem Abdul-Jabar

Bench: John Havlicek, Rick Barry, Elgin Baylor, Bob Pettit, Wilt Chamberlain


Draft Years 1975 - 1990:

Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Larry Bird
Charles Barkley
Hakeem Olajuwon

Bench: Isiah Thomas, John Stockton, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, Moses Malone


Draft Years 1991 - 2005:

Chris Paul
Kobe Bryant
LeBron James
Tim Duncan
Shaquille O'Neal

Bench: Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett


Draft Years 2006 - 2020:

Stephen Curry
James Harden
Kevin Durant
Giannis Antetokoumpo
Nikola Jokic

Bench: Russell Westbrook, Luka Doncic, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid


So this gets us to the title - Which of the following draft eras would you define as the greatest? Not who would win head-to-head, but which is the greatest in terms of legacy, accomplishments, and impact?

The earlier the draft era, the more dominant up until the DRob v. Sabas Olympics; then back to extreme dominance when the USA can start using professionals up to the modern era where we are no longer as dominant. If the question is which era is the greatest relative to their (non-USA) peers at the time, it would be the late 50s/eraly 60s or Dream Team era. But neither should be considered a great accomplishment because of the US v. World talent gap. Legacy and Impact huge for both though of course.

Wilt was the first where the world started paying attention to basketball then the impact of the Cold War where the Eastern Block starting putting a lot of resources into developing so they could compete at the Olympic level which spills over to international league play. That's probably the most impactful era, kickstarting from zero to competitive with American college Olympians. Then the massive Jordan marketing surge would be the second most impactful era but, despite the hype, if you drew a graph on international development of players and talent v. America only development, I don't know how much the slope of that curve would change based on Jordan or whether he would just continue the trend after the Cold War drivers of development changed. Certainly he pushed the marketing into 3rd world areas that have exploded to the point where South Sudan is a competitive world team today.

In terms of accomplishments, who fought against the most equal or even superior competition between the last of the amateurs and the most recent professional teams, and who was the most successful relative to competition is another question which I don't have time for now since only on a 10 minute break.