O_6 wrote:I think the problem with the media generated all-time lists is that they are susceptible to ranking athletes not only on their athletic abilities but their overall "aura", "storyline", and "impact on the culture". At the end of the day, the business of professional sports means it isn't just pure competition but also an entertainment source. Just because it isn't "fake" or "scripted" like Pro Wrestling, doesn't mean that the same principles don't apply in terms of putting on a show. The purpose is still to win the event, but the business side of it prefers that you win in style.
Having MJ as the leading man was a Godsend to the sports media world, they loved covering the phenomenon that was known as "Air Jordan". MJ became the most famous entertainer in the world outside of possibly the other MJ (I'm not talking Magic). Kareem never came close to replicating that, he wasn't even the most famous NBA player in his time. He was less popular than Wilt early on, less popular than Dr. J in his prime, and less popular than Magic/Bird at the end. Kareem was an aloof, quiet, and religious man who did not have a good relationship with the media.
HOW THE MEDIA FELT AFTER MJ RETIREDOne of my favorite type of lists to look at are the Turn of the Century rankings that they did in '99/'00.
These lists are essentially ranking a player's "Legacy" rather than their "Production", since there are so many different sports and impossible comparisons involved...
ESPN SportsCentury Top 100 US Athletes of the 20th century (1999) Code: Select all
1. Jordan (1st ranked athlete overall)
2. Wilt (13th)
3. Magic (17th)
4. Russell (18th)
5. Kareem (26th)
6. Bird (30th)
7. Oscar (36th)
8. Erving (43rd)
9. Baylor (58th)
10. West (62nd)
This was voted on by a panel of sports journalists and observers and was a big deal at the time as they would air documentaries for these athletes on ESPN. This occurred right after MJ's 2nd 3-peat and retirement so he is considered a Sports God in this moment and best athlete of the past 100 years. Kareem is considered the 5th best NBA player and 26th best overall athlete. ESPN wasn't the only one with a list around this time.
Sports Illustrated Top 25 Greatest US Athletes of the 20th Century (1999)Code: Select all
1. Jordan (2nd ranked overall)
2. Wilt (4th)
3. Russell (11th)
4. Bird (15th)
5. Magic (19th)
This was a book written by Tim Crothers and John Garrity for Sports Illustrated, I'm not sure how they came up with the criteria but it is yet another list where MJ is ranked as possibly the best overall athlete of the prior 100 years and Kareem isn't even in the Top 25 or Top 4 of his own sport. What's especially interesting about this list is that Wilt is Top 5 and Russell knocking on Top 10 overall, so a clear gap between them and Kareem. I'll throw up one more list for further context of the "feeling" at the time.
Associated Press Sports Writers' Top 100 Poll (1999)Code: Select all
1. Jordan (2nd ranked overall)
2. Wilt (10th)
3. Russell (16th)
4. Bird (24th)
5. Oscar (26th)
6. Kareem (31st)
7. Magic (32nd)
8. Erving (57th)
9. West (60th)
10. Baylor (74th)
This was voted by a 16-member panel of athletes/writers/historians and actually had their voting tally and list of voters available online. MJ is once again in the mix for the best overall athlete of the previous century while Kareem can't cut the Top 25 overall or Top 5 of his own sport.
In terms of public perception, the NBA GOAT debate didn't exist after MJ retired. Wilt was probably the most popular #2 choice at this point but not really a threat to MJ's status as the GOAT.
At this point in time, there appears to be a real consensus from the pro sports media world that Babe Ruth/Muhammad Ali/Michael Jordan were the 3 clear "greatest" US-based sports figures of the previous 100 years. Again, their definition of "greatest" has a lot more to do with intangible qualities and their status as American pop cultural icons than just a measure of pure athletic production. But it speaks to how Jordan was perceived at the time.
It also speaks to the fact that Kareem simply didn't "connect" as an icon in the same way. Most Points Ever, Famous/Dominant since HS in NYC, Dominant in most popular College at time, 6 MVPs + 6 titles, played for the LA Lakers, made cameos in successful movies... and yet it seems like he's considered the 6th best player and clear 3rd best Center in league history around 1999/2000.
HOW NBA COACHES/GMs/PLAYERS FELT IN 1986But just because Kareem was ranked as being the ~6th best player ever by the sports media in 1999, it doesn't mean everybody felt that way about him. In 1986 at the All-Star Game; the Dallas Morning News got a 60-person panel made up of current/former GMs, current/former coaches, and former players to vote for the greatest basketball player ever. They also did a list specifically for Centers which is obviously interesting as well...
Dallas Morning News The Greatest Player Poll (1986 All-Star Game)Code: Select all
1. Kareem (18 votes)
2. Oscar (14)
3. Russell (13)
4. Wilt (6)
5. Bird (4)
6. Baylor (2)
Dallas Morning News The Greatest Center Poll (1986 All-Star Game)Code: Select all
1. Kareem (23.5 votes)
2. Russell (16.5)
3. Wilt (16.5)
4. Mikan (2)
This should make Kareem fans feel a little bit better after the disrespect from the media earlier.
This is from an expert group of GMs/Coaches/Players NOT THE MEDIA. It's not in some landslide blowout decision, but in '86 after crossing Wilt's points mark it appears that the NBA world is comfortable crowning Kareem as probably the best player ever. Interestingly, his ex-teammate Oscar Robertson shows up very well on this list which backs up my recollection on how both old players and writers used to love him. Thanks to Guard-bias in most fans and the three-way Center battle, Oscar had a real GOAT argument at the time. Bird was already considered the GOAT Forward and a GOAT candidate, interestingly Magic was not even in the GOAT Guard picture yet.
So why is there such a big discrepancy in Kareem's rankings between the '86 list of GMs/Coaches/Players and '99 lists from the media? Kareem actually won 2 more titles, 3 more All-Star teams, and 5th place finish in the '86 MVP race after this vote; so you'd think that would help his case if anything. But nope, the media has him dropped out of the Top 5 and nowhere close to MJ at the end of MJ's career. I believe it was a combo of 2 things.
#1 is that Magic ascended in '87 and finally looked like the best player in basketball over Bird as Kareem aged into the secondary role. During the '87-'91 5-year stretch, Magic wins 3 MVPs/2 Rings/1 Finals MVP while Kareem is a clear sidekick/retired. This combined with the fact that Kareem's previous lone title came with Oscar Robertson (the guy who finished #2 on the All-Time list to him) as his sidekick, I think it made people reconsider how much Kareem was responsible for winning as he didn't win without Magic/Oscar.
#2 is that there appears like there was a Wilt renaissance sometime in the late 90s/early 00s as people realized that the only person who had previously matched MJ's volume scoring stats were Wilt, and Wilt was doing more than just match those scoring stats. Wilt scoring 100 and averaging 50 seemed ludicrous in an era when the Knicks and later Pistons were holding teams to 70. To further back-up that theory, it appears that Wilt finished 2nd to MJ in the 2003 RealGM Top 100 list and then ended up being #1 on the 2006 RealGM list (Kareem at 3rd).
But in the last 10 years or so the tide has turned as more and more basketball fans have learned the importance of valuing scoring efficiency instead just pure volume. Not even just individual scoring efficiency but trying to figure out how much impact on team offensive efficiency a player has. Kareem seems to have re-gained a pretty clear lead on Wilt in these greatest lists.
Basketball fandom is slowly adopting more of a Baseball-WAR type of way of ranking players in terms of accumulated value over their entire careers with more value on longevity than previous generations had. HOW I FEEL ABOUT KAREEM'S GOAT CASE TODAYSo I will be clear on what my GOAT list measures. Unlike the media and some other fans, I do not care about narrative. I do not care about the aesthetic quality of their game unless it affects them in a practical way. I am not ranking a player's "Legacy" like the media was attempting at the turn of the Millennium.
I am simply ranking how much a player's mere presence helped their team/can help any team in winning as much as they can.Does Kareem's Peak Year or Three Measure Up?Like a lot of you, one of the most important aspects of a player to me is how high they peak. If you want to be in my GOAT mix, you need to have a peak that is atleast in range of the best ever. With Kareem, there are 3 seasons in particular that I want to focus on.
1971: 32/16/3 on .606 TS%, leading All-Time Great 66-16 NBA Champions (MVP + Finals MVP)
This was truly a masterpiece of a season from Sophomore Kareem. His regular season combination of scoring volume + efficiency was game-breaking. Kareem led the league in PPG at 31.7 per game and his .606 TS% ranked 2nd in the league to a guy by the name of Johnny Green who had a .607 TS%.
In terms of "Historical True Shooting Points Added", Kareem's 453.0 TS Add in '71 ranks 3rd all-time. The only players to ever surpass that TS Add number? Himself the next year in 1972 (460.4) and Steph Curry when he broke the game in 2016 (454.7).But did the crazy Individual TS Add numbers actually impact the team, or were they lacking like with Dantley and even with Barkley? Well they were #1 in offense by far in '71, along with the #1 SRS and DRtg. This was an absolutely all-time great team that ran through the league. "Sansterre's Top 100 teams of the Shot Clock era" project was really wonderful, even if I didn't fully agree with the rankings (link below). The 1971 Bucks rank as the 3rd best team in his view based on their RS + Playoff domination, trailing only the '17 Warriors and '96 Bulls.
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2012241Hmm... so GOAT level combination of individual scoring volume and efficiency, leading to a GOAT level team with a historic offense. Also the anchor and dominant rim protector of the #1 ranked defense in the league. Yea... I'd say this qualifies as a GOAT-worthy peak. Is it definitely #1? No, I don't think so. But it's not far from the very top.
One thing I like to make sure is if a player's theoretical peak looks like a bit of an outlier. Well, with Kareem it's actually not even generally accepted that '71 was his best season. Most would say '77 or '80.
Kareem was the regular season MVP and Finals MVP in '71. He was the regular season MVP and SHOULD HAVE BEEN Finals MVP in 1980. That's a decade later with a completely different cast on a different team. While the '71 regular season was better, the 1980 Playoff run is arguably the best we've ever seen from a Center. 32/12/3 on .611 TS% and 3.9 BPG while eviscerating 3 very good 55+ win teams in the Suns, defending Champ Sonics, and 76ers. He was a man on a mission that season, and it was an underrated carry job as Magic wasn't what he'd become later yet.
'77 was just probably the best individual version of him as a player. He won MVP at the age of 29, with a deeper set of offensive skills and more strength than '71 but with the kind of defensive activity/rebounding that we didn't see by '80. He scored on Bill Walton at absolute will in the '77 series, despite that form of Walton being considered a defensive savant. 30 PPG on 60% FG shooting. The problem for Kareem was that he didn't have the guard-play needed to advance.
Either way you look at it, 1971/1977/1980 are 3 years where Kareem just annihilated the league. His Peak is absolutely one of the best ever. Easiest thing to do is just look at the 2019 GOAT Peaks Project (link below), Kareem's '77 season ranks 5th all-time which seems fair.
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1909659&p=79708590#p79708590Kareem's Prime/Longevity vs. other GOAT candidates?Another one of my favorite RealGM Projects ever is the original Retro Player of the Year Project. In my opinion, the discussions on those threads are the best discussions I've seen on this site. The quality of information and knowledge that was being dropped was truly a pleasure to read.
Based on that project, there seem to be 9 guys who really sort of stood above the rest in terms of RealGM POY Shares. Russell, LeBron, Kareem, Jordan, Wilt, Magic, Duncan, Bird, Shaq. Those 9 are pretty much the consensus around the internet these days with Kobe/Hakeem typically being the next in line. I wanted to compare roughly where those players ranked in the league during their best seasons. For example; in Tim Duncan's 10 best ranked years in that project he finished as the #1 player 4x, the #2 player 3x, the #5 player 2x, the #6 player 1x. This is how everyone else in that Top 9 ranks by that method for best 10 seasons.
Best 10 Seasons:Player ------ 1st ---- 2nd ---- 3rd ------ 4th ------ 5th ------ 6th ----- 7th ------ 8th ------ 9th ------ 10th
LeBron ------
9 ------
1 ------- x -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Jordan ------
9 ------ x -------
1 -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Kareem -----
8 ------
2 ------- x -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Russell ------
7 ------
3 ------- x -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Wilt ---------
4 ------
3 -------
3 -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Duncan -----
4 ------
3 ------- x -------- x ---------
2 ---------
1 -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Bird ---------
4 ------
2 -------
2 --------
1 --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Shaq --------
3 ------
2 -------
3 --------
1 ---------
1 --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Magic -------
1 ------
7 -------
2 -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Even among those 9, you can see the top 4 really separate itself with the amount of seasons being considered the best player in the league. Kareem's 8 1st place rankings are the 3rd most ever behind just MJ/LeBron, with 2 more 2nd place finishes to 'round it out among his 10 best years. His best 10 years are supposed to be where he lags behind MJ/Russell and even LeBron, but it looks like he holds up just fine and more than passes the smell test when it comes to how dominant they were in their extended primes. So Kareem has the Peak and the Prime, how about the impact seasons he had beyond those? We already saw where those players landed in their 10 best ranked seasons, let's see where they landed in their 11th best season and beyond.
11th Best season and beyondPlayer ------ 1st ---- 2nd ---- 3rd ------ 4th ------ 5th ------ 6th ----- 7th ------ 8th ------ 9th ------ 10th
Russell ------ x ------
2 -------
1 -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
LeBron ------ x ------
1 -------
1 -------- x ---------
2 --------- x -------- x -------- x ---------
2 -------- x ---
Kareem ----- x ------ x -------
1 --------
1 ---------
2 ---------
2 -------- x --------
1 --------- x -------- x ---
Wilt --------- x ------ x ------- x --------
2 --------- x ---------
1 -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Jordan ------ x ------ x ------- x --------
1 --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Magic ------- x ------ x ------- x -------- x ---------
1 --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
Duncan ----- x ------ x ------- x -------- x --------- x ---------
2 --------
1 --------
1 --------- x -------- x ---
Shaq -------- x ------ x ------- x -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x --------
1 --------- x -------- x ---
Bird --------- x ------ x ------- x -------- x --------- x --------- x -------- x -------- x --------- x -------- x ---
You can really see how Kareem/LeBron stand out from the rest in terms of longevity. It's not like they're still competing for the best player in the league crown, but they're clearly still in that Top 10 mix for longer than the others. Kareem with 17, LeBron with 16, Russell with 13, and MJ with 11. Kareem's longevity looks as advertised, he was a brilliant player for a long long time. If anything, the most noteworthy thing is that MJ is 2 full seasons behind even Russell in terms of impactful longevity and 6 behind Kareem. Although to be fair, the following needs to be mentioned...
RealGM POY Shares1. Bill Russell ----------------- 10.96 shares (13 seasons)
2. LeBron James ------------- 10.89 shares (16 seasons)
3. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar ---- 10.22 shares (17 seasons)
4. Michael Jordan ------------- 9.58 shares (11 seasons)
So even with the longevity edge, you can see how Kareem/LeBron don't necessarily blow MJ/Russell out of the water in terms of POY shares. When MJ won POY, it was by a much clearer margin than by what Kareem won it by. I would also say the competition was even deeper in the years MJ was ranked #1 than Kareem, making MJ's concentration of POY shares even more impressive.
TLDR... MJ's legacy and iconic stature ascended into rare company after his 2nd retirement. His peers at this time in the eyes of the media weren't other historic NBA players; they were Ali and Babe Ruth at least in terms of American history.
Kareem's legacy unfortunately never reached that status as he didn't have that "x-factor" to become a massive pop culture phenomenon. Despite being called the best player in history by ex-Coaches/GMs/players in 1986, in less than 15 years he was struggling to make the Top 5 on the media's list.
But Kareem's resume speaks for itself and just because the media didn't appreciate him doesn't mean they were right and he was overrated as a player. His accolades, individual success, team success, peak performance, prime length, and two-way play all scream GOAT tier. He is not my GOAT, I rank him 3rd. But it's pretty easy to see how he could be ranked #1.