What is your criteria for choosing the greatest careers?

[70sFan]

There's not zero footage of the 60s though. There is just alot less footage. There's enough to form a view about the quality of the league

I think there are less than 10 full NBA games from the 1960s available. That's less than one game per season.

Do you consider this enough to talk about the quality of the league? Seriously?

[One_and_Done]

I do. You apparently can rate it well off the footage that exists, not seeing why I can't form the opposite view.

[70sFan]

I do. You apparently can rate it well off the footage that exists, not seeing why I can't form the opposite view.

No, I do not. I never said that the whole league is amazing or garbage, because such generalisations are pointless to me.

If you can though, then I hope you will explain me why it's so clear to you. I can even provide all the footage that's available if you wish. I hope you can also explain me why suddenly the league wasn't garbage when the time hits the magical number of 1970.

[OhayoKD]

This is going to be an interesting Top 100!

Mikan got mentioned above. I don't think the "Mikan problem" has even been adequately dealt with. If you believe that greatness is about how much you dominated your contemporaries (vs. absolute basketball ability/sophistication, the debate at hand here), then you must think every Top 100 to date has drastically underrated Mikan (and Pettit, probably). Or, you adjust for quality of contemporaries, in which case I wonder whether you consistently apply such adjustment to the players of today and/or believe this is not a strong era either. I suppose a third, and likely widely held, alternative is that you do believe in a cumulative model of basketball ability and hold that there was just a massive gulf between the quality of 1940s/50s NBA basketball and everything that came thereafter (and no additional such gulfs going forward), but I'd wonder how you can hold such an opinion when honestly comparing some of the reserves (particularly bigs) of say, the 1990s, to today's margins of the league.

I actually think having Mikan at the edge of top 30 is fair if you heavily respect total career value. Mikan has one of the greatest peaks ever, but his NBA career is very short and to put him much higher, you'd have to value his peak way higher than other GOAT candidates. I think I'd have Mikan close to top 20 because of that, though I didn't evaluate his pre-1950 seasons yet.

Thanks for that added nuance. Yes, an unstated premise of my post is that I would expect his peak, in a consistent evaluation, blows most others away. But you're right that he is penalized for a shorter NBA career than most. I still wonder whether he and his league are regarded fairly, but I guess that'll be a great topic to revisit when the project begins!

Mikan was voted 30th in the peaks project. I do not think it's simply a matter of career value

[Dutchball97]

I actually think having Mikan at the edge of top 30 is fair if you heavily respect total career value. Mikan has one of the greatest peaks ever, but his NBA career is very short and to put him much higher, you'd have to value his peak way higher than other GOAT candidates. I think I'd have Mikan close to top 20 because of that, though I didn't evaluate his pre-1950 seasons yet.

Thanks for that added nuance. Yes, an unstated premise of my post is that I would expect his peak, in a consistent evaluation, blows most others away. But you're right that he is penalized for a shorter NBA career than most. I still wonder whether he and his league are regarded fairly, but I guess that'll be a great topic to revisit when the project begins!

Mikan was voted 30th in the peaks project. I do not think it's simply a matter of career value

But that's also because of a significant chunk of voters just not considering Mikan. Era-relative Mikan has a top 5 peak at the very worst, he was miles ahead of his competition.

[penbeast0]

I never said Thurmond was a g-leaguer. If you see my amended post you will note I recognise that players played across era; that's exactly what we should look at to help evaluate these eras. We may just disagree about the evaluation.

You will also see, if you look at the numbers, that players who played in the sixties were more, rather than less, successful into the 70s relative to normal age markers. Havlicek, West, Thurmond, Barry, Walker, Cunningham (but not Walt Bellamy). . . if you stayed healthy, didn't age out, and didn't get caught up in the drugs, you probably improved your age normed stats into the 70s because of the much greater number of weak teams. In the 60s, just looking at centers, in 1966 you were playing against Russell, Chamberlain, Thurmond in third of your games, add Zelmo Beaty and Bellamy (Willis Reed was playing PF next to Bellamy) and you have more than half the 9 teams starting HOF centers. Go forward a decade to 1976 and (ignoring the ABA) you have McAdoo, Kareem, Cowens, Lanier, half a year of Walton, Unseld, so 5 1/2 HOF centers v. 5 but spread over twice as many teams (18). There is a serious dilution of talent particularly at the top where it is tougher to find great players where it's not as difficult to find good ones.

The 70s expansion and most likely the early to mid 80s as well seriously diluted the player pool of greats compared to the 1960s and unlike the modern game v. 2013, the style of play was probably weaker as the ABA give players more of an incentive to play for themselves rather than the team (plus higher rates of cocaine use). The growth of steroid use and weight work did create stronger and probably more athletic players and the improvement in sneakers gave them greater ability to jump and land but the stars who were playing in the 60s and still healthy seemed to have no difficulty transitioning into the 70s.

[ShaqAttac]

I actually think having Mikan at the edge of top 30 is fair if you heavily respect total career value. Mikan has one of the greatest peaks ever, but his NBA career is very short and to put him much higher, you'd have to value his peak way higher than other GOAT candidates. I think I'd have Mikan close to top 20 because of that, though I didn't evaluate his pre-1950 seasons yet.

Thanks for that added nuance. Yes, an unstated premise of my post is that I would expect his peak, in a consistent evaluation, blows most others away. But you're right that he is penalized for a shorter NBA career than most. I still wonder whether he and his league are regarded fairly, but I guess that'll be a great topic to revisit when the project begins!

I think the early 1950s aren't regarded fairly at all in such discussions, but we will see when it will go this time.

I don't think we have any reasons to believe that Mikan is clearly better relative to league average than any other GOAT candidate to be honest. He's definitely in discussion, but I disagree that nobody ever reached his level of dominance. I am not super informed of pre-1955 NBA either though, so maybe we'll get some great information in the future debates.

wasnt he waay better than everyone else in the league?

[70sFan]

Thanks for that added nuance. Yes, an unstated premise of my post is that I would expect his peak, in a consistent evaluation, blows most others away. But you're right that he is penalized for a shorter NBA career than most. I still wonder whether he and his league are regarded fairly, but I guess that'll be a great topic to revisit when the project begins!

I think the early 1950s aren't regarded fairly at all in such discussions, but we will see when it will go this time.

I don't think we have any reasons to believe that Mikan is clearly better relative to league average than any other GOAT candidate to be honest. He's definitely in discussion, but I disagree that nobody ever reached his level of dominance. I am not super informed of pre-1955 NBA either though, so maybe we'll get some great information in the future debates.

wasnt he waay better than everyone else in the league?

Ian that true for all GOAT candidates?

[ShaqAttac]

I think the early 1950s aren't regarded fairly at all in such discussions, but we will see when it will go this time.

I don't think we have any reasons to believe that Mikan is clearly better relative to league average than any other GOAT candidate to be honest. He's definitely in discussion, but I disagree that nobody ever reached his level of dominance. I am not super informed of pre-1955 NBA either though, so maybe we'll get some great information in the future debates.

wasnt he waay better than everyone else in the league?

Ian that true for all GOAT candidates?

u got mj way better than keem? isn't their "impact" similar. also wasnt wilt n russ close?

[lessthanjake]

I think it’s probably a bit overrated the extent to which anyone was way better than the rest of the league. It’s usually the case that that didn’t really feel true during the time period in question but kind of becomes deemed retroactively true based on playoff results (which are often themselves at least in part a product of randomness, untimely injuries, etc.). And people forget that a player might be clearly the best over a long time horizon while not actually being clearly the best in many individual years.

For instance, how many years was it just unequivocally obvious throughout that LeBron was the NBA’s best player? You did actually have plenty of years where guys like Kobe, Steph, and others were either considered better or at least not way below LeBron. I think LeBron had a period in the middle of his time on the Heat where he really was just clearly way better than everyone else, but I don’t think it was the case for most of his career, and I think as we get further and further away from it people will think he was more consistently way better than everyone else than he actually was. The same is true of Jordan to some degree, IMO. For instance, in the first half of his career, Jordan was not clearly way better than Magic. I’m not old enough to have been watching basketball in the 1970s, but I suspect a similar thing was probably the case with Kareem in the 1970s.

[DQuinn1575]

If you mean that the 70s had more advanced coaching, techniques, and equipment (mainly shoes) that hadn't been there in the 60s, fine. If you mean the 70s had stronger average teams, deeper and with more outstanding players per franchise, I think you are pretty clearly wrong.

The 70s were actually a lot weaker in terms of team stars, depth, unit cohesion, etc. than the 60s, even ignoring the ABA. The population was expanding but not at anywhere close to the way the size of the league was expanding, doubling the number of times by 1976 (again, even ignoring the drain of some talent to the ABA). The only real top line stars who stood out the way Wilt, Russell, Oscar, and West stood out in the 60s were Kareem and in the ABA Erving. Plus the threat of jumping leagues and contract poaching meant there was more playing for stats and less playing for the team. Oh, and cocaine took its toll too. The 70s were my era but the idea that the competition was much stronger then than in the 60s is unrealistic.

The US population from ages 25-29 in 1960 was 5.3 million
In 1976 that number was 9.0 million

So the population of people basketball playing age did almost double in this time period.
In 1960 there were 24 Blacks total that appeared in the NBA.
In 1976 that number was 162.


The talent pool in the 70s far outpaced expansion.

[70sFan]

wasnt he waay better than everyone else in the league?

Ian that true for all GOAT candidates?

u got mj way better than keem? isn't their "impact" similar. also wasnt wilt n russ close?

Jordan peaked before Hakeem peaked.
Russell and Wilt were reasonably close, but it's an outlier situation.

[DQuinn1575]

I think the early 1950s aren't regarded fairly at all in such discussions, but we will see when it will go this time.

I don't think we have any reasons to believe that Mikan is clearly better relative to league average than any other GOAT candidate to be honest. He's definitely in discussion, but I disagree that nobody ever reached his level of dominance. I am not super informed of pre-1955 NBA either though, so maybe we'll get some great information in the future debates.

wasnt he waay better than everyone else in the league?

Ian that true for all GOAT candidates?

Make any caveat you want about league strength, but relative to his time:
Mikan played 2 years in the NBL and 6 in the NBA, retired, then played 1 more year.
In the first 8 years he won 7 titles.
His first year he played a partial season and dominated the playoffs.
Second year he was MVP
In his first 5 NBA years he was 1st or 2nd in scoring all 5 years, and led the league in rebounding the 3 years stats were kept.

So, best/2nd best scorer and rebounder in league for best team in league 7 years (okay they didnt win 1 of those 7). A tItle in the 8th year as he does slow down a little.

In terms of peak to his era, he probably really comes in at 2nd only to Jordan.

Then he only had 8 great seasons. But Curry is a 9x All-Star, Bird and Magic have 11 great seasons.
Again if you disregard league quality I think you really should put him in Top 10 all-time.

So take him at that, and then adjust for era the amount you feel is appropriate. That's the hard part.

[DQuinn1575]

As I said, players can trascend their league, but the league a player dominated is extremely relevant. I'd have Kareem top 3 probably, whereas I wouldn't have Mikan top 100. It depends on the context.

For what it's worth I'd likely have Jokic top 20ish, but part of that is I wouldn't have a number of luminaries from the 60s in the top 20 so there's more space in my top 20.

Lastly I disagree there is no point of comparison, because these eras were not sectioned off. There are guys like Wilt and Kareem and Lebron and Duncan who played across multiple eras.

But you get guys like Dolph Schayes, Ray Felix, Larry Foust, Clyde Lovellette, Charley Share who were all able to play in a league dominated by Mikan and then dominated by Wilt
And then Wilt (and others from the early 60s) playing vs Kareem.

Challenge I always have is if you span 20 years you got guys in the middle who were competitive on 1 end or the other.

[OhayoKD]

Ian that true for all GOAT candidates?

u got mj way better than keem? isn't their "impact" similar. also wasnt wilt n russ close?

Jordan peaked before Hakeem peaked.
Russell and Wilt were reasonably close, but it's an outlier situation.

Eh. They were draft-mates at the same age whose consensus "peak" were only a few years apart. Maybe if you're being very strict with peak(1-year) but it's not the same as Mikan being ahead of everyone else by a margin for the duration of his career.

I'd say Hakeem and MJ swept places between who was "better" throughout with Jordan's retirement helping him mantain during his supposed post-prime while Hakeem had better raw longetvity without the breaks at the cost of post-prime effectiveness.

Currently I have it as
85-87 -> Hakeem
89-91 -> MJ
93-95 -> Hakeem
96-98 -> MJ

Swing years:
88
92

And you then can put whatever value you think of the extra minutes Hakeem played as you want.

[One_and_Done]

As I said, players can trascend their league, but the league a player dominated is extremely relevant. I'd have Kareem top 3 probably, whereas I wouldn't have Mikan top 100. It depends on the context.

For what it's worth I'd likely have Jokic top 20ish, but part of that is I wouldn't have a number of luminaries from the 60s in the top 20 so there's more space in my top 20.

Lastly I disagree there is no point of comparison, because these eras were not sectioned off. There are guys like Wilt and Kareem and Lebron and Duncan who played across multiple eras.

But you get guys like Dolph Schayes, Ray Felix, Larry Foust, Clyde Lovellette, Charley Share who were all able to play in a league dominated by Mikan and then dominated by Wilt
And then Wilt (and others from the early 60s) playing vs Kareem.

Challenge I always have is if you span 20 years you got guys in the middle who were competitive on 1 end or the other.

I don't see it this way. Those guys were not overlapping rivals who challenged Wilt. There's poor points of cross era comparison for the 50s to the 60s for the most part. The 60s to the 70s has better examples of guys cross eras, and the 70s to the 80s moreso.

[OhayoKD]

This is late but...

Well alright, I suppose I could summarize my general approach. I generally like to start as broad as possible and then narrow down. General goal is to get a general range of value for an individual player at various points, then adjust for context, andthen, if era translation is required, apply the precepts of "league generally gets better" and "scarcity is value" and map to specific strengths and weaknesses.

For now I'll focus in on my era-relative placement process.

Step 1 is to just accumulate holistic evidence. What is the WOWY(always start with the biggest possible samples imo), what are potential sources of team improvement or decline, what's the regularized stuff saying(ideally look at volume and per-possession effiency), on/off, what is box-stuff saying, rs and playoffs, key to map out as much as possible as opposed to simply choosing a year based on perception. I like to look at what the high view, and the low views are. Even with a specific sample of WOWY, you can get different extrapolations based on different decisions(do you use srs or record? do you treat a player as a like for like replacement, if there's a minuites restriction, do you adjust?) In the 97 thread, that was actually a big focus of the mj discourse. Also keep in mind starting points, generally easier to elevate a 20 win team by 20 than a 50 win team(though thats not neccesarily a hard-set rule depending on the player type, some truth to "cieling raising/floor raising distinction"). With limited available, "weaker signals" may be useful to look at(olympic point diff record/pre-nba dominance with russell and kareem, partial rapm form peak mj) as a supplement.

Step 2 is adjusting for context, analyze potential sources of improvement, analyze spots where player may grow in value or decline in value, maybe establish predictions of where they should and shouldn't output value and then see if we have test-cases(so for Lebron you have the theory of cieling raising/spacing dependency and then you have spots where he defies it to some extent(2015, 2020, 2012)). Consider situation, is team having coke crisis, is FO antagonizing player unprompted, is coach competent(in this light Hakeem hitting some of the best notes of his era is very impressive(best examples of lift arguably, most impressive win maybe(lakers), single-star title, ect)). Also consider if individual metrics rising or dropping correspond with team rising and dropping(you can do this with defense, offense, or holistically).

Step 3 is weighting the holistics. Again sample size is a big consideration, but also specific player make-up. If there's outlier WOWY, then artificially capped rapm (and its derivatives) will probably be misattributing value, off-ball creation or paint protection as strengths will probably lead to weak box-score rep. Helio's may be better at elevating from lower points than they are from higher points(lebron/magic) and reverse may be true with non-helio's(curry/jordan). WOWY always has some utility as giving teams the opportunity to adapt, and going off a bigger sample is a strength vs more modern impact analysis which is looking at lineup data(as it should). To me it's like a sniff test, and if certain things are consistently disagreeing with it while others aren't, I get skeptical.

Also important to remember the time-based limitations of data. Kareem's RS ws/48 from 71-73 looks goated(and tracks with what a WOWY+context analysis of 71-75 would lead to imo), but his playoff score looks horrible because...the data is incomplete. Whatever you think of RAPTOR(apparently it ranges from sub-pipm to only behind direct-rapm depending on the test), if you're using it to assess older-era players, its basically stripped down to a PER-esque metric as player-tracking/plus-minus(which in every test seems to make data more predictive/stable) are gone. D-PIPM can do a bit better because its box component is tied to d-rapm but the offensive accuracy plummets(box-component is sub raptor's while full stat is more predictive and taken more seriously by nba teams).

Obviously consider sample size(wowyr suggests Russell is winning 11 rings with 35 win help, but that's only off 2.2 games a season, 82 game sample from 70 and 57 are probably better too work off), and consider additions/subtractions and the effect(Lebron is still anchoring an elite defense without second best defender in 09/10, Kareem is leading 62 win pace team without Oscar, Rodman looks really good in impact stuff(kd-esque wowy), Hondo sees their production skyrocket in 1970 and replacement for bill is drafted, defense rises and collapses with Oakley, ect, ect.)

Step 4 is to look for replication, if a player scores at or within range of the top at basically everything multiple times over in multiple contexts(Kareem and Lebron more or less) in close to every possible frame(playoff, rs, playoff+rs, floor-raising, cieling-raising, blah blah blah), then my instinct is to trust consensus and rate them accordingly(which is why right now, Lebron and Kareem are my two best post-russell/wilt peaks. Lebron actually does the best in terms of replication imo (by a margin), but Kareem has the "led a goat rs and po level team with probably not spectacular help" feather in his cap). Also accept uncertainty(we don't have everything on Russell, but what we have indicates he has a GOATED era-relative prime, and Wilt can scale off that to an extent. No reason to think in black and white and dismiss all that due to "not being enough info".)

Step 5 sort of builds for step 4, but basically its to look for resiliency, playoff performance, whether performance drops the longer a series goes on, whether they can remain impactful when certain parts of their game are hindered(2015 lebron and 2019 Giannis are good examples of this. Curry outplaying KD while injured, Flu game, also good examples.).

Step 6, assess off-court stuff. Is a player causing problems/instigating, are they operating as secondary coaches, weigh the good vs the bad, and remember that just because a player happens to win in a specific context does not mean that what they're doing off the court is positive(better to look at general trends to determine what is good or bad imo). Bill Russell is the clear GOAT here

Finally Step 7 is to consider longevity/sustained excellence. Even if you only care about peaks/primes, it's a good idea to remember that players who play longer will generally see averages dip and have more "bad" moments. If you don't want to credit players for that, fine. But don't penalize them for it.

With all that considered, I'm going to offer my own peak/prime/career val in case you're wondering how this can shape out. You are welcome to scrutinize/challenge anything here. Keep in mind this is purely era-relative and post shot-clock.

This is many months old and may not be the most refined draft, but I think that coves most of the bases. I had a preamble on the award-voting thread which covers some of the gaps.

[Tim Lehrbach]

My criterion for this project, part two:

Sport, like other durable elements of culture, is a meaning-making and meaning-signaling activity. When we participate, spectate, or reflect upon sport, we tell stories about ourselves and each other as individuals, as groups, and humans generally. Sport, it has been argued elsewhere, is ultimately about these meaningful narratives. It would not be such a durable feature of cultures if it did not provide meaning: it is less practical than noncompetitive exercise, it is far more demanding than nonathletic games and other pastimes that are not sports, and it is less accessible than art and especially popular culture. The practice, performance, observation, and affiliation of sport incites emotional investment and inspiration that would be inexplicable without the private and shared stories that attend its performance and the personal and societal circumstances which both contribute to its context and are themselves informed by the sports contained within them.

Where am I going with this? Well, we’re here to tell stories about basketball players. We’re here, more specifically, to compare the quality of stories told about basketball players. Personally, I don’t find The Greatest of All Time to be a particularly compelling comparison. Ranking competitors, especially according to moving targets of measurable achievement, is but one, historically situated kind of narrative among many. This elevation of sport as measure of human excellence has pluses and minuses, but while we take the pluses for granted, we rarely look at the drawbacks.

Yet, for better or worse, The Greatest of All Time means a lot to us, or at least to the forces shaping the dominant culture around our appreciation for elite sport. I don't believe I can wish away the impulse to assemble and revere an ultimate ranking of competitors. So, for the first time, I'm going to try to lend my (probably very lonely) perspective. Based on previous projects, I expect others to deliver impressive data, analysis, anecdotes, and video evidence. I have very little to offer on those fronts that has not already been uncovered and discussed. What I’d like to do instead is draw attention to the quality of the narratives that different players’ careers have generated. I believe this should be an important part of whether and how we appreciate them.

This point of view – emphasizing narrative – is not popular among close observers of the game, as unfortunately it conjures ideas about, for example, cultural influence, “killer instinct”/clutchness, or being “the man.” Some of these are weak narratives, others outright detrimental to sport, but I find it interesting they are dismissed as something imaginary or, more often, reduced to something quantifiable because of the tacit acceptance that our evaluations of players must aspire to be scientific. Very often, as in the “killer instinct” chatter, there is a question regarding which we do have data implicit in the claim being made, so sometimes it is absolutely appropriate to counter such narratives with numbers. At other times, though, the narrative has a life of its own that should be reckoned with irrespective of its conduciveness to statistical analysis.

I am not at all suggesting that statistics are the wrong lens through which to view questions that do have a numerical answer. The correct approach to unsupported claims about a player’s impact is to find the best metrics we have to measure the question being asked or implied. Rather, I would ask that we let the narratives which emerge about players, or which they write themselves with intention, stand and be considered even when they cannot be quantified. To some extent, we’re all used to this when we discuss a player’s leadership qualities, his coachability, and his influence on contemporaries and successors. However intangible they may be, these aspects are still related to a player’s impact on winning basketball games. I’d like to suggest that we should be looking even more broadly at narratives than this. We should be asking about what stories a player’s career tells about him, how these stories contribute to the culture of the sport, and what, ultimately, we learn about ourselves and the activity of basketball itself by this culture.

Doctor MJ posted the following in the Voting Criteria Guidelines:

The RealGM Top 100 is focused on:
[…]
2. Competitive achievement rather [than] cultural innovation/influence.

To be clear, I am not trying to evaluate how players influenced popular culture or advanced the sport of basketball in the public imagination. Rather, my interest is in how players’ competitive achievements reflect upon the players’ athletic and character merits, on ourselves as observers, and on the nature of the sport itself. This is what I mean by “the culture of the sport.” How does a player epitomize what it means to be a basketball player, or what it should mean to be one? How does a player influence the very idea of The Greatest of All-Time? I revisit these questions below as I get more specific about my evaluation criteria.

Even at this juncture, I expect pushback, and if this were a full-on treatise I would lay out and respond to anticipated criticisms and limitations to my approach. But this needs to be fun and easy if I’m to remain engaged and make any difference here. So, on to my approach…

As I said, we are here to tell stories about basketball players. The Greatest of All-Time is not a single measurable trait, nor a product of a formula. Each case for the ultimate player or players in any sport is a narrative which leans upon evidence to make an argument on the merits. Each case is also, however, an appeal for support on the basis of what we value in athletic achievement. One question for which I do not have the definitive answer, and for which there may not be a single right answer, is whether the very idea of the GOAT favors certain kinds of arguments and appeals over others. That is to say, if we want to talk about the GOAT at all, do we commit ourselves to a certain lens through which we view the sport? Even in the absence of clarity on these questions, I argue both that we typically do make such commitments and, on the other hand, that we are not bound to do so.

What are the commitments we make when we go about deciding who to crown the GOAT? Here are some that I find to be consistent foundations:
1. Sport is about the results of the games because competition is about determining the best.
2. Results (wins and losses) can be reduced to the discrete events which produce them. In the study of basketball, increasingly, these events are possessions.
3. We can properly diagnose the causes of those events.
4. We can attribute those causes to players’ actions.
5. We can measure and ranked these attributions, and therefore the players themselves, for their value – their importance to the results of the game.
6. Such measuring and ranking are inherently valuable exercises and are, in fact, the natural consequences of participating in or observing sporting competition.
7. The more scientific our measures and rankings are, the better the job we do at celebrating the best and therefore at fulfilling the purpose of sport.

My participation in any GOAT-talk is, as much as anything else, an attempt to examine the work that these unstated premises are doing to shape the discussion around greatness in sports. While each one may seem uncontroversial at first glance, I have argued and will continue to argue that several are insufficiently supported by history, sociology, and data science. In combination, I believe they yield a view of team competition – here, of course, NBA basketball – which unevenly assigns worth to the competitors by assuming that winning is the most important element of the sport, by misapplying the tools we have for recording and analyzing what causes wins, and by marginalizing other considerations which cannot be so easily captured and related to statistical indicators of wins. The consequence of all this, in my view, is a project (GOAT-talk generally; I’m not singling out this effort) that is inherently underdetermined and possibly altogether myopic with respect to our appreciation of the sport and its participants.

And yet, for all this, the lure of the GOAT project is irresistible to so many that it cannot be hastily dismissed. We must ask why it holds such appeal, whether the activity needs rehabilitating, and what corrections and additional perspectives would enhance it. To these questions, I also have no answer, but that’s where the RealGM Top 100 comes in. I want to find out – and to help the effort to find out – whether a community of actively-engaged, informed, and creative basketball observers has room to reshape the debate, and what effects such reshaping may have on both the results of the project and how observers respond to them.

To these ends, I make the following admissions about my involvement:
1. I seek to advance a view of sport that is less bound to the contingencies of the measure-and-rank regime, that situates NBA athletes within a longer arc of sporting history, and that reckons with the meaningfulness (beyond purported impact on winning games) of players’ accomplishments to themselves and to the fans.
2. If my contributions are to matter at all, they will need serious help. I’m pleading from the jump that my framework be treated with seriousness by those who are better-educated about the sport than I am and who possess sharper rhetorical and statistical tools than I do. The truth is that I do not know what shape the GOAT debate takes if my own premises are followed to their conclusions. Further, I do not know who, if anybody, deserves to be called the #1, #2, #37, or honorably mentioned GOAT.
3. Because I begin from a place of such uncertainty in my personal approach, I will necessarily be offering more questions than answers in my posts. I will vote, and my votes like any others will be supported by arguments and appeals. However, you may find my methods unconventional and unconvincing as I try them out. This is, again, where I am asking for help. If there is any uptake to my questions or interest in exploring the beliefs and biases I bring to the project, it is highly probable that you will be able to make better cases on their bases than I can. Please do not hesitate to do so, especially if the exercise contradicts my arguments for or against specific players, which is the heart of the project.

And finally, with the caveat that all the preceding is what my participation in this project is really about, I reiterate the criterion I shared earlier in this thread:
1. How and to what level does the player exemplify the highest athletic and character achievements available to a basketball player? What story does each player tell us about ourselves as humans capable of greatness? In what respect does the player illustrate the very purpose (to competitors and spectators alike) for having the game of basketball?

These questions constitute a criterion about the quality of the narrative that emerges when a player’s accomplishments are experienced, examined, and felt by the basketball community. To arrive at a consistent set of answers to these questions, I will further ask regarding each player:
1. What are the qualities of the narratives surrounding this player’s career? Are they positive or negative? What flaws are to be found in the narratives themselves, and do they need to be revised?
2. What impact has the player had on the GOAT debate itself?
3. Is this impact positive or negative for appreciation of the sport?

The format of my responses will be brief characterizations of the player’s esteem, my commentary, and areas for further inquiry. The content of my responses will be a picture of each player’s unique kind of greatness. To be sure, a big part of this picture is how well each athlete mastered the sport. And contributions towards winning basketball games is the most direct way any of these competitors demonstrate their greatness. To an extent, therefore, my responses will lean on the work of others. Beyond this, however, I hope to provide different lenses through which we can all look at the achievements, good and bad, of players throughout NBA history.

[One_and_Done]

I dunno man, on reading that it certainly feels like a clear violation of the rule you cited.

[Tim Lehrbach]

I dunno man, on reading that it certainly feels like a clear violation of the rule you cited.

If this is so, I can be disqualified. Thoughts, Doctor MJ?