RealGM 2025 Greatest Peaks Project #6

[VanWest82]

00Shaq
67Wilt
62Russell

https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2469534&p=119391452&hilit=Shaq+Wilt+Russell#p119391452
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2469810&start=73
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2470174&p=119425744&hilit=Russell#p119425744

[Cavsfansince84]

I’m asking a question of myself. Do I value Jokic defense more than Russell’s offence?

Because I think the defensive value Russell brought was on the same level as Jokic offensively.

I think that's a fair question to ask and I would probably favor Russell's offense when you factor in off rebounding, pick setting and some playmaking.

Also, on a sidenote there are two posters(whose names both start with O) who I expressly told I was placing on block yet who keep quoting and responding to me that I wish would just stop doing so. I told both of you that I had no interest in engaging with you on here any more so there's no point in attempting to discuss anything with me.

[AEnigma]

00Shaq
67Wilt
62Russell

Please at least quote or link your prior ballots to this effect. While most of us reading along know why this is your ballot, future readers will not if they just happen to check in on this specific thread (as is often the case).

[One_and_Done]

For me I'm wrestling slightly with the case for the Curry/Jokic/Magic types, who give you a huge lift but come with weaknesses, versus the Kawhi/Giannis/KG type who have few to no weaknesses (none in Kawhi's case), but who maybe don't give you as much lift.

[AEnigma]

Not entirely following your expressed grouping there. One-way players versus two-way players, sure. But you are framing them as essentially higher variance outcomes versus lower variance outcomes, and by that approach I do not see why Jokic would be grouped with Curry or Magic, nor why Garnett’s “lift” would be meaningfully questioned by comparison.

[70sFan]

For me I'm wrestling slightly with the case for the Curry/Jokic/Magic types, who give you a huge lift but come with weaknesses, versus the Kawhi/Giannis/KG type who have few to no weaknesses (none in Kawhi's case), but who maybe don't give you as much lift.

Every player has weaknesses. Kawhi never was much of a volume playmaker and he's not much of a factor as a rim protector (even in secondary role).

[70sFan]

To be fair to Larry Brown, he coached the 2004 Pistons to a much more optimal Shaq strategy (against an admittedly lesser version of Shaq), but those Pistons had an insane personnel compared to those Sixers.

Ratiliff was injured and traded, but also wasn't bulkier than Dikembe. He was listed at 235lbs and was drafted 10 pounds lighter than that. Dikembe was listed at 260lbs. that year. There's no real track record of bulky centers having success against Shaq, but it was something teams constantly tried. Todd McCullough played real minutes againt Shaq in 2 different finals for 2 different teams.

I agree with everything you're saying about more active defenses, but Shaq was uniquely good at sealing guys. Lakers did all kinds of things to make Shaq a less stationary target so defenses couldn't load up on him. Shaq was unusually good at sneaking and powering into seals under the rim, where he's then a huge target to pass to, and he had elite catching mits.

Even though today's defenses are way better at making post-ups less efficient, Shaq has advantages that no one else ever has. He'd be used in pick & roll way more today, but I think those Shaq ducks in work in any era (after the 1970s or whenever they started allowing more contact from the offensive player).

Shaq also went off in the 2004 finals when the Pistons mostly played him straight up with Ben Wallace. My guess is it was a macho thing to pit Brown's DPOY center against Shaq one-on-one which seemed to be a relic of the post-Jordan era.

Shaq was probably the best ever at sealing deep but you can still make a catch very hard especially if the paint was as crowded as it was then. An older Pippen wreaked havoc on the Lakers offense in that 2000 series by just being extremely aggressive with a soft double without actually triggering illegal defense. Shaq is Shaq of course and he'd still find a way but those monster Finals performances against those east teams probably overstates how good his offense was.

With old man Pippen, that felt like the last part of his game that stayed elite. I'm not going off data here, just so many memories of a graying Pippen in baggy shorts getting those 7'3" arms everywhere in the playoffs.

Ben guarded Shaq a ton, and there were also some regular Elden Campbell minutes. Ben would do plenty of fronting, and they also weren't shy about bringing Ben up to the point of attack against screens for Kobe, while the other Pistons rotated behind the play and ignored shooters. Having Rasheed Wallace be able to step behind Shaq as a secondary rim protector was a hilarous luxury.

I remember a 2006 Suns regular season game against the Houston Rockets, where Boris Diaw and Shawn Marion ruined Yao Ming life for a night, just making impossible for him to get a clean catch. This is a few years later than prime Shaq, but I think defensively teams weren't conceding post touches lazily. Fronting the post and playing deny defense were basic fundamentals. Having the bodies to do it to Shaq was a different story.

I agree with cupcakesnake here - of course now teams have a few more tricks to front post players successfully (especially compared to the illegal defense era), but it's one thing to perform these strategies on regular basis and it's another to try it on Shaq. People keep talking about Portland doing reasonably well, but they had 7'3 300 lbs wall on him and two of the best help defenders in the league with immense length.

It's not that you can take any team today and just prevent Shaq from dominating you just by fronting him in the post. Good luck trying that without enough size, length and skill.

[One_and_Done]

For me I'm wrestling slightly with the case for the Curry/Jokic/Magic types, who give you a huge lift but come with weaknesses, versus the Kawhi/Giannis/KG type who have few to no weaknesses (none in Kawhi's case), but who maybe don't give you as much lift.

Every player has weaknesses. Kawhi never was much of a volume playmaker and he's not much of a factor as a rim protector (even in secondary role).

Not being able to do everything isn't the same thing as a weakness.

[70sFan]

For me I'm wrestling slightly with the case for the Curry/Jokic/Magic types, who give you a huge lift but come with weaknesses, versus the Kawhi/Giannis/KG type who have few to no weaknesses (none in Kawhi's case), but who maybe don't give you as much lift.

Every player has weaknesses. Kawhi never was much of a volume playmaker and he's not much of a factor as a rim protector (even in secondary role).

Not being able to do everything isn't the same thing as a weakness.

True, but Kawhi passing limitations were exploited a few times in the playoffs.

[One_and_Done]

Every player has weaknesses. Kawhi never was much of a volume playmaker and he's not much of a factor as a rim protector (even in secondary role).

Not being able to do everything isn't the same thing as a weakness.

True, but Kawhi passing limitations were exploited a few times in the playoffs.

1) not sure the degree to which that is even accurate, and
2) peak Kawhi wasn't exploited

Kawhi has things he can't do, but describing him as being 'exploited' is maybe a stretch.

[70sFan]

Not being able to do everything isn't the same thing as a weakness.

True, but Kawhi passing limitations were exploited a few times in the playoffs.

1) not sure the degree to which that is even accurate, and
2) peak Kawhi wasn't exploited

Kawhi has things he can't do, but describing him as being 'exploited' is maybe a stretch.

Maybe too dismissing language (I am not native speaker) but it is true that there were series when Kawhi's limited playmaking abilities were one of the key factors of his team's losing in the end.

Kawhi was fairly versatile and complete basketball player at his peak, but no player is without weaknesses.

[Peregrine01]

Shaq also went off in the 2004 finals when the Pistons mostly played him straight up with Ben Wallace. My guess is it was a macho thing to pit Brown's DPOY center against Shaq one-on-one which seemed to be a relic of the post-Jordan era.

Shaq was probably the best ever at sealing deep but you can still make a catch very hard especially if the paint was as crowded as it was then. An older Pippen wreaked havoc on the Lakers offense in that 2000 series by just being extremely aggressive with a soft double without actually triggering illegal defense. Shaq is Shaq of course and he'd still find a way but those monster Finals performances against those east teams probably overstates how good his offense was.

With old man Pippen, that felt like the last part of his game that stayed elite. I'm not going off data here, just so many memories of a graying Pippen in baggy shorts getting those 7'3" arms everywhere in the playoffs.

Ben guarded Shaq a ton, and there were also some regular Elden Campbell minutes. Ben would do plenty of fronting, and they also weren't shy about bringing Ben up to the point of attack against screens for Kobe, while the other Pistons rotated behind the play and ignored shooters. Having Rasheed Wallace be able to step behind Shaq as a secondary rim protector was a hilarous luxury.

I remember a 2006 Suns regular season game against the Houston Rockets, where Boris Diaw and Shawn Marion ruined Yao Ming life for a night, just making impossible for him to get a clean catch. This is a few years later than prime Shaq, but I think defensively teams weren't conceding post touches lazily. Fronting the post and playing deny defense were basic fundamentals. Having the bodies to do it to Shaq was a different story.

I agree with cupcakesnake here - of course now teams have a few more tricks to front post players successfully (especially compared to the illegal defense era), but it's one thing to perform these strategies on regular basis and it's another to try it on Shaq. People keep talking about Portland doing reasonably well, but they had 7'3 300 lbs wall on him and two of the best help defenders in the league with immense length.

It's not that you can take any team today and just prevent Shaq from dominating you just by fronting him in the post. Good luck trying that without enough size, length and skill.

In my view, the issues when Shaq couldn't get the ball wasn't just that he didn't get the ball. It was that if he couldn't get the ball, he wasn't going to come outside the paint at all and if he's feeling particularly petulant, he'd intentionally draw offensive 3 seconds.

When he ballooned to become Lakers Shaq he kinda stopped doing a lot of things other than park himself on the block. I think this was an understated part of the disconnect between him and Kobe - it just became my turn your turn basketball in their last couple of years together.

[OhayoKD]

lazily copy and pasted from a #3 thread peaks post lazily copied from the top 100. Don't feel like writing another one of these and I figure "peaked higher than the person just voted higher" is a good enough argument for his peak. (that said pretty much all of this can be applied vs those still on the board)

Bill Russell over Jordan (peak) case

I presented a case for Duncan in the last thread and somewhat alluded to one for Russell in my Kareem post. There, I focused on his average, peak, and prime "goodness" as that was a big-question mark. Here, for Russell, just like with Kareem, I will focus on what voters seem to be marking as an advantage for Jordan...

Spoiler:

Even with the high ends and what I feel to be a substantial argument for GOAT peak/prime in Jordan's favor, why I see him as career #3 all-time is due to the meaningful longevity/prime quality and overall longevity aspects. I haven't finalized intel for my pool aside from my Mt. Rushmore / GOAT candidates yet, but James & Jabbar (even Russell) both have more MVP+ level seasons - and better supporting years when factoring in the full body of work.

#1 Michael Jordan

To put it simply, I personally think Jordan is flat out better than anyone else left. There may be a run or two from Russell or Duncan or Wilt that look comparable but nothing like Jordan's stretch of combined individual and team dominance. I also don't think he has the dips or red flags the others have. I love data as much as anyone, (not saying data isn't high on Jordan) but sometimes we do use that in place of simply "proving it" and I think putting anyone else other than Jordan here would be an example of that. However, I'm quite on Russell offensively, so I can see why those who view him higher may disagree.

To go back to my stated criteria from a prior thread, I believe the per season title equity Jordan gives you outweighs the longevity advantage of Duncan, and there is no longevity concern against guys like Russell or Wilt.
Nominate: Magic Johnson

Vote: Jordan

His peak is now too hard to pass up, despite limited seasons compared to a few others.

I have him at 8 seasons being the undisputed best player, 10 as an arguable top 3 player, 11 all-nba, 14 as an all star level, and 9 all defensive years.

He edges out Bill Russell and Tim Duncan.

For now I’d have Russell 4, Duncan 5.

Nomination: Shaq

Vote 1 - Michael Jordan
Vote 2 - Bill Russell
Nominate - Magic Johnson

As more and more seasons pass and the game evolves, it makes sense that Jordan’s assumed status as GOAT would be tested. I'm sticking with him here, but the decision between Kareem and LeBron for #2 has become tougher. While I'm generally a longevity guy, if I feel the body of work is impressive enough without elite longevity (jordan, magic, bird, now curry)

Vote #3 - Michael Jordan

Probably a lopsided vote so I won't spend too much energy here. I like players who are by far the best of their generation like Lebron, Kareem and MJ. I don't think anyone has a big enough longevity advantage over him where it's not weighed out by being worse. I value Curry's era more but I rate him as less valuable than MJ for his time period and his star longevity is slightly worse, but I could be talked into nominating him relatively soon.

Nominate: Shaq

Looking through these I see three claims:

-> Jordan peaked higher/was better on average/had a better prime
-> Jordan provided more "championship equity"
-> Jordan was the "undisputed best player" of his era in a way Bill Russell was not

I will start with the first two, as I think they go hand-in-hand. Do keep in mind, that these are going to be era-relative arguments built on a player's likelihood to lift teams to championships. I do not have any way to convince anyone Russell would have likely been better in 1990 or 2023. Perhaps someone may be persuaded or Duncan(basketball did not peak in the 90's), but for Bill, I will try and justify the following claims:
Bill Russell was probably better at his peak
Bill Russell was probably better on average
It is more likely Bill Russell was the best player of his era than Jordan was the best player of his

First, let's start with a simple assumption:
-> All else being equal, a player who wins 11 rings in 13 years probably was better("more likely to win championships") than a player who won 6 in 13
-> All else being equal, a player who wins 8-rings in 8 years probably was better("more likely to win championships") than a player who won 6-rings in 8(or 7) years
-> All else being equal, a player who goes 27-2(or 27-1) over a much longer period of time(an entire career) with dramatically different personnel in a league without lower-end expansion fodder...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KfFmPYlS0Mx00w0hri6LoGASkES3DWfBY25Q8vhHWoA/edit#gid=0
...is probably better than a player who posts a worse record of 27-3 (or 27-2) over a convenient 7 or 8-year frame while getting to dunk on weaker early round opposition
-> All else being equal, a player whose teams are a bigger regular-season outlier(7.0 expected championships vs 2.9 per fp4's calc) and then who overperforms in the playoffs by a bigger margin(11 actual championships vs 6 by basketball reference), probably was better

About now you might be thinking, "shouldn't this line of reasoning Jordan a starting advantage over Duncan?"

And you would be right, it should. Which is why I went ahead and argued the following:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=107489778#p107489778

All in all, I think then, it can be reasonably argued prime Duncan
-> Won at least one(probably three) titles with less
-> Led two dominant teams(statistically better with most of the Bulls if you go by standard deviation(more relevant to winning championships than "srs")), one was probably with less
-> Led a third team not too far behind in 2005(not sure what "help" is there but there's still no Pippen equivalent) with less
-> Beat two teams better or on par with anyone Jordan beat(05 and 07 suns, great in the rs too, great in the rs missing key pieces, greatest offense ever, led by an offensive goat candidate who also led a goat offense in Dallas pre-prime)
-> Beat two tougher gauntlets better than any Jordan beat(05, 07)
-> Beat, with less, a reigning champion that had posted a top 10 all-time full-strength srs after sweeping the Shaq-Kobe-Payton-Malone Lakers
-> Won at least 50 games every season(Jordan managed that once pre-triangle)
-> Won in multiple systems(Jordan managed that never)
-> Won with completely different 2nd bananas(Jordan managed that never)

I point this out because, even if you just lift Duncan's best two years to be a match for Mike's(and keep the internal scaling), then by Ben Taylor(the guy who put not one, not two, not three, not four, but five MJ years above the season you have at #1), his srs-study-based "career over replacement player" formula outputs Duncan's career as more valuable.

Feel free to dispute any of the excerpts above or the justification offered in the post(As Doc MJ noted, I actually used the BPM wrong formula in my post), but I do think it's fair that when arguing for a player who won less is better than a player who won more, to expect that there is justification that logically arrives at the alleged conclusion.

Here is what I believe has most often been argued for Jordan:
-> He is a great offensive player who also plays good defense
-> He looks great via conventionally defined "production"
-> When he loses his teammates don't look great via conventionally defined "production"(even if they are holding the opponent 5-points below their regular season offensive-rating)

But I have to ask, at least for those who are ascribing to era-relativity(that may not be true for all the posters voting for Jordan, but I believe it has been explicitly noted as part of their criteria for some) or something resembling Championships-over-replacement-player, where they see the logical connection between the above points and Jordan being better than BIll(or Duncan).

The Celtics did not win more 5 more rings than the Bulls on the strength of their offense. And the Bulls were a contention-level team(assuming health) when they lost the strength of Jordan's offense(and defense). By a metric called GOAT-POINTS, "production" sees Hakeem as the true greatest player ever. A couple of years ago, BPM saw Lebron as the undisputed GOAT. There was a measure of "production" which put Dennis Rodman on top at the 90's, and I'm sure some lunatic could just filter down scoring so that Pippen and Lebron came at #1 and #2.

Even if Jordan was the best offensive-player-ever(and I do not think his results or even historically mapping the ways he "produces" correlate with offense-quality supports that), it, alone, would not imply superiority to Bill as an individual force of winning.

Simply put, I think we ought to be careful conflating priors with evidence:

What phenomenon would "great offense and good defense in the 90's is more valuable than goat defense in the 60's" explain? Why couldn't Russell's defense be sufficient in a league without 3-pointers and a less horizontally spaced floor? And what about IQ, a trait that corresponds with suprising(relative to "production") results on both ends over a variety of contexts(Draymond, Magic, Lebron, Nash, Boston KG):

Spoiler:

I'd note here in Russell you have an example of someone with an incredibly active basketball imagination once it got turned on - which of course didn't happen until he had time AWAY from coaches - but it's not that I'm saying that his talent on this front was one-of-a-kind and that that was his truly greatest strength. Russell was unusual in such talent surely, but really it was him getting into certain types strategic habits with the reinforcement of a similar mind that caused something of an exponential curve. And of course, the application of that curve was on Russell's body, which was a far greater body talent than what Jones possessed.

I also think Russell elaborate on the horizontal game tellingly in this quote but unfortunately I'm not sure which book it was from:

Beginning in my freshman year, I developed the concept of horizontal and vertical games. I made a distinction between the two that others had not done. The horizontal game meant how I played side to side. The vertical game was how I played up and down. I knew that if I could integrate the two games, our team could win. I would always be in a position to determine where the ball was and where it was going.

What I saw was how much more there was to the game than that. I would lie awake at night and play with numbers. How much time was there in an NBA game? Forty-eight minutes. How many shots were taken in a game? Maybe a hundred and sixty, eighty or so on each side. I calculated the number of seconds each shot took—a second, a second and a half—and then I multiplied by a hundred. Two hundred forty seconds at most—or four minutes. Then add a single extra second for a foul shot missed and then the ball put in play; add another minute at the most. So, five minutes out of forty-eight are actually taken up in the vertical game.

What I'm hoping you're getting a picture of is a young man who started thinking for himself about how he could best help his team win at basketball.

From an innovator's perspective, this is what would put Russell at the very top of my list of all basketball players in history. This archetype of the horizontal & vertical force who intimidated shots like nobody's business but who relied on non-vertical agility to do a whole bunch of other things that were valuable, Russell basically invented it. Not saying no one before had ever done anything like it, but it wasn't what was being taught by coaches.

In Russell's words:

On defense it was considered even worse to leave your feet…The idea was for the defensive player to keep himself between his man and the basket at all times. Prevent lay-ups, keep control, stay on your feet. By jumping you were simply telegraphing to your opponent that you could be faked into the air. Defenses had not begun to adjust to the jump shot.

Russell would be the one, then, who would make that adjustment and have the world take notice, and only after he did that did the coaches begin coaching players to do Russell-type things.

Bill Russell was the best help defender and the best man defender of his time while also possibly sporting the most "ahead of the curve" basketball intelligence of anyone ever to the tune of becoming the nba's only champion-winning player-coach. He also happened to win the most on teams that gained separation almost entirely on defense. Why would we assume the "two-way force" that won half as much was as or more valuable to winning?

One approach has been to say Jordan was the Ultimate Winner:

Spoiler:

It's been mentioned a lot of times how the Bulls had the exact same record in playoff series from '91-'98 as the Celtics did from their first title of the Russell dynasty in 1957 to the last in 1969. Well, let's look at that a little more in-depth, but since Jordan wasn't playing in 1994, I'll use 1990 instead and just look at the years Jordan played with Phil Jackson. (Remember, Russell also had a legendary genius coach.)

The Celtics had an average SRS of +6.0 from '57-'69. The Bulls had an average SRS of +7.7 from 1990-1998 excluding 1994. During the Celtics' dynasty run, there were an average of 9.3 teams in the league and during the Bulls' run there were an average of 27.8 teams in the league. This means that during Boston's run, each team's SRS was artificially depressed by 0.7 points per game due to have to facing the Celtics (SRS/(# of teams-1)) while the Bulls opposition was only depressed by 0.3 points per game due to having to face the Bulls. So let's adjust every team the Celtics played in the playoffs up by 0.4 points during that run to give them a higher SRS. Here's how those series went:

Boston Celtics playoff series during Russell years
1957 Def. -0.6 adjusted SRS Syracuse 3-0
1957 Def. +0.1 ASRS St. Louis 4-3
1958 Def. +0.6 ASRS Philly 4-1
1958 Lose to +1.2 ASRS St. Louis 2-4
1959 Def. +4.1 ASRS Syracuse 4-3
1959 Def. -1.0 ASRS Minneapolis 4-0
1960 Def. +3.2 ASRS Philly 4-2
1960 Def. +2.2 ASRS St. Louis 4-3
1961 Def. +2.3 ASRS Syracuse 4-1
1961 Def. +3.4 ASRS St. Louis 4-1
1962 Def. +3.0 Philly 4-3
1962 Def. +2.3 LA Lakers 4-3
1963 Def. +1.6 Cincinnati 4-3
1963 Def. +3.1 LA Lakers 4-2
1964 Def. +4.8 Cincinnati 4-1
1964 Def. +4.8 San Francisco 4-1
1965 Def. +0.3 Philly 4-3
1965 Def. +2.1 LA Lakers 4-1
1966 Def. +1.4 Cincinnati 3-2
1966 Def. +4.5 Philly 4-1
1966 Def. +3.3 LA Lakers 4-3
1967 Def. -2.3 New York 3-1
1967 Lose to +8.9 Philly 1-4
1968 Def. -1.3 Detroit 4-2
1968 Def. +8.4 Philly 4-3
1968 Def. +5.4 LA Lakers 4-2
1969 Def. +5.2 Philly 4-1
1969 Def. +5.9 New York 4-2
1969 Def. +4.2 LA Lakers 4-3

Chicago Bulls playoff series during Jordan/Jackson years
1990 Def. -1.1 SRS Milwaukee 3-1
1990 Def. +4.2 SRS Philly 4-1
1990 Lose to +5.4 SRS Detroit 3-4
1991 Def. -0.4 SRS New York 3-0
1991 Def. -0.4 SRS Philly 4-1
1991 Def. +3.1 SRS Detroit 4-0
1991 Def. +6.7 SRS LA Lakers 4-1
1992 Def. -3.9 Miami 3-0
1992 Def. +3.7 New York 4-3
1992 Def. +5.3 Cleveland 4-2
1992 Def. +6.9 Portland 4-2
1993 Def. -0.7 Atlanta 3-0
1993 Def. +6.3 Cleveland 4-0
1993 Def. +5.9 New York 4-2
1993 Def. +6.3 Phoenix 4-2
1995 Def. +2.9 Charlotte 3-1
1995 Lose to +6.4 Orlando 2-4
1996 Def. +1.5 Miami 3-0
1996 Def. +2.2 New York 4-1
1996 Def. +5.4 Orlando 4-0
1996 Def. +7.4 Seattle 4-2
1997 Def. +1.8 Washington 3-0
1997 Def. +5.5 Atlanta 4-1
1997 Def. +5.6 Miami 4-1
1997 Def. +8.0 Utah 4-2
1998 Def. +1.9 New Jersey 3-0
1998 Def. +2.5 Charlotte 4-1
1998 Def. +6.3 Indiana 4-3
1998 Def. +5.7 Utah 4-2

Overall results

Russell vs. teams with 5+ ASRS: 4-1 series record (.800), 17-12 game record (.586)
Jordan vs. teams with 5+ SRS: 13-2 series record (.867), 57-28 game record (.671)

Russell vs. teams with 2-5 ASRS: 14-0 series record (1.000), 56-28 game record (.667)
Jordan vs. teams with 2-5 SRS: 6-0 series record (1.000), 23-7 game record (.767)

Russell vs. teams under 2 SRS: 9-1 series record (.900), 35-19 game record (.648)
Jordan vs. teams under 2 SRS: 7-0 series record (1.000), 25-2 game record (.926)

Note that Jordan has a better record in individual games against playoff teams with a SRS under 2 than Russell has in series. Also, Jordan has a better game record against the teams with 5+ SRS than Russell does against the teams with SRS under 2. Even if you go back to Jordan's rookie season, he never lost to a team with an SRS under 5 whereas Russell lost to the pitiful 34-38 Hawks in 1957 in a year where no team had a winning record in the Western Division. Obviously, there are other factors at play. Russell dominated more consistently over a variety of ages, but also he did it against much weaker competition with regard to the league as a whole and where the talent level was at, and with Oscar stuck on extremely poor teams all through his prime, he pretty much just had to beat Wilt most years to win those rings. That's why I'm voting for the ultimate winner:

Vote: Michael Jordan

Nominate: Shaquille O' Neal

A few notes
-> As noted earlier, the "identical record' bit is a bit disingenuous. Russell is 27-1 in series he was available for. If missed games are a detriment, then Jordan is 27-3. Actually there are alot of issues with this framing(mostly noted at the top). Will add that because of the length(beyond natural aging) Russell had to play alot more regular season games to get to those 11 championships.

-> Raw SRS comparisons are not always relevant to era/league-relative comparisons. At some points srs tresholds are similar. In the 60's they are much lower. I think standard deviation might represent things better, but they're still extrapolated from SRS so it probably only mitigates that discrepancy. (Have also been using psrs to rate playoff opposition but FP4 has reservations about the calculation process)

-> SRS thresholds being lower also do not necessarily mean the league was weaker(see: post-merger 70's, early 2000's where Duncan led 3 Chicago-tier outliers)

-> SRS tresholds being higher also do not necessarily mean the league is stronger(90's)

-> The 1969 Celtics probably beat a better opponent than anyone Jordan has toppled with the Wilt-West Lakers, where what was, when healthy, one of the greatest era-relative teams ever had the best player from the team that pushed the Celtics to 7 in 1968(more on that later). You might note that Wilt is the only star who has ever properly beaten Russell and it required a Sixers team that was excellent without him and Russell to find himself the new coach of his team while carrying an injury. (And yes, I would say that is better evidence for Russell being the clear "best player of his era" than anything present for Jordan)

-> The Celtics also beat the 1969 Knicks who posted a +8 srs(virtually unheard of for any non-boston team up until that point) en route to a championship the following year

-> Subjectively speaking I think losing to a 4x mvp plus a really good cast on what was a big outlier for that era in his first year as a player-coach(injured by the way) is less of a wasted "chance" than Jordan losing to detroit in 90 or orlando in 1995.

A more...uh natural approach is to argue Jordan was disadvantaged in terms of support(which itself would not justify seeing Micheal as better), but even here, I do not think the arguments are strong:

Spoiler:

Do you think Russell had waay more help than MJ then? Because MJ only won with a superteam and 11>6.

certainly on average he had more help. his first season in the league, he missed the first 24 games for the olympics. his team went 16-8. if they had kept up that pace, they would have finished 48-24, 10 wins more than the next best team. that was the team russell got added to. i said duncan had a good start, but it pales in comparison to a runaway best record team. he actually had a negative WOWY that first year because his team went 28-20 (42 win pace) with him, so -6. little wonder that the celtics posted easily the best record for the next 5 or 6 years. and the rest of the league was shockingly mediocre, so russell's megateams were facing <1 and <2 SRS teams constantly.

russell's average SRS differential to his opponent in his 2 losses is actually +1.47. meaning he was a favorite on average in his 2 losses. that's the highest "average loss" differential of anyone i tracked. yes, he was injured in the finals, but the team did go 1-3 in his games and 1-2 if you take out game 6 where he came back and only played 20 minutes. on the flip side, jordan's differential of -5.04 is easily the lowest of anyone i tracked, meaning he was a massive underdog when he lost. besting the 2nd lowest of -3.49 for garnett.

russell also started his career as generally a playoff faller. this partly explains why his teams got taken to 7 games so many times, despite huge win differentials. he also wasn't an underdog in a series until 1967, and he lost.

by mid career though, russell started becoming a playoff riser, his teams do not appear to have the lopsided talent advantage by that point, and he started playing higher SRS teams (though often still not great) and beating them, including a +8 wilt team and 4 teams around +5 to finish it out. so in a way, you could say he validated the early career concerns by showing he could win without a huge supporting cast advantage and could beat good teams and even 1 great one. the counterargument would be that he got lucky he was a playoff underperformer (modestly) on his most talented teams and then overperformed on his less talented teams. in fact, it's probably axiomatic that someone that wins 11 of 13 in a team setting got lucky/fortunate in a lot of ways. if the talent advantage on his teams was flipped from early career to late career, we might see the late 60's celtics go on a 5 or 6 year run of 65-70 win seasons with dominant 0 and 1 loss playoffs sprinkled in. but possibly 3 or 4 missed titles early in russell's career, which might remove some of the veneer of invincibility.

the biggest concern with jordan's case is that he kind of went from huge underdog to huge favorite very quickly. when he lost, it was unreasonable to think he wouldn't lose. when he won, it was often unreasonable to think he wouldn't win. so he didn't necessarily pile up the close series we might like to see. however, i do give big credit to 1993 and 1998. the 1993 bulls were a +6.2 teams that had to basically beat 3 other +6 teams, and went 12-4 against them. the 1998 bulls were a +7.2 team, but the pacers and jazz were +6.3 and +5.7, and with pippen's last 2 finals games being a 2-16 disaster class and a game 6 where he only played 26 minutes, that was the time to get jordan. instead, in game 7 against indiana, he guarded reggie in the 4th and held him to 0 points on 0-1 shooting (wouldn't even let him get the ball), and in game 6 against utah he score 45 points in a glacially slow 76 pace game to drag a tired bulls team to title number 6. basically his "bill russell 1969" moment as far as i'm concerned, to show he could also win when things were not at their best.

A few more:
-> Expected SRS only works if you assume Jordan was as or more valuable in the regular-season(what we have mostly suggests the opposite)
-> Curiously a 28 game-sample without from Russell's rookie-year is included, but an 82-game sample after he leaves with a similar roster is not. Nor is the career-wide "off"

Another angle is to insist the Bulls were actually not that good with a selective consideration of health:

Spoiler:

The arguments against him in the prior threads focus a lot on the Bulls doing pretty well without him in 1994, but even there we’re still ultimately talking about a 2.87 SRS team that beat a completely injury-ravaged team in the first round of the playoffs and then lost a close series against a very good team. Even if we ignore the lingering value of that team having learned how to win from their prior years with Jordan, and leave aside the fact that missing a star player for a whole season is entirely different from missing a player for random periods due to injury (the latter will be a situation where the team is not as able to adapt to the player’s absence), the reality is that the 1993-1994 season in no way backs the idea that the Bulls were a contender without Jordan. They were 11th in SRS (maybe a bit higher just while healthy, but we’re comparing to the rest of the league’s numbers and other teams weren’t always healthy either). And the only playoff series they won was against a team that was completely ravaged by injury (the Cavs missing Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance, and Hot Rod Williams). They also managed to play the Knicks very close—which was pretty good, because the Knicks were a genuinely good team—but being 11th in SRS, winning a gimme-putt playoff series, and then losing a 7-game series is not the picture of a real contender

More than a few notes:
-> As has been pointed out(and ignored), the Cavs playoff-rotation posted a net-rating of +5.8 without the mentioned pieces. A caveat is that they played below average competition, and to my knowledge no one's calced the SRS. They do about as expected vs playoff-teams going by record(3-5).
-> Pippen and Grant, after barely missing any games in 1993 missed a bunch in 1994. Even if the other teams are not always healthy, the Bulls themselves were healthy in 93 when Jordan played with them making the non-health adjusted numbers misleading
-> If we account for health and are "consistent" with our approach we find there's plenty that backs up the Jordan-less Bulls as a proper contender, even outside of 1994...

The Bulls Supporting Cast: 94, 95, Jordan's Individual "Production", and the Triangle

Spoiler:

This is an extremely common refrain and the type of thinking that is inevitable when we spend more times looking at name than at real production.

The 1994 Bulls played at a 4.7 SRS pace when healthy, but because we need to portray the Bulls as untalented, we instead need to ignore Pippen and Grant separately missing ten games for the first time in their career. There we need to look past the “55-wins”. And then the following year, when Grant is replaced with Ron Harper and they play at a 3.8 SRS pace before Jordan’s return, well, we look at the win totals painting them as a barely over .500 team. They play like more of 6.5 team with Jordan (3.8 —> 6.5 quite the feat of ceiling raising!), and when Rodman is added to that 6.5 core, Jordan is the one who receives all the credit for that lift.

That last point is a very common trend for Jordan’s teams. 2.74 SRS in 1990, then a massive spike up to 8.57 in 1991. What changed? Jordan played 160 fewer minutes. His TS ADD went down from 315 to 301. His VORP went up 0.2, his win shares went up 1.3, and his PIPM wins went up 1.4… Then the following year the Bulls are even better: 10.07 SRS, rarefied air. But Jordan? TS ADD down to 196. VORP down 1.6, win shares down 2.6, and PIPM wins up 0.5. But of course it is not a super team. 1993, they take a step back to 6.19 SRS. A 4 SRS fall out of nowhere! And contributing to that fall, Jordan’s TS ADD is now down to 124. His win shares are down 0.5, his PIPM wins are down 0.9, and his VORP… is up 1.

So if Jordan is not the one driving these massive swings, I wonder who else possibly could be.

We see elements of this in effect more clearly in 1998, where Pippen misses a large chunk of the season. With Pippen out, the Bulls play at a +6 pace. With Pippen returns, the Bulls play at a +9.5 pace, and this is where I urge readers to remember 1995.

This entire line of thought is another instance of classic Jordan double-speak where we praise Jordan because he lifts teams people claim are less talented teams… but we also call him a “ceiling raiser” because he supposedly fits so much better with the same talent!

The other issue with "Jordan bullied his teammates to greatness" is they did exceptionally well with him entirely absent(55-win full-strength srs, 58-win when when you add the playoffs, 53-win srs without Jordan and Grant in 95) despite a metric-ton of ongoing off-court drama. Why were the Bulls able to fully contend without Jordan with Pippen beefing with management, and Grant and Scottie at each other's throats? Why were they able to fully contend without Jordan with Pippen actively beefing with the guy who management repeatedly tried to replace him with? Why were they still good when Grant left and their best player went and filed a trade-request?

Doc has argued that "leadership is not always linear", but that only leaves "Jordan the great galvanizer" as plausible, not probable. As it happens, the Pre-Jackson Bulls never had a team comparable to Jordan-less Chicago.

And even if you want to put their great success(which was mysteriously absent before jackson entered the fray and limited Jordan's influence)as a byproduct of Jordan, that doesn't really change that Jordan was given far less leeway to "lead" in Chicago than he was in Washington. If "power reveals", does it really make sense to pretend Jordan at his most powerful isn't indicative, but the results when Jordan was at his least powerful were?

Never said anything about "confident", but I don't really have an issue making probabilistic judgments(uncertainity is fine). Main thing about 1971 vs 1991 is
-> there is no triangle equivalent(Bulls offense goes from +2.3 to +6.5 between the first and 2nd half of 1990),
-> there's no equivalent to the defensive jump(Bulls go from below average at the start of the season to a -3 defense by the 90 playoffs(-5 in the last 2 rounds)).

The Bucks are closer by 1970 with rookie Dandridge than the Bulls get pre-triangle despite Kareem joining a similar team. The Bucks are also still great In 72 in the games Oscar completely misses and unlike 91 where there's no real discernible improvement(Mj's on/off, rapm, defensive tape all looks worse actually)despite facing significantly weaker competition(pistons are way worse defensively and overall in the first two rounds of 1991 compared to 1990).

Kareem's production jumps between 70, 71, and 72 despite worse help(oscar hobbled) and much tougher comp(west+wilt) in 72 vs 71(west hurt). Their full-strength srs also improves iirc. It's also obvious the Bulls were historically loaded when we look at the full-lineup performances in 94 and 95(58-win without Jordan, 52-win without Jordan and Grant), and there's nothing that indicates the same for the Bucks

See the thing about the triangle was it wasn't about getting Jordan to do more. If 90/91 MJ was a better player than 88 or 89 MJ, it wasn't because he was out there impacting the game in more ways. It's because he was more effective in a scaled-down, specialized role. The box-score only tracks the ends of possessions. It does not track Jordan facing way less doubles. It does not track Jordan making less plays at the perimeter than Scottie, nor does it track him being less involved in the full-court presses.

Usage rate measures assists(the pass before a shot) and shots, it does not track who is handling the ball and who is floating off-ball where it's very hard to double because of illegal-d. Jordan was, in a raw sense, doing less. There was a trade-off between effeciency and volume even if you don't put it down to help and competition.

So some thinghs here about that +7 number

First that is really weird to use the 93 bulls playoffs improvement as their "real level" cause they improved in the playoffs after coasting. Then not use the 94 bulls playoffs (where they also improved a lot) as their "real level" too

The 94 bulls actually had a +8.9 postseason srs which is almost the same as their 93 seasom +10 post season srs ( +1 difference)

The 94 bulls also missed 20 combined games from their two stars and played a +4.7 srs when healthy in the regular season (+1.5 difference with the 93 bulls with jordan) and in a very generous best case scenario a (+5.3 difference with even the 92 bulls regular season )

If i average the 94 bulls (+4.7 at full strenght in regular season and +8.9 in playoffs) vs the 92 reg season + 93 playoffs combination draymomd used (and please notice i am already picking and choosing the parts that help jordan more) the gap is only 5 points

That is not goat level.

Even by you guys own approach[Draygold and DJoker are the "guys" for context] as it is below other all time greats lift in either absolute terms or in "ceiling raising" situations


I also dont get the "improving a good team is harder" part in relation to kareem, who led a goat level team in the 71 bucks so he was not exactly lacking in "ceiling raising" either compared to jordan while also having better "floor raising" lift as evidenced by their 60~ win pace without oscar in 1972

Or 08/09 garnett who had a similar lift from +3.4 to +9 and he is not even among the goat candidatws short list yet matches jordan here

i could also bring up other cases of lift like 2015 lebron cavs +10 postseason srs with a lot less talent and that the 91 bulls (kirye and love hurt) which strikes me as a even more extreme example of "ceiling raising" considering the floor it came off.
Iirc it's +5 if you combine the rs and playoff sample but feel free to take the +4.7

To summarize...

-> with their starting lineup, the 94 Bulls played like a 55-win team in the regular-season, dominated a decent opponent and outscored a New York side, without home-court, that came within a couple of possessions of winning the championship in 6.

-> In 95, health or no health-adjusted they played like a 50+ win team(52-win health adjusted) despite the loss of Grant(who helped the Magic to their first finals).

-> And from the onset of the triangle through to the 1992 regular season, the Bulls defense and offense skyrocketed(with a huge jump within 1990 itself) despite Jordan's own individual numbers, box or non-box, not seeing a similar jump as Jordan scaled down his role on the team.

I could of course say that the "without" from Russell's rookie year is a noisy 28-game sample and thus there is "nothing backing up" Russell's Celtics having excellent help.

But I believe good arguments are internally consistent so I will acknowledge that just like the Jordan-less Bulls, the Celtics were capable of contention without their best player. Here's the difference...

-> Won at least one(probably three) titles with less
-> Led two dominant teams(statistically better with most of the Bulls if you go by standard deviation(more relevant to winning championships than "srs")), one was probably with less
-> Led a third team not too far behind in 2005(not sure what "help" is there but there's still no Pippen equivalent) with less
-> Beat two teams better or on par with anyone Jordan beat(05 and 07 suns, great in the rs too, great in the rs missing key pieces, greatest offense ever, led by an offensive goat candidate who also led a goat offense in Dallas pre-prime)
-> Beat two tougher gauntlets better than any Jordan beat(05, 07)
-> Beat, with less, a reigning champion that had posted a top 10 all-time full-strength srs after sweeping the Shaq-Kobe-Payton-Malone Lakers
-> Won at least 50 games every season(Jordan managed that once pre-triangle)
-> Won in multiple systems(Jordan managed that never)
-> Won with completely different 2nd bananas(Jordan managed that never)

You see all these points I brought up about Duncan? I can also make similar ones about Russell. After it was

Russell who kept winning that initial "superteam" was depleted, not Jordan
Russell who kept winning with different co-stars, not Jordan
Russell who won when the league got tougher(Jordan only won after the competition broke down)
and
Russell who, by the data, won with less

Speaking of. Remember that 82-game sample I mentioned earlier?

What happened to the Celtics with a bad positional replacement(like Chicago had in 84 and 94(Pippen controversially ended up played minutes as a shooting guard)) as they lost a 28mpg role-player and Russell's best teammate "having learned how to win under Bill" significantly improving?

Well let's do a comparison. And while we're at it, why don't we do the Bulls *before Jordan taught them how to win. In fact let's give Jordan, at his statistical apex in 1988, all the credit for the Bulls getting better from when they drafted him. He should beat out the retiree player-coach who doesn't score enough points or isn't "the most productive player in every series he plays in", right?

Spoiler:

Correct, though to be specific it is a 22-23 win improvement on a bad team(taking a 40 win team to 65-wins for example would be harder). Furthermore, with an eye to future threads, this is especially disappointing in comparison with Kareem and Russell once you account for srs tresholds(assuming you are still worried about championships, how you compare to the best opposition matters alot more than how you compare by raw-score):

((1988), Bulls were +3.8 at full strength)

((1977), Lakers were +4.9 at full strength)

(1969, no clue what the Celtics were at full-strength)

In terms of positional replacements Jordan replaced a bad shooting guard in 84. Russell was replaced by a bad center in 1969. For the purposes of what we're using for Kareem(pretending the Lakers didn't lose anything in the trade including their starting center), Kareem's signal should actually be suppressed if we looked at "positional replacement".

retiree-player-coach russell, on a team that would run a tougher gauntlet than any of Jordan's Bulls, saw the celtics drop by 7 points with an otherwise near identical roster(sam jones was a 28 mpg chucker on an average offense) despite hondo improving and a 2-point offensive improvement. (key to note is that this 7-point drop was from a much better league-best lvl team even if u just go by the regular-season)

Kareem, assuming the Lakers lost nothing when they traded for him in 1975(actually lost 2nd and 5th mpg guys) saw the Lakers jump from -3.95 to .500 to +4.9 with the addition of 29 mpgDon Chaney and one-off head-coach Jerry West. That is a bigger jump in a league on a team that posted a higher srs in a league where the best teams were +4 to +6.

Simply put, having inflated Jordan's mark beyond reason, retiree-player coach russell looks like an outright peer, and Kareem having given him a lower mark than is reasonable, looks outright better. And with Kareem it is hardly a one-off(will get into that on the next thread). And for Russell while we have much, what we do have all corroborates beyond a 20-game stretch on a much better team as a rookie. Also beyond the numbers Russell won 5 rings with a completely different core than he won his first 6. Jordan only ever won with a specific infrastructure and co-star, Bill only ever lost when hurt.

And yet, no. Russell is still a match for (emperically)apex Jordan on a much, much[b] better team.

Some other signals

[b]-> WOWYR, which was used to argue for Jordan against Lebron puts Russell's help for his career at 40-wins
-> WOWY, which does not make weird corrections such as applying 2nd-year Pippen to 91 MJ's "without", views the Bill-less Celtics as a 35-win cast throughout his career.
-> In 1969 Russell missed 5 games and the Celtics were bad
-> If we do health-adjustment for 69 and 70, Russell does not merely match Jordan's drop-off, he outright looks more valuable:

Tom Sanders, KC Jones and John Havlicek made up an excellent supporting cast of defenders, although Boston lacked a second big man to play next to Russell. When he retired in 1969, along with Sam Jones — who was down to 26 minutes per game by then — the Celtics dropped a whopping 8 points in SRS (from a 59-win full-strength pace to a 36-win one) despite returning the rest of their eight-man rotation.10 So while Boston fielded a strong team around Big Bill, there’s nothing indicating that they could sniff the same heights without him.

-> For those tempted to put it all to "the Celtics didn't have centers", the Celtics were [b]largely unaffected when Russell's teammates missed time throughout his career:

For instance, when his teammates missed time, Boston rarely missed a beat. In 1958, Bob Cousy sat for seven games and the Celtics played far better without him. In ’59 and ’60, Sharman, Cousy and Tom Heinsohn missed a few games each, and the machine kept on ticking. In ’61, Sharman missed 18 games and the Celtics were (again) better without him. In ’62, Cousy missed five and, yes, the Celtics were better without him (portending his retirement years).6

But Russell missed four games in 1962 and Boston’s differential fell by 22 points. Four games is infinitesimally small, but all of these stories point in the same direction. It was only when Russell was hampered by injury (in the 1958 Finals) that the Celtics fell short of a title — the single time a Russell team failed to win in a 12-year span dating back to college.7

This trend would hold throughout most of Russell’s career. In ’66, Sam Jones missed eight games and Boston’s performance didn’t budge. Jones missed 11 more contests in ’69 and the team was about 2 points worse without him. All told, as the roster cycled around Russell, his impact seemed to remain.

Does this all make Russell being more valuable certain?, no. But when you are ranking one player over another, appealing to uncertainty is not justification.

Is Russell absolutely for sure better? No. But, if you value winning championships, I believe it is more likely that Russell is better(era-relative) than Jordan is, and I do not think there's much of a counter-case.


I also said I would justify Russell peaking higher, but honestly at this point, I think I can just offer these earlier assumptions:

(For the purposes of this post, "goat-level" can just be "peak/prime Micheal Jordan")

-> All else being equal, a player with more high-level years has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player with less high-level years. If a player is "at" the top more often, then they have more chances to fluctuate up and "peak"
-> All else being equal, a player who starts off as better has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player who starts off worse
-> All else being equal, a player who ages better has a greater chance of having a higher peak than a player who does not'
-> All else being equal, a player with better longevity is also more likely to be better at their best. After all, higher peaks have more room to fall, and the ability to maintain excellence over time is usually indicative of a both versatility and a special sort of mental resilience(Kareem does not win 6-rings if he copies MJ's antics in Washington).
-> All else being equal, a player who is generally better, is more likely to be better at their best

In fairness Russell's rookie year looks worse per "without", but pre-nba he was winning ncaa championships with a program that had never made the final in a league where more proffessional players played.

Additionally(and I only realized this mostly done with this post), using full-health with and without, 1969 Russell already looks more valuable than an inflated signal for Micheal(assuming the Bulls improved or maintained as a cast between 84 and 88) when we account for srs-suppression.

If you are looking to be convinced that Bill was clearly the best player of his era. I would ask you to consider how you would feel about Jordan if he retired beating the Reggie-Stockton-Malone Jazz. The data is rather conflicted about Jordan being the best in his perceived prime with certain players(Magic, Drob) consistently advantaged while his draftmate switches between being favored or disfavored depending on the signal before elevating better than Jordan does in the playoffs.

Regardless, I think I've said about all I can think to say so I'll end with this:

If the forest is "winning", then arguing for Jordan over Bill on the basis of "individual production" is missing the forest for the leaves.

A good theory has explanatory power. What phenomenon does "Jordan was more valuable" explain? If you can't think of a satisfactory answer to the question, then perhaps Bill Russell is just better, and we don't need a theory saying otherwise.

[trelos6]

After the first few, my all time great seasons are so close, they really are in a big group.

Effectively tied, on any given day, I'll find reasons to pick one over the other.

These seasons are (yet to be voted in):

'00 Shaq
'04 KG
'64 Russell
'67 Wilt
'17 Steph
'23 Jokic

Offensively, I think Steph and Jokic are ahead of the pack. Defensively, it's Russell, then daylight, then Wilt and KG.

So to the question I asked myself earlier. I'll make it easier on myself. Most legendary players play on the same team as another legend. It's nigh impossible to win a title with a g-league roster. Shaq had Kobe. Russell had Havlicek, Jones. Steph had KD, Draymond. Wilt had Walker, Cunningham. Jokic had Murray. Magic had Kareem. Jordan had Pippen. You get the point. I wont penalize a player for playing with another top 30 all time player.

So here we go, today I'm going.

#6. Bill Russell (1962 > 1965 > 1964) . I'm going for 1962 to get the improved Russell scoring. 11.6 pp75 on +1 rTS%. Upped his scoring and efficiency in the playoffs. Playmaking was about the same in 62-64. The team dRtg was -8.5, good for 5th all time. behind '64, '65 and '08 Celtics, as well as the '04 Spurs.

#7. Steph Curry (2017 > 2016 > 2018). I don't fault Steph for playing on the greatest team of all time. One very big reason they were the GOAT team is because of prime Steph. Great scoring volume (27.4 pp75) on elite efficiency. Playoffs he upped his scoring AND efficiency, as the team cruised to a +7.7 rOrtg.

#8. Nikola Jokic (2023 > 2025 > 2024). Best playmaker and passer in the league. 26.7 pp75 +12 rTS% in RS, 29pp75 +5 rTS% in the playoffs. +2.8 rOrtg. -0.6 dRtg. Up to +6 rOrtg in PS along with a -2.7 dRtg. While I don't think his defense was great, or even good. It's probably neutral, which is good enough as his offensive game clears Shaq's IMO.

As for the rest, for tiebreakers. Shaq '00 > Wilt '67 > KG '04

[TheGOATRises007]

Shaq used to be a lock for top 2-3 in these projects in the past. How things have changed!

The voting pool is vastly different now than the last one.

People have different opinions.

But I'm also lower on Shaq now too. I used to have him 3rd for peaks, but I don't think I'd have him top 5 now.

[trelos6]

Shaq used to be a lock for top 2-3 in these projects in the past. How things have changed!

The voting pool is vastly different now than the last one.

People have different opinions.

But I'm also lower on Shaq now too. I used to have him 3rd for peaks, but I don't think I'd have him top 5 now.

Prime Shaq gives you elite rim pressure. 13.4 FTA/100. However, we've seen Giannis top that in '21 with 13.6 FTA/100, and hitting them at 69% vs 52%. Shaq's FT's hurts his overall efficiency, and Giannis is superior to Shaq as a defensive player. I also think Giannis was a better playmaker. I still have Shaq ahead of Giannis, but it's not quite the slam dunk it used to be.

[One_and_Done]

Shaq used to be a lock for top 2-3 in these projects in the past. How things have changed!

The voting pool is vastly different now than the last one.

People have different opinions.

But I'm also lower on Shaq now too. I used to have him 3rd for peaks, but I don't think I'd have him top 5 now.

Prime Shaq gives you elite rim pressure. 13.4 FTA/100. However, we've seen Giannis top that in '21 with 13.6 FTA/100, and hitting them at 69% vs 52%. Shaq's FT's hurts his overall efficiency, and Giannis is superior to Shaq as a defensive player. I also think Giannis was a better playmaker. I still have Shaq ahead of Giannis, but it's not quite the slam dunk it used to be.

Agreed. Worth noting though that Kawhi can't slow down Shaq.

[TheGOATRises007]

Kawhi didn't slow down Giannis either. It was a complete team effort from one of the best defensive units ever.

If you asked Kawhi to guard Giannis 1vs1 on an island, he'd get torched.

[mdonnelly1989]

Shaq used to be a lock for top 2-3 in these projects in the past. How things have changed!

And Michael Jordan used to a be a LOCK for Top 1

[f4p]

Kawhi didn't slow down Giannis either. It was a complete team effort from one of the best defensive units ever.

If you asked Kawhi to guard Giannis 1vs1 on an island, he'd get torched.

I mean the greatest team ever held giannis to 27 ppg on 58 TS% for the first 2 games and then over the last 4 games with kawhi, it was 20.5 ppg on 48 TS%.