If Mourning didn't get his kidney disease could he have been top 50

[migya]

Mourning didn't make the nba top 75 but if he hadn't gotten the kidnet disease what would his career had been like after and would he have done enough to be top 50 ever looking at it today if you were to pick a top 50?

Of note is that Mourning looked like he was at his best in 199 and 2000 before the kidney problem. I think he'd have had another three seasons of similar level and that'd give him about eleven seasons prime. A two way force as he was would have a case as at least there isn't ten better Centers than that.

[One_and_Done]

I haven't sat down and done a top 50, but I'm skeptical he'd make the cut. He'd need a heck of alot more longevity to start with.

[migya]

Well he might be top 10 alltime defensively and among Centers, might be top 10 offensively. 11 odd years prime, with the extra years alongside Shaq in Miami is hard to put other 50 players ahead of.

[One_and_Done]

Zo was a great player, but he was clunky on offense and his impact was to some degree a product of the era he played in. Today he'd still be good, but his impact would be lessened.

You call him a top 10 center, but I'm not sure that's true. In today's game is there any chance he's more impactful than say prime Gobert? I really doubt it. I feel like we could come up with 10 better centers pretty easily. I'll try right now in fact; Kareem, Shaq, Hakeem, D.Rob, Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, AD, M.Gasol, Dwight, Gilmore, Ewing maybe, that's over 10 already, without even counting Duncan as a 5, or Pau, or including Walton or Wilt or Ben Wallace or Moses (not all of whom I necessarily buy as better). Wemby assuredly will rank over him.if he stays healthy too.

[70sFan]

I think he would be in the fringe, but probably not? I mean, we have plenty of centers of his caliber who probably wouldn't make top 50 like Reed, Lanier, Howard etc.

Well he might be top 10 alltime defensively and among Centers, might be top 10 offensively. 11 odd years prime, with the extra years alongside Shaq in Miami is hard to put other 50 players ahead of.

Top 10 defensively is iffy but defensible. Top 10 offensively is not.

[LA Bird]

It depends on where you have him ranked now. Mourning was #60 on the last RealGM list and climbing 10 spots with a couple more of his peak level seasons as a top 3 player doesn't seem that difficult. As for becoming a top 10 center all time though, that is still a no because of how crazy stacked the position is. You can almost go to the 20th best center in history and they would still be comparable to the 10th best at any other position.

Personally, I have Mourning top 50 already. His prime got cut short by a few seasons but you still get around 7 years after excluding missed games. Frazier was voted #35 with a 7 year prime and a similar peak.

[homecourtloss]

I think he would be in the fringe, but probably not? I mean, we have plenty of centers of his caliber who probably wouldn't make top 50 like Reed, Lanier, Howard etc.

Well he might be top 10 alltime defensively and among Centers, might be top 10 offensively. 11 odd years prime, with the extra years alongside Shaq in Miami is hard to put other 50 players ahead of.

Top 10 defensively is iffy but defensible. Top 10 offensively is not.

'Zo's defensive peak is probably underrated by many, but you're right thatTop 10 offensively is pretty wild considering that you currently have three active 5s who are among the best offensive bigs ever in Jokić, Embiid, and Towns. I think it would be a good fight for a top 20 though I'm not sure if he even gets there .

You have AD, Horford if you have him as a center is a better overall offensive player. Then there's Porzingis. Holmgren is has already peaked higher offensively with a shorter career of course. Wemby will get there. Wilt, Kareem, Gilmore, Moses, Hakeem, Shaq, Ewing, DRob, Duncan, KG, McAdoo if have him as a 5, Walton for peak. then you have guys like Yao Ming, Arvydas Sabonis, Pau Gasol as a center.

[penbeast0]

Zo was a great player, but he was clunky on offense and his impact was to some degree a product of the era he played in. Today he'd still be good, but his impact would be lessened.

You call him a top 10 center, but I'm not sure that's true. In today's game is there any chance he's more impactful than say prime Gobert? I really doubt it. I feel like we could come up with 10 better centers pretty easily. I'll try right now in fact; Kareem, Shaq, Hakeem, D.Rob, Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, AD, M.Gasol, Dwight, Gilmore, Ewing maybe, that's over 10 already, without even counting Duncan as a 5, or Pau, or including Walton or Wilt or Ben Wallace or Moses (not all of whom I necessarily buy as better). Wemby assuredly will rank over him.if he stays healthy too.

Only in this massive recency bias style accounting would Zo be considered better than Wilt or Moses (or for that matter would Gilmore rank over Wilt much as I liked Gilmore). Marc Gasol is another way overrated player here.

[migya]

Zo was a great player, but he was clunky on offense and his impact was to some degree a product of the era he played in. Today he'd still be good, but his impact would be lessened.

You call him a top 10 center, but I'm not sure that's true. In today's game is there any chance he's more impactful than say prime Gobert? I really doubt it. I feel like we could come up with 10 better centers pretty easily. I'll try right now in fact; Kareem, Shaq, Hakeem, D.Rob, Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, AD, M.Gasol, Dwight, Gilmore, Ewing maybe, that's over 10 already, without even counting Duncan as a 5, or Pau, or including Walton or Wilt or Ben Wallace or Moses (not all of whom I necessarily buy as better). Wemby assuredly will rank over him.if he stays healthy too.

Going by career in total, he might be top 10 scoring wise. There's more than just shooting and nice looking moves. Mourning drew fouls and banged better than most even in his Center stacked era. He had flaws for sure and didn't shoot his jumper enough in his Miami years, but he was quite successful as the best scorer on his teams. His defensive impact is just too much to not be top 10, though players like McAdoo were very nice.

[One_and_Done]

Zo was a great player, but he was clunky on offense and his impact was to some degree a product of the era he played in. Today he'd still be good, but his impact would be lessened.

You call him a top 10 center, but I'm not sure that's true. In today's game is there any chance he's more impactful than say prime Gobert? I really doubt it. I feel like we could come up with 10 better centers pretty easily. I'll try right now in fact; Kareem, Shaq, Hakeem, D.Rob, Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, AD, M.Gasol, Dwight, Gilmore, Ewing maybe, that's over 10 already, without even counting Duncan as a 5, or Pau, or including Walton or Wilt or Ben Wallace or Moses (not all of whom I necessarily buy as better). Wemby assuredly will rank over him.if he stays healthy too.

Going by career in total, he might be top 10 scoring wise. There's more than just shooting and nice looking moves. Mourning drew fouls and banged better than most even in his Center stacked era. He had flaws for sure and didn't shoot his jumper enough in his Miami years, but he was quite successful as the best scorer on his teams. His defensive impact is just too much to not be top 10, though players like McAdoo were very nice.

He's not better than any of those guys I named.

[70sFan]

Going by career in total, he might be top 10 scoring wise.

Not even close:

Mikan
Johnston
Wilt
Kareem
Lanier
McAdoo
Moses
Hakeem
Daugherty
Ewing
Shaq
Duncan
Towns
Jokic
Embiid

are all easily better scorers than him. Then you have a lot of names within his range like Bellamy, Reed, Gilmore, Yao, Howard, Gasol etc., most of which should probably ahead of him in that regard. That doesn't take into account other offensive skills like passing, which would put him even lower.

His defensive impact is just too much to not be top 10, though players like McAdoo were very nice.

Again, it is not clear if Mourning is a top 10 defender ever and he's likely not top 30 offensive center ever. I can see him reaching the end of top 10 for people who are very high on his defense, but it's just tough, center position is that stacked.

[lessthanjake]

Seems to me like the answer to this is yes. He was already ranked #60 on the last RealGM Top 100 list. And he was ranked #64 on the 2020 RealGM Top 100. So the consensus here is already that he was pretty close to top 50. That’s despite the fact that he had health issues that occurred when he was age 30 and at the peak of his powers and rendered him no longer the same again. If you take that away, you probably get another year or two of his peak (i.e. akin to his 1999 and 2000), followed by a few more prime years (i.e. probably something like his 1996-1998 years). And, after that, his late-career years would probably be a bit better than they were. It seems hard to imagine that that wouldn’t be enough to take him up to the top 50.

The only caveat I’d have here is that, in this particular scenario, he probably doesn’t win the 2006 title, because he’d probably have been too good for the Heat to get to draft Dwyane Wade (not to mention that they surely wouldn’t have gotten Shaq). So he would be very unlikely to have the title-as-a-role-player part of his resume, though that seems relatively minor, given that he only played 11 MPG in the 2006 playoffs (though he was definitely effective in those minutes IMO).