RGM Top 100 Vote Thread - The Greatest Player of All-Time

[Black Feet]

Vote - Kareem

Nominate - Michael Jordan

[GilmoreFan]

I can't quite work out why the Kobe crowd (or anyone) is voting for Mikan... it would be like arguing that the caveman who invented the wheel was smarter than Einstein, because he was further ahead of his peers. Or that the fastest man in a small village 1000 years ago deserved as much respect as any of the champions from the last 70 years, because he was that far in front of his peer group. So the "how did he compare to his peers" argument is illogical.

But almost as bad is the "he had X skills... he was a great FT shooter", etc. You could replace Mikan's name with some random bum who never made the NBA, and it would be just as true of them, and tell us just us little about whether they would make it in the NBA. Brian Cardinal is a great FT shooter for a big guy, it tells us nothing meaningful about him as a player. Tskita was a pretty excellent FT shooter, and he was an embarrassment of an NBA player. Laettner was as sound a big man as could be, a great FT shooter, and dominated the college game with all his technical skills... I don't doubt he was more athletic than Mikan... and yet he was a one time all-star of no significance. Take a look at photos of the guy (and some of the admittedly rare footage), this guy (http://hoopedia.nba.com/images/2/2a/GeorgeMikan.jpg) is not an NBA player, he doesn't have an NBA body, he has no frame to add real muscle, gimpy legs (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... eMikan.jpg), and if footage is anything to go off he neither had a motor nor did he need one in the dinosaur age of "basketball" he played in.

It's absurd for him to be mentioned at all, let alone for the 11th nomination.

[JordansBulls]

Vote - Kareem

Nominate - Michael Jordan

Jordan is already on the panel. You have to nominate someone else.

[GreenHat]

They want you to recognize how much better his team is than everyone without accounting for how good his teams were minus him.

Slater Martin: “Boston just wasn’t much of a team until Russell showed up.”

Ed Macauley: “We played them a couple of times when Russell wasn’t in the lineup, and they were an ordinary club. With him, they were just superb.”

Bob Cousy: “We can win without me or Bill Sharman or Tom Heinsohn, but we can’t do it without Big Bill” (The New York Times, Mar 8, 1961).

“Without Bob Cousy or Tom Heinsohn or Bill Sharman the Boston Celtics are still the world’s greatest basketball team. Without Bill Russell they can be beaten” (The Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 25, 1962).

If anyone doubts the value of Bill Russell to the Boston Celtics, the performance of the three-time National Basketball Association champs in the last four games may change their mind.

Russell, considered the best defensive player in the game, has missed the last four games because of a foot injury and the Celtics have lost every one.

Their four game losing streak matches their longest since March, 1957, and has cut their Eastern Division lead from 10 to six games.

February 2, Russell suffered severely sprained ligaments in his right knee in a 95-94 loss to New York at Boston Garden. With New York leading 95-92, Russell was the recipient of a pass and scored on a layup. He fell hard to the floor and writhed in pain as the Knicks ran out the last 12 seconds.

HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Television’s most publicized sports rhubarb of the season came when NBC-TV cut away from the end of a New York Jets football game to start a special program, “Heidi.”

But Sunday ABC-TV, whose notable sports department has many achievements to its credit, made an on-the-air decision that may be more significant in terms of coverage—and was regrettable to fans who have come to admire the network’s genuine interest in athletics.

The decision came at the end of ABC-TV’s weekly professional basketball game, this one between the Boston Celtics and New York Knickerbockers. Right before action ended, Boston’s great player-coach, Bill Russell, took a long pass, rammed it through the basket—and then fell to the floor, hard.

As the game ended, he remained there, his knee severely whacked, and as the camera properly moved in on him, one could see the pitiful sight of Russell in obvious agony, a heart-rending picture. For basketball fans, and for just ordinary televiewers, it was a simple matter of human concern.

One of the announcers made the correct statement that although New York had won the game, the real story was there on the floor: Russell. What the announcer was talking about was the implication in regard to the league race—and also the human story concerning Russell, the most dominant figure in the history of professional basketball.

Boston lost five straight, their longest losing streak since the 1949-50 season. Russell returned February 9, 1969 against the 76ers, helped them overcome a 10-point deficit, blocked two shots and then dunked a shot with two seconds remaining to tie the game and send it into overtime, where after the Celtics took the lead he had made a key free throw and a key steal to preserve it as Boston won 122-117.

all MVP talk about Reed, Frazier, Cunningham and Unseld aside, Russell is the man who could bring Boston back. After Russell's magnificent posthospital game against the 76ers, Havlicek told The Boston Globe : "It's a damn shame you have to place so much of a load on one person. They keep saying this guy is the key, that guy is the key. There's only one key—him [Russell]—and he's only human, like everybody else."

Of course, don't let the facts get in the way or anything.

Well its nice to see that you have graduated from using one game sample sizes and have moved up to at least 5 games. (I replied to your 5-40 example with Heinshon's 37 and 23 in that very game, not sure if you saw my post in the mountains of replies).

Quotes aren't facts, they are just thoughts. Yeah they lost a handful of games without him in a couple of seasons.

Do you disagree that Russell played with good teammates? If you took the best player off of every team back then, how would they rank in the league? I'm going to go with pretty good.

Also you picked out one example from the many I listed, is this the only one you had a contention with?

[GilmoreFan]

re: Different Eras. I don't understand how we are supposed to seriously consider "how well game translates to other eras." League rules as well as economic factors change the dynamics of the game, and the sport evolved. Why not just judge guys based on what they did?

re: Intangibles. These are *already* built in to impact. If someone had really bad off-court issues, or zapped a team in practice and uninspired them, then we would see in that a player's impact. I fear people look at a player's impact (intangibles built in) and then ADD some intangible factor, which really at its root is just a bias.

I see this with McGrady vs. Kobe Bryant. It's been noted by many NBA people that McGrady had "lazy" habits, and like Allen Iverson, didn't take practice as seriously as he could have. BUT THE DUDE STILL SMOKED THE LEAGUE IN 2003.

Someone says, well, if McGrady had more "fire" (or whatever) he would have had a better career. That's true probably. But he made SEVEN all-nba teams. Guess what - if Shaq cared more about basketball he might have been the GOAT.

But we should just judge these guys on how they played/actual impact.

I agree we judge players based on how they actually played btw, I just think part of that is necessarily looking at the context of their play. If some guy was the fastest guy in a village of one legged men, I'm not especially impressed by that fact. He gets credit for being a speedster compared to this hamlet of unipeds, but how far will that get him in comparison with Jesse Owen? Yeh... not very far.

[GilmoreFan]

Near as I can tell from actual votes given, the current tally is:
Jordan- 15
Russell- 4
Kareem- 3
Wilt- 1

Nomination vote is much closer:
Erving- 6
Moses- 4
Oscar- 3
West- 3
Mikan- 3
Karl Malone- 1

Not I haven't included voters who haven't finalised their votes yet. So far very much to my liking though, as I have Erving 10 and 11, and both look like they're going to get the next 2 nominations.

[GreenHat]

The problem is the Russell supporters want their cake and everyone else's cake and eat all of it and even save some for later.

I can address your whole post, in its entirety, point-to-point, purely by directly quoting things that I ALREADY WROTE in this thread. I'm a Russell supporter, and I don't need everybody's cake. But it'd be nice if at the least a person quoting me to rebut had actually read what I've written.

I wasn't speaking directly at you, but all Russell supporters. I just quoted you to extend your metaphor, I thought that was obvious. I can find an example of someone doing everything that I have said. I apologize if you thought it was directed at only you, that wasn't my intent at all. But since you took the time to answer me point by point I will do the same.

They want his efficiency to be bumped up because the whole era was inefficient, but for his defense not to take a hit from competing against inefficient players.

Simultaneously, Russell also had the quickness, speed and explosiveness to be an Olympic caliber athlete in track-n-field. As such, I believe that he would be a major defensive horizontal presence in today's NBA as well, perhaps the most valuable defensive asset there is at present.

Your 1st point doesn't address my point at all. I never said that Russell wouldn't be a great defender. I even conceded that he might be absolute (in addition to the obvious relatively) best defender of all time. So in effect you are in agreement with me when you say "perhaps the most valuable defensive asset there is at present". If anything I seem to have a higher opinion of his defense. My point was that if you want to excuse his disgusting efficiency by saying the whole era is grossly inefficient then you have to account for the fact that his huge statistical defensive impact came against inefficient chuckers. Is it easier to guard bad offensive players or good ones? Even if he still is the best defensive player of all time playing in this era, the gap isn't going to be as big now.

They want his assist numbers bumped up because it was harder to get assists back then but they want you to ignore that rebounds were almost twice as easy to gather.

Finally, while he might not average 20+ rebounds per game these days, I definitely could see Russell leading the NBA in rebounding with modern examples like Rodman, Wallace and Love demonstrating it can be done.

Again we are in agreement, I definitely think Russell could lead the league in rebounding. We both agree that he wouldn't average 20+ a game today, so isn't disingenuous to quote his raw rebounding of 24+ a game in an era with almost twice as many shots? Seems we think alike on this issue.

They want you to assume that Russell would routinely get 10 blocks a game in today's game, even though calculating his blk% off of game films doesn't support that conclusion at all with the much fewer shots.

For example, I don't think Russell would average anywhere near double-digit blocked shots in today's NBA. BUT, there have been man players with his rough body type to lead the league in blocked shots in the last 25 years (Hakeem, Ratliff, Mourning, Wallace, even Howard). With current training methods, I think Russell would still be able to lead the league in blocks whatever era he was in.

Again, I have no argument with Russell being able to lead the league in blocks. We agree again. I only disagree with those that think he would double every other player.

They want you to count his rings without taking into account that he only had to beat out 7 teams at some points and 0 teams over a 2 SRS in some seasons.

They want you to recognize how much better his team is than everyone without accounting for how good his teams were minus him.

Now, does any of that diminish what Jordan did? OF COURSE NOT! If you're judging based on a player's individual impact, or at least trying to, then it doesn't matter how good their teammates were or weren't. That might make a difference in how many rings a player gets (which is why rings shouldn't be a stand-alone argument), but it doesn't make a difference in how good the player plays or in their impact. Which is the lion share of what I'm trying to vote on.

I put very little stock into ring counting. But that is Russell's most vocalized argument, is it not?

In fact I wish this project was solely based on how good a basketball player was.


No it looks like we are in agreement on defense/rebounding/blocks/rings shouldn't matter much.

I think that you believe that he would be better on offense than I do though.

So lets say he leads today's league in rebounding and blocks. Doesn't that make him a better defense and worse offense Dwight Howard? I think he's better than that so lets say a lot better defense and worse offense. Would you take that over every other player ever?

That's where I differ. I'm not one of those people who say that Bill Russell wouldn't even play in the league today.

I concede that he could very easily lead the league in rebounding, blocks and be the best defensive player in the league while having limited offense (I'm not going to assume he gains offensive skills all of a sudden, a lot of defensive centers never did).

To me that's a better Dwight Howard, but not the best player of all time.

If you want to make the argument that he had the highest impact of all time, relative to his era I won't argue with you.

But the question is who is better at playing basketball.

[Black Feet]

Vote - Kareem

Nominate - Michael Jordan

Jordan is already on the panel. You have to nominate someone else.

oops

Then I'll nominate Dr. J

edit - GOAT discussion should be between MJ & Kareem imo, I don't see a solid case for anyone except maybe Wilt. Though I am interested in reading everyone else's reasoning for picking different players.

[GreenHat]

A few minor points people called me on that I want to answer . . . .

Greenhat -- you say players today may be the same height but they are thicker and longer. Thicker, yeah due to modern weight training (and steroids) but with everyone having the same access to the weights and "supplements" I can't see where that would make a difference. But they are shorter but longer? Really? Out of what source did you come up with this one?

You can't see where being bigger makes a difference (through whatever means)? Are you kidding?

And yeah shorter but longer as in wingspan, not length of body. Look at someone like Dwayne Wade. He plays much bigger than the other guys his height. That's how he is blocking seven footers that are trying to dunk while playing the point guard position on the other end.

The undersized guys (by height) have big wingspans. They didn't even measure for it back then. Yeah a some guys just naturally had it, but now its actively searched for. Do you disagree that players today are longer than 50 years ago?

Greenhat -- you are right about blocked shots not being turnovers. I was thinking of plays that take the ball from one team and give it to the other which is what a turnover is supposed to define but because most great shotblockers slam the ball to intimidate like Dwight Howard (or Wilt), blocks that direct the ball to teammates to start the fast break aren't considered turnovers in the stat box although they have the same effect.

I agree that it has *almost* the same effect but in a vacuum a turnover is more valuable. Overall being a good shot blocker is better, but on one specific possession forcing a turnover is better. We both know that Russell doesn't retain 100% of his blocks, and I have seen on video times he blocked a shot right to the other team who got a layup from it.

More importantly the correlation drawn is just on turnovers, so if using that study as an argument, you can't just add blocks. That would be like adding steals to the rebounding aspect because a steal has a similar effect to rebounding (except not really either).

Unbiased Fan -- While your rebound numbers are too low because you are ignoring the team rebound issue, I will say that a 10ppg/15rpg DPOY with good passing skills who made his team defensively as much better than the second place team in the league as the second place team was better than the second to worst team . . . and did it consistently every year . . . would get so many accolades today that people would be saying Shaq Who? and kids would be growing up wanting to be defensive substitutes because that's where the money would be going. Add to it that that DPOY's team won every damn year and it would be an MJ level phenomenon.

I hope this is just intentional hyperbole. Also its disingenuous to say the second as compared to the worst, when I can easily say the second as compared to the eighth.

And there is no way of knowing if even by being the best defensive player in the league he would have that kind of impact. Team defenses are much more sophisticated now which makes it harder for a team to stand out from the crowd and there is 3 point shooting. Even if he is the best defensive player of all time, he's not going to be defending all those long 3s while covering the basket and rebounding.

If you really think a player like that would have people saying Shaq, who? and getting kids to want to grow up and be defensive substitutes, I've got news for you.

Not to mention with a 30 teams, the chances of him getting drafted by a crappy team (and not getting the ROY and another good player drafted with him) are a lot higher. Then we wouldn't be able to attach all the intangibles that we make up for guys who have won a lot.

[ThaRegul8r]

They want you to recognize how much better his team is than everyone without accounting for how good his teams were minus him.

Slater Martin: “Boston just wasn’t much of a team until Russell showed up.”

Ed Macauley: “We played them a couple of times when Russell wasn’t in the lineup, and they were an ordinary club. With him, they were just superb.”

Bob Cousy: “We can win without me or Bill Sharman or Tom Heinsohn, but we can’t do it without Big Bill” (The New York Times, Mar 8, 1961).

“Without Bob Cousy or Tom Heinsohn or Bill Sharman the Boston Celtics are still the world’s greatest basketball team. Without Bill Russell they can be beaten” (The Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 25, 1962).

If anyone doubts the value of Bill Russell to the Boston Celtics, the performance of the three-time National Basketball Association champs in the last four games may change their mind.

Russell, considered the best defensive player in the game, has missed the last four games because of a foot injury and the Celtics have lost every one.

Their four game losing streak matches their longest since March, 1957, and has cut their Eastern Division lead from 10 to six games.

February 2, Russell suffered severely sprained ligaments in his right knee in a 95-94 loss to New York at Boston Garden. With New York leading 95-92, Russell was the recipient of a pass and scored on a layup. He fell hard to the floor and writhed in pain as the Knicks ran out the last 12 seconds.

HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Television’s most publicized sports rhubarb of the season came when NBC-TV cut away from the end of a New York Jets football game to start a special program, “Heidi.”

But Sunday ABC-TV, whose notable sports department has many achievements to its credit, made an on-the-air decision that may be more significant in terms of coverage—and was regrettable to fans who have come to admire the network’s genuine interest in athletics.

The decision came at the end of ABC-TV’s weekly professional basketball game, this one between the Boston Celtics and New York Knickerbockers. Right before action ended, Boston’s great player-coach, Bill Russell, took a long pass, rammed it through the basket—and then fell to the floor, hard.

As the game ended, he remained there, his knee severely whacked, and as the camera properly moved in on him, one could see the pitiful sight of Russell in obvious agony, a heart-rending picture. For basketball fans, and for just ordinary televiewers, it was a simple matter of human concern.

One of the announcers made the correct statement that although New York had won the game, the real story was there on the floor: Russell. What the announcer was talking about was the implication in regard to the league race—and also the human story concerning Russell, the most dominant figure in the history of professional basketball.

Boston lost five straight, their longest losing streak since the 1949-50 season. Russell returned February 9, 1969 against the 76ers, helped them overcome a 10-point deficit, blocked two shots and then dunked a shot with two seconds remaining to tie the game and send it into overtime, where after the Celtics took the lead he had made a key free throw and a key steal to preserve it as Boston won 122-117.

all MVP talk about Reed, Frazier, Cunningham and Unseld aside, Russell is the man who could bring Boston back. After Russell's magnificent posthospital game against the 76ers, Havlicek told The Boston Globe : "It's a damn shame you have to place so much of a load on one person. They keep saying this guy is the key, that guy is the key. There's only one key—him [Russell]—and he's only human, like everybody else."

Of course, don't let the facts get in the way or anything.

Well its nice to see that you have graduated from using one game sample sizes and have moved up to at least 5 games. (I replied to your 5-40 example with Heinshon's 37 and 23 in that very game, not sure if you saw my post in the mountains of replies).

No, I have not.

Quotes aren't facts, they are just thoughts.

This is a discussion. I am providing qualitative data to support what I'm saying, rather than just expecting people to take my word. Are not most of the people replying in this thread providing their "thoughts?" I provide evidence to support what I say.

Yeah they lost a handful of games without him in a couple of seasons.

False. When Russell went down to injury for a prolonged period of time, they lost every single one of those games. The two longest losing streaks of the Russell era came (coincidentally?) when Russell was out with injury.

Do you disagree that Russell played with good teammates? If you took the best player off of every team back then, how would they rank in the league? I'm going to go with pretty good.

What we know is that Boston did nothing before Russell. I provided the testimony of contemporaries. What we know is that Boston lost every single game without Russell when Russell missed prolonged periods of time with injury. Those are the facts.

Also you picked out one example from the many I listed, is this the only one you had a contention with?

I responded to it because it stood out to me as glaringly false, easily disprovable, and I have the facts on hand to do so. It also suggested that you hadn't looked much into that era and might be one of those people who write off Russell because of "all his HoF teammates."

[shawngoat23]

Vote: Michael Jordan. Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar follow behind.

I would write a long explanation but nothing has changed in the last three years, except for the fact that I lost any delusion that people want to read Odyssey-like posts from me.

Nominate: Julius Erving. I consider him to be the 11th best player, if the 10 original nominees are considered the best ten (and in fact, I rate him above several of the original nominees), so he's the logical choice. Moreover, a nomination implies that this next player has a chance at being voted in at #2. Granted, the chances are miniscule that anyone outside the top 10 can be voted in at #2 (and in fact, really, only 4-6 players deserve to be considered, which is why I opposed expanding the nominees to 10), but if you focus on Erving's dominance in the ABA and his importance to the merger, you can assemble a weak case for him. So Erving it is on both criteria.

[GreenHat]

Well its nice to see that you have graduated from using one game sample sizes and have moved up to at least 5 games. (I replied to your 5-40 example with Heinshon's 37 and 23 in that very game, not sure if you saw my post in the mountains of replies).

No, I have not.

Quotes aren't facts, they are just thoughts.

This is a discussion. I am providing qualitative data to support what I'm saying, rather than just expecting people to take my word. Are not most of the people replying in this thread providing their "thoughts?" I provide evidence to support what I say.

Yeah they lost a handful of games without him in a couple of seasons.

False. When Russell went down to injury for a prolonged period of time, they lost every single one of those games. The two longest losing streaks of the Russell era came (coincidentally?) when Russell was out with injury.

Do you disagree that Russell played with good teammates? If you took the best player off of every team back then, how would they rank in the league? I'm going to go with pretty good.

What we know is that Boston did nothing before Russell. I provided the testimony of contemporaries. What we know is that Boston lost every single game without Russell when Russell missed prolonged periods of time with injury. Those are the facts.

Also you picked out one example from the many I listed, is this the only one you had a contention with?

I responded to it because it stood out to me as glaringly false, easily disprovable, and I have the facts on hand to do so. It also suggested that you hadn't looked much into those teams and might be one of those people who write off Russell because of "all his HoF teammates."

No I'm not at all.

If you want to build your case on four and five games be my guest. And I'm sorry if I don't take the testimony of some of Russell's friends as evidence. Especially when its false.

Slater Martin said "Boston wasn't much of a team until Russell showed up" according to you.

That's bull.

Boston was the second best team in the league the year BEFORE Russell arrived. If you and Slater Martin believe that being the second best team in the league "wasn't much of a team" then you have a lower opinion of the era than most of us (including me) do.

They were the second best team in the league and they added Russell and Heinshon to Sharman and Cousy (while losing Mcauley) and won the championship with Cousy winning MVP.

So the team was in second with an MVP player before Russell (and Heinshon) showed up. Not exactly the same if Russell played today and got drafted by the Cavs.

[GilmoreFan]

Yeh, I think stopping at 9 would have made more sense, since Kobe had something like 6/17 actual votes as a top 10 guy. It was also very clear that almost all the other 11 who expressed a clear vote (and quite a few who didn't explicitly vote) don't rank him in the 10 either, so he's now going to be hanging around for a while pretty pointlessly, with people eventually caving in and voting for him because "he's been waiting on the list for long enough".

Also, if this issue is important enough to you to spend so much time on it, would it be so much trouble to make concise and not overlong posts of actual argument? The information spamming and quote spamming is getting absurd. I could care less about what some dumb reporter once wrote, just as I care less about obscure accolades Jordan has (and I voted for Jordan). Could people confine themselves to arguments?

[Doctor MJ]

They want his efficiency to be bumped up because the whole era was inefficient, but for his defense not to take a hit from competing against inefficient players.

Your statement doesn't even make sense to me. Russell's defensive greatness isn't dependent on other people's poor FG% against him compared to stars of other eras. We don't even have that information.

They want his assist numbers bumped up because it was harder to get assists back then but they want you to ignore that rebounds were almost twice as easy to gather.

Count me among those who want you to adjust for both properly. When you do that, you see a guy with a fantastic pace-adjusted rebounding rate and who also racked up assists quite well.

They want you to assume that Russell would routinely get 10 blocks a game in today's game, even though calculating his blk% off of game films doesn't support that conclusion at all with the much fewer shots.

I would not ask you to assume Russell would block anything like 10 blocks per game today, though I am curious where you've seen numbers giving those estimates.

What I would ask you to do is recognize that there's a hell of a lot more to Russell's defense than shotblocking numbers, and that the other skills he possessed in spades are that made Garnett arguably the best defender of his generation.

They want you to count his rings without taking into account that he only had to beat out 7 teams at some points and 0 teams over a 2 SRS in some seasons.

Factor in the league size all you want. It's frankly not clear to me how to do so, but I won't say you can't.

They want you to recognize how much better his team is than everyone without accounting for how good his teams were minus him.

Go analyze Russell's last few years in the league man. Seriously. Anyone who doesn't come away with some serious respect after that isn't being objective.

From '65-66 to '68-69, Wilt had at least comparable supporting talent to Russell (and clearly superior talent in the last year), and Russell's team still won 3 of 4 times. Then Russell retired, and the team won less than 35 games.

[ThaRegul8r]

Vote: Michael Jordan. Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar follow behind.

I would write a long explanation but nothing has changed in the last three years, except for the fact that I lost any delusion that people want to read Odyssey-like posts from me.

Unlike most people, I couldn't care less how long a post is. I only care whether it's thoughtful and contains cogent points. If it isn't, then a sentence is too long. I read books. For recreation. I'm currently reading a book with over 500 pages. No internet message board post is as long as a book. Therefore I think it's a sad reflection on society when a message board post is "tl; dr." I think Twitter, with its 140-character limit, and Facebook, with its 240-character limit, has contributed to decreasing people's attention spans, as they can't be bothered to read anything longer than a status update. (I'd be curious as to whether there's been any research conducted on this.)

(I read The Odyssey, btw. One of my favorite works of literature.)

[Doctor MJ]

Boston was the second best team in the league the year BEFORE Russell arrived. If you and Slater Martin believe that being the second best team in the league "wasn't much of a team" then you have a lower opinion of the era than most of us (including me) do.

You really open yourself up for attack when you make statements like that.

The Celtics went 39-33, had an SRS < 1, and then got upset in the quarterfinals of an 8 team league. Granted that's not a horrendous team, but not at all the image you conjured up.

They were the second best team in the league and they added Russell and Heinshon to Sharman and Cousy (while losing Mcauley) and won the championship with Cousy winning MVP.

So the team was in second with an MVP player before Russell (and Heinshon) showed up. Not exactly the same if Russell played today and got drafted by the Cavs.

I think the '56-57 performance is a more worthwhile argument people should think about.

It's not the Cavs...on the other hand LeBron didn't lead the Cavs to 11 titles either. No one should give Russell GOAT simply because he won 11 titles, but at the same time, it's pretty silly to talk about going from never winning, to winning so many in a row as if it's a small difference. The Bulls did win 55 games without Jordan after all.

Also, Cousy as MVP was just a joke. It was the only year that Cousy beat Pettit in an MVP race, and it has everything to do with him being an established star getting honored for team success that within a year everyone credited Russell for.

[shawngoat23]

Vote: Michael Jordan. Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar follow behind.

I would write a long explanation but nothing has changed in the last three years, except for the fact that I lost any delusion that people want to read Odyssey-like posts from me.

Unlike most people, I couldn't care less how long a post is. I only care whether it's thoughtful and contains cogent points. If it isn't, then a sentence is too long. I read books. For recreation. I'm currently reading a book with over 500 pages. No internet message board post is as long as a book. Therefore I think it's a sad reflection on society when a message board post is "tl; dr." I think Twitter, with its 140-character limit, and Facebook, with its 240-character limit, has contributed to decreasing people's attention spans, as they can't be bothered to read anything longer than a status update. (I'd be curious as to whether there's been any research conducted on this.)

(I read The Odyssey, btw. One of my favorite works of literature.)

Here's my original post: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=831786url#p17123556

I think it's important to justify why you made each selection, and whether it can be done succinctly in a sentence or requires pages is up to the discretion of each poster. In my case, I don't personally have a lot of time nowadays, and I don't think anything has changed since 2008 to make me change my opinion.

To be sure, my opinion varies day-to-day, just as it did in 2008. Usually, Jordan's my #1, although I can see a case for Russell, KAJ, and Wilt too. As of right now, I have KAJ at #3 and Wilt at #4, whereas I had them reversed 3 years ago. But it's more of a "what am I feeling today" rather than anything about their particular resumes, obviously.

[JordansBulls]

The Bulls did win 55 games without Jordan after all.

Also, Cousy as MVP was just a joke. It was the only year that Cousy beat Pettit in an MVP race, and it has everything to do with him being an established star getting honored for team success that within a year everyone credited Russell for.

Yes and Celtics won 2 titles in the next 7 years after Russell left and had it's most wins ever at 68 wins with Havlicek on the team and then another 4 years later was back to winning 60+ games. Bulls after MJ left took 7 years to just make the playoffs and took 11 years to even have another allstar.

[Fencer reregistered]

Yes and Celtics won 2 titles in the next 7 years after Russell left and had it's most wins ever at 68 wins with Havlicek on the team and then another 4 years later was back to winning 60+ games. Bulls after MJ left took 7 years to just make the playoffs and took 11 years to even have another allstar.

Only after drafting another MVP center.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Unbiased Fan -- While your rebound numbers are too low because you are ignoring the team rebound issue, I will say that a 10ppg/15rpg DPOY with good passing skills who made his team defensively as much better than the second place team in the league as the second place team was better than the second to worst team . . . and did it consistently every year . . . would get so many accolades today that people would be saying Shaq Who? and kids would be growing up wanting to be defensive substitutes because that's where the money would be going. Add to it that that DPOY's team won every damn year and it would be an MJ level phenomenon.

Sorry to break this to ya, but a 10 PPG/15 RPG/5 BPG/DPOY center wouldn't be be better than Dwight Howard impactwise. Russell was usually the 3rd or 4th best scorer on his team. Where as Dwight Howard has to hold down the scoring & defense. Just last year Dwight put up 23 PPG/14 RPG/59% FG%/2.4 BPG/DPOY.

Please explain how Russell would have done better in today's game. He's a better outlet passer, and shot-blocker. But offensively you're giving up a lot. And on a team like Orlando, Russell wouldn't have the luxury of being just the 3rd or 4th option. Perhaps Russell leadership would turn that team around, perhaps not.

All due respect to Russell as a pioneer of the game, but the more in depth we go, the more I feel he's being overrated.