cecilthesheep wrote:Sublime187 wrote:Man Mikan better not make it in yet. It's the one guy I really do not want in for at least the next 10 to 15 spots. Guy was in the weakest era BY FAR of any great. A guy like Ewing, Barkley, Kobe and even Embiid should get in before him easily.
Imagine what Moses would do against that competition....
Imagining what Moses (or Barkley, or Kobe, or Ewing) would do against that competition if he was born in 1924 and played under 1950s rules is much harder to do, but I think he probably would not have been as good as Mikan. The whole race thing complicates the discussion significantly, but in general I think there is no way to do this but rate players by how well they did against the competition they actually faced with the resources, coaching, and training they actually had.
To make it fair, I hope you’re also doing the reverse and speculating on how Mikan would do if he’d been born circa-1980 or thereabouts. That’s where it gets tricky; while it’s true he crushed his weak era [as you’d expect a true all-time great to do], it’s hard to see him as a player who is dominant to the same degree as many of the modern(ish) players [who are still on the table] were/are in the modern(ish) era.
And I say that as someone who has generally been pretty pro-Mikan in all-time comparisons in the past. But let’s look at him realistically.....
As an athletic specimen, he’s very similar to someone like Marc Gasol [or at best a Steven Adams type], although perhaps 1” shorter.
He’s got a nice post game [relative to his era, at least] though not exactly making my all-time short-list of great post scorers.
Has a bit of shooting touch, though it’s difficult to speculate on how much range he’d have [need to bear in mind when looking at his FT% that he did the under-handed “granny shot”, which he no doubt would NOT be utilizing in any semi-modern context; would that hurt his %???.....].
Is a decent passing big, though nothing transcendent; certainly not at all an “all-timer” in this regard.
Has very good defensive instincts to my eye (and certainly the Lakers’ defensive run with him at the helm supports this).
So where does a Marc Gasol level athlete with those player attributes land in a modern context? Probably roughly a Marc Gasol level player (which I think we’d all agree Marc Gasol is no where near a top-20 player peak all-time). Admittedly, we cannot assume Marc would be as dominant in the 40s/50s as Mikan was, though. But jsia: if it’s difficult to imagine Mikan significantly better than Marc Gasol in a modern context (I know many would argue he’d be substantially worse than that, though I personally tend to disagree), it’s difficult [for me] to argue him as a top 20(ish) peak.
"The fact that a proposition is absurd has never hindered those who wish to believe it." -Edward Rutherfurd
"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
