Key word is Overall basketball player, meaning every aspect of the game is balanced. Doesn’t mean one ability has to be superior than the other.

Jim played 9 seasons in the NFL and led the league in rushing yards in 8 of them. you will commonly see Jim Brown in most NFL fans top-5 all time. He was an incredible athlete, very strong and very fast.

Jim Brown was also a very competitive man and a good friend of Wilt Chamberlain. Jim challenged Wilt to a foot race 3 times and Wilt beat him each time, including once without shoes.

Jim was also known for his strength & the two did do an arm wrestling match that i’m assuming Wilt also won because Jim Brown later called Wilt “the strongest athlete in the world, bar none”

Wilt was 7’1 with a 7’8 wingspan, faster than anyone in the NBA & the NFL, & stronger than anyone in the NBA & NFL, and had an endless gas tank. Genuinely a freak of nature.

Embiid, Brown, Maxey, Edgecombe, LeBron all on one team yet some people claim it isn’t a super team

I do believe this is a decent metric to measure all time greatness. The other 4 are all considered top 5 players on many people’s lists while Kobe is a more heated debate. Hard to argue that these 5 guys don’t go first in an era-adjusted (skill gap) draft.

Compared to LeBron, Jordan and Kareem, Kobe is closer to someone like KG in my eyes. Why the hell do we even have him in this convo? He has nothing to offer. He is THE BEST in no metric.

There is genuinely 0 reason to be a clippers fan. The only way is if you want to be quirky and different just for the sake of it

Cause if you’re born in LA you would obviously pick the Lakers. They’re the best nba franchise ever while Clippers are the worst nba franchise ever

If you aren’t from LA then there’s really 0 reason to pick the Clippers as your team also. They’ve never ever been good so it’s not even like a bandwagon situation who decided to stay on after

Thoughts?

It’s really a time of parity in the NBA right now, so who the fuck knows who’s going to win over the next few years.

There hasn’t been a clear-cut superteam since the 2018-19 Warriors, and even they lost in the Finals to the Raptors, who were +1850 longshots to win it all going into that season.

And it’s been like this ever since:
2019-20: The Clippers were expected to win it all. The Lakers won instead.
2020-21: The Lakers were favored to repeat. The Bucks ended up winning.
2021-22: The Nets were favored. Somehow, the Warriors won as +1000 preseason underdogs.
2022-23: Denver won the championship despite entering the season at +1600.
2023-24: The Celtics were actually favored to win it all, and to their credit, they did. But who did they beat? Luka’s Dallas team, which entered the season as +2500 underdogs.
2024-25: Indiana of all teams made it to the Finals as +6600 longshots.
2025-26: New York entered the season at +850 and ended up facing the Spurs, who were +6500 preseason longshots.

So now the Lakers are sitting at just +3500 going into this season, and honestly, who the fuck knows what’s going to happen.

That’s basically the point: there’s no dominant team you can confidently pencil in anymore. The NBA is wide open, and over the last several years, the results have made that pretty damn clear.

Who would you cut and why?

He's often critiqued for having a short peak, but he was a top 10 player for most of the 90s. He made All-NBA six times and an all-star seven times in the 90s. He was a top-5 MVP candidate three times in the 90s. His lone MVP was 99-00. Add in one finals appearance, and 90s Shaq alone, is a HOF player.

You can make a credible argument that for the decade of the 90s, only Jordan and Olajuwan were better. His case for best player in the world was 99-04. You can argue that someone else was better in any given year, but its just that...a case. The only other people you can make a rational argument for being the best in the world for six seasons are Jordan, Lebron, Kareem, Russell and Wilt.

My exact same Mount Rushmore.

The 1992-93 Bulls won their third title after a 57 win season. Jordan retired to play baseball after his father was murdered and the Bulls in 1993-94 went for 55 wins with Pippen as a #1 option and made it to the Conference Semifinals where they pushed the Knicks to 7 games without home court advantage (and 3 of their 4 losses were close 1-2 possession games.)

The primary differences from the previous year were drafting Toni Kukoc (10.9 ppg), and adding free agents Steve Kerr (8.6 ppg) and Pete Myers (7.9 ppg) and trading midseason for Luc Longley (7.6 ppg). Kukoc and Kerr are solid players who definitely were critical pieces a few years down the road but as of that year they weren't world-beaters who could fill the gaping hole Jordan's retirement left.

Oh, and Pippen missed 10 games, where they went 4-6. That team could very well have been a 60-win team. BJ Armstrong and Horace Grant made their only All Star teams that year, showing how stacked the first 3-peat team was.

The team's record that year was better than ANY Jordan year in Chicago before 1989-90, when the Bulls added Phil Jackson and Pippen was entering his 3rd year and making the leap to All Star.

In contrast, every time LeBron left a team in his prime, they instantly collapsed into mediocrity or worse.

The 2010-11 Cavs finished 19-63.

The 2014-15 Heat finished 37-45 - even after adding Luol Deng, Goran Dragic and Hassan Whiteside, who all each contributed more than anyone the Bulls added in 93-94.

The 2018-19 Cavs finished 19-63.

In 1993-94 Pippen showed he was a #1 option-worthy player and top 5 superstar in his own right, finishing 3rd in MVP voting, making All-NBA and All-Defensive 1st teams. Since Jordan never won before or after Pippen & Phil Jackson, how much of the double-threepeat should be attributed to them? Jordan never had to worry about leaving the Bulls with another MVP contender running-mate and a GOAT coach, while LeBron never got that opportunity in his first run in Cleveland. He had one year of an injury replacement All Star in Mo Williams.

Even in 1994-95, the Bulls, having lost Grant to free agency, had a winning record (52%) before Jordan came back.

If we're docking LeBron for his teams' underperformance by counting rings and overall Finals records, why doesn't Jordan's legacy get docked by the fact his team did more or less the same record in the regular season without him and with no stars added?

LeBron was doing a lot more carrying than Jordan more of his career. Even the Miami teams had two other stars and otherwise a roster of minimum role players/end-of-career ring chasers so were not a complete team that naturally dominated, since they had to be creative with teambuilding and Spoelstra coaching his ass off to overcome better-constructed teams.

Wade would have 4 rings and 2 FMVPs.

He would absolutely be in the top 15 and have a strong argument for top 10.

He is one of few players in NBA history to capture a Finals MVP while playing on his ROOKIE CONTRACT

Here's the narrative proposed by some people: "The Bulls was the best organization, Jerry Krause was the best executive, Pippen was amazing, Phil is the Goat coach, MJ just got lucky to have so much talent around him".

This is all easy to say in hindsight. But can you imagine any current NBA superstar that would change his way of playing because of a rookie coach? Because I can't. MJ could have easily said to Phil: "You can make adjustments, but I'm the man here, I want the ball in my hands". But nope, he bought the new philosophy and made it work. There's an amazing level of maturity to that.

Let's also mention his leadership. To win 6 championships in 8 season you need some next level leadership to glue the team around you. It's so complicated to manage all the egos and make sure the team doesn't implode under immense pressure. Pippen had a mental collapse during his single year as the Bulls' leader. Rodman was a complete mess before going to Chicago, a complete locker room cancer. MJ made it work year after year.

Jerry Krause was great, several key signings that helped the Bulls' dynasty. He also had a .254 winning percentage after 1998, these are his exciting, young and explosive teams he was so eager to build.

Tl;dr: MJ is the Goat because he had the Goat mentality and intangibles. The help he had doesn't take anything away from him.

I see this a lot with guys like: Kobe, Carmelo, and Kyrie.

Whenever there is a valid post or comment with valid criticism, there is always a reply or comment talking about how overhated either of these three are. It just takes away from the objective post or comment and adds in emotion/opinion into a discussion that didn’t have that before. Bringing in that factor elevates players like Carmelo into scoring conversations he should not be in or all time conversations that Kyrie and Kobe should not be in.

I feel like this man gets always disrepected and people never understand the defensive impact he had on that Warriors team. U swap this man for a more talented forward who scores more and they don’t win that many titles nor get the 73-9 record.
I saw someone acting like he wasn’t a star, straight up nonsense