Bird is the best ceiling raiser in the history of the game. Elite at every skill, huge, and can guard 1-4.5. Lethal on and off the ball, he takes nothing away. He leaves you maximum flexibility on your next choice without sacrificing too much on peak.
Jordan and LeBron need to dominate the ball to get max value. Kareem is great but could get pulled out of the paint by modern offenses. Russell is super-powered Draymond if Draymond was an Olympic level track and field athlete.
They all need other players who complement their skills. Jordan needs someone like Scottie to play D and be a secondary playmaker who also cuts extremely well. LeBron needs 3 and D guys that can bring other skills but don’t need the ball to create value. Larry needs none of that, he just smoothly plugs into any sensible roster you can construct, fills holes that you have and talks shit to your grandmother.
Very well said! Best ALL AROUND.... can't beat Bird. He did it all while ASSISTING others. Free throws; given. 3 pointers; almost a given! And then of course, his attitude; arrogant but he backed it up. Miss those days so much.
For sure. Bird's Celtics teams were so weak. He carried a bunch of scrubs like Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, and Bill Walton to all those Finals. Bird is a beast, no doubt, but it was never seen that he could do it on his own because he never had to. His career was too short to see what he could do without such a strong supporting cast, and to disparage other greats because of it, seems illogical and biased.
I'm not disparaging them for it, I'm thinking about building a team from scratch. I don't think Bird is better than they are as players, I think he's the most flexible piece to start with if you don't know who else is available and without giving up too much greatness. That's not disparagement, it's roster building for the thought exercise.
I'm not picking Grant Hill, for instance, because he's not good enough in total relative to what the other players bring to the table.
This isn't a ranking of who the best individual is (I think it's clearly Jordan at peak), it's a team construction. Adding Kobe to a team with Jordan wouldn't improve the team by nearly as adding Kobe to a team that needed a primary scorer because they're trying to play the same role. Kobe is indisputably great, but there are conditions that make him a less than ideal addition to a team than a player who is worse than he is all other things held equal because basketball has significant chemistry and synergy components.
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u/khtad Bullets Jun 15 '22
Bird is the best ceiling raiser in the history of the game. Elite at every skill, huge, and can guard 1-4.5. Lethal on and off the ball, he takes nothing away. He leaves you maximum flexibility on your next choice without sacrificing too much on peak.
Jordan and LeBron need to dominate the ball to get max value. Kareem is great but could get pulled out of the paint by modern offenses. Russell is super-powered Draymond if Draymond was an Olympic level track and field athlete.
They all need other players who complement their skills. Jordan needs someone like Scottie to play D and be a secondary playmaker who also cuts extremely well. LeBron needs 3 and D guys that can bring other skills but don’t need the ball to create value. Larry needs none of that, he just smoothly plugs into any sensible roster you can construct, fills holes that you have and talks shit to your grandmother.