In the wake of Steph Curry winning his 4th championship and first Finals MVP award, there’s been a lot of talk recently of where Steph Curry fits into the best players of all time discussion. This article attempts to quantify the best players ever based on their career accomplishments.
As a bit of background, when evaluating the best players of all time, I think about which player’s career I would have liked to have played out entirely on my favorite team (stripping away the player’s actual teammates, coaches, etc.). I feel like this helps me properly calibrate for a player’s peak vs. a player’s longevity (i.e.. The longer a player’s career, the more value he will add, but I would rather have an all-star player for 10 years than a decent starter for 15).
I believe some combination of individual accolades and team success should be the determining factor when considering the best players of all time. A player shouldn’t be punished because he was stuck on bad teams. Nor should a player be rewarded simply because he was on great teams (e.g. why Robert Horry’s 7 rings don’t make him one of the greatest players of all time). However, team success is the whole reason why they play the games, and in basketball specifically, the best players win championships at a very high rate. To me, the most relevant metric is not how many championships the player won, but how many championships the player won as the best player on the team.
For these reasons, I highly value regular season MVPs and being the best player on a championship team. I think regular season MVPs are underrated by most people, but they are very indicative of who was the best player at a time, especially when you can pile up multiple MVPs. For example, some Kobe fanatics legitimately think Kobe was one of the two greatest players of all time. But I can’t reconcile that with the fact that Kobe only finished top two in MVP voting twice (1st in 08, 2nd in 09). So there were only two years that he was considered one of the best two players in the league. To me, that is disqualifying when people try to put him in the top 5 of all time.
In light of my belief that individual accolades and team success both must be considered when evaluating the best players, I created a scoring system that quantifies how great a player is based on his achievements. The scoring system is as follows:
| MVP | 10 |
| Finals MVP | 5 |
| Most Regular Season Win Shares on Championship Team* | 5 |
| All-NBA 1st Team | 3 |
| All-NBA 2nd/3rd Team | 2 |
| Defensive Player of Year | 3 |
| All-NBA Defensive Team | 1 |
| All-Star | 1 |
| Championships | 1 |
As you see, my system rewards more points the more rare an accomplishment is. A player can accrue up to 29 points per year played (fun fact: Hakeem in 1994 is the only player to accrue 29 points in a year. He was MVP, DPOY, and Finals MVP on a championship team). I like the system because it values longevity, but you can rack up points very quickly with a few all-time great seasons.
My system has a flaw in that there was no All-Defense teams or Finals MVPs until 1969, and no DPOY awarded until 1982, but in looking at my results, I think these problems were more or less cancelled out by the fact that the players of the 60’s and 70’s played pre-merger in a much smaller league with a diluted talent base.
I used ESPN’s most recent ranking of the top 75 players of all time as my starting point, but I also included Karl Malone just to see how he would compare.** Without further ado, here’s my top 21
| Rank | Player | Points |
| 1 | Jordan | 174 |
| 2 | Kareem | 156 |
| 3 | Lebron | 152 |
| 4 | Russell | 139 |
| 5 | Duncan | 130 |
| 6 | Magic | 111 |
| 7 | Wilt | 99 |
| 8 | Shaq | 98 |
| 9 | Bird | 97 |
| 10 | Kobe | 96 |
| 11 | Hakeem | 89 |
| 12 | Mailman | 77 |
| 13 | Moses | 76 |
| 14 | Steph | 72 |
| 15 | KD | 65 |
| 16 | Dirk | 63 |
| 17 | Giannis | 61 |
| 18 | West | 59 |
| 19 | Oscar | 54 |
| 20 | Dr J. | 47 |
| 21 | Baylor | 41 |
I don’t want to go through every player, but here are a few notes on the final ranking:
– As expected, Jordan comes out on top, and it’s by more than just a hair. Being the best player on 6 championship teams is really the biggest differentiator. He doesn’t have the longevity of Lebron or Kareem, but he still accomplished more in less time.
– Kareem is just a bit above Lebron. If I were ranking manually, I would switch these two. And if Lebron can make another All-NBA team and a few more All-star teams, he’ll pass Kareem anyway. But it’s a good reminder of just how impressive Kareem’s career was. He didn’t have quite the peak of Lebron, but his All-defense teams made a difference.
– Duncan is ranked 5th here, which is higher than just about anyone outside of San Antonio would say. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a fair ranking. He has as many championships, Finals MVPs, and Most WS on champ as Magic (and as many or more of those as everyone else ranked below him), and he had a much longer career. His 15 All-defense teams is astounding.
– Wilt, Shaq, Bird, and Kobe are neck and neck, so I think those four could be put in any order without too much complaint from me. Fun fact: Bird was 1st or second in MVP voting every year for 6 straight years (2nd in 81, 82, 83, 1st in 84, 85, 86). Hakeem is clearly below those 10, but clearly above everyone else, so he is solidly 11th.
– Karl Malone being this high without any championships to his name is a testament to his longevity. Only Lebron has more 1st team All-NBA’s.
– Steph is 14th with 72 points, and KD is 15th with 65 points. Steph picked up 11 points this month by winning a championship, a Finals MVP, and having the most Win Shares on a team to win the championship, moving him from 17th to 14th. On the one hand, accruing 11 points in a single day seems like a stretch. On the other hand, this was the first season where I felt like he actually carried a team to a championship, so it’s probably deserved.
– It’s pretty impressive that Giannis has already cracked the top 20, but he’s already accrued 2 MVPs, a Finals MVP, and a DPOY, by age 27, so his spot is absolutely justified.
– The biggest difference between my rankings and ESPN’s rankings is Oscar Robertson. ESPN had him 9th and I have him 19th. I think his triple doubles are overrated given the pace of the NBA in the 1960’s, and Russell Westbrook has revealed that while it’s hard to average a triple double for a season, it’s not unthinkable and it doesn’t make you one of the best of all time. Oscar only won 1 MVP, was never the best player on a champion, and didn’t have extraordinary longevity or defense. To me, he’s more comparable to someone like Steve Nash than he is to Magic or the other players in the top 10.
– The second biggest difference is Dr. J. My system doesn’t include ABA accolades. But if you were to give Dr. J half-credit for his ABA awards (3 ABA MVPs, 2x most WS on ABA champ, 4x ABA 1st team, 1x ABA 2nd team, 2x ABA champ), he’d have 75 points, putting him at 14th (which is exactly where ESPN has him).
– If you want to consider likely future accolades of active players, this list gets much more subjective. I’ll spare you the details of specific forecasts, but I think Lebron is likely to pass Kareem, Giannis is likely to jump all the way to the 12 range, and Curry and Durant are likely to stay right about where they currently reside.
This is simply one way to determine the best players, but I think it accurately values individual and team success, and correctly weighs longevity with peak. Feel free to leave a reply in the comments.
Footnotes:
* My system values regular season MVPs (10 points) the same as it values being the best player on a championship team (10 points). However, there’s more than one way to determine who was the best player. The Finals MVP isn’t perfect, but it usually captures the best player on a championship team, so I give it a weight of 5 points. I also give 5 points to the player with the most win shares on a championship team (using Basketball-Reference.com’s win shares metric) to determine the most valuable player on a championship team in a given year. This helps even out years like 2007 and 2015 when most observers would agree that Tim Duncan and Steph Curry were the Spurs and Warriors’ best players, respectively, but Tony Parker and Andre Iguodala won the Finals MVP.
** ESPN’s recent ranking is available here: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33297498/the-nba-75th-anniversary-team-ranked-where-76-basketball-legends-check-our-list
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