Who's the best basketball player of all time?

[jimmy olsen]

Is there a talented Brit netball player who'll qualify for the poll? :brit:

On a related note I thought about shilling for Canadian Steve Nash, but pretty sure he'd be considered just a step below the guys mentioned.

Olajuwon is probably the foreign NBA GOAT. But people like Doncic, Antetokoumpo and Jokic have a chance of passing over him when it's all said and done. Christ, Jokic is such a wickedly fun player to watch.

Donic is really fun to watch to, and he's not only great, he's clutch. It's just that he plays on a team that would be otherwise competing for the number one pick.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm not sure Larry Byrd should be on this list. But he is certainly one of the players that was impacted by injury. There are a lot of games during the championship runs of the Celtics where he had to sit out a lot of minutes because of back pain.

Russell, Chamberlain, Bird, and Magic are all in that area of top 10 players of all time but just a notch below Kareen, Lebron, and Jordan IMO. Obviously I think Kareem is 1 and Jordan and Lebron are 2a and 2b but reasonable minds can disagree.

I agree with Chamberlain, Bird and Magic being in the grouping just below the best of all time.  But I would put Russell in the grouping of the best of all time along with Jordan and Kareem.  The thing those players had that Lebron does not is they made the players around them better.  Lebron is all about hero ball and so that disqualifies him from being the best ever.

This is nonsense. Lebron is the most well rounded player ever. He's got over 10k assists and 10k rebounds.

A lot of those teams that lost in the finals with him wouldn't have even sniffed the playoffs if he wasn't on the team.

EDIT: This is just a bizarre criticism. The mainstream criticism of Lebron has been that he doesn't engage in heroball nearly enough. For literally his entire career he has been hammered by fans and pundits for not taking over games like he's Jordan of Kobe.

[crazy canuck]

That says more about what you consider valid mainstream views. 

[jimmy olsen]

That says more about what you consider valid mainstream views. 

You can disagree with the mainstream view. You may even by right to do so, but you can't make the argument that it is not the mainstream view. By far the most common criticism of Lebron has been that he doesn't take over games when he needs to and that he's too unselfish.

[Admiral Yi]

Michael gave better highlights than LeBron.  Taking it to the hole vs. tossing a 3.

[PDH]

Kenny Sailors

[HisMajestyBOB]

I don't follow basketball. Nor do I know much about it. But as  a 90s kid, I gotta go with Jordan. He is and was always the best. I still remember going to a sleepover in the mid 90s and watching one of the Shaq vs Jordan games. Epic.

[Gups]

I also don't know enough to comment but Jordan unarguably raised the profile of the sport worldwide.

[crazy canuck]

That says more about what you consider valid mainstream views. 

You can disagree with the mainstream view. You may even by right to do so, but you can't make the argument that it is not the mainstream view. By far the most common criticism of Lebron has been that he doesn't take over games when he needs to and that he's too unselfish.

The problem with these sorts of polls is that they are informed mainly by recent memory.  Your view that LeBron is criticized for not being self-centred enough is a really good example of this. During his prime, the main criticism made against him is that he was too much of a ball hog. Recently, he is being criticized for taking too many games off, both literally and figuratively.  Your view of him appears to be shaped mainly by the last couple of years, which are in no way indicative of his career.

[crazy canuck]

Another example of faded memory, it was not that long ago that the debate was whether Kobe had replaced Jordan as the best player ever, and Kobe is not even on this list.

[jimmy olsen]

Another example of faded memory, it was not that long ago that the debate was whether Kobe had replaced Jordan as the best player ever, and Kobe is not even on this list.

No one outside of Lakers fans thought this.

I've followed Lebron his whole career and from the first years in Cleveland to now he's always been hammered for not taking the game over like Jordan. That absolutely includes his prime. When he was being ripped for not winning that first year in Miami with Bosh and Dwayne Wade he was getting a hundred percent of the blame for being too unselfish.

Edit: The only other modern player that might deserve to go on that list is Curry. Really revolutionized the game.

[The Minsky Moment]

Chamberlain was so dominant at his peak it creates a kind of mental distortion field.  It's hard to wrap one's mind around the degree to which he was lapping the competition.

[Eddie Teach]

Chamberlain was so dominant at his peak it creates a kind of mental distortion field.  It's hard to wrap one's mind around the degree to which he was lapping the competition.

We're not talking about *that* kind of scoring. 

[Barrister]

Chamberlain was so dominant at his peak it creates a kind of mental distortion field.  It's hard to wrap one's mind around the degree to which he was lapping the competition.

This is always a problem in discussing "who was the best" in sports - at a certain point these games just weren't regularly recorded on video.  If I remember correctly there's no video of Wilt's 100 point game as most games of that era weren't televised.

So it's hard to compare someone like Chamberlain to more modern players because no one alive has seen Chamberlain play.

[The Larch]

Chamberlain was so dominant at his peak it creates a kind of mental distortion field.  It's hard to wrap one's mind around the degree to which he was lapping the competition.

This is always a problem in discussing "who was the best" in sports - at a certain point these games just weren't regularly recorded on video.  If I remember correctly there's no video of Wilt's 100 point game as most games of that era weren't televised.

So it's hard to compare someone like Chamberlain to more modern players because no one alive has seen Chamberlain play.

In basketball this is compounded by the fact that the 3 point line was introduced much later than we think, and this has made it very difficult to compare stats from different eras. Also some stats only started being counted in relatively recent times as well, so you can't know, for instance, how many blocks Wilt Chamberlain averaged.