Using Numbers to Find the 75 Greatest NBA Players of All-Time

in 1996 on the 50th anniversary of the nba the league put together a list of the 50 greatest players in nba history dating all the way back to 1946 the list included the best players to ever play the game from the most notable players like michael jordan magic johnson wilt chamberlain to some old school players that a lot of modern fans have never even heard of such as dolph shays dave bing and hal greer fast forward 25 years and this season for the first time since 1996 the nba is releasing a new list an updated list of the top 75 greatest players of all time and sometime later this month the official list will be released but until then many nba fans have wondered how the league will go about this will the nba keep the original 50 players and just add 25 new ones in that case it would be tough to narrow down 25 years of basketball to just 25 players not only that but as much as we want to respect the past i think we can all agree that a generational talent in the 50s isn't quite up to par with the generational talent from the 2000s but this list is based off of the greatest players not the best players and there's a distinct difference there a player can be exceptional but due to many different variables like injuries and bad management that player may never reach their full potential in terms of greatness tracy mcgrady patrick ewing and dominique wilkins are all great examples of this with a list this expansive ranging through seven decades worth of nba history there is bound to be a lot of subjectivity the official top 75 greatest players of all time list was voted on by a blue ribbon panel of media current and former players coaches general managers and team executives but even with all that basketball knowledge and experience there are bound to be entries that leave you baffled writers for usa today sports created their own list of the greatest 75 players ever one writer voted for robert orry to be a part of the ultra elite top 75 another writer had casey jones above james harden and dwyane wade this writer doesn't even know how to spell paukersol's name and this writer put kobe bryant as the 15th greatest player of all time 15th but if that isn't crazy enough check out this writer's list he's got michael jordan at three magic johnson at 15 below carl malone isaiah thomas and elgin baylor he's got pete maravich a player that only played 10 seasons in the league seven spots above stephen curry he also has kevin garnett at 55 right behind ray allen this is far from a good list but instead of sitting on the sidelines and judging i made my own list but this isn't just any old list i threw together based off of my own subjective point of view the entirety of my top 75 greatest players of all time was constructed by using purely numbers and statistics an extremely unconventional and probably psychotic way to go about this but if you're familiar with this channel you know this isn't anything new numbers don't lie but they also don't tell the full story so this will be tough to begin this process i selected 110 players that i felt were eligible to even be considered for this list players from every era every decade every position and playstyle 110 players doesn't sound like a lot but think of any all-time elite talent and chances are they were included in this process next i chose 13 different metrics to rank each player off of now this was the trickiest part of this entire experiment i needed to avoid metrics that heavily favorite longevity because there are current nba players who haven't been in the league long enough to even crack those leaderboards for example i chose points per game instead of total career points but at the same time we also want to acknowledge and reward when a player maintains excellence for an extended number of years some of these metrics may seem a bit random but after spending far too many hours deliberating this i'm pretty confident that these metrics give the best representation of every aspect that makes a player great and lastly not every category is weighted the same finals mvps regular season mvps and championships are weighted slightly heavier than the other categories since you know those things are um pretty important i will assess every player in every category the top 20 players in each category will earn points the leader in each category will earn the most points second place earning the second most points and so on down to the 20th best player once each player has been assessed across all 13 categories we will add up the total points and the top 75 points earners will be our top 75 list so with that out of the way let's get into this the first category we looked at was championships one and the obvious leader here is bill russell bill's right hand man john havlicek racked up the second most points here and four players each earned the third most points the next category is finals mvps now technically michael jordan has the most finals mvp in nba history with six but the award didn't even exist when bill russell was in the league in fact russell was so dominant in the finals they literally named the award after him and because of that i gave bill russell the top spot there's about oh i don't know a hundred percent chance that if the award existed when bill was playing he would have more than six anyways so second is michael jordan and third is lebron fun fact only five players in nba history have won more finals mvps than willis reed next is regular season mvps and leading the way is kareem abdul-jabbar followed by michael jordan and bill russell only eight players in league history have earned more than two regular season mvps one of them being the criminally underrated moses malone next we have every fan's favorite stats points per game and with the top spot is michael jordan just narrowly edging out wilt chamberlain followed by elgin baylor what's crazy here is that wilt elgin and jerry all played on the same lakers roster for four seasons and in one of those seasons neither wilt jerry or elgin led the team in scoring shout out 1972 gail goodrich following points per game is assists per game and at first thought i assumed jon stockton held this title but it's actually magic johnson with a sizeable lead followed by stockton and oscar robertson on the other end of the spectrum we have rebounds per game a category that is dominated by pre-modern big men with wilt chamberlain averaging a mind-boggling 22.89 rebounds per game followed closely by bill russell and bob pettit dwight howard and joel embiid are the only active players to crack this leaderboard next we're handing out points to players who dominated the defensive end with all defensive team selections tim duncan is the clear leader here with a selection total that will more than likely never be topped 15 selections to the nba all-defensive team just think about that most players don't even play 15 seasons in the nba second is kobe bryant and kevin garnett each with 12 selections a piece next we're looking at all nba team selections this category among the last one we just looked at rewards sustained excellence so there are players who aren't on this leaderboard but will be in years to come players like stephen curry kevin durant james harden giannis as well as a few others but for now we must assess these players based off of their body of work and as it stands the leaders here are lebron karim and kobe now there is a current player that i could see passing lebron's current record of all nba selections any guesses to who that player might be leave your answers in the comments below next up is one of the better statistics for measuring a player's value on the court or rather their impact on winning and that's win shares per 48 and at the top is unsurprisingly michael jordan but trailing him by just a sliver is david robinson that's about as close as it gets if robinson played a couple games just slightly better throughout the entirety of his career he would lead all nba players in this category and right after robinson is wilt chamberlain so remember when i said that this list was going to be made up entirely of numbers and statistics well i lied this category is one that i made up but hear me out this metric is necessary there are zero statistics that show how great a player is at making shots and i'm not just talking about how good a player is at shooting i'm talking about players who can create and make their own shots players that can put the ball in the basket on demand from just about anywhere there's some advanced stats that do a decent job at quantifying this aspect of the game but since those metrics only date back to about a decade ago i came up with this now take a good look at this leaderboard because although it is subjective i think it's pretty solid with kobe bryant in my opinion being the greatest shot maker in nba history followed by stephen curry kevin durant tracy mcgrady and james harding our next category is the infamous per stat i know it's become a bit of a punching bag among nba fans over the last few years but it's still a solid all-around stats and it's more data to be considered for this process and topping the list is michael jordan followed by lebron james and anthony davis okay so here is an interesting category peak as in a player's peak years in this case their best five-year stretch in regards to win shares and here we can see that wilt chamberlain had the greatest peak in nba history putting up numbers that don't even register in today's nba context at the second spot is kareem who had an incredible individual run in milwaukee that really isn't talked about enough and in the third spot is michael jordan who at his peak looked like jesus in a basketball jersey and last we have the impact and influence category this category was narrowed down to 10 players who have influenced the game the most players that change the way we see the game how we watch basketball how we play basketball and how we fell in love with the game in the first place and leading here is michael jordan kobe bryant and stephen curry and that covers it all 110 players through each of our 13 categories so who came out on top which players cracked the top 20 and who rounds out the top 75 nba players of all time i mean who are we kidding [Applause] [Music] with the top spot just like every other chart we've ever covered is michael jordan with a total score of 106 way way way ahead of everyone else michael ended up leading in four categories and was top five in eight different categories michael's a rare case of a jack of all trades and a master of many but we all knew he was going to be number one on time so let's take a look at where some other players landed our top 10 is made up of jordan lebron kareem wilt russell kobe magic duncan durant and shaq now is that a perfect top 10 well i don't think a perfect top 10 exists but considering we literally use data and numbers to make this list i'd say that's a really accurate top 10. and i just want to say that i'm glad to see kevin durant in the top 10 all time some fans will agree with this many won't but all things considered durant has put together a career that ranks up with the greatest of all time if i had to put kd on an all-time list based off of what i personally think of him and his accomplishments this is about where i'd put him as well larry bird surprisingly missed the top 10 cuts and landed at 11. followed by oscar robertson hakeem pettit and david robinson steph curry ended up at 16 followed closely by chris paul at 17 and carl malone dirk nowitzki and willis reed rounded out the top 20. now i'm not going to go into detail on each and every player but let's talk about some notable rankings kawhi leonard finished at 22 with james harden just behind him at 24. giannis ranks 30th all time which would make him at this moment the sixth greatest power forward of all time i think that's probably too low for him i know he's still young but he's already accomplished a lot more than some other players above him did in their entire career westbrook lillard and kyrie all finished in the late to mid 40s carmelo and mcgrady finished at 55th and 57th respectively and somehow dwyane wade slipped down to 47. but you want to hear something insane five players on this year's lakers roster made this list five and dwight howard who would have been the sixth player to make this list just narrowly missed it some more interesting notes about this list the 1984 and 1996 draft classes both known as two of the best draft classes of all time both have four players who made this list but this particular stretch right here from 1996 to 1998 produced nine players that made this list which is what i would consider to be the best stretch of nba drafts in league history of the original 50 players from the nba's official list in 1996 36 of them made the cut this time around and of the 75 players on this list 18 of them are currently in the nba at just 22 years old luka doncic is the youngest player on this list and luca's possible appearance on the nba's official list has been the topic of a lot of debate lately should a player that has only played three seasons in the nba makes such a prestigious list well it all depends on how you look at it is luka doncic a top 75 player of all time in regards to what he has accomplished in the league no is he a top 75 player of all time in regards to skill and ability without a doubt i would assume that when the nba makes their list they will be considering both of these factors but in the case of our list the data says he lands at the 42nd spot which is crazy because luca doesn't even qualify for half of these categories yet and he still rose this high on this list but i want to make something clear this list is far from perfect paul pierce is too low dwayne wade is too low he should be somewhere around 30. bob pettit's too high clyde drexler and patrick ewing didn't even make the cut which is an absolute tragedy and i think the biggest flaw in using this particular method of sorting out the top 75 players of all time is that numbers do a terrible job of recognizing the small nuances of a player's game there's no real way to explain steph and curry's on-court gravity using just numbers a basic stat like points per game does not begin to describe tracy mcgrady's scoring prowess and knows that truly captures just how dominant patrick ewing was in the low post numbers can only take us so far but you want to know the best part about this list 95 of our entire process for deciding who lands where was based off of statistics raw data numbers on a computer screen and we still came up with a better list than a lot of analysts and so-called experts you can either use what they like to call the eye test to assess players or you can use stats i would like to think that most fans do a little bit of both but to know that some individuals have an eye test that can lead them so far astray is baffling to me now i know this list has its flaws but instead of looking at who is and who isn't on it look at where players landed on this list and who landed near them derek rose is right between bob mcadoo and nicola yokic and when you think about what these players have accomplished this actually makes sense same thing with willis reed carl malone and dirk nowitzki charles barkley and kevin garnett landed in back-to-back spots as well which would make sense but let's be honest a list this extensive gets pretty shaky after about 40. pretty much any ranking after that is completely up to interpretation i don't care how much basketball you watch the guy you pick at let's say the 50th spot is more than likely going to be a different player than who everyone else picks for their 50th spot and that's probably the best part about this entire process we've all watched a lot of nba action we all have our own opinions we can all appreciate different aspects of the game no matter how you split it no one's necessarily wrong well unless you have someone other than michael jordan at number one then you're definitely wrong and you can go ahead and throw that list in the trash let me know what you think give me your list of top 75 all-time players make some predictions as to how you think the nba's list will look hope you all enjoy it and as always until next time you

Channel: JxmyHighroller

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Keywords: LeBron James, LA Lakers, House of Highlights, ESPN, NBA highlights, Jimmy Highroller, Kobe Bryant, NBA trash talk, Michael Jordan highlights, Buzzer Beaters, Kobe Bryant's best game, James Harden Nets, Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving, Ankle Breakers, Lamelo Ball, Trash Talk, Shannon Sharpe, NBA Finals, NBA Championship, Finals Highlights, Rebound, Cashreacts, Flightreacts, Nick Briz, Devonte Friga, ballislife, Golden Hoops, NBA Preseason, Stephen Curry

Id: vx3KitEiaLU

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2021