By: Scott the Statissassin
So, if you are anything like me then you are very over the “Jordan vs LeBron G.O.A.T.” discussion. This is very much not that.
At this point, it’s quite clear as to which two players occupy the top spots in NBA history. But, in honor of the World Cup I came up with an all time NBA starting XI (that’s not 100% retconned I promise). These 11 players, to me, make up the inner circle of basketball greats, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at their statistical profiles to see how they match up from strictly a statistical perspective. It should go without saying (and most definitely does not) that being just outside this incredibly elite group should not be considered a slight. As with any list of greats, everyone can have their own list(s). There are always arguments to be made for the inclusion of both other and more players, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and for me, this is it. The following 11 players are listed in alphabetical order (say it with me - ALPHABETICAL ORDER!).
With the exception of LeBron James, every player on this list is retired and already in the Hall of Fame. LeBron has played long enough and secured a high enough place in the NBA pantheon to allow his incomplete career to be compared to finished legacies. Where possible, only playoff statistics were used (unfortunately player impact plus minus (PIPM) is currently limited to only regular season data). For some older players (Wilt, Russell, and The Big “O”) only Win Shares (WS) and Win Shares Per 48 Minutes (WS/48) are available. Box Plus Minus (BPM) and Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) are available for all other players on this list. Some of these stats are better than others, but all of them are realistically better than traditional statistics (points, rebounds, assists). Hopefully using all of them together helps to minimize the biases found in each metric. A combination of all five (median values of the 8 players with all stats were used as stand-in values for those without) produces one all-encompassing metric known as Basketball Arguments Are Real Fun (BAARF).
For the most part, everyone on this list has pretty similar looking numbers. Can you really make any determinations about the greatness of Shaq vs Hakeem by comparing their 0.184 and 0.189 WS/48 values? Is Magic-Bird settled by 7.4 over 6.9 BPM? The conclusion, if there must be one, is that these all-time greats largely come down to preference -- whether era, team, style-of-play, position, or other. The most obvious takeaway? One quick glance is a reminder of why the MJ vs. LBJ debate exists; those two guys are on another planet even when compared to the cream of the crop.
There’s not a whole lot more to say about these numbers, as I was mostly curious how the profiles would look compared to each other. So just in case anyone other than myself wanted a handy reference chart, here ya go. Now please take a moment to recognize those who put so much hard work into this...
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