PauloCatarino

Fair enough... Here's my take on your original list:

- I agree your top-5 are prettu much solid. I don't agree with your positining, and i could even argue that sometimes, i feel Larry Joe should be there instead of Russell. But then again, no biggie.

- What fumed me was you placing Duncan in the Top-10 AND OVER LARRY BIRD. Even if we take into account that we are talking about "greatest players" and not "best players", i still get pissed. Larry Bird, as a basketball player, was severall levels above Tim Duncan. Yeah, duncan has just won his 4th ring. But he played against a bunch of nobodies. That even couldn't provide the fight the lowly Nest did for Duncan's second ring.

- But, again, if you factor heavily championships won (which is the only way one could put Duncan over Bird), then i don't get why you don't rank Russell #1. He has won as much as Jordan and Magic COMBINED. And as much as Wilt, Hakeem, Shaq AND Bird COMBINED.

- Using PER is uselles because it's a knock on Wilt and Russell. These are player who routinely would get 7/8 blockspg. and maybe a couple of steals.

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kflo

i'm challenging your own assessment. it doesn't make sense. the lakers certainly weren't the underdogs. do you think the lakers upset the celts in '85 or '87?

as for PER, it doesn't really capture defense well.

Brockin25

Championships won were the most heavily favored factor, and Russell was given a 33% gap over 2nd place, but it wasn't the only factor.. there were other factors, and based on those other factors Russell was still second.

It's not useless... Russell's offensive numbers were not that good, but since he didn't have blocks per game, I didn't dock him, when normally he would have lost a lot more...He'd have had to finish top 3 in the category to jump over Jordan overall, and even with BPG, his offensive numbers weren't good enough to do that... BUT I did note that in the ranking.

Wilt was already #4 I think in PER? Had he finished first it would not have been enough to vault him over Russell or Jordan... so it's inconsequential in his case.

Brockin25

It's cool brother... not everyone is gonna like it, me or the way I do things. You're the first person to flat not like it, so I guess that's pretty good

23AJ

This is one of the best formulas I've seen yet in ranking the greatest players of all time. You use a lot of facts versus what a lot of people like to do, and that's just draw conclusions from their opinions, and toss away all the actual facts.

Brockin25

Thanks man, really... cause that is all I was trying to do for joehoo.net, is make it as factual as possible without getting into watching every game ever and making some calculus formula with 900 trillion variables...

I want to redo it for the top 25.. but who do you pick, you know?

kflo

i'm asking you to reevaluate your scoring for that section. penalizing bird and crediting magic and kareem is nonsensical - you can explain it to me, you can ignore the question and keep it the way it is, or you can change it.

overall, not a horrible system, although any system will inherently be flawed.

EGarrett

What does a player get .325 if he played with the best player of his era, but .5 if he didn't? Shouldn't you get more credit for being a second-fiddle if you were second fiddle to the best?

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BadBaronRudigor

Yes, my critique wasn't of the overall approach, I liked it a lot. Obviously though, by changing the weightings for championships won, or using a different system than PER, or any of a number of measures you could get a different result. I'd like to see you do this system for other players . . . sometimes finding out that Brent Barry is the number one guard in the league or some other fluke result sheds light on your weightings, though you did an excellent job of weighting career achievement more heavily than peak since that is what you seem to be looking for.

Oh, and back to size . . . weights in the old days were also listed at what the player weighed in college (Walt Bellamy ended up Shaq sized, not at 225!) so they are far less realistic than heights which are usually only overstated by one to two inches for modern players on official records.

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