Who's held the NBA Championship Belt?

Mugthis

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 15, 2002
842
Berkeley, CA
Throughout the NBA's history, who's held the title of "best player alive"?
 
To get started, here's the top-5 players according to a 3-year rolling sum of VORP, courtesy of Basketball Reference. 
 
 

Mugthis

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 15, 2002
842
Berkeley, CA
If playoff performance were included and properly weighted, I imagine Duncan would be the guy from 2001-3 and maybe 2002-4. Jordan would probably surpass Malone in '96-'98, maybe Pippen too from '95-97.
 
I'm pleased that Kobe's best 3-year run is only 3rd.
 

ivanvamp

captain obvious
Jul 18, 2005
6,104
Often, when people are discussing the greatest player of all time, Russell and Chamberlain rise to the top. But you now who gets almost no love? Kareem. But my word, Kareem was insanely good. In every way. Peak. Longevity. Individual accolades. Championships. Statistics.

Also, I can't believe that Michael Jordan only would have the belt for 5 years.
 

snowmanny

Member
SoSH Member
Dec 8, 2005
15,671
ivanvamp said:
Often, when people are discussing the greatest player of all time, Russell and Chamberlain rise to the top. But you now who gets almost no love? Kareem. But my word, Kareem was insanely good. In every way. Peak. Longevity. Individual accolades. Championships. Statistics.

Also, I can't believe that Michael Jordan only would have the belt for 5 years.
 
I didn't like him much but Kareem was dominant.  Don't forget he won three titles in college in three eligible years. (Freshman weren't eligible.  But his Freshman team did defeat the then #1 ranked UCLA varsity).  If he was a freshman in college now the hype would be off the charts and those awesome NCAA title seasons would be in the NBA.  The 1971 Bucks are also underrated; at the time it was unimaginable that they could be beaten. (I also believe the 1972 Bucks would beat the vaunted 1972 Lakers 7 out of 10 times.)  I'm still amazed that Dave Cowens was somehow able to stay close enough to even with Jabbar in enough games in the 1974 Finals to get Boston the title.
 
On the other hand, the notion that Magic Johnson, who was awesome and I liked a lot, was better than Larry Bird is totally based on the last thing people saw.  It is indisputable that Bird was the clearly superior player for each of their first seven years in the NBA.  After that Bird was hurt (though still really good when he played) and Magic shot better and the Lakers won the last titles.
 

Kliq

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 31, 2013
22,673
There are many, many, many things wrong with that chart and it pretty much explains nothing.
 
In 2005-2006, Kobe Bryant was the best player in the NBA, it's true. He averaged 35.4 ppg (only Elgin, Wilt, Jordan and Rick Barry have ever done that) and people always talk about Kobe being a senseless chucker, but he shot a respectable 45% from the field. In addition, he probably should have shot more, because his team was fucking terrible. The next five guys behind Kobe in minutes played on that team where Lamar Odom, Smush Parker, Kwame Brown, Devean George and Chris Mihm. Despite all that, Kobe dragged that team to 45 wins and the 7th seed in a brutal Western Conference and nearly upset the Suns in the first round. VORP might come out saying one thing, but if you replaced Kobe on that team with a league average player, say Ricky Davis, that team wouldn't even win 15 games.
 
Karl Malone can lead the league in VORP all he wants, until it comes down to the last two minutes and his face looks like he just bit into a lemon. If the idea is who held the Championship belt, then actual championships should matter. David Robinson might hold the edge during the MJ-less years, but anybody that doesn't think that Hakeem was the best player during that two year span needs their head examined. All the proof is in the 1995 playoffs, where Hakeem bulldozed his way through Robinson in spectacular fashion, knocking out Robinson in the title fight like he was Sonny Liston.
 
Bill Walton was the best player in 1976-77, even if his reign only lasted one year.
 

ishmael

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 3, 2006
640
Kliq said:
In 2005-2006, Kobe Bryant was the best player in the NBA, it's true. He averaged 35.4 ppg (only Elgin, Wilt, Jordan and Rick Barry have ever done that) and people always talk about Kobe being a senseless chucker, but he shot a respectable 45% from the field. In addition, he probably should have shot more, because his team was fucking terrible. The next five guys behind Kobe in minutes played on that team where Lamar Odom, Smush Parker, Kwame Brown, Devean George and Chris Mihm. Despite all that, Kobe dragged that team to 45 wins and the 7th seed in a brutal Western Conference and nearly upset the Suns in the first round. VORP might come out saying one thing, but if you replaced Kobe on that team with a league average player, say Ricky Davis, that team wouldn't even win 15 games.
First off, this is a three year rolling ranking. But even for 2006 the stats say differently and I'd tend to agree.
 
True Kobe scored more points, but LeBron put up 31.4 ppg (on 4 fewer shots per game), 7 boards, 6.6 assists, 1.6 steals, and 0.8 blocks. His Cavs won 50 games, won a playoff series, and pushed a solid Detroit team to 7 games. The eight rotation players behind LeBron in minutes were:
Eric Snow
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Drew Gooden
Damon Jones
Donyell Marshall
Larry Highes
Ronald Murray
Sasha Pavlovic
 

bowiac

Caveat: I know nothing about what I speak
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 18, 2003
12,945
New York, NY
ivanvamp said:
Also, I can't believe that Michael Jordan only would have the belt for 5 years.
I would imagine this is because of the three year rolling average and his "retirement". He has some zeros mixed in there.
 
As far as Kobe's 2006 season goes, it may well have been better than LeBron's, but the real champion that year was, you know, the NBA Finals MVP...
 

Kliq

Member
SoSH Member
Mar 31, 2013
22,673
ishmael said:
First off, this is a three year rolling ranking. But even for 2006 the stats say differently and I'd tend to agree.
 
True Kobe scored more points, but LeBron put up 31.4 ppg (on 4 fewer shots per game), 7 boards, 6.6 assists, 1.6 steals, and 0.8 blocks. His Cavs won 50 games, won a playoff series, and pushed a solid Detroit team to 7 games. The eight rotation players behind LeBron in minutes were:
Eric Snow
Zydrunas Ilgauskas
Drew Gooden
Damon Jones
Donyell Marshall
Larry Highes
Ronald Murray
Sasha Pavlovic
 
I couldn't really care less about the three year rolling period of VORP, I'm pointing out it's inadequacy as a decider of the NBA Championship belt holder. 
 
Kobe's season was better because he had worse teammates in a better conference. That isn't an all-star lineup for LeBron, but at least most of the guys had relevant NBA careers beyond their time playing with LeBron. Outside of Lamar Odom, you can't say that about anybody that played significant minutes on that Laker team. Yes LeBron won five more games, but he also played in a conference that had such juggernauts as the Bucks (40-42), Bulls (41-41) and Pacers (41-41) all make the playoffs. There were five teams in the East with a winning record, there were 8 in the West. 4 teams in the East failed to have a winning percentage over .400, while only 1 team in the West sunk below that mark.
 
I don't mean to disparage LeBron, he was great that season. But if you asked the GM of all 30 NBA teams after that season who was the top dog in the league, the answer would be Kobe. In his book, Bill Simmons went over all of the MVP awards in the leagues history and determined if the right guy really won the award. One of the questions he used to determine the worthiness of a candidate was "If you were picking teams for a pickup game and you had every player in the NBA from that season, who would you pick first?" The answer is Kobe, not only because he was the best player, but because he is the one player that would take it as a personal insult if you DIDN'T take him first, so when he was picked second, he would play with an extra chip on his shoulder to show you that you made a mistake in picking someone else. It might be a dumb Simmons thing, but it is important when determining who the top dog in the NBA is.
 

bowiac

Caveat: I know nothing about what I speak
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 18, 2003
12,945
New York, NY
Kliq said:
I don't mean to disparage LeBron, he was great that season. But if you asked the GM of all 30 NBA teams after that season who was the top dog in the league, the answer would be Kobe. In his book, Bill Simmons went over all of the MVP awards in the leagues history and determined if the right guy really won the award. One of the questions he used to determine the worthiness of a candidate was "If you were picking teams for a pickup game and you had every player in the NBA from that season, who would you pick first?" The answer is Kobe, not only because he was the best player, but because he is the one player that would take it as a personal insult if you DIDN'T take him first, so when he was picked second, he would play with an extra chip on his shoulder to show you that you made a mistake in picking someone else. It might be a dumb Simmons thing, but it is important when determining who the top dog in the NBA is.
Okay, but this is a deeply stupid question.
 
I think your "ask all 30 GMs" question is also weird, considering Kobe didn't win this MVP that year. It went to Nash, with LeBron and Dirk also finishing ahead of Kobe. Maybe the GMs would have wildly disagreed with the sportswriters, but I don't know 1) why you think that; 2) why that matters.
 
Factoring in playoffs of course, I think the answer is Wade.
 

m0ckduck

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 20, 2005
1,714
ivanvamp said:
Often, when people are discussing the greatest player of all time, Russell and Chamberlain rise to the top. But you now who gets almost no love? Kareem. But my word, Kareem was insanely good. In every way. Peak. Longevity. Individual accolades. Championships. Statistics.
 
Agreed that Kareem has become weirdly underrated.
 
Speaking of 'underrated': notwithstanding all the Kobe discussion, the two most dominant peaks of the last 50 years that aren't rewarded with a #1 status are Hakeem Olajuwon and Moses Malone. The former basically dominated the league in '93 and '94, and you could make a case that Malone was collectively the most dominant player from 79-83.