Rating Players: The Best Basketball Player Ever

I read a very good article recently about rating players the other day and it got me to thinking about the whole psychology of picking a "best" player. 

For me, the best kind of player is epitomized by guys like Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson. Oscar and Magic were the kinds of guys who set up their teammates and destroyed opposing defenses by forcing the defense to guard everyone on the floor.

When Magic Johnson’s Lakers met the Celtics of that era, the Celtics had arguably better personnel at every position except perhaps at point guard. The Lakers won two of their three matchups largely because of Magic’s skill at getting his entire team involved in the scoring.

When I was younger, the kind of player teams tended to build around was the big center like Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul Jabbar. These were guys who could dominate the game with high percentage inside scoring, great interior defense and control of the boards.

During these earlier eras there were guys like Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Dr J, etc.; guys who were great scorers but not necessarily considered essential to the building of a championship team. At the beginning of the 90’s this perception changed when the Chicago Bulls began to win championships lead by the scoring of Michael Jordan.

Since what has become known as the "Jordan era" it has become popular to point to Jordan’s stats as proof that Michael Jordan could lay claim to being the best player ever. 

Was he really, or is someone else the best player ever?

Championships

One of the biggest considerations people make in considering the worth of a player is the number of championship teams that player has been on.

There are some respects of this consideration that are legitimate, but just because a player was on a championship team does not mean that he was a great part of why that team won the championship. 

Players like B. J. Armstrong, Luke Walton, Kenny Smith and Robert Horry all have been on championship teams, yet no one would consider them as great players. Robert Horry in particular has seven championship rings, one more than Michael Jordan, and only two less than Bill Russell.

The consideration of championships only makes sense if the reverse is true, that a team could not have won a championship if a particular player had not been there. Certainly in the case of the 2000 Lakers championship team, the absence of either Shaquille O’Neill or Kobe Bryant would have made a championship unlikely for that team. They probably would have not even made it to the playoffs.

One of the oddities of the Jordan era is that he briefly retired after the first run of three championships. The 1993-94 Chicago Bulls ended up with a comparable record to previous Bulls championship teams and only exited from the playoffs after a hotly contested second round playoff series without Jordan or a replacement for him.

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