Ranking the Most Talented UCLA Basketball Teams of All Time

College basketball history is full of great teams. Legendary squads that make you wonder how it all worked to such perfection on the hardwood.

This is not about those teams.

This is about the ones that make you squint at the roster years later and wonder how it all fit in one locker room—squads where the talent level bordered on absurd and future pros were sometimes stacked two-deep.

You can win a title without that kind of depth. You can even dominate a season without it. But when it's there, it leaves a different kind of imprint.

So we set out to find those instances.

Bleacher Report writers and editors started with a massive pool of candidates and cut it to 68 via a staff vote, enforcing a simple rule along the way: No overlapping cores. That meant no two teams from the same school could share more than one rotation player.

From there, we focused on what these rosters became, counting only players who actually reached the NBA or WNBA, and weighing how many made it, how long they lasted and how much they accomplished as pros. Individual NCAA accomplishments were also considered, but amateur team success was not.

A first-place vote garnered 68 points, on down to 1 point for a last-place vote.

The result isn't a ranking of the best college teams ever. It's a catalog of talent at its most concentrated—rosters that, in hindsight, feel almost unreasonable.

Below is a collection of UCLA's most stacked teams that appeared in our overall ranking.

Team summaries by Andy Bailey

4. 1963-64 UCLA Men (30-0)

Overall Ranking: 66

Pro Seasons (36): Gail Goodrich (14), Keith Erickson (12), Walt Hazzard (10)

Hall of Famers: 1 | Pro All-Stars: 2 | Top-10 Picks: 2

NCAA Tournament: Won National Title

It won't surprise you to learn that this isn't the last time you'll see the UCLA Bruins on this list. The number (and caliber) of pros that program has produced is pretty spectacular.

And even though we're still in the 60s for this countdown, this group qualifies for that description.

After winning the 1964 national title under John Wooden, Gail Goodrich, Keith Erickson and Walt Hazzard all went on to play at least a decade in the NBA. All three had multiple seasons with double-digit scoring averages. Hazzard and Goodrich were each top-10 picks and All-Stars. And Goodrich was eventually a Hall of Famer.

For an eight-year stretch from 1968-69 through 1975-76, Goodrich averaged 22.4 points, 5.5 assists and 1.5 steals.

With those three together, it's not hard to wrap your head around the college team going undefeated.

High Vote: 34

Low Vote: UR

3. 2007-08 UCLA Men (35-4)

Overall Ranking: 14

Pro Seasons (57): Russell Westbrook (18), Kevin Love (17), Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (12), Darren Collison (10)

Pro All-Stars: 2 | Top-10 Picks: 2

NCAA Tournament: Lost Final Four

Four players and four 10-year veterans is a heck of a success rate. And that's exactly what the 2007-08 UCLA Bruins did here.

But, with all due respect to Darren Collison's steady playmaking and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute's multipositional defense, the standouts here are Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love.

Remarkably, despite being drafted in 2008, both are still in the league. One-time MVP Westbrook is still registering triple-doubles this season. And Love, a five-time All-Star and key cog on the 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers title team, has settled nicely into his "veteran mentor" role.

Both are in the top 90 in career wins over replacement player (when you include the playoffs).

High Vote: 3

Low Vote: 53

2. 1968-69 UCLA Men (29-1)

Overall Ranking: 4

Pro Seasons (46): Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (20), Sidney Wicks (10), Curtis Rowe (8), Steve Patterson (5), John Vallely (2), Lynn Shackelford (1)

Hall of Famers: 1 | Pro All-Stars: 3 | Top-10 Picks: 2

NCAA Tournament: Won National Title

We enter the top four with another UCLA squad coached by the legendary John Wooden. This one, of course, was headlined by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The Bruins, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers center is generally known as the third-greatest player in the history of the league, and there are certainly arguments to have him higher.

The six-time NBA MVP averaged 24.6 points for his career and was the all-time leader in total points until LeBron James recently passed him. Over the first 12 seasons of his career, he put up a whopping 28.1 points, 14.1 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 3.4 blocks and 1.2 steals. And of course, he won six championships and two Finals MVPs.

Kareem isn't the only reason this UCLA team is here, though.

Sidney Wicks was a four-time All-Star with a career average of 16.8 points. Curtis Rowe had an All-Star nod of his own and also averaged double figures for his career.

Abdul-Jabbar is certainly the driving force behind this rank, but he had a lot of help on this championship-winning team.

High Vote: 2

Low Vote: 26

1. 1973-74 UCLA Men (26-4)

Overall Ranking: 3

Pro Seasons (49): Jamaal Wilkes (12), Marques Johnson (11), Bill Walton (10), Richard Washington (6), Dave Meyers (4), Andre McCarter (3), Greg Lee (2), Ralph Drollinger (1)

Hall of Famers: 2 | Pro All-Stars: 3 | Top-10 Picks: 4

NCAA Tournament: Lost Final Four

Half a decade after Kareem's team won it all, Wooden had an even more stacked roster at UCLA.

This one featured three future NBA All-Stars (Jamaal Wilkes, Marques Johnson and Bill Walton), two Hall of Famers (Wilkes and Walton) and an MVP (Walton).

Before injuries derailed his career, Walton was on track to perhaps be the face of the league. By his fourth season, he'd won a championship, Finals MVP and regular-season MVP. In 1976-77 and 1977-78, the two years in which he made the All-Star team, he averaged 18.8 points, 13.8 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 2.9 blocks.

Wilkes, meanwhile, won three championships and averaged 18.4 points, 6.5 rebounds and 2.6 assists over the first 10 years of his career.

And Johnson put up 20.1 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.6 assists in his career.

That kind of talent, plus five other pros, made this UCLA roster one of the most imposing in the history of basketball.

High Vote: 1

Low Vote: 10