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Bill Walton =
<<<< David Robinson =
He's been a role player on 6 championship teams... Some of the Celtics guys did LESS than he has already..
Bill Walton =
Artis Gilmore who played for the Spurs for a few years should have been mentioned. He averaged 19 pts and 12 rbds over his career.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/...gilmoar01.html
Russell was the only constant in those 11 championships. Havlicek joined the Celts 3 or 4 years after the first championship (as a 6th man the first few years). Havlicek and Russell were the guys who drove the other players to that extra level. When Russell and Havlicek played together, they were similar to what Tim and Ginobili gives the Spurs today from an intensity and will-to-win standpoint. David was closer to what Russell was in talent, but he didn't have quite the winning intensity that Tim seems to have.
By the way, Bill Walton most certainly had a talented, defensive-minded crew around him. Mo Lucas was an All-Star and was a mean, fierce and dominating 4-man. They had terrific perimeter defenders in Lionel Hollins and Bobby Gross. This 1977 team was very similar to how the Spurs play today.
People act like all of the Celtics showed up at once. Guess what? They were already a good team, but hadn't won anything. They had a SIX time all star in Ed McCauley at center. They didn't even think twice about trading him for the #2 overall pick in the 1956 draft (St Louis Hawks) to nab Russell. That bought the Hawks a le in 1958...and the Celtics a dynasty. Before that trade, the Celtics were the Suns, a guard oriented fill it up team that couldn't stop a HS team. After? Champions for 11 out of 13 years. Figure it out.
My take on the list, was that apart from being a top 10 with only 8 on the list (???) is that he, just like usual, got it mostly wrong.
To me, the top 3 were without doubt Russell, Wilt, Kareem. Russell was greater than wilt, because of their head to head record. Kareem was also better than Wilt, based mainly upon the winning side of his game - Wilt, while great didnt win as much as Kareem did. So thats that one sorted. Russell, Kareem, Wilt.
Okay, next up would be Hakeem - Hakeem beat Shaq fairly easily, and as much as i hate to say it - was better skilled than DRob, and is definitely number 4 on this list.
Drob and Shaq and Moses Malone would be the next tier - with Shaq probably 5, Drob 6, Moses 7.
Next, Mikan, Ewing, Bill Walton - With Walton 8, Ewing 9, Mikan 10.
That would be my top 10.
Amen. Has anyone here ever read "The Last Amateurs", by John Feinstein? Annapolis is so difficult to get into that they have to find either top 10% academic players, or get recruits to go to a prep school for a year. How many serious HS basketball athletes would be willing to go to school for a year without playing so they can go play for a weak hoops program that happened to be from a rigorous military academy (Navy was in the Patroit League when the book was written, though.)?
And it was still that way in the mid-80's when David was playing. And I know about his late growth spurt, but I'm talking about his Middie teammates. Can you imagine how dominant David could have been in college if he went to any regular school, with legit D-1 talent? ing Rice could have won a pair of NCAA les.
ok. take russel out of the team he was playing for and tell me how many les they would have won. They had cousy, sharman, havlicek, and sam and K.C Jones, but do you know the only one star that was there for all 11 les. BILL RUSSEL. Case and point.
The only guy who could actually leverage championships with his leadership and will to win was Hondo. The Celts actually won 2 more les with Havlicek after Russell retired. That's why I mentioned him as special in an earlier comment.
David is a top 10 center all-time, in my view. He's in some great company led by Russell, Wilt and Kareem but he could easily rank in the 5th - 10th list.
Wilt Chamberlain averaged 50 points a game in a season. He averaged 27 rebounds per game one season. He shot 73% from the field one season. He scored 100 points in a game. In another he pulled down 50 rebounds.
His statline for his career was 30 22 4.
You can talk all day long about how you didnt like his approach to the game but he was a man that could do pretty much whatever he wanted individually on the court.
The man with the exception of a couple of years with the Lakers he had no talent to work with. Despite this he took the Warriors to the finals and won the finals with Philadelphia.
Red Auerbach put together some formidable teams to throw against him and triumphed but this is an evaluation of individual performance not team. After Chamberlain left the Warriors their team went to the crapper. It took the Lakers 5 years and Jabbar to get back to the playoffs.
Noone will ever score 100 points again. Noone will grab 50 rebounds in a game. , noone will even come close.
The Celtics dynasty in the 60s is the greatest team of all time but Chamberlain is the best player to play the game.
I've been following basketball since before Wilt came to the pros. I saw the battles between the Celtics, with Russell, Cousy, Satch Sanders, Loscutoff (who only came into the game to hurt people) and the Hawks when the Hawks had Pet , Martin, Lovelett, others. I followed Wilt's career in Philadelphia. Saw Walton in his prime at UCLA, the Lakers, even with the Celtics. Russell, Wilt, Walton, even Thurmond, , would have more than they could handle with the likes of Shaquille, Olajuwon, Robinson. and the very agile, fleet 4s and 5s of today. One simply cannot compare them. The older players are like oranges, to the more recent apples. People who write to judge and compare do a disservice to those they don't rate as high as the others.
For whatever this person's opinion is worth, there is one aspect of the game that one player stood out above all the rest, in passing and assists, and that was Bill Walton. No, I don't care much for his commenting, but one can't deny what he was good at.
In comparing lists of "the greatest x", whatever that may be in sports, you still have to look at the level, conditions, styles and any rules or what was allowed by officials during that particular era. There's no other way to compare them, really.
Yes, the Big O and Jerry West were rt. hand dominant on their dribbling, but they were the greatest in their time and conditions. A cross-over dribble of today would have been whistled for carrying the ball back in the 60s.
Babe Ruth is considered one of the greatest baseball players to ever hold a bat or wear a glove...but insert him as he was in his greatest years into today's game, and he may not be anything but a DH. It's hard to say...thus you can only really compare them with how they performed in the conditions they played in.
# David Robinson — too soft and too clutchless to succeed without being carried by Tim Duncan.
Carried by Duncan?
Not even gonna comment on the other 2 failures in that one sentence.
At least he spelled David's name correct.
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