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Saw this on ESPN Insider, knew you guys would be interested.
By John Hollinger
ESPN
OK, everyone -- it's time for something different. Much of my writing to date has focused on leaguewide issues, but today I want to tackle a franchise-level question. And when it comes to franchises, none can rival the recent history of the Los Angeles Lakers. While the Celtics dominated the '60s, the Lakers have been the league's marquee team ever since. With L.A. entrenched atop the Western Conference, its string of dominance shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
They've also employed an unusual number of superstars over the years. Any list of the game's 20 greatest players has to include at least seven Lakers, all of whom require just one name (Magic, Kobe, Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Elgin and West).
Which brings up the obvious question: Which ones are the greatest? Now that Kobe Bryant is about to pass Jerry West for the most points in Lakers history, I'm not the only person looking at that issue. The Kamenetzky brothers have been addressing the G.L.O.A.T. question in their ESPNLosAngeles.com blog, and had me project Kobe Bryant's career numbers as part of the exercise.
It's a far more interesting question than for many other franchises. For some, the answer is so obvious that this exercise would seem pointless (Is there any debate at all about the greatest Milwaukee Buck, Minnesota Timberwolf or Cleveland Cavalier?) while for others the history is too brief (Anyone up for a greatest-Bobcat debate?).
For L.A., however, we can compare several all-time greats, and you can make a strong case for at least five players to rank at the top. So today, we're going to tackle the 10 greatest Lakers of all time, starting from the bottom and working our way up.
Here are the ground rules: First, we're counting only the time spent as a Laker. So Bob McAdoo gets no credit for winning those scoring titles in Buffalo, for instance. Second, we're counting only the Los Angeles years, not the time the franchise was based in Minneapolis (apologies to George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen and Jim Pollard). And third, duration matters -- a longer tenure is generally better than a shorter one.
Without further ado, here's one man's G.L.O.A.T. list:
10. Pau Gasol (2008-present)
Gasol has played only two-and-a-half seasons in purple and gold, but his arrival immediately heralded a new era of Lakers dominance. He's already helped L.A. to two conference titles and one championship, and he seems poised to add at least another conference title to his résumé.
Depending on how long he stays in town, Gasol's elite-level production could eventually see him rise to the seventh position on this list. His past two seasons are better than two of the three players immediately ahead of him, but he hasn't yet done it for long enough.
9. Gail Goodrich (1965-68, 1970-76)
Goodrich played much of his career during a lull in the Lakers' dominance, was shunted off to Phoenix for two seasons during his prime and spent his final seasons toiling in anonymity for the New Orleans Jazz after signing as a free agent. Because of that, he may be the rarest of rarities -- an underrated Laker.
(And his move to New Orleans also boosted his "value" to the Lakers, in that L.A. received three draft picks as compensation, under the free agency rules at the time. One of them became the top pick in the 1979 draft, Magic Johnson.)
Goodrich was good enough at his peak to lead a 69-win team in scoring. Less renowned is his performance in 1973-74, in between the West-Wilt era and the Kareem era. Goodrich led L.A. to 47 wins, averaging 25.3 points a game, and earned his only first-team All-NBA honors for his efforts.
He made four straight All-Star teams from 1972-75 and had solid playoff numbers throughout. He might have a tougher time in today's era, since he was basically a 6-foot-1 shooting guard, but his résumé is tough to ignore.
8. Wilt Chamberlain (1968-73)
Chamberlain outranks Goodrich despite the brevity of his L.A. career (five seasons, one of which lasted only 12 games) for one simple reason: He was the centerpiece on one of the greatest teams ever. Chamberlain's 1971-72 Lakers won a record 33 consecutive games and set a then-record with 69 total wins en route to winning the franchise's first title in California.
Chamberlain hardly scored for that team, but he led the league in rebounding and field-goal percentage while captaining the defense, letting Goodrich and West do all the damage offensively. His other Lakers seasons weren't as impressive, but he still led the league in rebounding four times and shooting percentage three times.
7. James Worthy (1982-1994)
Worthy's regular-season output was, quite frankly, well short of Hall of Fame quality. The reason he waltzed into Springfield, Mass., so easily was his outsized playoff numbers, including three straight postseasons with a 20-plus PER (player efficiency rating) and the Finals MVP award in 1988. Worthy is one of the rare performers with a career playoff PER better than his regular-season rating, making his "Big Game James" moniker richly deserved. For his playoff career, he averaged 21.1 points and shot 54.4 percent, which were far better than his regular-season output of 19.6 points and 52.1 percent.
That said, the gap between Worthy and the first six spots on this list is enormous. Worthy was never named first- or second-team All-NBA, but every player ahead of him had at least six first-team selections as a Laker.
6. Elgin Baylor (1960-1972)
Here's where the hair-splitting gets intense.
We had to ditch Baylor's first two seasons, which came in Minneapolis, but those seasons wouldn't have affected his ranking. The strong points in his L.A. résumé are eight first-team All-NBA selections and five top-five MVP finishes. Those accomplishments alone would make him the greatest player for at least half of the NBA's franchises.
In L.A, the bar is a few miles higher. Baylor's case is hurt by the lack of a playoff MVP or regular-season MVP and, more glaringly, the lack of a championship. Additionally, his peak years don't quite measure up to those of Shaq, Kareem and Magic, and he falls a bit short of Kobe and Jerry West on staying power and defensive contributions. He's one of the greatest players ever. But on this list, he's sixth.
5. Jerry West (1960-1974)
The Logo was gifted enough to shift to point guard in his 30s, lead the league in assists, and help the Lakers win 69 games and a title in 1971-72 … two seasons after he led the league in scoring. He was gritty enough to make five all-defense teams and earn 10 first-team All-NBA selections and two second-teams. He also came up huge in the playoffs, averaging more than 30 points in six straight postseasons and winning the 1969 Finals MVP award despite playing for the losing side (the only time that's happened).
So why's he only fifth? For two reasons. First, he wasn't especially durable -- he played fewer than 70 games in seven seasons and missed all but one minute of the 1967 postseason. Second and more important, his peak years were the least impressive of anyone's in the top six. West had about 15 straight seasons in which he was really, really good, but in none of them could you have said he was the league's best player. He never won the MVP award but landed in the top five of the voting eight times.
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1976-1988)
You could make a convincing case that Kareem is the third-best player of all time, behind Jordan and Chamberlain, so the fact that he comes in fourth on the Lakers' list is a pretty strong statement about the star power that has passed through L.A. over the past half century.
Abdul-Jabbar had his best seasons in Milwaukee, but he was no slouch in the Forum either. In L.A., he won three MVP awards and one Finals MVP and had nine top-five finishes in the MVP voting. Kareem also won five championship rings and made 13 All-Star teams as a Laker.
You could make a strong case that Kareem should be No. 1 based on the above, but the reason he drops to fourth on my list is his playoff performances. Abdul-Jabbar's postseason numbers weren't as strong as his regular-season output, which is perfectly normal (the competition is tougher in the postseason), but fall short in this group of playoff overachievers. Additionally, his peak seasons weren't as good as those of another dominant big man -- the next player on our list.
3. Shaquille O'Neal (1996-2004)
Shaq has a legitimate case to be No. 1 for one simple reason: At his peak, no Laker has ever been better. Not only did he post three straight seasons with a 30-plus PER -- something no other Laker has done, nor any other player in history, save Michael Jordan -- but he capped them with equally monstrous playoff efforts. O'Neal won only one MVP award in that span, but that's a travesty that says more about our own David-versus-Goliath voting tendencies than it does about how he played. However, the Lakers won three consecutive titles with him in the middle, and during that time he was as dominant as any player in history.
But his tenure was too brief to put him No. 1 on this list. He played only eight seasons in L.A., he feuded with Bryant at the end, and he wasn't durable, playing more than 70 games only twice and missing a total of 110 in his time in L.A. Shaq was amazing, but you couldn't count on him the way you could the top two players.
2. Kobe Bryant (1996-present)
Bryant might be the most divisive player in NBA history -- love him or hate him, virtually everyone has an opinion about him. Those opinions have become markedly more positive over the past two seasons, as L.A.'s success and his own increasing maturity have combined to greatly rehabilitate his reputation. Additionally, Bryant finally became the main man on a championship team (a key line previously missing from his G.L.O.A.T. résumé), and in 2008, he won his first MVP award.
Bryant has all the nuts and bolts to earn a high ranking -- a dozen All-Star selections, seven All-NBA first-teams, nine all-defense honors, and four championship rings. What's missing, oddly enough, is peak value. It's strange because at times, Bryant at his best has been as good as any player in history -- witness his 81-point explosion, for example, or his string of nine successive 40-point games.
But when you start comparing entire seasons, he has only one with a PER greater than 27, which is a pretty flimsy record compared to the other elites in the top six. And while his playoff numbers are strong, they aren't any better than his regular-season output -- again, a stat line that's impressive among mere mortals but pales in this company.
That's enough to keep him out of the top spot, although an early start combined with a career spent entirely in a Lakers uniform should allow him to own many of the franchise's records by the time he's done.
1. Magic Johnson (1979-91, 1996)
I've looked at players based on various criteria: peak value, durability, playoff performance and longevity. On those factors, Magic has the whole package, and only an early exit due to his contracting HIV prevents this from being a rout.
Peak value? Magic won three MVP awards, had nine top-five finishes in MVP voting and had five seasons with a PER of least 25. Durability? Before the HIV diagnosis, Magic had only one significant injury in a dozen seasons. Playoff performance? Magic had one of the greatest games of all time as a rookie, leading the Lakers to a championship while playing center in place of an injured Kareem; plus, he won the Finals MVP award three times and led L.A. to five titles.
Despite his early exit, Magic also grades out well in the "quantity" items. He made nine first-team All-NBA squads; only West, with 10, has more, and Kobe is still on seven. Magic's nine top-five MVP finishes is matched only by Kareem; Kobe, again, has just seven. In addition to Magic's five seasons with a PER greater than 25, he played 13 seasons with a PER greater than 20; only Shaq and Kareem beat the former number, and only West tops the latter.
By John Hollinger
ESPN
OK, everyone -- it's time for something different. Much of my writing to date has focused on leaguewide issues, but today I want to tackle a franchise-level question. And when it comes to franchises, none can rival the recent history of the Los Angeles Lakers. While the Celtics dominated the '60s, the Lakers have been the league's marquee team ever since. With L.A. entrenched atop the Western Conference, its string of dominance shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
They've also employed an unusual number of superstars over the years. Any list of the game's 20 greatest players has to include at least seven Lakers, all of whom require just one name (Magic, Kobe, Kareem, Wilt, Shaq, Elgin and West).
Which brings up the obvious question: Which ones are the greatest? Now that Kobe Bryant is about to pass Jerry West for the most points in Lakers history, I'm not the only person looking at that issue. The Kamenetzky brothers have been addressing the G.L.O.A.T. question in their ESPNLosAngeles.com blog, and had me project Kobe Bryant's career numbers as part of the exercise.
It's a far more interesting question than for many other franchises. For some, the answer is so obvious that this exercise would seem pointless (Is there any debate at all about the greatest Milwaukee Buck, Minnesota Timberwolf or Cleveland Cavalier?) while for others the history is too brief (Anyone up for a greatest-Bobcat debate?).
For L.A., however, we can compare several all-time greats, and you can make a strong case for at least five players to rank at the top. So today, we're going to tackle the 10 greatest Lakers of all time, starting from the bottom and working our way up.
Here are the ground rules: First, we're counting only the time spent as a Laker. So Bob McAdoo gets no credit for winning those scoring titles in Buffalo, for instance. Second, we're counting only the Los Angeles years, not the time the franchise was based in Minneapolis (apologies to George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen and Jim Pollard). And third, duration matters -- a longer tenure is generally better than a shorter one.
Without further ado, here's one man's G.L.O.A.T. list:
10. Pau Gasol (2008-present)
Gasol has played only two-and-a-half seasons in purple and gold, but his arrival immediately heralded a new era of Lakers dominance. He's already helped L.A. to two conference titles and one championship, and he seems poised to add at least another conference title to his résumé.
Depending on how long he stays in town, Gasol's elite-level production could eventually see him rise to the seventh position on this list. His past two seasons are better than two of the three players immediately ahead of him, but he hasn't yet done it for long enough.
9. Gail Goodrich (1965-68, 1970-76)
Goodrich played much of his career during a lull in the Lakers' dominance, was shunted off to Phoenix for two seasons during his prime and spent his final seasons toiling in anonymity for the New Orleans Jazz after signing as a free agent. Because of that, he may be the rarest of rarities -- an underrated Laker.
(And his move to New Orleans also boosted his "value" to the Lakers, in that L.A. received three draft picks as compensation, under the free agency rules at the time. One of them became the top pick in the 1979 draft, Magic Johnson.)
Goodrich was good enough at his peak to lead a 69-win team in scoring. Less renowned is his performance in 1973-74, in between the West-Wilt era and the Kareem era. Goodrich led L.A. to 47 wins, averaging 25.3 points a game, and earned his only first-team All-NBA honors for his efforts.
He made four straight All-Star teams from 1972-75 and had solid playoff numbers throughout. He might have a tougher time in today's era, since he was basically a 6-foot-1 shooting guard, but his résumé is tough to ignore.
8. Wilt Chamberlain (1968-73)
Chamberlain outranks Goodrich despite the brevity of his L.A. career (five seasons, one of which lasted only 12 games) for one simple reason: He was the centerpiece on one of the greatest teams ever. Chamberlain's 1971-72 Lakers won a record 33 consecutive games and set a then-record with 69 total wins en route to winning the franchise's first title in California.
Chamberlain hardly scored for that team, but he led the league in rebounding and field-goal percentage while captaining the defense, letting Goodrich and West do all the damage offensively. His other Lakers seasons weren't as impressive, but he still led the league in rebounding four times and shooting percentage three times.
7. James Worthy (1982-1994)
Worthy's regular-season output was, quite frankly, well short of Hall of Fame quality. The reason he waltzed into Springfield, Mass., so easily was his outsized playoff numbers, including three straight postseasons with a 20-plus PER (player efficiency rating) and the Finals MVP award in 1988. Worthy is one of the rare performers with a career playoff PER better than his regular-season rating, making his "Big Game James" moniker richly deserved. For his playoff career, he averaged 21.1 points and shot 54.4 percent, which were far better than his regular-season output of 19.6 points and 52.1 percent.
That said, the gap between Worthy and the first six spots on this list is enormous. Worthy was never named first- or second-team All-NBA, but every player ahead of him had at least six first-team selections as a Laker.
6. Elgin Baylor (1960-1972)
Here's where the hair-splitting gets intense.
We had to ditch Baylor's first two seasons, which came in Minneapolis, but those seasons wouldn't have affected his ranking. The strong points in his L.A. résumé are eight first-team All-NBA selections and five top-five MVP finishes. Those accomplishments alone would make him the greatest player for at least half of the NBA's franchises.
In L.A, the bar is a few miles higher. Baylor's case is hurt by the lack of a playoff MVP or regular-season MVP and, more glaringly, the lack of a championship. Additionally, his peak years don't quite measure up to those of Shaq, Kareem and Magic, and he falls a bit short of Kobe and Jerry West on staying power and defensive contributions. He's one of the greatest players ever. But on this list, he's sixth.
5. Jerry West (1960-1974)
The Logo was gifted enough to shift to point guard in his 30s, lead the league in assists, and help the Lakers win 69 games and a title in 1971-72 … two seasons after he led the league in scoring. He was gritty enough to make five all-defense teams and earn 10 first-team All-NBA selections and two second-teams. He also came up huge in the playoffs, averaging more than 30 points in six straight postseasons and winning the 1969 Finals MVP award despite playing for the losing side (the only time that's happened).
So why's he only fifth? For two reasons. First, he wasn't especially durable -- he played fewer than 70 games in seven seasons and missed all but one minute of the 1967 postseason. Second and more important, his peak years were the least impressive of anyone's in the top six. West had about 15 straight seasons in which he was really, really good, but in none of them could you have said he was the league's best player. He never won the MVP award but landed in the top five of the voting eight times.
4. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1976-1988)
You could make a convincing case that Kareem is the third-best player of all time, behind Jordan and Chamberlain, so the fact that he comes in fourth on the Lakers' list is a pretty strong statement about the star power that has passed through L.A. over the past half century.
Abdul-Jabbar had his best seasons in Milwaukee, but he was no slouch in the Forum either. In L.A., he won three MVP awards and one Finals MVP and had nine top-five finishes in the MVP voting. Kareem also won five championship rings and made 13 All-Star teams as a Laker.
You could make a strong case that Kareem should be No. 1 based on the above, but the reason he drops to fourth on my list is his playoff performances. Abdul-Jabbar's postseason numbers weren't as strong as his regular-season output, which is perfectly normal (the competition is tougher in the postseason), but fall short in this group of playoff overachievers. Additionally, his peak seasons weren't as good as those of another dominant big man -- the next player on our list.
3. Shaquille O'Neal (1996-2004)
Shaq has a legitimate case to be No. 1 for one simple reason: At his peak, no Laker has ever been better. Not only did he post three straight seasons with a 30-plus PER -- something no other Laker has done, nor any other player in history, save Michael Jordan -- but he capped them with equally monstrous playoff efforts. O'Neal won only one MVP award in that span, but that's a travesty that says more about our own David-versus-Goliath voting tendencies than it does about how he played. However, the Lakers won three consecutive titles with him in the middle, and during that time he was as dominant as any player in history.
But his tenure was too brief to put him No. 1 on this list. He played only eight seasons in L.A., he feuded with Bryant at the end, and he wasn't durable, playing more than 70 games only twice and missing a total of 110 in his time in L.A. Shaq was amazing, but you couldn't count on him the way you could the top two players.
2. Kobe Bryant (1996-present)
Bryant might be the most divisive player in NBA history -- love him or hate him, virtually everyone has an opinion about him. Those opinions have become markedly more positive over the past two seasons, as L.A.'s success and his own increasing maturity have combined to greatly rehabilitate his reputation. Additionally, Bryant finally became the main man on a championship team (a key line previously missing from his G.L.O.A.T. résumé), and in 2008, he won his first MVP award.
Bryant has all the nuts and bolts to earn a high ranking -- a dozen All-Star selections, seven All-NBA first-teams, nine all-defense honors, and four championship rings. What's missing, oddly enough, is peak value. It's strange because at times, Bryant at his best has been as good as any player in history -- witness his 81-point explosion, for example, or his string of nine successive 40-point games.
But when you start comparing entire seasons, he has only one with a PER greater than 27, which is a pretty flimsy record compared to the other elites in the top six. And while his playoff numbers are strong, they aren't any better than his regular-season output -- again, a stat line that's impressive among mere mortals but pales in this company.
That's enough to keep him out of the top spot, although an early start combined with a career spent entirely in a Lakers uniform should allow him to own many of the franchise's records by the time he's done.
1. Magic Johnson (1979-91, 1996)
I've looked at players based on various criteria: peak value, durability, playoff performance and longevity. On those factors, Magic has the whole package, and only an early exit due to his contracting HIV prevents this from being a rout.
Peak value? Magic won three MVP awards, had nine top-five finishes in MVP voting and had five seasons with a PER of least 25. Durability? Before the HIV diagnosis, Magic had only one significant injury in a dozen seasons. Playoff performance? Magic had one of the greatest games of all time as a rookie, leading the Lakers to a championship while playing center in place of an injured Kareem; plus, he won the Finals MVP award three times and led L.A. to five titles.
Despite his early exit, Magic also grades out well in the "quantity" items. He made nine first-team All-NBA squads; only West, with 10, has more, and Kobe is still on seven. Magic's nine top-five MVP finishes is matched only by Kareem; Kobe, again, has just seven. In addition to Magic's five seasons with a PER greater than 25, he played 13 seasons with a PER greater than 20; only Shaq and Kareem beat the former number, and only West tops the latter.
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