Players with at least a percent chance of getting in as of now I counted as HOF years. The first thing that pops out is the enormous difference between Russell and the rest of the players, even Kareem. He was teamed with more Hall of Famers than the other three combined. When you look at "his" 11 rings, this simply cannot be ignored. That Celtic dynasty may very well have been the greatest team in North American professional sports.
In , they literally had eight Hall of Famers playing at the same time. It was a different era with fewer teams, regional draft choice claims, and no free agency. The Celtics amassed great players on the team, and they were able to keep them without worrying about salary caps or cost. Additionally, the league was only between eight and 14 teams deep at that time.
It goes without saying that it's easier to win a league that has only eight teams, not In many ways, you can compare winning the division title now to winning the league then. Kareem's Lakers were somewhat in the middle. While he was with Milwaukee , he didn't have a lot of Hall of Fame teammates. He had Oscar Robertson for four seasons, and that was it.
He only won one title there. It was in the middle of his career that there was the merger—the league was considerably more developed when he retired than when he started.
It also merits stating that all but one of his championships came after the merger, where the "modern age" of basketball started. Jordan and Bryant played in an era of free agency, which essentially means they weren't able to keep the same team together.
Both players won with essentially two different teams in the sense of who was put around them. Their teams were also decisively thinner.
Note that I didn't say "thin" but "thinner. It should viewed as crediting Kobe and Jordan for their accomplishment. Now, another huge factor that needs to be accounted for is the second best player on the team. Since the merger, more than half of all championship teams have had at least two players among the top 15 in PER. Over 75 percent have at least two players in the top 25 and only the Rockets have won without at least two players in the top The "Robin" factor is undeniable, too.
Every player needs another star to complement them, and these four were no exception. However, were all "Robins" the same? I went through and took the PER and WS of all four players through each postseason where they won a title, as well as the best scores that didn't belong to them. I then found the difference in each case and added the scores together to come up with a "Robin Factor" to give an estimate of how much help each player received from their superstar teammates.
First, here are the average "Robin Factor" scores for each player and their teammates:. It's pretty evident by looking at the year-by-year Robin Factors that Jordan isn't benefiting from a skewed season by anyone in any way, shape or form. His six rings account for six of the highest seven scores. Furthermore, he's the only player who you can't argue was ever the "Robin" on a championship team. Clearly, in through , Shaquille O'Neal was the driving force.
For Kareem, it was because Magic Johnson was in charge. In fact, while Jordan has six finals MVPs, the other two have only two a piece. For Russell, on his first two championship teams and his last one, it is evident that he wasn't even the second best player on the team. That's not a swipe though. He was first a very young player on a team loaded with Hall of Famers and a veteran past his prime.
There were no Finals MVPs awarded then, but it's likely he could have won six. However, there remains the earlier fact that he had by far the most Hall-of-Fame help of any of the players. In terms of help, Jordan received significantly less than any of the other three. Statistically speaking, there can be no argument. Jordan is not only clearly ahead in terms of absolute value. He is also clearly ahead in relative value.
However, there will be those who argue that numbers don't tell the whole story. Now, first, I will say that I agree with that. It has been my observation though that generally when people make that argument, they deny the part of the story that the numbers do tell. Numbers don't tell the whole story, but they do tell a pretty good chunk of it. Years after his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar seemed especially proud about his longevity.
By the time I retired, everybody saw me as a venerable institution. Things do change. He even spent a year as a coach on the White Mountain Apache reservation in Arizona — an experience that he recorded in the book A Season on the Reservation.
He has written several other books, including 's On the Shoulders of Giants , about the Harlem Renaissance. Abdul-Jabbar has also worked as a public speaker and a spokesperson for several products.
In November , Abdul-Jabbar was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, but his long-term prognosis looked favorable. In February , doctors declared the retired NBA star cancer free. Showing he was still athletic enough to compete at age 71, the basketball legend signed on for the cast of Dancing with the Stars: Athletes in the spring of , where he was paired with reigning champion Lindsay Arnold.
He also continued to showcase his gift for persuasive arguments, penning an essay that explored the complicated issue of firing Roseanne Barr for her racist tweet and another that noted the increasing appearances of socially conscious villains in popular entertainment. A father of five, Abdul-Jabbar has four children from his first marriage to Habiba Abdul-Jabbar and a son from another relationship.
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Former pro basketball player Kobe Bryant won five NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers while establishing himself as one of the game's all-time greats.
He died tragically in a helicopter crash on January 26, Hall of Fame basketball forward Julius Erving, or "Dr. His dunks and graceful play helped change the game. Dennis Rodman is considered one of professional basketball's all-time great rebounders, leading the Detroit Pistons and later the Chicago Bulls to multiple NBA titles.
He missed, but it felt natural. He was already As an eighth grader he stood and could dunk. As a sophomore at Power Memorial, he averaged 19 points and 18 rebounds as Power went undefeated. It went unbeaten again in Alcindor's junior season, and it was this year that he came to the apex of his white-hatred period. One day he came home upset and yelled at his mother, who has some white blood in her: "I wish you didn't have any white in you at all!
Because I hate every bit of white blood I have in me! Alcindor, who had been averaging 30 points, was held to It was his only loss in his last three years. He finished his career at Power in with 2, points and 2, rebounds both New York City records. Alcindor played for the best college team in the country in , but unfortunately for him and his teammates, freshmen were ineligible to compete for the varsity then.
In their first game, the first game ever at Pauley Pavilion, the UCLA freshmen whipped the varsity, two-time defending champions and preseason No. Alcindor scored 31 points, grabbed 21 rebounds and blocked seven shots.
The Brubabes went and Alcindor averaged 33 points and 21 rebounds. Later that season, he scored He averaged 29 points and As a junior, eight days before unbeaten UCLA's showdown against unbeaten Houston, Alcindor suffered a scratched left eyeball.
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