2024-25 NBA Season

[PAOerfulone]

Chris Hu said:

Chrkeller said:

Shaq played exclusively in the paint.  He didn't handle the ball, shoot mid range nor hit 3 pointers.  He was a god awful foul shooter.  His field goal was high because all he did was dunk.  He was one dimensional and an all time great.  Your argument is weak at best.  Because while Shaq was one dimensional he was dominant and an all time great.  Winning matters, Curry wins.

Also there is no need to be rude.

All centers during Shaq's era pretty much got all their points in the paint.  Shaq also made three NBA defensive second teams.  Curry never even came close to making a first of second all defensive team.

Magic Johnson never made an All NBA Defensive team in his career and his jump shot was inconsistent. He was strictly a floor general and the vast majority of his scoring came off layups, dunks, and transition offense. So in a sense, he was one dimensional. Is Magic not a Top 10 player?

Jerry West (I assume the Mitch Richmond example didn't work out? Why am I not surprised?) played in an era where there were only 8 teams in his rookie year and 17 teams in his final year. Not 30 like today. And only 6-8 teams made the playoffs. Not 16 teams (not counting the Play-In tournament) The level of competition was MUCH smaller and nowhere near as diverse as it is now. You think ANY team in ANY sport, let alone the modern NBA, will come close to winning 8 straight or 11 in 13 years like Bill Russell's Celtics did back then? There's a reason why no team in any sport has been able to 3-peat since the Shaq/Kobe Lakers and the one team that came the closest to doing it since was... the Golden State Warriors... The team Steph plays for and was built around HIM. Three titles in a row seems so far fetched in today's league. 8 in a row? 11 in 13 years? Forget about it! Same goes for a player averaging 50 and 26 while playing all every minute of every game like Wilt Chamberlain did. 

Seeing as how you were the one who brought up the "If he played in this era" narrative. You think that 60s Celtics team still wins 8 in a row if the competition back then was a diverse and as fierce as it is now where we have elite, superstar players from all over the world? Russell, Wilt, Jerry, and Oscar would still be great players, but they would struggle and they wouldn't have the same level of success just because it's more taxing and demanding to play in today's league and competition compared to back then. 

And even with that lack of competition back then, Jerry is a whopping 1-8 in NBA Finals appearances. Winning matters and Jerry certainly didn't win nearly enough to warrant a place in a Top 10 over many of his peers or successors who all accomplished and did more than him. Even with Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor on his team for two of those trips and Game 7 on his home floor for the first one, they STILL couldn't beat an old, aging Celtics team or a hobbled Knicks team with their All Star center injured. 

You're so fixated on stats that I genuinely question if you've ever actually seen a game or if you even take a moment to stop and think about the context behind all those stats you love to pull.