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ESPN's top 74 all time rankings

1. Giannis shouldn't be 27 - not yet anyway. I'd take Stockton > Giannis as a body of work so far knowing Giannis has a lot of years left in front of him that could change that dynamic.
2. Championships matter or both these guys would have been higher
3. The rest I really don't have an issue with. I think they ranked similar non-title players like Barkley in the same vein

It's still hard for me to believe that it was 23 years ago that Stockton hit the shot - that's a memory that will be forever etched in my mind.
 
It seemed quite interesting but As soon as I saw Pete "Pistol" Maravich at 68 and Russel Westbrook at 42 sorry but I closed the page...IMO some choices like that are REALLY debatable
 
I’ll try to peruse more of this later, but I think it’s hard when guys who aren’t even halfway through their career are put on here. I’m not arguing that they aren’t great players, but there’s a level of assumption that they’ll continue to have great careers. For instance, as great as Kawhi is, if he were to worsen his injury as of now and it essentially became career-ending, where does he show up on a list like this 10 years from now?

Maybe Yao Ming is a good example. I didn’t check to see if he’s on this list and, if so, where, but he’s be a guy that if you were ranking him during his prime, you’d be expecting him to be an all-time great, and perhaps he would have been, but from this current vantage point, it’s obvious that health limited his viability of being a candidate for being an all-time great.
 
In general I think they're rating a bit more strongly by peak than I would (see Walton top 50, Kawhi/Giannis that high already, then KD/Curry top 15). Also I think a bit too high on score first perimeter guys overall. Not bad on Stockton/Malone, though I'd be a few slots higher on each (Stockton at least, that might be right for Malone).

Too low on great defensive bigs.
 
There's always an issue with ranking players who are still in their primes or just entering them alongside players who have finished their careers or have for all practical purposes accomplished everything they are going to accomplish.

Penny Hardaway at 24 was already a 2-time All-NBA First team selection, had played in the finals, and had won 5 playoffs series. At the time, he seemed a lock for HOF and it looked like right now, we'd be discussing whether Penny or Magic was the greatest PG of all time. Who could've predicted that Shaq would leave, Penny would be moved to SG and then suffer every injury imaginable, and that his most enduring legacy today would be a Sprite commercial?

Giannis is amazing, but he's won 2 playoffs series so far and that was all last year. He could hurt himself and end up a what-if. Havlicek's resume still dwarfs his.
 
JimLes said:
There's always an issue with ranking players who are still in their primes or just entering them alongside players who have finished their careers or have for all practical purposes accomplished everything they are going to accomplish.

Penny Hardaway at 24 was already a 2-time All-NBA First team selection, had played in the finals, and had won 5 playoffs series. At the time, he seemed a lock for HOF and it looked like right now, we'd be discussing whether Penny or Magic was the greatest PG of all time. Who could've predicted that Shaq would leave, Penny would be moved to SG and then suffer every injury imaginable, and that his most enduring legacy today would be a Sprite commercial?

Giannis is amazing, but he's won 2 playoffs series so far and that was all last year. He could hurt himself and end up a what-if. Havlicek's resume still dwarfs his.
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I went with Yao, but obviously Penny is a better example. Could throw Grant Hill in there, too. And a lot of guys, to be honest, but they're hard to name because we've completely forgotten about them, but in their day they seemed like locks.
 
Durant being ahead of Malone is pretty crazy, too. Malone has got him beat in every accolade and accomplishment, except that Durant has two rings having joined a 73-win team at the age of 28.

I mean, replace Durant with Malone on that team and he wins two rings, as well. And I don't mean 1997 Karl Malone. Replace him with 2017 Malone.
 
infection said:
I went with Yao, but obviously Penny is a better example.
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Yao is a great example because you could also say the same thing about his teammate McGrady. Consider the regard he was held in around 2005 and how we see him now. None of these players are on any of these Greatest anything of all time lists now.
 
JimLes said:
Durant being ahead of Malone is pretty crazy, too. Malone has got him beat in every accolade and accomplishment, except that Durant has two rings having joined a 73-win team at the age of 28.

I mean, replace Durant with Malone on that team and he wins two rings, as well. And I don't mean 1997 Karl Malone. Replace him with 2017 Malone.
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Ha ha. This is spot on.
 
Wes Mantooth said:
Lmfao at Westbrook at 42.
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So we're talking just above how 15-20 years later, some players' accomplishments lose sheen in context and hindsight. Westbrook's MVP season was only 2 years ago and it's already considered grossly overrated, along with the player himself.
 
Stockton being ahead of Isaiah, Iverson, and Nash is great to see. The challenge of comparing players in the past to current players is always funky but if you take that out of the equation, I agree with a most of the rankings.
 
infection said:
I went with Yao, but obviously Penny is a better example. Could throw Grant Hill in there, too. And a lot of guys, to be honest, but they're hard to name because we've completely forgotten about them, but in their day they seemed like locks.
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Gilbert Arenas, Brandon Roy, Steve Francis, Adam Morrison.

Lol

One of those guys is a joke.
 
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