Zeke’s legacy has been somewhat tarnished over the years by the opinions of his peers and the off-the-court issues he brought on himself while in the Knicks’ front office. And while he will forever live in the shadow of MJ, real ones know Jordan doesn’t ascend to Zeus status without Pippen doing all the dirty work and turning out to be the perfect complementary player. - AC 28. His hybrid play, like Magic Johnson’s, was way ahead of its time. A Dream Team member and two-time gold medal winner who was skilled enough to be considered one of the 50 greatest by the NBA in 1996, and one of the 75 greatest players ever in 2021, Pippen did so much more than his averages indicated (16.1 PPG, 6.4 RPG, and 5.2 APG). Pippen is inarguably one of the greatest defenders in NBA history having made 10 All-Defensive squads (8 First-Team selections) during his 17-year career and regularly stifled the opposition’s best player like it was nothing. But never forget what the GOAT, Michael Jeffrey Jordan, told us in the documentary: “Everybody said I won all these championships, but I didn’t win without Scottie Pippen and that’s why I considered him my best teammate of all time.” If ya don’t know, now ya knoHe never did anything as good as Jordan-except, that is, defend. Way more than just a sidekick to you know who, Scottie Pippen’s greatness is sadly taken for granted by many, including those who saw it with their own two eyes along with the ones basing their assessments solely on what they saw in The Last Dance. For a guy his size to go out and drop 48 on the road against the heavily-favored Los Angeles Lakers is straight-up unbelievable. To this day that is still one of the most amazing individual performances on a basketball court that I’ve ever seen. For myself, I’ll never forget Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals. You could go on and on with former and current NBA stars talking about why Iverson was so great and means so much to them. Dwyane Wade has said AI is part of the reason he wore No. The list goes on, but Iverson’s cultural impact on the current, and even future, generation of NBA players are more meaningful than his numbers on the court. LeBron James has called him the pound-for-pound best ever. AI is unquestionably a top 30 NBA player ever. It upsets me that people might be shocked that Allen Iverson is included on this list. The discourse never dies and we’re here for it. Our latest entry to the list is Nikola Jokic and with him entering the top 30, we had to remove another all-time great in John Stockton. We’re cool with what we came up with knowing the next time we update it Kevin Durant could sneak into the top 10. Some will love the rankings, others will loathe them. Praise or pillar the selections as you see fit. So for better or worse, here are the best 30 players in NBA history, assiduously ranked. Others argued it should be about the numbers and that awards don’t always end up belonging to the most deserved individual.īut decisions had to be made. There were passionate pleas to weigh unprecedented accomplishments over sustained excellence. O’Neal was physically and statistically unlike any center the NBA has seen. But how much more credit do you give Bryant for winning more rings and drawing legit comparisons to Michael Jordan?Īnd who do you give the nod to between three legendary guards-Chris Paul, Steve Nash, and Allen Iverson-when there’s only room for one? As each individual involved in this incredibly difficult and necessary endeavor lobbied for the player they thought deserved proper billing, we quickly realized it was going to be hellacious coming to a consensus. Instead, the politicking and petty attacks on each other’s basketball intelligence got really heated, over multiple Zoom calls and text threads, when we tried to properly rank Shaq and Kobe and a bunch of point guards toward the bottom of our 30 Best NBA Players of All Time list. It’s guaranteed to get hardcore basketball fans in their feelings and, in our humble opinion, do a much better job than some of those other rankings floating around the interwebs that shall remain nameless.Īlmost up until deadline, we debated whether Shaquille O’Neal, inarguably one of the best big men in NBA history and a true disruptor on the court, deserved to be ranked higher than the late, great Kobe Bryant. Nor did we particularly labor over why Tim Duncan, for instance, deserved top 10 status over Kevin Garnett and Kevin Durant (for now). When the Complex Sports crew started to put together this list, we didn’t waffle over whether LeBron deserved to be ranked higher than MJ. The toughest debates may not be the obvious ones.
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