Russell Westbrook
Westbrook is one of the youngest players on this entire list, and is the youngest player among the top 30, and is the first of 6 active players to appear among that group. In case you don't feel that he belongs this high among the all-time greatest players, let's take a look at what he has done over the past several years.
He didn't miss a single game during his first 5 seasons in the league, and he averaged around 34 minutes per game for that entire time. By his third season in the league, he was already one of the top 6 players in the entire league, a status he has maintained for the 5 subsequent seasons.
It was also that year that the Thunder made their first deep playoff run, which is something that would become a pretty regular occurrence after that. It helps that he has had Kevin Durant beside him for his entire career up to this point, but while Durant was the best Thunder player during their first three deep playoff runs, Westbrook has established himself as the better player over the past two years. Here are their stats from 2011 and 2016:
Westbrook (2011) - 21.9 pts, 4.6 reb, 8.2 ast, 1.9 stl, .442 FG, .330 3P, .842 FT
Durant (2011) - 27.7 pts, 6.8 reb, 2.7 ast, 1.1 stl, .462 FG, .350 3P, .880 FT
Westbrook (2016) - 23.5 pts, 7.8 reb, 10.4 ast, 2.0 stl, .454 FG, .296 3P, .812 FT
Durant (2016) - 28.2 pts, 8.2 reb, 5.0 ast, 1.0 stl, .505 FG, .387 3P, .898 FT
You can see that over those 5 years, Westbrook has improved by a lot more in nearly every category than Durant, and now grabs nearly as many rebounds as Durant, who is 6 inches taller, and still gets more than twice as many assists. It's always been difficult to tell which is the better player, but with the difference in level of improvement, I would say that Westbrook is currently the better player.
In my earlier profile on Stephen Curry, I argued that Westbrook may have been the best player in the league last year rather than the unanimous MVP. Westbrook had one of the best overall seasons in history, with 18 triple-doubles, which was the most for any player in a season in the past 34 years. Also, those averages of 23.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 10.4 assists are nearly unmatched in history, with only one player ever eclipsing each of those averages in a single season: Oscar Robertson.
Overall, Westbrook has been a league scoring leader once, a top 6 player for 6 seasons, the best player on a conference finalist, and a close second on 3 other teams that made it at least to the conference finals. He has also led the league in triple doubles for two straight seasons, which is a mark of a great all-around player, and this is one who could make a run at the all-time top 10.
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