Top 100 NBA Players: #98

Jerome Kersey

(BBR: #256)

Jerome Kersey may not be a name that would normally come up in the conversation of best players ever, but when you look back at what he accomplished in the early 90's, he reminds you a lot of Lamar Odom today. Odom won two championships as the third or fourth best player on the Lakers, while Kersey lost in the Finals twice as the second or third best player on the Trail Blazers. Let's take a look at his career graph.

His career followed a somewhat normal trajectory, peaking in his late 20's, after which he held on for another 10 years chasing a championship. Because he was not a major contributor to the Spurs 1999 title team, it didn't contribute to his placement on this list. What got Kersey on this list and ahead of Lamar Odom was his playoff performance between 1990 and 1992. Let's compare these two players' regular season and playoff peaks:

Regular Season (5-year peak)

Jerome Kersey - 16.0 pts, 8.0 reb, 3.0 ast, .479 FG%, .701 FT%

Lamar Odom - 13.2 pts, 9.5 reb, 3.9 ast, .486 FG%, .682 FT%

Playoffs (3-year peak)

Jerome Kersey - 18.3 pts, 7.7 reb, 2.9 ast, .476 FG%, .719 FT%

Lamar Odom - 12.0 pts, 9.2 reb, 2.2 ast, .495 FG%, .634 FT%

As the above numbers show, the two players are pretty even as far as regular season performance goes, but when the playoffs came around, Kersey upped his game, while Odom struggled. Kersey may not have continued playing at his peak level for as long as Odom has, but he was the one who played better when it counted, even if he wasn't able to turn those playoff performances into championships.

One final point. In Elliott Kalb's Who's Better, Who's Best in Basketball?, while explaining why he left James Worthy off his top 50 all-time list, Kalb writes, "Put Jerome Kersey in Worthy's spot and Kersey has the rings." While this was clearly meant to say that Worthy was not worthy of the top 50, there's no doubt that he's a top 100 level talent, and if Kalb feels that Kersey was basically his equal, shouldn't that mean Kersey is also good enough to be considered among the top 100 players of all time? I say it does.