Top 100 NBA Players: Intro, Snubs, and #100

I have finally finished analyzing all of the data available from all 65 NBA seasons, and have compiled my listing of the 100 greatest NBA players of all time. As I mentioned in my previous post, players are awarded points based on their performance in each season of their career, as long as they are in the top 10 percent of players in that season. The factors that define these players are most often domination, longevity, all-around skill, and playoff success. Missing games for any reason counts against a player, meaning that several players whose careers were cut short by injuries are either ranked lower than you might expect or may have missed the top 100 altogether.

There are several players you would expect to find on this kind of list that did not have enough impact during their NBA careers to make an appearance here. I am highlighting a few of them here, along with some of the reasons each one is not in my all-time top 100.

Snubs

Dennis Rodman
Rodman misses out on this honor due to the lack of an all-around game. He led the league in rebounding 7 times during his career and won 5 championships, but he was lacking in most other areas. For example, his career averages of 1.8 assists, 0.7 steals, 0.6 blocks, and 58.4% free throw shooting show that rebounding was his only area of strength. Early in his career he led the league in field goal percentage once, but in what should have been the prime of his career, he was so focused on grabbing all the rebounds he could that he only hit over 50% of his shots twice in his final 8 seasons, which includes his 3 years with the Chicago Bulls. If this were a list of the greatest rebounders of all time, he would definitely make the list, but he doesn't make the cut as one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

Bill Walton
Bill Walton is an example of a great player who never reached his full potential due to multiple injuries derailing his career. He missed 3 complete seasons during his prime, and missed at least half of 4 others. In fact, the only time that he missed fewer than 15 games in a single season was 1986, when he was way past his prime and coming off the bench for the Boston Celtics. When he was healthy briefly in 1977 and 1978, he was a dominant player, winning an MVP award and a championship with the Portland Trail Blazers, but two seasons aren't enough to define a player as one of the all-time greats.

Willis Reed
Willis Reed is another former MVP who failed to make my top 100, and with good reason. When he was given the 1970 MVP award, there were several players more deserving of it, most notably Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who missed out on several MVP's for the same reason Michael Jordan did: because they were tired of giving the award to him. Reed also won the Finals MVP award that year and again in 1973, but in both cases the most dominant Knick was not the big man but was in fact their point guard, Walt Frazier. He may have provided the emotional charge the team needed to win in 1970, but Frazier led them to victory.

Tiny Archibald
In 1973 Tiny became the first and probably only player ever to lead the league in scoring and assists during the same season, but his accomplishment is overshadowed by the fact that the Kansas City Kings failed to make the playoffs that season. In fact, they only made the playoffs once with Tiny on the roster, so his big numbers don't really mean that much, do they?

Pete Maravich
Pistol Pete is kind of a combination of Dennis Rodman and Bill Walton as far as this list is concerned. Pete was a great scorer with great shooting range, but that was about it. His career lasted only 10 seasons, and the majority of those years saw numerous games missed due to injury. His teams only reached the playoffs 4 times, and never advanced very far, and his career shooting percentage was only 44%, which is kind of strange for a person whom many consider to be one of the greatest shooters ever.

Wes Unseld
The third and final MVP to miss my top 100, Unseld suffered from extreme overrated-ness. He led the Bullets to a huge turnaround as a rookie, for which he was named Rookie of the Year, but for some reason he was also named the MVP of the entire league that year also. I don't have an argument with him being awarded ROY that season, but there were at least 20 other players in the league that outplayed him that season, including immortals such as Don Kojis and Zelmo Beaty. His popularity earned him another award late in his career, the Finals MVP he was given in 1978, but he was probably only the 3rd-best player on that team, behind Elvin Hayes and Bob Dandridge. For some reason the voters loved the undersized and overrated center.

Robert Horry
I mentioned earlier that playoff success was an important piece of my formula, but it's more than just winning championships. Leading teams to the championship, or at least being a significant contributor to it, means much more than just getting a ring. Horry may have more rings than anyone who didn't play for the Celtics in the 60's, but he was never one of the top 2 players on a championship team, and he only made solid contributions to 5 of those 7 winners. In addition, he was never once among the top 10% of NBA players during a single regular season in his career. I guess that the number of championships won is not the only argument you need for greatness.

Now that I've run through several of the players who failed to make the cut, I'm now ready to unveil the final player who did reach the exclusive club consisting of the 100 greatest NBA Players of all time. I realize that several others have compiled similar lists in the past, and I have included rankings from 3 other sources for comparison's sake. Those 3 rankings come from Who's Better, Who's Best in Basketball by Elliot Kalb (top 50), The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons (top 96), and the Elo-Player Rater at www.basketball-reference.com (top 500).

Without further ado, let's begin the fun with today's featured player, ranked at #100......

Cliff Hagan

(Simmons: #84, BBR: #189)

Many people today are probably not even aware of who Cliff Hagan is. This is probably due to the fact that he retired from the NBA in 1966, long before many of today's fans were around. Hagan's career didn't start until the age of 25, because the served 2 years in the Air Force before finally making his way to the NBA, and before he had even played a single game, he was traded, along with Ed Macauley, from the Boston Celtics to the Saint Louis Hawks for the rights to Bill Russell. That was only the start of his connection to Russell.

During his first 5 seasons in the league, Hagan and the Hawks made it to the NBA Finals 4 times, each of those times facing off with the man he was traded for and the team that traded him, Bill Russell and the Boston Celtics. Even though they won only one championship in those 4 tries, the fact remains that they were the only team to defeat Bill Russell in the NBA Finals. Much of the credit for that championship has always been given to Hagan's more famous teammate, Bob Pettit, but I believe that Hagan was the true catalyst behind their title. To prove my point, let's compare the two players' statistics for the 1958 playoffs.

Hagan - 27.7 pts, 10.5 reb, 3.4 ast, .502 FG%, .838 FT%
Pettit - 24.2 pts, 16.5 reb, 1.8 ast, .391 FG%, .729 FT%

These categories, along with personal fouls, were the only statistics recorded back then, and they tell the story very well. Pettit outperformed his teammate in only one category in the playoffs, while Hagan dominated Pettit in most of the others. Pettit may have been a better player for longer, but in the 1958 playoffs, it was Hagan who reigned supreme.

Hagan's career peak came in 1960, his 4th in the NBA, when he averaged 24.8 pts, 10.7 reb, 4.0 ast, .464 FG%, and .803 FT%. While those averages are all very good, they still don't compare to what he did during the Hawks' title run. Today a player with those averages in a single season would be considered a superstar, so there is no reason that Hagan should not also be added to that group. His total value is summarized in the graph below.

The value assigned in this chart refers to an adjusted version of all of a player's bad contributions subtracted from all of his good ones. It is adjusted for the player's position, and also for his shooting percentages and games missed. A value of 30 or more is generally enough to place a player among the top 10% for a season. Hagan reached this value for 5 straight regular seasons as well as 3 playoffs during his career, which is more than any of the snubs can say, which is why he is here at #100 instead of them.