Friday, July 15, 2011

Top 100 NBA Players: #80


Bob Lanier

(Simmons: #92, BBR: #57)

During the 1970's, Bob Lanier was one of the premier players in the entire league, yet he was never voted to an All-NBA Team. He was the #1 pick in the draft, yet he never won a championship. He put together 8 of the most solid seasons in history, but he was traded away for almost nothing. Lanier's career was a string of almosts, but he still ended up making the Hall of Fame.

From 1971 to 1979, Lanier starred for the Detroit Pistons, but was never able to move them past the second round of the playoffs. He finished in the top 10 in scoring six times and rebounding four times in that decade. His overall numbers for those eight seasons are very impressive:

Lanier - 23.9 pts, 12.5 reb, 3.5 ast, 2.0 blk, .512 FG%, .780 FT%

Despite those incredibly regular season numbers, his Piston teams regularly lost early in the playoffs. In fact, the only time in his entire career that he made it as far as the Conference Finals was 1984, his final season as a player, and a season in which he was not anything more than a role player for the Milwaukee Bucks. It's impossible to make a list like this without including him somewhere, but it's also impossible to move him any higher when he was so playoff-challenged.


Lanier gets the nod over Aguirre thanks to his long, steady peak in the early years of his career, which coincides perfectly with a valley in Aguirre's best years. Both moved on to better teams later in their careers, and although Aguirre was able to win some championships late in his career, he wasn't a major player on those teams, so it wasn't quite enough to push him past Lanier on the list of great players who couldn't quite get it done in the playoffs during their peak years.

1 comment:

  1. Along with furthermore most considerably, you can additionally choose a relied on store to acquire NBA 2K21 MT, this is the fastest methods to acquire a significant amount of MT. NBA2K21MT.COM not just provides inexpensive prices of NBA 2K21 MT nevertheless similarly can you take pleasure in price cut price rates with our rate cut voucher code to lower the complete expenditure. It's 100% legit and additionally protected in addition to 99% orders can be sent out within 15 mins.

    ReplyDelete