Top 100 NBA Players: #90

Bill Sharman

(Simmons: #51, BBR: #77)

Bill Sharman was probably the first great shooting guard in NBA history. During his era, guards never shot over 40% from the field, but Sharman did it 9 straight times. He was also the first great free throw shooter, never shooting worse than .844 from the line, which included 7 seasons leading the league, and his .932 in 1959 stood as the best in history for nearly 20 years.

Sharman also won 4 NBA titles as a starter for the Boston Celtics at the end of his career. He was never the best player on those title teams, but he was the second-best player on the 1957 champs, then third or 4th best on the other 3 winners as Bill Russell and Tom Heinsohn emerged as stars.

He was one of the 5 best regular season players 3 times, including his peak years of 1956-57 and 1957-58, where he and Bob Cousy were the best duo in the league. Look at their overall stats from those two years:

Sharman - 21.7 pts, 4.5 reb, 3.1 ast, .420 FG%, .900 FT%
Cousy - 19.3 pts, 4.9 reb, 7.3 ast, .365 FG%, .833 FT%

Both were great scorers and rebounders for their position and era, both got a lot of assists in a time in which they were tougher to get, and both could hit free throws with the best of them. Putting these two together in the backcourt at that time would be similar to putting Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson together in the late 1980's. Can you imagine losing with that combination. It's no wonder they won 4 titles in 5 years.

Sharman's peak years may not have been quite as good as Boozer's, but he was consistently improving his game, as you can see from the trajectory of his chart above. He was always one of the best players in the league, and when he finally fell from that position, he walked away and became one of the better coaches of all time, and he is currently one of only 3 men to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as both a player and as a coach. The reason that he falls so much lower in these rankings than in some other similar ranking systems is that he was never better than the #4 player in the league in any given season or playoff series, and in a time when there were only between 80 and 110 players in the league, that only puts him in the top 5% for his time.