Michael Jordan
(Kalb: #3, Simmons: #1, BBR: #1)
Ask 100 people who the greatest player of all time is, and the top response will most likely be Michael Jordan, but it would be far from a landslide. Many others would get a significant number of votes, from Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Oscar Robertson to Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, and even LeBron James. So what makes Michael Jordan the best player of all time?
There are five factors that I feel qualify a player to be considered one of the greatest of all time. Those are offensive and defensive prowess, regular season and playoff dominance, and longevity. By using these 5 factors, I'll show that Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time.
First, offensive prowess. The purpose of offense is to score points, and there has never been a greater scorer than Michael Jordan. Wilt Chamberlain may own the record for points in a game and points per game for a full season, but Michael Jordan owns the record for most points per game over a full career. Among the top 20 players of all time, the five with the highest career scoring averages are, in order:
Michael Jordan
Wilt Chamberlain
LeBron James
Elgin Baylor
Jerry West
Next, defensive prowess. This one is a little tougher to define, especially since the All-Defensive Team has only existed since 1969, Bill Russell's final season. Three players have appeared on the All-Defensive First Team nine times in their career, and if you add in Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, both of whom were said to have blocked at least 8 shots in a game quite regularly, this is the list you come up with:
Michael Jordan
Kobe Bryant
Kevin Garnett
Bill Russell
Wilt Chamberlain
Then let's consider regular season dominance. Michael Jordan was the best player in the league for his final 9 seasons with the Chicago Bulls, and would have made it at least 11 if he hadn't kept retiring prematurely. He was the best player in 1988, and he was the best player in 1998, a feat only Kareem can match with his 1970 and 1980 seasons. The list of players who spent the longest time as the league's top star is as follows:
Wilt Chamberlain
Michael Jordan
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
LeBron James
Larry Bird
Perhaps the most important category is playoff dominance. The whole point of playing the game is to win championships, and Jordan was the best player on more champions than anybody but Bill Russell. He made 6 trips to the NBA Finals in his career, and won all 6 times. The record for highest scoring average in a Finals series is 41.0, and it's no surprise that Jordan holds that record for his performance against the Phoenix Suns in 1993. Here is the list of the players who have led their teams to the most championships:
Bill Russell
Michael Jordan
Magic Johnson
Tim Duncan
Shaquille O'Neal
Larry Bird
Finally, let's look at longevity. When looking at this category, I'm looking at more than just playing for a long time. You must also play at a high level for a long period of time, and Michael Jordan fits that bill as well. In his first game after turning 40, he obliterated the old record for points by a player of that age. Kareem had held the record of 27, but Jordan poured in 43 that night, and scored at least 30 points 9 other times after his 40th birthday, meaning he owns the 10 highest-scoring games for a 40-year old player. Here are the 5 players who had the most productive seasons after the age of 35:
Karl Malone
Elgin Baylor
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Michael Jordan
Jerry West
There's only one player that appears on all 5 of these lists, and you've probably already guessed who that is. It's also worth noting that only one other player appears even 3 times on these lists, and that is Wilt Chamberlain, the player I ranked as second-best all time. Michael Jordan is the only player in history who has been dominant in every important facet of the game, which is what makes him the greatest of all time.
With that in mind, are there any current players that have a chance at displacing Jordan at the top? In my opinion, there are only two that have a chance, and the two happen to be facing each other in the NBA Finals right now. The obvious one is LeBron James, who has already cracked two of these lists, and has already made the All-Defensive First Team four times, and has a head start on the longevity since he started so young. A championship would start him down the road in the fifth category as well. The other is Kevin Durant, who is a great offensive player and is improving on defense, and also entered the league very young, which could help his longevity.
While there is nobody who can measure up to what Wilt did in his first few years, Jordan became just as dominant a player after that point, even beating Wilt at the tail of of his career, when Wilt was returning from injury and Jordan from retirement. What sets Jordan apart is that he took home 6 NBA titles, while Wilt only won 2, and he wasn't even the best player during one of those playoff runs. All of this leads me to believe that Michael Jordan is still the best player ever to play the game of basketball.
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