Top 100 NBA Players: #97

Bob Dandridge

(Simmons: #79, BBR: #182)

Bill Simmons refers to Bob Dandridge as his "favorite lost great from the seventies." The reason that Dandridge is "lost" is that he was a great player but never the best on a good team. He spent the entire decade of the 70's as one of the league's best players, but he always had better or more famous teammates overshadowing him. In Milwaukee, where he started his career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson took the spotlight. In Washington, where he had his career peak, people still paid more attention to Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld. The two seasons in which he took over as the best player on the Bucks turned into the two worst seasons of his career, which says to me that he was better as a second banana.

Dandridge played in 4 NBA Finals during his career, winning the NBA championship twice. In each of those Finals appearances he raised his scoring average, something the previous entrants on this list haven't been able to say. Here are the playoff numbers from those seasons.

1971 - 19.2 pts, #3 player on champ
1974 - 19.3 pts, #3 player on runner-up
1978 - 21.2 pts, #2 player on champ
1979 - 23.1 pts, #2 player on runner-up

Dandridge's career in the 1970's looks very similar to Lamar Odom's in the 2000's, with several very solid years in a row. The thing that sets Dandridge apart is the way he always stepped up in the playoffs, while Odom faded. The big playoff dip in the middle represents the time in which he was carrying the Bucks, and the cliff on the right side was caused by injuries that derailed his career right when it appeared that he was about to take over as the star in Washington.

Not only has he been forgotten by the majority of NBA fans, he has also been left out of the Hall of Fame by voters for decades, who obviously have failed to recognize how big a contributor he was to some of the best teams of the 1970's. The least I can do is give him a little recognition today as one of the top 100 players of all time.

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.

Top 100 NBA Players: #99

Lamar Odom

(BBR: #144)

That's right. The 99th best player of all time has never even made an All-Star team. The greatest honor he has won in his professional career is the Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2011. So what makes him so great? Is he really good enough that he should be ranked ahead of a man who was the best player on a championship team?

What helped Odom climb this high on the all-time list was that he has been a solid player for 8 straight years, which includes being the 3rd best player on an NBA Finalist, the 3rd best player on an NBA Champion the next year, and the 4th best player on yet another champion in 2010. That's 3 straight years of being a solid starter on a championship-caliber team. 

When Odom was a senior in high school, he was named the top high school prospect in the country by Parade Magazine, and after a solid freshman season, he jumped to the NBA, where he was immediately a starter. His career has been very up and down, with numerous injuries hampering his effectiveness early in his career, but with 4 straight healthy seasons behind him now, he appears to have found his niche in Los Angeles. 

The ups and downs of Odom's career are immediately visible in the above chart. He finally broke the pattern in the 2009 playoffs, when he improved upon his previous playoff appearances and helped the Lakers win the title after losing in the Finals the previous season. He may not have ever reached the level that Hagan achieved at his peak, but he has remained relevant for longer than Hagan's entire career lasted, and he may not be finished, as the upward slope of his career over the past few years shows. The career averages of the two are not even that far apart.

Odom - 14.6 pts, 8.9 reb, 4.0 ast, .469 FG%, .699 FT%

Hagan - 18.0 pts, 6.9 reb, 3.0 ast, .450 FG%, .798 FT%

Odom holds a slight edge over Hagan in 3 of these categories, while Hagan has a decent advantage over Odom in the other two, which makes then pretty much even. As far as championships go, Odom has the advantage 2-1, while Hagan holds the edge in Finals appearances 4-3. I give the slight edge to Odom because he has remained a very good player for longer than Hagan was.