It's time for another sports history lesson from your friends at The Athletic.
The "publication" (mostly on line, although the New York Times uses its work too) came up with a list of the top 100 football players a while back. It was all right, although I wasn't as enthusiastic as some other readers.
Now it's time to try the formula on pro basketball players. Thus "The Basketball 100" followed its football counterparts into the bookstores. I found the execution of this one a little bit better than its pigskin associate.
The idea, of course, is timeless. Look over the history of a particular sport or team, come up with the list of the top 10/25/100/500 players, and rank them in order. Then biographies are assigned of the players involved, and you are on your way toward a book.
David Aldridge and John Hollinger, two familiar names in the basketball media, came up with a rather complicated way of coming up with an initial ranking. It's explained near the back of the book, and the numbers merely serves as a guide for further work. Considerations include championships, individual awards and achievements, all-time statistics, etc. The pair also uses some individual advanced metrics in their rankings. While they no doubt have a good deal of value, I'm on the outside looking in on such matters since I don't follow such things in basketball very closely.
At that point they had a list of around 100 names, and then the internal debates began. Who goes where? There are two obvious problem areas in this sort of game. The first centers on how how to rank today's players. It's not too early to consider someone like Steph Curry as one of the greatest guards of all time - perhaps in the top five, depends on where you might position such players as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Others with shorter careers, such as Nikola Jokic (29 years old at this writing), are harder to rate in terms of history. Someone like Jokic is bound to move up in the near future in many eyes, since durability is a valuable asset. But where to place him now is difficult.
Then there are those who had a shortened or modified career for one reason of another. Grant Hill looked like he was on his way to super-stardom when injuries slowed him down considerably. He still played for a long time, but his march toward the top 20 took an unforced detour. Someone like Bill Walton had his career shortened by chronic injuries. You'd probably say he had a very high one-season peak value but not a particularly long career value, if you get the difference. It's tough to compare that career to one such as Robert Parish's, who had a much longer period of effective play but certainly didn't match Walton's play at his best.
There are also a few players on the list who are hard to put in a category. Spencer Haywood certainly had top 100 talent, but some of it was unfulfilled. He gets credit here for challenging the age-restriction on the NBA draft - something that was important but had nothing to do with his play on the court. Then there's Dennis Rodman, certainly one of the great rebounders in NBA history on an inch-for-inch basis and someone who played on a lot of winning teams. Is that enough to crack the top 100? I can see some logic in that argument, but I'm decidedly not sure. And as far as trying to figure out if George Mikan was a better player than Kawhi Leonard, well, good luck with that. (They are placed next to each other here.)
Once all of that is done, the authors go through the players with good-sized biographies. Here's where the book takes a step up. Most of the stories are quite well done, and some of them leave the reader almost disappointed when they are over because they are so well researched and written. They were a bit better than the ones in the football version of the top 100. I'm a little curious as to why Steve Nash was No. 39 on the hoops list and fellow point guard Bob Cousy was No. 40 - even if I admire both players. But in the long run, I guess it doesn't matter too much.
The point is that "The Basketball 100" offers a good, solid history lesson about the game of pro basketball. For those looking for some information on the all-time greats, it's a reasonable place to start.
Four stars
Learn more about this book from Amazon.com. (As an Amazon affiliate, I earn money from qualified purchases.)
Be notified of new posts on this site via X.com @WDX2BB.
No comments:
Post a Comment