emk211
Legend
Bronze Level
If you were God and you had to choose one player to start and be the captain of your all time greatest basketball team, who would it be, if I was a betting man and the Devil is, who would I put all my money on for the Win? Take the shot? Steal the ball? Make a free throw to seal the deal?
The answer to all of the above is MJ.
There is literally only one player that could single handily beat all 5 players by themselves, Detroit had to tackle him, mug him and thug him. MJ playing today would never get touched and could have scored 50 a game, he played defense without fouling, so he could steal and be dunking all game, the guy was a beast on both sides of the court.
He played the game the way we wish we all could. There are many great basketball players before him and after, I watched many of them since I was old enough to know what a basketball was as age 3, and I am qualified to speak on this subject. I will never say he is the greatest of all time, because all time has not stopped, but I will say this, emulate him, pretend to be him, get compared to him and you lose every argument.
Bill Russell was not even the greatest center, he was just fortunate enough to be on a team in a league with very few that could challenge him, team wise, the Celtics were the superteam back them and only had maybe 4 teams that could compete with them. The league was young.
Now they say it is watered down with too many teams and that is why MJ could win the way he did when he did, but the game has evolved, equipment is better, training is better, traveling is easier, for all teams and the draft process allows for bad teams to get better opportunities to get better quicker, MJ would have excelled in any league, at any time, regardless, but it is much harder to win a championship against 30 teams and MJ won 6 with basically 2 different teams.
No, he did not do it alone, but make no mistake about it, he made players around him better because he gave them opportunities to score whenever other teams doubled and tripled him, the entire career MJ never seemed to ever take time off, he was always involved in the play, defensively, offensively, always the focus of attention every play, you just can not say that about any other player.
So, in my lifetime thus far, this is how a rate the top 10 players of the NBA Mount Rushmore, 10- Jerry West, 9- Pete Maravich, 8- Dr.J, 7- Larry Bird, 6- Magic, 5- Bill Russell, 4- Kobe, 3- Shaq, 2- Kareem, and #1 MICHAEL "AIR" JORDAN. This is the list and they had to be retired to make it, before it is over maybe LBJ and Steph and KD make it here.
The answer to all of the above is MJ.
There is literally only one player that could single handily beat all 5 players by themselves, Detroit had to tackle him, mug him and thug him. MJ playing today would never get touched and could have scored 50 a game, he played defense without fouling, so he could steal and be dunking all game, the guy was a beast on both sides of the court.
He played the game the way we wish we all could. There are many great basketball players before him and after, I watched many of them since I was old enough to know what a basketball was as age 3, and I am qualified to speak on this subject. I will never say he is the greatest of all time, because all time has not stopped, but I will say this, emulate him, pretend to be him, get compared to him and you lose every argument.
Bill Russell was not even the greatest center, he was just fortunate enough to be on a team in a league with very few that could challenge him, team wise, the Celtics were the superteam back them and only had maybe 4 teams that could compete with them. The league was young.
Now they say it is watered down with too many teams and that is why MJ could win the way he did when he did, but the game has evolved, equipment is better, training is better, traveling is easier, for all teams and the draft process allows for bad teams to get better opportunities to get better quicker, MJ would have excelled in any league, at any time, regardless, but it is much harder to win a championship against 30 teams and MJ won 6 with basically 2 different teams.
No, he did not do it alone, but make no mistake about it, he made players around him better because he gave them opportunities to score whenever other teams doubled and tripled him, the entire career MJ never seemed to ever take time off, he was always involved in the play, defensively, offensively, always the focus of attention every play, you just can not say that about any other player.
So, in my lifetime thus far, this is how a rate the top 10 players of the NBA Mount Rushmore, 10- Jerry West, 9- Pete Maravich, 8- Dr.J, 7- Larry Bird, 6- Magic, 5- Bill Russell, 4- Kobe, 3- Shaq, 2- Kareem, and #1 MICHAEL "AIR" JORDAN. This is the list and they had to be retired to make it, before it is over maybe LBJ and Steph and KD make it here.
