MVN: Most Valuable Network

I was leafing through Elliot Kalb's book, Who's Better, Who's Best in Basketball.  It purports to rank the 100 greatest basketball players of all time.

It looks like a rather weak effort.  It seems to be rife with subjective opinion and moving standards.  If I want that, I'll turn on NBA Fastbreak.

An example is Kalb ranks Shaquille O'Neal the number one player of all-time but, having read the Shaq chapter, I couldn't tell you why.  As far as I can surmise, Kalb contends Shaq is the best because in Kalb's mind he's better than everyone else.  Purely circular argument.

In fact, you cannot objectively argue that Shaq's impact was better than any of the other 4 Kalb ranks in his top 5.

Click Here for a Win Profile of the best seasons of 5 all-time greats

Wilt has to be considered most valuable

Amongst Kalb's top 5: Shaq, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I think Wilt has to be the most valuable player.  He was simply further above his contemporary competition than the rest, and therefore was able to make a more positive win contribution to his teams.  As for who's the "best" player, that's purely speculative.

As you can see from my chart, Wilt's 1966-67 season easily eclipses anything produced by the other 5.  He was simply awesome, on par with Babe Ruth in 1927.  (Kareem's best season, you will notice, was in a Milwaukee Bucks uniform.)

As for Michael Jordan, he had a consistently great career, but he simply was not as far above his competition as Wilt Chamberlain was above his, and therefore he was not as valuable to the Bulls in any one season as Chamberlain was to the Sixers in 66-67.  You can argue he had greater intrinsic value to his team, I suppose.  I can't really argue that point either way.

I was surprised to discover what a poor offensive player Bill Russell was.  But he buttered his bread on defense and on the boards, and he did that for many seasons.  Shows what you can do even if you cannot score.