In 1997 I was just a kid making his way through the District Two school system but for the NBA it was a much more significant year. In 1997 the NBA was celebrating its fiftieth year in existence and as part of that celebration they decided to name the Top-50 NBA players of all-time, which in turn led to many discussions of who should have been on the list but also asked the question, in place of who? Earlier tonight I got to thinking about that list and realized it has been 18 years since that list came out and that means there has been a lot of basketball played since then, so I decided to text Jed, Travis and Richard to talk about who we would put on the list from the past 18 years and the tougher part, who would we take off the list?
The conversation got started with, “Well, we have to at least include LeBron and Kobe on the list right?” We all agreed on those two choices and we also decided we couldn’t leave Tim Duncan off the list, a man who has won five NBA Championships over the last 18 years. These were the three players that we said, “We have to add them to the list, but who do we take off the list to add them?” When you look at the list, it is hard to find people that you just say, “Well, he is obviously not good enough to be on this list” so you have to go down the list and hope that you find someone that you can talk yourself into taking off the list, so that you can include one of these other well deserving basketball players. After a discussion of about twenty minutes over text we were able to talk ourselves into replacing Scottie Pippen and Lenny Wilkins on the list with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant but finding the spot for Duncan was a little harder. One way we discussed finding a spot for Duncan, was to have him replace his former teammate David Robinson on the list. That would be a tough decision though because “The Admiral” was a very dominant center in his day and how do you take him off a list of the Top-50 players of all-time? We know Duncan has to be on the list, but once again we had to ask the question, “Who goes off the list?” We continued to talk about other players we thought could possibly have a spot on the list, as Travis tried to make a case for Dirk Nowitzki and we discussed the resumes of Reggie Miller and Kevin Garnett while also asking the question of, how could players like Dominique Wilkins be left off the original list? We also tried to make cases for some of our favorite players from each of our childhoods to make the list but we couldn’t get a group consensus on any of those players. In the end we found three spots we felt we had to make room for on the list but could only free up two spots. I’m sure the discussion will continue on but my question to you the reader though is this, if you had to add players from the last 18 years to this list, who would you add, who would you take off and why? The 1997 list of the Top-50 All-Time NBA Players: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Nate Archibald Paul Arizin Charles Barkley Rick Barry Elgin Baylor Dave Bing Larry Bird Wilt Chamberlin Bob Cousy Dave Cowens Billy Cunningham Dave DeBusschere Clyde Drexler Julius Erving Patrick Ewing Walt Frazier George Gervin Hal Greer John Havlicek Elvin Hayes Magic Johnson Sam Jones Michael Jordan Jerry Lucas Karl Malone Moses Malone Pete Maravich Kevin McHale George Mikan Earl Monroe Hakeem Olajuwon Shaquille O’Neal Robert Parish Bob Pettit Scottie Pippen Willis Reed Oscar Robertson David Robinson Bill Russell Dolph Schayes Bill Sharman John Stockton Isaiah Thomas Nate Thurmond Wes Unseld Bill Walton Jerry West Lenny Wilkens James Worthy
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
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