High Quality Sports

In 2021, the NBA announced its 75th anniversary team. An extension of the NBA at 50 25 years later. The list is fairly awful and has 76 players so I decided to make my own.

Players that are on both lists and so don’t need much commentary: Dolph Schayes, George Mikan, Bob Cousy, Bob Petit, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, John Havlicek, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Rick Barry, “Walt” Clyde Frazier, Wes Unseld, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Lanier, Dave Cowens, Julius Erving, Bill Walton, Moses Malone, George Gervin, Robert Parish, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kevin McHale, Isiah Thomas, James Worthy, Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Dennis Rodman, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, Reggie Miller, Gary Payton, Shaquille O’Neal, Jason Kidd, Kevin Garnett, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Giannis Antetokounmpo

Players on the 75th anniversary team that are not on my team: Carmelo Anthony, Nate “Tiny” Archibald, Paul Arizin, Dave Bing, Billy Cunningham, Dave DeBusschere, Hal Greer, Elvin Hayes, Sam Jones, Damian Lillard, Jerry Lucas, Pete Maravich, Bob McAdoo, Earl Monroe, Bill Sharman, Lenny Wilkins, Dominique Wilkins.

Players that are on my list but not on the anniversary team: Cliff Hagan, Bob Lanier, Dikembe Mutombo, Alonzo Mourning, Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway, Grant Hill, Ben Wallace, Tracy McGrady, Manu Ginobili, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard, Draymond Green, Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Jayson Tatum, Luka Doncic.

Upon first glance, it’s pretty obvious my team of 16 would beat the tits off the guys who were put on in their place. Jokic, Penny, Manu, Tatum and Dwight Howard vs Tiny, Dave Bing, Carmelo, Dave Debusschere and Elvin Hayes. Did someone say mercy rule? A think a few tropes came through in making the list.

1. They didn’t remove any of the atrocious choices from the first top 50 list, which was bad then and is even worse now.
2. Foreign or international players got no love. Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili are not on the list? Insanity.
3. Defense was not valued at all – which is expected from the average 0 iq fan, but the NBA needs to do better. Mutombo, Wallace, Mourning, and Draymond were all left off but empty calories offensive players with cool moves that never contributed to winning impact were thrown on ad nauseam.
4. They didn’t want to do any amount of projecting into the future. It’s possible you could say if their career ended in 2021 that Luka, Jokic, Tatum and Embiid wouldn’t warrant this list but Shaq was put on in ’96 and now that we’re in 2025 it looks exceptionally stupid to leave an easily top 20 player all time in Jokic off a list of 75 players that has Dave Bing. Shame.
5. Whatever bullshit popularity contest Dwight Howard lost has stained the list as he’s such a disgusting snub I think half the voting body needs to be publicly executed.
6. If you were on the 70s knicks teams – which definitely wasn’t a dynasty – you get an automatic bid, but if you were on an actual dynasty (00s Spurs, 10s Warriors) you won’t be included. None of Manu, Tony, Klay, Draymond, Iggy made it.

I think we will look at players in categories. Some are either or, on the bubble tough to leave off or last ones on.

Egregious snubs: Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Manu Ginobili

Dwight and Pau are top 35-50 players ever, theres truly no logic or reason that can be made leaving them off of this list. Manu Ginobili had some injuries and didn’t play 38 minutes a game but other than that I don’t see it. Elite shooter, playmaker, defender, scorer, +/- God, champion, did it for a long time. Again, other than being not from the US I don’t see a reason to leave him off. Here’s his 2005 post season per75 adjusted numbers.

Opp	Pts	aTS%	reb	ast	stl	blk	net rtg
Den	31.2	12.7	7.8	5.2	.5	.8	30
Sea	27.6	18.2	7	5.6	1.6	.3	25
Phx	24.7	8.9	6.7	5.2	2.2	.2	20
Det	25.2	13.2	7.3	5	1.6	.1	17

That playoffs alone puts him well ahead of plenty of players on the list. Carmelo Anthony couldn’t sniff these scoring numbers and he never played defense or passed the ball. I think the argument that he didn’t “lead his team” or “carry the load” on offense is quite weak. He did lead his team in on/off for the 2005 and 2007 playoff runs, as well as in scoring efficiency, and was a key cog in arguably the best dynasty the sport has seen. That and the bat incident make him a criminal snub.

Egregious errors:

1. High box score stats point guards who never had high level offenses: Pete Maravich, Tiny Archibald. Maravich has some of the best NCAA numbers ever and he was one of the pioneers of flashy passing. However, his flashy passing also came with an astounding level of turnovers. Combine this with less than 0 defense and very inefficient scoring and never being on a really good team and you have just a run of the mill player who everyone just wants to anoint status because of the aesthetic. Archibald has the historic “leads the league in points and assists the same year” wow he must be great! You know who has come dangerously close to this record? Trae Young. Who also deserves to be nowhere near this list. Tiny was not a high level offensive engine he was just the first usage merchant who had big numbers on terrible teams.
2. Very high on the all time career points list but never contributed to a winning team: Carmelo Anthony, Elvin Hayes. These guys are almost the exact same player, just at a different position with a different birthday. They both had the ball a lot and shot tons of shots. A good enough percentage of them went in so that their team kept feeding them the ball but neither were good defenders, neither of them could pass any better than a middle school point guard, and none of them were good in the playoffs or ever put up an impressive on/off profile. Carmelo made it out of round 1 twice in his career. I think most of his appeal is by overweight people on their couch who have a similar pump fake game without the skill and like his 3 point celebration and enjoyed the one good playoff moment he had when he drilled 3s to sent it to OT and to end the game vs a Rose-less Bulls squad. This, being a knickerbocker, and his various olympic hot streaks has built him a cult following but upon the smallest of deep dives into his statistical profile it’s quite clear he shouldn’t be on this list, and I think he’s better than Elvin Hayes.

Moderate Snubs:

1. Can we agree that if we put the 10 best offensive players on the list regardless of their defensive value that we’re required to put the top 10 defensive players on the list regardless of their offensive value? I think the best 10 defensive guys ever are: Russell, Chamberlain, Thurmond, Olajuwon, Robinson, Garnett, Duncan, Wallace, Mutombo, and pick one of Howard, Davis, Green and Gobert. Big Ben and Dikembe both got 4 DPOY awards, the most ever and Wallace was arguably the best player on a title team. It’s foolish to leave both of these guys off and I put both of them on. I can understand picking only one of the two but leaving both off is just wrong.
2. Very short peak but injured and was never the same: Alonzo Mourning, Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, Mark Price. All of these guys had a not-quite-MVP peak for just a couple of years then got injured and had some semblance of a career after that. I think they were good enough that they should be on the list. Their peak is certainly higher than many others and I think that’s more of what the list should embody vs someone who is very good(all star or sub all star) year in year out like Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, or say, Dominique Wilkins. I had to leave Price off but he could definitely be on there. To have none of these 5 guys seems wrong while Dave Bing burns my eyes every time I see his name.
3. Quality guards who had a bunch of solid years and were part of multiple title teams: Joe Dumars, Tony Parker, Klay Thompson. I don’t have any of these guys on my list but I think they deserve consideration and I think it’s odd that Lillard made the team and none of these 3 did. I suppose the voters wanted to put a father/son combo on the team and since Anthony Davis made it they decided Lillard should too. If that joke went over your head here’s some numbers from 2018

2018 WC1: (3) POR vs (6) NOP [0-4]

Player	Pts	aTS%	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	Net Rtg
Davis	32.1	11	11.1	1.2	1.7	2.6	27.6
Lillard	16.9	-7.6	4.4	4.6	1.1	0	-26

Moderate errors:

1. 50s/60s guys they didn’t want to take off: Bill Sharman, Sam Jones, Billy Cunningham, Paul Arizin, Hal Greer. I’m not going to sit here and say I know for an absolute fact that I’d rather have Cliff Hagan and Bob Lanier over these guys and most of them are on the bubble. I think my issue is that the super early days of the NBA were disproportionately represented. Sports evolve and get better over time and have more players from long ago seems odd. The icons, all timers and trailblazers deserve to be on here which is why Russell, Chamberlain, West etc surely deserve to be on here. Mikan was the first real superstar so he’s on here for that, but Cunningham and Arizin were like the 5th best players in the league when the league wasn’t that great. I’m not too enamored with that which is why these guys didn’t make my final cut.

Players who deserve consideration but aren’t on my list or the official list: Shawn Kemp, Vince Carter, Andre Iguodala, Tony Parker, Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Marc Gasol, Dennis Johnson, Joe Dumars, Lamar Odom, Baron Davis, Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway, Mark Price, Mark Eaton, Rudy Gobert, Klay Thompson, Kyrie Irving, Bobby Jones, Caldwell Jones, Artis Gilmore. All of these players I would put on the list before Maravich, Dave Bing, Earl Monroe or Dave Debusschere.

My final list in order of draft date is: Dolph Schayes, George Mikan, Bob Cousey, Cliff Hagan, Bob Petit, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, John Havlicek, Nate Thurmond, Willis Reed, Rick Barry, Clyde Frazier, Wes Unseld, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bob Lanier, Dave Cowens, Julius Erving, Bill Walton, Moses Malone, George Gervin, Robert Parish, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kevin McHale, Isiah Thomas, James Worthy, Clyde Drexler, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Dennis Rodman, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, Reggie Miller, Gary Payton, Gary Payton, Dikembe Mutombo, Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Penny Hardaway, Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Kevin Garnett, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Ben Wallace, Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, Dirk Nowitzki, Paul Pierce, Manu Ginobili, Pau Gasol, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Draymond Green, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, Jayson Tatum, Luka Doncic.

Toughest cuts: Sam Jones, Mark Price, Shawn Kemp, Joe Dumars, Tony Parker, Vince Carter, Damian Lillard, Paul George, Jimmy Butler