An NBA Hypothetical
If you’re a sports fan, best to start reading Joe Posnanski’s blog. It’s wonderful. And as icing he gives us this question:
Could the NBA’s all-time fourth team beat the NBA’s all-time best team?
Let’s say the all-time NBA team looks like so:
G: Magic Johnson
G: Michael Jordan
F: Larry Bird
F: Bill Russell
C: Wilt Chamberlain
And the No. 2 all-time team looks like so:
G: Oscar Robertson
G: Jerry West
F: Tim Duncan
F: Elgin Baylor
C: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
And the No. 3 all-time team looks like so:
G: Bob Cousy
G: Kobe Bryant
F: Lebron James
F: Hakeem Olajuwon
C: Shaq
And the No. 4 all-time team looks like so:
G: Isiah Thomas
G: John Havlicek
F: Julius Erving
F: Karl Malone
C: Moses Malone
Now, obviously those are not my top four teams — I picked those names off the top of my head. You can mix and match, add or subtract, throw in a Bob Pettit or a Charles Barkley or a John Stockton or whoever. The question is if you put those four teams on the floor as is, would the No. 1 team definitely be the best? It looks like that to me … but what if Chamberlain and Russell don’t mesh? What if Jordan can’t play with Magic? What if the old timers turn out to not be able to play with the kids?
And how would this team compete against those teams?
G: Chris Paul
G: Dwayne Wade
F: Kevin Durant
F: Kevin Love
F: Dwight Howard
Presumably we’re talking about a seven game playoff series.
Discuss.
The first team would easily beat the fourth team, becasue it has better players in every position, and players who have demonstrated that they can sacrifice aspects of their own games in order to win. More than that you have 4 of the greatest winners in NBA history (Bird, Jordan, Russell, Magic). These guys have demonstrated time and time again the will power to make the kinds of plays that win games under the most arduous pressure.
But there may be a team that could compete.
SF: Lebron vrs. Bird
PF: Moses or Tim Duncan vrs. Russell
C: Kareem vrs. Wilt
SG: Oscar Robertson vrs. Jordan
PG: Isiah Thomas or Chris Paul vrs Magic
Offensively you would do OK, but it would be hard to control Jordan and Magic. I still think the No. 1 team would win. There are better teams you could construct if you didn’t have to pick from your list of all-time greats, but instead took players that had the specific skills needed to play aginst the No. 1 team.
— cw · Feb 21, 07:00 PM · #
You mean there really is an afterlife? I mean an NBA?
I thought with that species, they are born, eat, play some college hoops, and that’s the end. Sure, I’ve heard talk about this NBA thing, but in another species I’ve heard talk about heaven and hell, too. I didn’t think they meant it. I figured it was just a coping mechanism, or something to use to motivate the juveniles of the species into following social norms.
But you’re talking about it as if there really is such a place.
I wonder, though. That part about streets of gold sounds fishy, as though people are just inventing something based on wishful thinking. If there really was an NBA, why would it be made merely to sound like a mundane, embellished version of real life, aka NCAA basketball? Wouldn’t you expect it to be something grander and more transcendent?
— The Reticulator · Feb 22, 02:25 AM · #
The way to beat the all-time team is to focus on defense and matchups. You need a team of big, quick, athletic, versatile players who can shoot.
On defense, you want to be able to matchup against a big all-time team (which is all 6’6” or taller), have a major presence in the paint (since everyone besides Bird likes to get the ball inside), and be ready to help and switch (since they’ll be scrambling to keep up with the all-timers). On offense, you want to find matchups to exploit, stretch the defense, and be ready to take advantage when the defense is scrambling.
The three obvious choices to me are Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett, and LeBron James. Olajuwon was an amazing man defender in the post and could take on Wilt, Garnett could guard Russell and be a great help defender, and LeBron can guard Magic or Bird. On offense LeBron would lead the way, and they’re all versatile players who would give the all-time team matchup problems with their quickness, strength, and range.
The team doesn’t need much offense from its last two players, but they should at least be good enough to keep the defense honest. Someone has to guard Jordan – maybe Joe Dumars, Gary Payton, Kobe Bryant, Sidney Moncrief, or Michael Cooper? I like Dumars for the role, since he’d give the offense an outside shooter to stretch the defense.
There are a lot of possibilities for the final spot – Bryant/Moncrief/Cooper are still options to guard Magic or Bird, so are guys like Oscar Robertson, Scottie Pippen, or Paul Pierce, some PFs like Barkley or Karl Malone might be able to keep up with Bird, or we could even put Garnett on Bird and add another big man like Tim Duncan or David Robinson to create major matchup problems on the other end of the floor. I’ll stick with players I’ve seen and go with Pippen, an elite wing defender who’s used to a complementary role on offense, making the team:
Hakeem Olajuwon
Kevin Garnett
LeBron James
Scottie Pippen
Joe Dumars
— Brad · Feb 22, 06:32 AM · #
Love this idea, and it’s one I’ve even thought about sometimes. I agree the first team would almost always win a seven-game series, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it took seven games to put away any of the next few ultra-fives. Defending both Jordan and Magic would be near-impossible and if you send help, any one of the remaining three would absolutely devastate you. And yet, on a given night or two … I’ve seen Dumars light up Jordan on a night even when Jordan was in typical form. With players like these anything, and I mean anything, is possible. Even an all-white team with Walton, Bird, West, Maravich and Nowitzki would not be a gimme putt.
— beejeez · Feb 22, 05:43 PM · #
One point I consider both pretty obvious and largely overlooked by sportswriters, is that competitive standards rise rapidly over time. So while it makes sense to evaluate players relative to their era in terms of hall of fame votes, it doesn’t make sense to do so in imagining an actual time-travel-utilizing matchup. I think it’s really unlikely guys like Havlicek, Cousy, Moses, Oscar, Russell, or Jerry West in their prime would be anywhere near the top-tier level of today’s play. There’s just been way too much improvement in training, nutrition, equipment, strategy, fashion, etc.
The point Posnanski seems to be making, that chemistry trumps talent, seems much better proven by the play of Team USA in the 2004 Olympics.
— Ben · Feb 22, 11:50 PM · #
I wonder how Jerry West would match up if his younger self were playing Kobe Bryant, both in their primes. You’ve got to think that if they competed in the Olympic decathlon Kobe would take every single event. Would he similarly destroy West in basketball? I just can’t bring myself to be as confident that the answer is yes, even though I suspect that it might be.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Feb 23, 07:49 AM · #
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