Here’s 70 Years of Basketball History in One Graphic
While we wait for the NBA Finals to settle things between Steph and LeBron, we’d might as well pass the time arguing about the past 70 years of the NBA. Endless arguments are what make basketball great. To that end, the Mitchell & Ness graphic below is a great start.
Mitchell and Ness
And here were my 10 reactions, in order, after I saw this come across my Twitter timeline Monday night and stared at it for 15 minutes:
1. Celtics Shaq over Sheed on the Pistons? Are you serious?1
2. You can’t put LeBron over Russell, you can’t put LeBron over Jordan, but come on, you gotta put him somewhere on the list.2
3. People are going to say Wade or CP3 belongs over Iverson, and I hate these people already.3
4. How many times is Ron Artest on this list?4
5. Lakers Karl Malone over Isiah. Holy shit.5
6. THEY PUT KAREEM OVER LARRY BIRD. HOLY SHIT.6
7. Ohhhhhhhhh, I get it. They’re saying best players overall. It’s not specific to what number they were wearing at the time. That explains Shaq over Sheed. It does not explain Malone and Kareem over Bird and Isiah.7
8. Vlad Radmanovic!8
9. Totally forgot Baron Davis was on the Knicks, totally forgot he wore no. 85, but, man, what a perfect way to tell the whole world he was done caring.9
10. No matter what, Scot Pollard has a spot in history forever.10
(H/T: Slam Online)
Filed Under: NBA
Andrew Sharp is a staff editor at Grantland.