Is Larry Bird the Greatest NBA Player Of All Time?

2 steals a game. Less than 1 block per game. 7 rebounds per game. Those aren't the stats that get you in the top 25 of the greatest players ever. Yes, he was a great shut down guy. But every other statistic (16.1 ppg, 5 assists, 32% from 3) are all slightly above average.

Pippen's offensive numbers and defensive prowess are similar to Walt Frazier or Bobby Jones, both great players. In fact look at Jones' stats. not in the Hall but averaged more rebounds, blocks, blocks, and steals while averaging only slightly fewer points and assists.

After looking at the stats, Pippen should be in the Hall BUT top 25 player, no. He couldn't create his own shot and had awful shot selection. And for everybody lauding him as the reason the Bulls finally won, please. He was a piece, much like Rodman, Paxson, Wennington/Longley/Perdue, Armstrong but Jordan was the glue that held it together and made it work. The only Hall of Famer on that team besides Jordan was Pippen. And when you look at the stats, he wasn't that special.

During the Bird/Magic Era.... Magic had Abdul Jabbar and Worthy. Bird had McHale, Parrish, Johnson, Walton (I know, bad knees). All Hall of Famers. No one can possibly think Bird and Magic didn't have more help winning their titles than Jordan did. And Jordan's best teammate can't touch the best teammate for Magic and Pippen wouldn't crack the Celtics starting lineup. How some people are questioning Jordan as the greatest player ever is unreal.

Other players were more well-rounded than Jordan, but his overall game was still better compared to any NBA player ever...his offensive skills were so great that they overshadow anyone else who might have been a more well-rounded player.I disagree about LeBron. He's great for sure, but Jordan was greater. Lebron still has time to get better though, and I don't care about the rings. Right now though, Michael Jordan is the best NBA player ever...better than Bird, better than Magic, better than Jabbar.

I think Pippen was a fantastic all around player, so I agree with you there, but your arguments below are horrendously weak. Pippen was better than Dominique and Dr J because.... (drum roll everyone, DeanM is going slay us with some excellent, well-thought out points here)....."Pippen was just better." Wow. Pathetic debating/argument on you part. Dr J??? You are out of your mind. Moving on:Pippen was better than Karl Malone because.....The Mailman was the worst "elite player in the clutch of all time", a statement backed up by....... NOTHING ?! No "crunch time" stats. No quotes from opposing players or NBA experts. No. Just a statement. Working hard Dean, working hard.Pippen was better than David Robinson because the Admiral "lacked passion." Again, backed up by nothing. And Barkely? "ponderous with the ball" ?! HE WAS A POWER FORWARD! He wasn't a point guard for crissakes. And he could do everything but dribble exceptionally well. And then your analysis of Stockton, Kobe, Hondo, and Zeke is absurd. Firstly, the the question you were really just debating was "who was better, Pippen or...", not, "who was the ideal teammate for Jordan," and secondly, Jordan would have found a way to mesh with any of those great players, and a great point guard would have truly freed him up to do everything else he did so well (pippen sometimes played point, and was hardly efficient at it. He pulled it off, but seriously, he was no point guard).Having said all that, I think Pippen was indeed a great player and sidekick for Jordan. But if they added an all time great true point guard or center (guys who you think would not have fit in with Jordan), they would have never lost.

dean moriarty wrote:

I'd rank Pippen above quite a few of those names. And speaking from the perspective of Michael Jordan, I'd much rather have Pippen on my team than:

Wilkins (Pippen was just better)

Dr. J (same)

Karl Malone (easiest choice, worst elite player in the clutch of all time)

David Robinson (think his lack of passion during games would drive MJ nuts)

Barkley (ponderous with the ball, erratic)

Walton (always hurt)

And probably:

Stockton (didn't really need a PG in their system)

Kobe (just because Kobe and MJ would have a hard time playing together)

Havlicek (more athletic)

Isaiah (because Isaiah was a 24/7 douche to MJ)

Allegedly. wrote:

Jordan was allegedly jealous of Pippen cuz Pippen was hung like a horse.

Pippen was "gifted down below" according to asst. John Bach. Bach said Pippen always had a stream of girls waiting for him in every city.

Madonna would have a limo w/ hot tub waiting when the Bulls came to LA. MJ once told Madonna that he could satisfy her as well as Pippen. Madonna replied, um, no.

you cant say jordan is the best bc if he hadnt had grant pippen and rodman he never would have won. magic won his ifrst year with no jabar. he played as a center in game 6 and played all five positions. so dont even tell me jordan is better. he had no legitimate rival like magic did. he played in a down era where the best rivalry was stockton and malone. magic played thomas bird mchale parrish dr.j the list goes on. so you jordan automatons dont listen to espn and nike for once and realize whose better

I definitely agree with you about MJ's supporting cast early in his career - but remember that in '97 and '98, the Jazz were starting Greg Ostertag and their sixth man was Antoine "Shades" Carr. I'd much rather have Kerr, Caffey, Kukoc, and a little bulldog like Randy Brown coming off the bench than Howard Eisley and a bunch of people you probably can't remember. It wasn't a deep league back then.

Easy tiger. I was talking about who MJ would prefer to play with instead of Pippen. The point being that his supporting cast was ideal. And, that Pippen was a great player.

MJ was a psychopath that terrorized his teammates. He punched Steve Kerr in the face (among others) and went on a one-man crusade to humiliate 19-year-old Kwame Brown, when MJ was 40 and Kwame's boss. He was not an easy man to play with. But, everyone loved playing with Pippen, read about it. It's well documented.

So, if MJ was picking a teammate, I doubt there would be many players above Pippen, who did everything Jordan asked of him, was on one of the All-NBA teams every year they were winning titles and was first team All-Defense basically every year. It's very hard to improve upon that.

But if you really want to get into it, Karl Malone was awful in the clutch, or at least was perceived that way by almost everybody (remember "the Mailman doesn't deliver on Sundays"?). David Robinson was a passive personality and that was proven when Hakeem destroyed him in the playoffs after his MVP without a peep from the Admiral. Barkley and Dr. J were ball hogs and were unreliable defenders. Barkley's weight was kind of all over the place, too. All of those would have driven MJ nuts.

MJ thrived on a system where the ball moved around quickly and he could cut to the basket and take shots whenever he wanted. So, I doubt MJ would want to be running the pick and roll with Stockton all day. Or, for that matter, watching Ewing ponderously back the ball into the lane. And, I doubt MJ would want to play with anyone that stopped the ball to jack up a ton of shots like Kobe.

Do a little independent reading about the NBA and chill out!

I'm not responding to the post about this one.

First of all, Pippen was NOT BETTER THAN PETE MARAVICH. Read a bit about Pete Maravich. He's probably had the greatest ball handling skills of all time - dribbling, shooting, and passing. His NCAA scoring records haven't come CLOSE to being broken in forty years and it's possible they never will. The NCAA scoring leader is usually like 25 ppg these days... he averaged FORTY FOUR PPG FOR HIS COLLEGE CAREER. I realize that's college, but he was an insane alcoholic and played on horrible pro teams.

The book called Pistol is one of the most fascinating biographies I've ever read, and I've read quite a few.

Secondly, anyone who thinks that Michael Jordan is head and shoulders about Wilt Chamberlain is either really ignorant about the sport and about sports in general and probably shouldn't be commenting on this subject or is just a straight up idiot and probably shouldn't be commenting on ANY subject. Wilt is the most obvious example, but I think the same could be said for Russell and some others. Yeah, the game was different back then, but he was from another PLANET in those days. He was every BIT as athletically gifted as Lebron James is if not significantly MORE SO. I don't feel like rattling off a list of his achievements... some of them have already been listed. There are a billion websites and books that will tell you how ridiculous he was. So yeah, anyone who thinks MJ is "by far" the best basketball player of all time is just wrong. In fact, 99/100 times when people say that X is by far the best of all time in Y discipline, that person is an idiot, unless the discipline is really obscure.

Above this one*

Pippen developed slowly the first few years and the end of his career was ruined by a back injury suffering in taking a charge against Karl Malone in the 1998 finals. But he was not just another piece. I lived in Chicago during the second three championships and watched many of their games at bars. Pippen was a lockdown defender on anyone. In crunch time he could get any rebound, he would never miss a free throw at that point in the game, and he would give you the three when you needed it. He started more breaks than anyone. To watch Pippen was a great honor. In crunch time, Malone would get the ball stolen by Pippen, as in the 1998 championships, or Jordan, and Malone couldn't be relied on in crunch time: the ball would always go to Stockton, who was deadly at that time in the game. The Bulls of 72 victories had Jordan, Pippen, Harper (former all star, though he didn't really fit in the triple post offense), Steve Kerr, the all time 3 pt percentage leader, Dennis Rodman (great defensive player, great rebounder, great offensive rebounder, fantastic outlet passer on the break), Toni Kukoc, a terrific all around offensive player (the waiter on defense) at 6'11", and then role players like Jud Buechler, Luc Longley, Bill Wennington, who could give you some outside shooting or some rebounding but not much else.

dean moriarty wrote:

I'd rank Pippen above quite a few of those names. And speaking from the perspective of Michael Jordan, I'd much rather have Pippen on my team than:

Maravich (took way too many shots)

Wilkins (Pippen was just better)

Dr. J (same)

Karl Malone (easiest choice, worst elite player in the clutch of all time)

David Robinson (think his lack of passion during games would drive MJ nuts)

Barkley (ponderous with the ball, erratic)

Walton (always hurt)

And probably:

Stockton (didn't really need a PG in their system)

Kobe (just because Kobe and MJ would have a hard time playing together)

Havlicek (more athletic)

Isaiah (because Isaiah was a 24/7 douche to MJ)

Pippen was a beast, and the rest of MJ's supporting cast was very, very good. Jordan wouldn't have a few titles if it weren't for the sharpshooting of two future NBA GM's...

Pippen more athletic than Havlicek? Not a chance.

steve "red" wrote:

No, Larry Bird is not the greatest of all-time. Bill Walton should have made your list of great players

College player Bill Walton, yes

Professional Bill Walton, no

Sometimes I open a thread like this one and then click straight to page 9 to see how anyone can possibly still be responding to the thread.

Pippen today said that LeBron has the potential to be the greatest player of all time.

Flagpole wrote:I disagree about LeBron. He's great for sure, but Jordan was greater. Lebron still has time to get better though, and I don't care about the rings. Right now though, Michael Jordan is the best NBA player ever...better than Bird, better than Magic, better than Jabbar.

Pippen was on ESPN's "Mike and Mike" show this morning, and even HE stated that Jordan was the greatest OFFENSIVE player ever. Pippen went on to say that Lebron James is a better all-around player than Jordan was, and he suggested that James is arguably the best player ever right now.

I'm not sure I agree about James, but when MJ's right hand man says that MJ wasn't the best then it has merit. People need to get over their infatuation with MJ and just accept that there were (and are) plenty of guys on the "best list" who are ahead of Jordan.

Barret Dahl aka Crip Nation wrote:

The speed of the game is so much faster now than Bird in his prime wouldn't even make it on a college team nowadays.

It is much more physical game now and Bird would be a boy among men.

This is the kind of argument that lacks any vision. Are you really arguing that athletes of 20 years ago would not have developed differently in today's environment? Do you think that they would not take advantage of training methods available today, given their drive to be great when they played?

If you say yes to either of those, you are not very smart.

Do people really think Hondo was more athletic than Pippen!? Pippen dunked on Patrick Ewing! Not a knock on Hondo, who was a fantastic athlete, but Pippen was a cut above.

Pippen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl8Y6k16mgg

Hondo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsYAICmVMHA

I grew up near East Lansing and started following Magic's career while he was getting incredible buzz playing his cross town rival, Jay Vincent. Got to see many of his games at Michigan State and am one of the biggest Magic fans ever. Larry Bird was a hated rival but now in retrospect, I appreciate his skills. He was a better shooter but Magic had the better all around game. I resisted for a long time calling MJ the best ever because Magic was clearly the best ever before he came along. They are different types of players and effect the game differently, so it's hard to compare, but I have to say MJ is the best I've ever seen. My argument is not based on stats, just on the feel of who dominated the game the most and could just refuse to lose. MJ at his peak was head and shoulders above everyone else on the court and would just kill teams in the 4th quarter even though everyone knew the ball was coming to him. Wilt's stats are so mind boggling that he is the only other player who could claim the title "best ever." Unfortunately, I never got to see him play and don't know if his relative lack of titles was truly because of a lack of a supporting cast or because the team concept was lost on him.

Jordan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFxXSXGd4hs