Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Thoughts on recent Basketball HOF

Rodman - A player of extreme strengths and conspicuous weaknesses. Whatever your take on player value, he most certainly had the fame part, hard to leave him out.

Mullin - The anti-Rodman, everything Rodman couldn't do, Mullin could. And vice versa.

Take Mullin's scoring and passing, combine it with Rodman's defense and rebounding, and you'd have the greatest player ever not named Jordan.

Gilmore - Absolutely monster stats. Would have been hard to keep him out forever, though he's generally not considered one of the elite franchise centers in history. Still a fine player post ABA, but not quite as dominant.

Sabonis - It's not an NBA HOF, but a general basketball HOF. Sabonis was one of the greatest centers ever. When he finally got to the NBA he was seriously broken down, but effective. Sabonis was not comparable to Ichiro, being a great player on either side of the world. Here's how I'd compare him to a baseball player: If Saduhara Oh came over to the US in his mid 30's, couldn't play a position or play everyday, but had a few years of .270/.400/.525 production as a platoon DH that would be about it. NBA HOF? no. Basketball HOF? yes.

Sanders - Yes, Bill Russell's Celtics were a great team. But does every single teammate of his need to go into the Hall? looking at the 1961-62 team, midway through the run, the HOF has inducted Russell, Heinsohn, Sam Jones, Cousy, Ramsey, KC Jones, and now Sanders. Every player who had more than 1200 minutes for that team.

If we fetishize the late 90's Bulls to the same degree, then sooner or later we'd have to put in Luc Longley and Steve Kerr. Celtic fans can't have it both ways. Was Bill Russell the greatest player of his time or was he playing with the best supporting cast of all time?

I tend to side more on the Bill part - he was the great one, and his teammates were lucky to have played with him. Several are legit in their own right, but Sanders is going too far, and we already went too far in inducting KC Jones.

And Reggie Miller absolutely should have gone in with this group.