MJ Is NBA's Best Ever
By Benjy Lipsman in News on Sep 9, 2009 2:40PM
On Friday, Michael Jordan finally assumes his rightful place in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Leading up to his enshrinement, the Trib asks what we can only assume is a rhetorical question, "Is MJ the best ever?" Sure, we may be a teeny bit biased here in Chicago. But we still pick MJ over the likes of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson. So would former Bulls assistant coach Johnny Bach, "I saw Oscar Robertson and Russell play. I coached against Wilt (in college). The idolatry Michael experienced would send anybody else off spinning. But he continued to produce."
Jordan and Chamberlain both averages exactly 30.1 points/game during their illustrious careers. Sure, Wilt and Russell outrebounded MJ but they were centers and he was a guard. Roberton's stats were closer to MJ's and while he scored fewer points he rebounded more and dished more assists.
And while individual stats are important, basketball's a team game and only Russell can compete with Jordan's collection of championship rings. His 11 titles dwarf even Jordan's six championships. But Russell's NBA was a very different league, with half as many teams and Celtics teams that were stacked with future Hall of Famers. Jordan achieved his greatness without much of a supporting cast. Scottie Pippen is perhaps his only teammate likely to join him in the Hall. And yet he dominated a league full of all-time greats like Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone and Shaquille O'Neal. The Bulls won six titles in eight years, and most likely would have won those two in the middle had Jordan not taken a hiatus from the game.
Jordan also propelled the league into the stratosphere in terms of it prominence in the global sports culture and defined modern sports marketing with his Air Jordan shoes and countless other endorsement deals. There is no question that MJ was the best ever in the NBA -- hell, ESPN named him their top athlete of the 20th century in any sport -- and we have a feeling we'll be hearing those feelings echoed by countless fans and experts this week as see our hero join his peers in Springfield, Mass.