The 10 best basketball players ever in the shadow of the NBA’s 75th birthday

The beauty, and agony, of writing a list of the best NBA players of all time is not that the names are subjective, but rather the order in which they are presented.

The players were different 40 years ago, and so were the rules. Some of the greats didn’t play with a 3-point shot for the bulk of their careers. Some of the greats retired before 3-pointers became the sport’s scoring craze. Some teams won titles scoring 120 points; other champions rarely scored 100.

Because of the jump-shot craze, this list won’t have four big men, as it does now.

If you want the perfunctory stats, Jordan averaged 30.1 points per game (only Wilt Chamberlain averaged as much), 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 2.3 steals per game. There was nothing he could not do on the hardwood.

Jerry West, whose shadowy contours dribbling a ball is the official NBA logo, once noted that Jordan was the best offensive and defensive player on the planet. Jordan went to six NBA Finals. He won six NBA FInals. He was the MVP of six NBA Finals.

Jordan also became the first to monetize his brand in biblical amounts. His scissor-kick silhouette on his Air Jordan clothing has almost replaced West as the de facto NBA logo. He turned a million-dollar personal brand into a billionaire's business model. He's also won five regular-season MVP awards. Jordan became the first athlete to become globally worshipped.

He was called "The Chosen One" before he played a single pro game." He was given a monstrous, million-dollar deal by Nike; he was projected to be the best player in basketball history — all before he played in an NBA game.

And he's come wisker-close to meeting every syllable of every outsized expectation.

LeBron "King" James entered the NBA with a sonic boom and hasn't stopped in the 17 years since.

His stats are typically sublime, averaging 27.1 points, 7.4 rebounds, 7.4 assists, and 1.6 steals per game. He couldn't climb the mountain his first time in Cleveland, then won two titles with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade in Miami. And he just won last year's NBA title with the Lakers.

While his four titles fall short of Jordan's six, LBJ won four with three different teams, making it at least as difficult. LeBron won't even move lower than No. 2 on this list.

Some sobriquets are recited more often than birth names. So it is with the Magic Man, who became so labeled for his megawatt smile, no-look passes and overall hardwood wizardry.

He won a state title in high school. He beat Larry Bird in the college national title game in 1979 and won the NBA Finals as a rookie, his first of five titles as a pro. There was a legendary confluence of timing and talent when Magic got to the Lakers. He already had a legend at center in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. James Worthy would soon be drafted. Michael Cooper and Byron Scott were a perfect rotation at shooting guard. And so born were the Showtime Lakers — known for their fast-breaking, breakneck speed, led by Magic, who whipped the ball across the court with a sniper's precision.

In his first NBA Finals, Magic replaced an injured Kareem and played center, scoring 42 points and grabbing 16 rebounds, as a guard playing center. Magic and Larry Bird saved the NBA, and then Magic inched slightly ahead of Bird, and then a fella named Jordan took over. But without Magic and BIrd there is no modern NBA.

Over his splendid career, Magic averaged 19.5 points per game, 7.2 rebounds, and an astounding 11.2 assists while playing point guard at 6-foot-9. Before Magic, the NBA was teetering on total collapse. They weren't even showing the NBA FInals on tape delay and cocaine use was rampant across the league. Ironically, Magic cemented his legacy by confronting his own demons, when he told the world he tested positive for HIV. We thought he'd be dead in a year. And 30 years later, he's still teaching us how to win, in the NBA, and in life.

Perhaps the greatest force in any sport, at any time, Wilt Chamberlain entered the NBA as a towering, unstoppable player and left the same way. Legends were spawned by his play and rules were changed because of his dominance.

Some called him "Wilt the Stilt" or "Uncle Wilt" or "The Big Dipper" as Chamberlain soared over his competition at laughable levels. He's the only player to score 100 points in one NBA game (in 1962, against the Knicks, of course). He's also the only player to average 50 points per game over an entire NBA season, in 1961 - '62.

Chamberlain, an All-Star in 15 of his 16 NBA seasons, led the league in scoring seven times and rebounds 10 times. Some folks would nudge Bill Russell into this slot, for all the times his Celtics toppled Chamberlain's Philadelphia or Los Angeles teams in the NBA Finals, but Wilt Chamberlain was literally and entirely unguardable on a basketball court.

Russell beat Chamberlain because Boston was loaded with Hall of Famers. Wilt didn't have that luxury over much of his career. The two times he did — with Philadelphia in 1967 and the Lakers in 1972 — both teams stormed across the league and dominated both of those NBA Finals.

The Yogi Berra of basketball, Russell is the ultimate NBA winner: bagging 11 NBA Finals in 13 seasons. Russell was also named to 12 All-Star teams in 13 seasons.

Russell and his Celtics were such prolific winners during the 1960s that 40 years after Russell's retirement, NBA commissioner David Stern renamed the award the "Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award." In a foul twist of irony, the winner of the first award was given to Jerry West of the Lakers, in an NBA Finals he and his Lakers lost — to Bill Russell and the Celtics.

Born in the Big Apple as Lew Alcindor, this iconic hoops star became a national sensation at Power Memorial High School in Manhattan. Then he fled 3,000 miles to play for the immortal UCLA head coach, John Wooden, where he won three national titles in the three years he played for the Bruins.

Many consider the 7-foot-2 Abdul-Jabbar the best high school, college and NBA player of all time. It's easy to agree with the first two while an argument can be made for the third — he won six NBA MVP awards, six NBA Finals and was a 19-time All-Star.

If that's not special enough, consider that his first and last world championship came 17 years apart.  He was also named to 15 All-NBA teams and 10 first-team selections. Over his sprawling career, Abdul-Jabbar averaged 24.6 points per game, 11.2 rebounds, and 3.6 assists.

If it matters, fellow Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas ranks Abdul-Jabaar as the best player in league history. More than anything, his sky hook was his signature weapon, impossible to defend and got him most of his staggering total and league record of 38,387 points.

Bird burst on the basketball scene in 1979 by taking the Indiana State Sycamores to their first and only Final Four and came within 40 minutes of the national championship until Magic Johnson and Michigan State blew past Bird's Sycamores. To this day, it is the highest-rated college basketball game ever broadcast on television.

They carried their fascinating rivalry into the NBA, where Bird got the best of Magic early, and then Johnson worked tirelessly to improve his game and beat Bird in the NBA Finals. Not only was it the best rivalry in basketball, it's also the most important. Without Bird and Magic, the league would sink into the sewer of history. And if you'd like to see a slow white guy score 60 points in a game, hop onto YouTube and search March 12, 1985. Bird was even calling his shots, much to the delight of Atlanta's bench.

Bird retired with a man cave stuffed with three NBA Finals trophies, three NBA MVP awards, and a certified place on any top ten list. He averaged 24.3 points, 10 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and 1.7 steals. And like everyone else on this list, Bird has his bronze bust at the Naismith Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Mass.

One of very few players — and fewer great players — to reach the NBA from the Virgin Islands. Duncan hails from St. Croix and has been the archetype of the great NBA player ever since he landed on our shores.

Duncan first rose to prominence playing for Wake Forest in the ACC. Some argue he's the last truly great college player who played all four years, got his degree and didn't hurt his draft status. Indeed, he was selected first overall in the 1997 NBA Draft by the San Antonio Spurs, who already had a humble big man who harvested his feelings deep inside — graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, David Robinson. And both were to be coached by another military man, Air Force Major Greg Popovich.

The most unlikely trinity won two NBA Finals over Duncan's first four seasons. Then "The Admiral'' retired and Duncan and Coach Pop won three more rings, giving each five overall, with Duncan the NBA Finals MVP in three of them.

Duncan was also an All-Star in 15 of 18 seasons. He was also hungry yet humble, kind yet competitive, a killer on the court but impossible to dislike away from the hardwood. He earned the nickname, “The Big Fundamental,” for playing so well and thoroughly through all his years.

Shaq would be higher on this list if there weren't already three big men in front of him. And it's not blasphemous to say that Shaquille O'Neal — who, at different times of his life, was called Shaq Daddy, Shaqtus, Shamrock, Diesel, Dr. Shaq, Shaq Fu, The Big Aristotle, Mayor McShaq — was just as much the physical force as anyone on this board, if not the most, period.

Shaq was more than a handful. He had good feet around the rim, a soft touch with the ball, was nimble enough to get his spot in the paint, strong enough to stay there. And when he wasn't winning one of his four NBA Finals, he was either making movies or joining a local police force, in aim of his goal to be a town Sheriff. He was also an All-Star in 15 of his 19 seasons.

When you pick Kobe, everyone gets it. Get Jerry West, the logo and great two-way player, and the people nod. But we're going old school for a player with a new school game. Before Russll Westbrook stacked stats at historic levels, “The Big O” averaged a triple-double for an entire season (1961-'62).

Robertson was an NBA All-Star in 12 of his 14 seasons and led the league in assists in seven of his 14 pro seasons. Robertson was, along with his tormentor Jerry West, considered the best-non-center in the spott for at least a decade. He did not get to win a ring until a kid named Lew Alcindor was drafted by Milwaukee, changed his name to Abdul-Jabaar, and helped lead the Bucks to the 1971 NBA title.

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