NBA Conversation: All-Time Greats Past and Present - A Comparison

I have been glued to the NBA Playoffs this season, and there have been some very impressive performances thus far. Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade have all shown why they are considered among the best in the game. Bryant and James, blessed with talented supporting casts, may face each other in the NBA Finals, while Wade's Miami Heat were eliminated despite his impressive postseason stats of 33.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game.



For the sake of argument, just how are these guys stacking up against some of the game's best at this stage of their careers?



In order to compare today's stars with those of the past, it is important to look only at their first 7 seasons in the league, since this is LeBron and Wade's 7th season. There is one caveat to this, as injury and lack of playing time as a rookie can drastically alter a player's statistics. Therefore only the first 7 seasons in which a player started 42 or more games were used for this compliation. Typically, all-stars statistics decline late in their careers, so it would not be fair to compare current players who are in their 7th season against those that had 14-15 year careers. The comparison first looks at the career regular season averages for James, Wade, Bryant, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson.

Then, since the players averaged varying amounts of minutes, their statistics were extrapolated out to reflect their production over 48 minutes of action. This gives a standard time frame for comparison's sake.



The results are as follows (source:basketball-reference.com):



Dwyane Wade: 37.6 Min.Per Game, 25.4 Points Per Game, 48% FG, 29% 3Pt%, 77% FT, 4.9 RPG, 6.6 APG, 1.8 STL, 1.0 BLK, 3.7 Turnovers per game.



LeBron James: 40.3 MPG, 27.8 PPG, 48% FG, 33% 3Pt, 74% FT, 7.0 RPG, 7.0 APG, 1.7 SPG, 0.9 BPG, 3.3 T/O.



Kobe Bryant: 39.9 MPG, 25.4 PPG, 46% FG, 31% 3Pt., 84% FT, 5.9 RPG, 5.2 APG, 0.7 BPG, 3.16 T/O.



Larry Bird: 38.1 MPG, 23.96 PPG, 50% FG, 32% 3Pt, 87% FT, 10.5 RPG, 5.9 APG, .84 BPG, 3.19 T/O.



Magic Johnson: 36.96 MPG, 18.5 PPG, 54% FG, 18% 3Pt, 81% FT, 7.7 RPG, 10.6 APG, 2.29 SPG, 0.49 BPG, 3.9 T/O.



Michael Jordan: 39.1 MPG, 32.6 PPG, 52% FG, 25% 3Pt, 85% FT, 6.36 RPG, 6.04 APG, 2.74 SPG, 1.04 BPG, 3.07 T/O.



Jerry West: 39.84 MPG, 27.9 PPG, 46% FG, 80% FT, 6.8 RPG, 5.5 APG



Oscar Robertson: 44.5 MPG, 30.5 PPG, 49% FG, 83% FT, 9.4 RPG, 10.7 APG.



The above information shows that LeBron, Kobe and D-Wade certainly compare favorably to their predecessors. Also, Oscar Robertson was an extremely productive player, nearly averaging a triple-double for 7 seasons. Particularly striking to me was how active a defensive player Michael Jordan was, averaging 2.75 spg and a little over 1 block as well. That is extremely impressive for a 6'6" guard. Unfortunately, defensive statistics and turnovers were not statistics taht were recorded in their era.



In order to truly compare the players, however, it is necessary to take their stats and extrapolate them into 48 minute production, since some players averaged substantially more minutes than others (i.e. Robertson's 44.5 and Magic's ~37 minutes per game). Those results show the following:



*Leaders for each category in bold italics



Wade (per 48 minutes): 32.4 PPG 6.3 RPG 8.4 APG 2.3 SPG, 1.3 BPG, and 4.7 T/O.



LeBron: 33.1 PPG 8.3 RPG 8.3 APG 2.0 SPG 1.1 BPG 3.9 T/O.



Kobe: 31.0 PPG, 7.2 RPG, 6.31 APG, 1.9 SPG, 0.9 BPG, 3.9 T/O



Bird: 30.2 PPG, 13.2 RPG, 7.5 APG, 2.3 SPG, 1.1 BPG, 4.0 T/O



Magic: 24.6 PPG, 9.6 RPG, 14.5 APG, 2.7 SPG, 0.6 BPG, 5.2 T/O



Jordan: 39.9 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 7.4 APG, 3.4 SPG, 1.3 BPG, 3.8 T/O



Robertson: 32.8 PPG, 10.1 RPG, 11.5 APG


West: 33.6 PPG, 8.19 RPG, 6.6 APG



Again, it is unfortunate that West and Robertson did not have as many statistics available as the more current players. Michael Jordan leads in the most categories (points per game, tied for blocks per game and fewest turnovers per 48 minutes). He is tied with Dwyane Wade for most blocked shots per 48 minutes, which is somewhat surprising considering they are both guards. Again, this data highlights Jordan's activity on the defensive side of the ball.



LeBron James is certainly worthy of the praise he has been receiving, as well. While he does not lead in any one category he is effective in nearly all aspects. These data suggest though that while James is a deft passer, his game may be more similar to Bird than Magic. He and Bird are similar in points (33.1 - 30.2) and assists (8.3 - 7.5) while Bird holds a rather significant advantage in rebounds. This data also may support the idea that Bird may actually be underrated as a player. Magic has a substantial lead in assists to anyone else on the list, but he was less of a scorer than everyone else by a wide margin. It was also surprising to see such a large guard (6'8") have such success stealing the ball from opposing point guards who were presumably much shorter.



Again, Oscar Robertson was a productive monster as the only player to average a triple double in every category. It is hard to tell how comparable his numbers, and those of West, are to players of today, however, as their era (1960s) is significantly different than those of the more current players. Nevertheless, both he and West stack up quite favorably to the others on the list.



Personally, I feel that to disregard their numbers due to the supposed lack of athleticism of their oponents is unfortunate. The players today may be bigger, faster, stronger but are they better? The most athletic basketball player (or team) is certainly not always the best. While many of today's players are great at making SportsCenter's Top 10, they enter the league as 19 year olds who are very raw. It discredits the talents of players from the past and also insults the fundamentals of the players today to assume today's players are inherently more athletic and therefore better.



Not surprisingly to many is the finding that Kobe had the fewest assists. However, I was somewhat surprised by his averages as they are higher than many would expect from a player commonly labeled as selfish and a ball hog. His statistics compare to Jordan's less favorably than Wade's, but Kobe's resilience in the clutch has been his true hallmark. Wade may be another player that gets overlooked at times due to his woeful supporting cast in Miami, but it is impossible to argue his effectiveness on the court. Unfortunately for him he does turn the ball over at a high rate.



The next point of interest is how much these players mattered to their teams. Basketball-reference.com uses a few stats to show a player's contribution to his team's offense, defense, wins and wins per 48 minutes. Another stat of interest is the PER or Player Efficiency Rating, which is a measure of per minute production, which is standardized so the league average is 15.



- OWS represents Offensive Win Shares : an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player due to his offense



- DWS represents Defensive Win Shares : an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player due to his defense.



- WS represents Win Shares: an estimate of the wins contributed by a player



- WS/48 represents Win Shares per 48 minutes: an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player per 48 minutes (league average is ~0.100).



Presented in this discussion is information on each player's regular season and postseason contributions to his team, averaged over their first 7 seasons.



Results:

Dwyane Wade - PER: 25.3 OWS: 6.5 DWS: 5.6 WS: 9.97 WS/48: 0.18

Kobe Bryant - PER: 23.1 OWS: 7.7 DWS: 2.9 WS: 10.5 WS/48: 0.18

LeBron James - PER: 26.9 OWS: 9.9 DWS: 4.8 WS: 14.77 WS/48: 0.23

Larry Bird - PER: 23.3 OWS: 7.6 DWS: 5.7 WS: 13.4 WS/48: 0.21

Magic Johnson - PER: 23.1 OWS: 7.4 DWS: 3.6 WS: 11.0 WS/48: .21

Michael Jordan - PER: 29.8 OWS: 13.4 DWS: 5.0 WS: 18.4 WS/48: 0.28

Jerry West - PER: 22.4 OWS: 9.9 DWS: 2.6 WS: 12.4 WS/48: 0.21

Oscar Robertson - PER:25.9 OWS: 14.2 DWS: 2.6 WS: 16.8 WS/48: 0.23

Michael Jordan clearly dominates these statistics when comparing the first 7 years of these stars' careers. He posted the highest PER, WS and WS/48. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine the true PER for Robertson and West due to the lack of defensive statistics. Nevertheless, Robertson had the highest OWS at 14.2. Also somewhat surprising was the defensive impact of Bird, again giving further evidence of his legacy being undervalued. Not surprisingly, is LeBron James having the second highest PER due to his all-around abilities. Dwyane Wade's defensive contributions rank second Bird, which is somewhat surprising as his defensive acumen is often unmentioned.

Lastly, their postseason numbers in the same metrics are reviewed. These will use career averages, not just 7 years, since each player did not make the playoffs in their first 7 seasons in the NBA.

Postseason Comparisons:

Robertson: PER 21.66 OWS: 1 DWS: 0.36 WS: 1.36 WS/48: 0.18

Jordan: PER 28.4 OWS: 2.1 DWS: 0.95 WS: 3.1 WS/48: 0.24

Magic: PER 22.5 OWS: 1.8 DWS: 0.7 WS: 2.5 WS/48: 0.2

Wade: PER 23.3 OWS: 0.97 DWS: 0.7 WS: 1.7 WS/48: 0.15

Kobe: PER 20.6 OWS: 1.3 DWS: 0.5 WS: 1.8 WS/48: 0.13

LeBron: PER 28.6 OWS: 1.9 DWS: 1.0 WS: 2.9 WS/48: 0.26

Bird: PER 20.4 OWS: 1.2 DWS: 0.9 WS: 2.1 WS/48: 0.15

West: PER 20.96 OWS: 1.6 DWS: 0.4 WS: 2.1 WS/48: 0.15

LeBron James performs very well here, as he leads in most categories. He holds a slight advantage over Jordan in the PER, DWS and the WS/48. Jordan leads in WS and OWS. The other players appear to be somewhat grouped together. This is a difficult comparison since this is only a few years versus careers in which some players were at the end of theirs (Jerry West actually had a negative WS/48 in his final season at age 35). Nevertheless, LeBron is the King in the playoffs at this point in his career.

These data, in my opinion, support the notion that Michael Jordan is the greatest of all time no matter how you cut it. Dwyane Wade and Larry Bird deserve more credit and LeBron James is truly a jack of all trades on the court.