Mad Dog Hall of Fame The Ultimate Top-Ten Rankings of the Best in Sports

Chapter 1 The Top-Ten NBA Players of All Time Will Elgin Baylor make the final cut? Does Wilt tower over Michael? Basketball, especially pro basketball, is the ultimate individualist's game. One guy can and does make a huge difference for a team. Look at who wins championships. It's usually the team with the best player. Magic. Bird. Jordan. Hakeem. Shaq. Tim Duncan. They're all legendary players, and when a team like the Pistons sneaks in there and wins a championship, it's the exception rather than the rule. So I'm taking that into account in my rankings. Over the long term in the NBA, a team's success and the individual's success are intertwined. Everyone in this Top Ten won at least one championship, and most of the guys on the list have multiple titles. With that in mind, don't be surprised to see a lot of Lakers and Celtics on this list. In fact, there are only two guys who didn't play for one of those storied franchises at some point in their careers. So you can rant all you want about Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, and Patrick Ewing. I'm not buying it. They're not going to crack this kind of a list without at least one championship ring. The other thing is sort of an intangible factor. The history of professional basketball is full of giants, literally and figuratively, and I think every player on this list qualifies. Call it star power. Charisma. The ability to transcend the game. Some guys were more demonstrative, some were a little more laid-back. But every one of these guys had it. 10. Diesel Powered Want to understand Shaquille O'Neal's greatness? Just turn on the television. Shaquille O'Neal is a rarity in this book. You want to see most of the other athletes in this book, you'll have to go to the Hall of Fame on induction day, or maybe to some memorabilia show, where they're signing autographs and talking about the old days. The only thing they're playing these days is golf. Shaq? You can just flip on the Trinitron and catch a Miami Heat game. He's still playing, and though injured a lot, very close to the top of his game, and that's what separates him. Now, I don't think Shaquille is as good, just from an athletic standpoint, as the three centers who are going to be ahead of him on this list--Kareem, Wilt, and Russell. Physically, obviously, he's bigger and stronger than any of them, except maybe Wilt. But I don't think he's as good an athlete. Shaq gets by with his strength. And his greatness, his dominance, is all about brute force more than basketball delicacy. He just overpowers the other guys. He's a bull in a china shop. And he's been able to get away with that for one reason: He's really the only great center of his era. Sure, when he was young he played a little against Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson and Patrick Ewing. But look who he's gone up against to win his championships. Rik Smits. Dikembe Mutombo. Jason Collins. Todd MacCulloch. This is not Wilt against Russell, Willis Reed, and Nate Thurmond. By any stretch of the imagination, I don't think he's as good as Wilt, who is the easiest comparison as far as size is concerned. Wilt had power and grace. Shaq just has power. And if I were starting a team tomorrow I might think long and hard about taking Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon over Shaq, but I can't put Hakeem on this list, because he lacks some other elements that Shaq has. Here's the biggest reason why Shaq cracks my Top Ten. For every game that he has played in his career since he came out of LSU, he has been the most dominant presence in that game. Every single one. For three different franchises. Every team he played on--the Magic, the Lakers, or the Heat--he immediately made them title contenders. If you can contain Shaq, you've got a shot at winning the game. If not, no chance. That's greatness. And while you can chalk a little bit of that up to the lack ofRusso, Chris is the author of 'Mad Dog Hall of Fame The Ultimate Top-Ten Rankings of the Best in Sports', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385517461 and ISBN 0385517467.