Greatest Laker of All Time?

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There have been some discussions on this now, with Kobe just moving up to 5th on the all-time scoring list. Realistically, if he plays two more years, moving up to 3rd all-time is attainable. If he can pull off 3 more good seasons, he can pass Jordan for 2nd all time. He needs four great season, or five pretty good seasons if he wants to topple Kareem for the all time scoring leader.

So the question is, who is the greatest Laker of all time? There's only 3 choices in the poll. And these guys are so good that we only need first names here. Wilt is not on the list of three, because he only played 5 of his 15 years with the Lakers - 7 with the warriors and 3 with the 76ers if you're wondering about the other 10. I know there are a bunch of quality - Hall of Fame caliber even - players who played the majority of their years for the Lakers, but there's only 3 possible choices here.

My pick:

Spoiler

Magic. He played 12 years, was the best player on his team during that run. Lakers made the finals 9 times and won 5 titles. Nuff said.

EDIT: Kareem is on the list because although he started with the Bucks, he played about 2/3 of his seasons as a Laker.

 

I don't care if he was only there five years....

Greatest Laker -- Wilt
Great Basketball Player of All-Time -- Bill



To be honest though I'd put Jerry West above two of those you've listed.

 

I also voted for Magic

 

I knew you would weigh in. You're right about the top three - I don't know why I flip flopped Jordan and Malone. In order to get to #2 on the list, he'd need to average 25 ppg for the next four years.

How far he goes up the list though really depends on what kind of player he is going forward. I ran the numbers for 3 sets of point totals - first I figured 15 ppg - if you're in that camp, you feel that Kobe is already in decline, and his decline will be rapid.

In this scenario, he needs 2 years (after this one) to pass Wilt, 3 years to get to Jordan, 6 years to get to Malone, and 8 years to get to Kareem. Of course, if he's only averaging 15ppg, he likely won't play more than 2-3 more years.

Next I took a look at 20ppg - in this scenario, Kobe is also in decline, but his decline is gradual. In this model, he would just miss catching Wilt at the end of next year, so still 2 more seasons after this. But then at the end of that same year, he'd pass Jordan as well. Bad news after that, as it would take him 5 years to get to Malone, and 6 years to get to Kareem.

Finally I looked at 25ppg. In this scenario, you don't believe Kobe is in decline at all. He averages 25.4ppg over his career, so this scenario requires he maintains that level of play going forward (which I concede seems unlikely). In this scenario, he pass Wilt next year, Jordan the year after, Malone in 4 years and Kareem in 5.

So I do agree with your assessment that 3 is the highest he can realistically climb. Kobe doesn't strike me as the type of player who will hang on like Kareem did. I think as soon as his production drops into the mid-teens in ppg, he's gone. So unless you think he can maintain his level of play of at least 4 more years, Malone is out of reach.

Also with Kareem, the reason I included him and not Wilt is that while he did not start out with the Lakers, he did play more of his career with them. I stopped being lazy and actually looked up the stats this time.

He played 20 years, and 14 of them were with the Lakers. While it is true that his best statistical seasons in terms of ppg were with the Bucks, he was the best player in the league when he got to the Lakers. Three of his six MVP awards were with the Lakers, the last coming in his 6th year with the club. He may have had his best seasons with the Bucks from a statistical perspective, but he was certainly still in his prime for about the first half of his career with the Lakers. His ppg started to decline in 1982, which coincides with Magic's rise as the premier player on the Lakers.

After T2's post, I thought I may have given short shrift to Wilt's career, but after doing more research on him, it only confirmed my initial impression, although I did learn a couple of things about him that I didn't know previously.

For example, he played for the Globetrotters for two years after leaving college. He spent the next 7 years with the Warriors. When he signed with them, they were based in Philadelphia (which I knew), and they moved the team to San Francisco and became the San Francisco Warriors for a few years (which I didn't know - I thought they went right from Philly to their present-day location in Oakland). The Warriors moved to Oakland and became the Golden State Warriors after Wilt's career with them ended.

After leaving the Warriors, he went back to Philly for the next 3 years, this time with the 76ers. One could argue that he was already beginning to decline at this point in his career - all of his best seasons were with the Warriors. However, he did win an MVP with the 76ers, so I still have to consider him in his prime at that point.

Then he spent the final 6 years with the Lakers. At this point, there's no arguing that he was in steady decline - he was already 32 in his first year with the club. While he was still a dominant player when he saw the court, he started suffering a lot of injuries - particularly in his knees. I still don't understand how a team that included Wilt, West, and Baylor only won 1 title. Three future Hall of Famers for four years (Baylor retired two years before Wilt), and only one title? Anyway, injuries were catching up to Wilt by the time he got there, and while I do think Wilt belongs on everyone's Top 10 list of players of all time - maybe even Top 5 - I can't consider him among the great Lakers, when his time with them doesn't include any of his best years. I still find it surprising he only won two titles in his career. Bill Russel was pretty much the only guy in the league that could guard him, and has career with the Warriors coincided with the Celtics' run of championships. Then later in his career, Kareem became the league's best player.

 

You aren't old enough to remember Wilt's prime, are you? He retired in 1973. With Kareem, I wasn't even born when he was first drafted by the Bucks, but I do remember him as a Laker. Obviously, I have no memory of Wilt, other than highlights, nor Bill Russel.

 

I thought as much. I figured at best, you'd have been very young towards the end of his career, and since most people (or at least for me) don't remember much from the first five or so years of their life, I doubted you would remember much before 1970 or so. He must have been impressive though. His season record for ppg of 50 will never be broken. No one has even sniffed it. I assume Jordan is "second" - if we define second as "someone not named Wilt Chamberlain" - but Jordan never even averaged 40 in a season. I haven't checked, but I imagine that Jordan's "second" is more like 5th or 6th, with Wilt holding all the top spots. It's probably something ridiculous like Wilt owning 7 or 8 out of the top 10.

 

What this thread needs is someone who knows something about basketball.

 

And here I thought Splunge's comment would be about fishing ... I'm a bit disappointed.

 

You guys have no idea what you are talking about. Rambis was the Man!

Seriously though, Kareem all the way. He changed the college game. He changed the Pro-game.

I was never a Magic fan. His teams were loaded with stars. He had Kareem, Wilkes, Worthy, Scott, Cooper, Rambis and others. Always had a great supporting cast. And as noted above, he played no Defense.

I rate Kobe above Magic. I am not a Kobe fan, but he is pretty awesome. He doesn't need Shaq to win. He is the closest thing to Jordan that I think we will ever see.

West would be number 5. I would rate Elgin Baylor number 4.

 

You don't have to be on a winning team to be great as a player. That is what we are talking about, right? Greatest Laker, not Greatest Laker team? Magic played on a great team just about every year of his career. It inflates his greatness. Put Kobe on one of those 80s teams and see how much better it would of been. How many HoFers did Kobe play with? Shaq will be the only one that was impactful. Magic played with a couple of others at the same time for multiple seasons.

 

Indiana was about 10 deep then. Not 10 all-stars, but 10 very solid players. There were 2 Davis' on that Roster, Dale and Antoine(Center). (neither could cover Shaq, but nobody in the league could, so I don't see that comparison being relelvant). Did they still have Rik Smits then?

The 76ers were very strong defensively, but again, they had no Center to guard Shaq, even with the 12 fouls they had to give with Who Wants to Sex Mutumbo and Matt Geiger. they also couldn't cover Kobe, as Iverson was a mismatch defensively becuase of his shortness and Mckiee and Lynch wer just to slow, though they were good defenders in their own right.

You are fogetting Kenyon Martin on the Nets team. And Kerry Kittles. And Lucious Harris. Actually a very deep team, but no match for a Kobe/Shaq tandem.

You are right, Magic did have tougher Championship matchups, but the path to get there for Kobe was tougher. The West had several good teams for years to contend with. Utah, San Antonio, Phoenix to name a few. Especially San Antonio, that was a good, solid team for years, still is.

 

Well yeah - I mean look at the Celtics teams from that era. Bird would make anyone's Top 5 of all time. McHale is in the HoF. Parish is in the HoF. Dennis Johnson made a bunch of All Star teams, although he's not in the HoF (at least I don't think so). And Danny Ainge was very good as well. So the argument that Magic played with other HoFers - Worthy and Kareem - is mitigated that he was facing off against other teams that had multiple HoFers as well.

 

I completely disagree. We are talking about an individual's greatness, not his team's greatness.

 

??? You're disagreeing with me for agreeing with you? How does this happen? dmc pointed out that the Kobe/Shaq Lakers had less than great teams to play in the finals. You agreed, but placed the caveat that all the good teams at the time were in the west, so they had a tougher time making it through the playoffs. I agree with both those statements, and just added that because there were a couple of great teams in the 80s in the Celtics and Lakers, and that one of those teams seemed to win the championship every year. So of course when they played each other in the finals there were future HoFers on both sides of the ball, and the level of competition was obviously high.