PossibleChairs

How do I make a Top 500 All-Time list? Here are the 5 pieces that go into it, in no particular order 🧵

It really has more to do with the other players. Kobe is about as good as his 04 self, but LeBron and Wade arrive as superstars. Dirk has his best season to date. Iverson was healthy again. MVP Nash ascends. It’s better competition than the Jermaine O’Neal, Peja, Jason Kidd, Ben Wallace grouping that makes up the 5-10 from 04

This is what I'm talking about when I say "guys dont change much year over year" Nothing in Kobes game or body changed radically in 04 to 05 to worsen his game, and then suddenly went away in 06 05 KB is ≈98% the guy he is in 08, but people will pretend he was wildly different

@NickMcLawhorn Well I’ll be damned

@Possiblechairs That’s 14 top 10 finishes

I’ve ranked the top 10 players for every season of Kobe’s career and his dominance truly spanned a generation. Reaching equal heights over a decade apart from 2001 to 2013 is a huge part of why Kobe’s legacy is so engrained in NBA culture 2000: 10th 2001: 5th 2002: 4th 2003: 4th 2004: 4th 2005: 10th 2006: 2nd 2007: 4th 2008: 1st 2009: 2nd 2010: 2nd 2011: 6th 2012: 4th 2013: 5th 13 top 10 finishes. More than Duncan (12), Dirk (11), or Garnett (10)

@ThroughWithTy @VintageHoops This is just from the 04 season

@Possiblechairs @VintageHoops This isn’t correct. Chauncey has FMVP AS and so do the others…

Who was the best player on this team? 🤔

@thelowballgod @podoffame @bball_ref sports-reference.com/blog/2026/03/s…

@podoffame @bball_ref @bball_ref explain!

Wait a sec….. We have blocks per game for Wilt Chamberlain in his final season all of a sudden? Big day.

@arhooptalk @whateverbs99 KC Jones has been in the HOF for nearly 40 years

Still no KC Jones or Marques Johnson. The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame voters are a disgrace. That’s just a best basketball truth.

2003 Duncan had the weakest supporting cast of any championship superstar with the possible exception of 94 Hakeem (and I’d argue that team was underrated). It’s weird how that isn’t treated as this major feather in Duncan’s cap. It’s just another in his pile of rings.

Kevin Garnett my ass

@Possiblechairs Aaron, would last year’s OKC team have slotted in the “best teams ever” series?

The greatest layup in basketball history. If you disagree with this, I’m gonna need to see video.

This isn't how it's really worked. When Kobe averaged 35.4, he was averaging 35.6% of his team's per-game points. When Harden averaged 36.1, he was averaging 31.7% of his team's per-game points. The best scorers tend to stabilize in the high 20s, low 30s, with a few outliers in the mid-to-high 30s. What changes is team offense around them. This actually makes a fair bit of sense when you think about it. In low-offense environments, like parts of the 90s and 2000s, teams are so desperate for scoring that they just let their best perimeter players take whatever shots they want. They wind up getting their 25-30, but they do so inefficiently. But in high-offense environments, as we've been transitioning towards over the past two decades or so, those individual scorers are suddenly getting their 25-30 more efficiently. But they're not the only ones benefitting. Suddenly it's much more efficient for their teammates to take shots as well. So whereas in the past, it made sense for stars to take a bunch of ugly, contested jumpers because their teammates weren't getting better shots, now, when someone like a James Harden can't get a good shot himself, he knows that extra defensive pressure is creating better looks for a teammate. So he passes into more corner 3s, more lobs, more cutters, more secondary creators in a position to punish a mismatch. Teams benefit from a star's scoring gravity way more now than they used to. This has subtly shifted where an offensive star generates his value. Notice how there are fewer pure point guards now and more scorers who also rack up a bunch of assists? This is part of it. The great scorers of today score more efficiently because an offense-friendly environment gives them better access to good shots and therefore lessens their incentive to take bad ones and increases their incentive to use possessions that might in the past have been bad shots to pass into better ones for teammates instead. As team scoring goes up, it's not star point totals that tend to increase. It's teammate totals. When Kobe averaged 35.4, his second-leading scorer averaged 14.8. That's roughly what SGA's third-leading scorer averaged when he put up 32.7 last season. The 06 Lakers had four players average double figures. The 25 Thunder had seven. The best players are scoring similar amounts, but a lower percentage of their team's total points. Now, could you argue that older players scored a higher share of their team's point total because, in the past, the gap between the best players and the average player was bigger than it is today? Sure. I'd actually broadly support that idea because it's true in most human endeavors and actually sort of holds in NBA history too (the "Wilt averaging 50 during the plumbers and firemen era" concept). As knowledge about a sport increases, as access to proper training and medical care increases, yea, the average player does tend to get better at a faster rate than superstars do because suddenly the enormity of the advantage their natural gifts and outlier work ethics created is suddenly less meaningful because the competition is stiffer. So yea, I think it's reasonable to say that Michael Jordan had a bigger advantage over the average player of his day than, say, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has over the average player of today. Of course, that means if you plopped MJ in the modern game, he'd have less of an advantage over his peers than he did back then. What I think all of this broadly means in the "MJ would average 50 today!!!" fake debate is that no, he wouldn't average 50 today. He'd average a similar number of raw points, but more of his game would shift towards playmaking and different sorts of shots because that's just sort of how modern basketball works. I'm open to the idea that Michael Jordan would be better at modern basketball than the players actually playing modern basketball if he'd come up in that ecosystem because he's Michael Jordan and I imagine he'd be incredible in whatever era he played in. But the idea that he'd average 50 or that anyone from the past would see their scoring total increase beyond modern norms just because they played in a league less friendly to offense is ridiculous and one of the dumber persistent NBA takes.

Duncan On/Off in the 2002 and 2003 playoffs Maybe the GOAT carry job

@kings_muse Richmond was one of the most efficient scorers in the league in 1997

Most inefficient season by King in franchise history (among league qualified)

@IafornaroSean @Fullcourtpass @Deseret :(

@Fullcourtpass @Deseret Damn Sacramento This is all @Possiblechairs fault

“I might not leave college… my mom wants me to stay and get my degree.” - AJ Dybantsa (Via @Deseret)

@casualtweeter02 @HPbasketball Moses averaged 25ppg on +4% rTS from 1979-1989. No idea where you’re getting that he was inefficient. Career TS added of +1888 and TS+ of 107. Well above average across the board

@HPbasketball He was a terrible defender, inefficient offensive player, delivered the worst playmaking value of any player ever to get the usage he had, shall I go on? His value was what he delivered as a rebounder and how that contributed to winning the possession game.

I'm a LONG-time Moses Malone appreciator, but he's kind of disrespected again in modern contexts. 3 MVPs, 1 title, several deep playoff runs. Why is he so overlooked? I get the OREB stuff but that's really just craftiness.

@YvanMontgury @utahjazz @chosen1dantley @UtahJazz_France @utahjazzhistory @JazzLatam @PeterVecsey1 @Charlottean28 @DetroitPistons @PistonsThoughts @LakersVintage Adrian Dantley averaged 40-8-5 on 70% TS against Denver in 1981, across 6 regular season games

Happy 71st Birthday Adrian ‘Teach’ Dantley 🎂 6× NBA All-Star (80–82,84-86) 2× All-NBA 2nd Team (81, 84) NBA Comeback POY (84) NBA ROY (77) NBA All-Rookie Team (77) 2× NBA scoring champion (81, 84) No. 4 retired by @utahjazz Oscar Robertson Trophy (76) 2× Consensus 1st-team All-American (75, 76) Mr. Basketball USA (73) 1st-team Parade All-American (73)

@KristerNorstran That is true, Bird definitely outduels him in the playoffs

@Possiblechairs Legacy MVP was the wrong word to use. Was this year they lost to Boston after being up 3-1 ??

1981 NBA MVP voting was a doozy

@jasonlevin18 @bball_ref By 1976 the ABA probably had better top talent but less depth

@Possiblechairs @bball_ref 3 of top 5 were ABA guys 5 years post merger.

@KristerNorstran Dr J averaged 25-8-4 with 3.9 stocks, and led a 62 win team with no other all stars. It’s not a crazy MVP season but I mean this is more than legacy

@Possiblechairs Always felt like a Julius legacy MVP, wasnt that 76ers team better when he was on the bench??