Greatest Center of All Time

[joshposh]

This is going to be a hard one. I would like to add several players that was considered for the title, Shaquile Oneal, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Tim Duncan.

And the winner is. Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon. He played majority of his years as a Houston Rocket where he won 2 championships and became one of the smoothest centers in the league. Soft hands and smooth low post game, gave him the distinction of being the best at center.

 

[thejamal]

Now this is easily the best discussion of the "greatest ever" for positions. Side-note, I wouldn't include Duncan as a C, but a PF since that's where he played a majority of his prime.

IMO, there are only 5 guys who are in the discussion: Kareem, Shaq, Wilt, Hakeem and Russell. What makes it truly tough is each guy has a good case for being the top C ever and it's kind of a matter of subjective opinion as to what you value more in a player. If you like Rings, then Russel is your choice. If like longevity, rings and statistical dominance, then you're probably going Shaq and Kareem. Just stats, you're probably going Wilt.

But I agree with your choice on it being Hakeem. He never had the talent on his rosters that the other C's had and he'd be my pick for greatest defender ever. The only time he really had any help was near the end of his career when an old Clyde and Barkley joined him in Houston. Give him a prime Clyde while he's in his prime and we're probably talking about Hakeem being a 5 or 6 time champion. He wasn't as good offensively as Kareem, Wilt or Shaq, but I think as far as 2-way C's go, he's the right pick.

 

[joshposh]

Wilt and Russell would of been considered but that was before my time. Sure I seen highlight films and broadcasters talk about them a lot, but because I wasn't able to follow their careers I didn't feel right adding them. So that being said, considering them for my vote as "the best" wouldn't be fitting.

 

[thejamal]

Wilt and Russell would of been considered but that was before my time. Sure I seen highlight films and broadcasters talk about them a lot, but because I wasn't able to follow their careers I didn't feel right adding them. So that being said, considering them for my vote as "the best" wouldn't be fitting.

Yea, that's kind of the difficult part when talking about all-time greats is it's physically impossible to have been able to see everyone play unless you're getting up there in age. But I don't think it's necessarily wrong to go by stats, reports, and expert accounts of guys like Russel and Wilt to get a feel for the level of impact that they had on the game. I didn't need to see them play to know that they were two of the most dominant players to ever play the game.

That said, something that always hurts Wilt and Russell in my eyes is the level of talent they played against in the 50's and 60's and the stacked teams that they played for. Russell's 13 championship teams would be the equivalent of a team today getting to trot out Bron, Durant, Lillard, Howard, etc; in other words, the best players in the league at the time. Especially with Russell, who wasn't that good of an offensive player.