Thursday, January 18, 2024

24 Potential Teams Based on Adding Rest of 75 Greatest players Ever

Thursday night we topped 16,000 unique visitors for January, our most traffic all time for a month and we still have 13 days to go. Thank you!

In addition to picking the greatest teams ever for our Value Add Basketball Game, we used two other criteria. We tried to pick the best team from as many different schools as possible, and we tried to get as many all-time great players in the game as well even if their teams were not elite. 

After finishing our latest tournament, we pull up the top 75 basketball players of all time according to this ranking in this story in the Athletic.

We found that 24 of the greatest 75 were on teams that were not yet in the game. 

Rank  All-time great teams   Year             SRS-17  Player You Might Know   All-Time Player
19Michigan19937Chris Webber65
21Connecticut19966Ray Allen52
38North Carolina19724Bob McAdoo54
46UCLA20083Russell Westbrook46
55Georgetown19892Alonzo Mourning69
56Georgetown19952Allen Iverson40
166Louisville1968-6Wes Unseld60
169Oregon St.1990-6Gary Payton48
170California1993-6Jason Kidd36
172Arizona St.2009-6James Harden33
180LSU1953-7Bob Pettit Jr31
183UCLA1987-7Reggie Miller47
185Texas2007-7Kevin Durant 13
198Providence1960-9Lenny Wilkens75
199Louisiana Tech1985-9Karl Malone16
205Florida St.1968-11Dave Cowens57
206Centenary (LA)1976-11Robert Parish74
207Santa Clara1996-11Steve Nash38
214North Carolina1965-15Billy Cunningham66
218Southern Illinois1967-16Walt Frazier Jr45
219Gonzaga1981-16John Stockton25
221Massachusetts1971-18Julius Erving19
222Weber St.2010-18Damian Lillard68
223NYU1948-19Dolph Schayes61

This included four elite teams we had left out mainly because their school had several other teams - and when we checked their card calculations it looks like the Fab 5 from Michigan, Ray Allen's UConn, Bob McAdoo's UNC, Russell Westbrook's UCLA and two Georgetown teams with 5 future NBA players each would rank in our top 60 teams in the game. 

There is then a big gap with the other top 75 players being on teams that would not rank in our top 160 teams in the game. Here is how they would rank, so if we do created these cards at some point for a tournament, we would likely give the top 8 seeds a bye and start Jason Kidd's Cal 1993 as the 9-seed facing Dolph Schayes and NYU. they claimed runner-up hosting the 1945 national championship game though they only went 14-7 and there is no record of their roster until Dolph Schayes senior year - the 1948 that would be our last seed at 24 to face Cal.

Four teams had a top 75 player not listed because of another great player on the team: South Carolina 1973 already had Mike Dunleavy listed, but also had Alex English ranked as the 73rd best player ever in the Athletic. Houston 1983 already had Hakeem Olajuwon, but also had Clyde Drexler 43rd best player ever in the Athletic. North Carolina 1982 already had No. 1 ranked Michael Jordan, but also had James Worthy 59th best player ever in the Athletic. Ohio St. 1960 already had Jerry Lucas, but also had John Havlicek 29th best player ever in the Athletic.

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