23 Responses to “The Top 10 Centers of All Time (*according to statistical +/-)”

1. Fred Says:
   March 4th, 2009 at 4:57 pm

   If I understand well, David Robinson's 1994 season, with an SPR of 17,7, is the best ever by a center? He was my favorite player, and I am really happy to see that!

2. Eddy Says:
   March 4th, 2009 at 10:56 pm

   Looks like the tag of best center, according to statistical +/- is between Kareem, Wilt and David Robinson. For the longest time, I've always thought of Wilt as the best big man ever .. but I've begun to buy into the argument, a bit, of the idea that Wilt feasted on inferior competition, (that's a fact) while players like Kareem & David Robinson had stiffer competition themselves. In this case, it seems as though one could then surmise that either Kareem or David Robinson would battle for the ultimate honor of best center under this metric.

3. Johnny Twisto Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 12:19 am

   Eddy, the competition was inferior, but by that argument, modern players will always have to be ranked at the top. In 50 years David Robinson or whoever will have to be ranked below the players of 2059 because the athletes will be that much better. That's not necessarily a useful way of ranking players across time, because players will always be getting better. (But also note that Wilt was in a much smaller league, so whatever talent there was was more concentrated.)

   I had been thinking about center rankings lately. I had something like this in mind:

   Tier I: Russell, Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar
   Tier II: Olajuwon, Malone, O'Neal, Robinson
   Tier III: Ewing

   A lot of guys I haven't seen/heard about/studied enough yet to really classify. I suppose another few guys could go in Tier II. And obviously a bunch more in Tier III.

   Walton is hard to classify. It sounds like he might have been as good as anyone ever when he was healthy, but he was hardly ever healthy.

   I never thought Robinson was so spectacular, but some of these modern stats push me to put him in that 2nd tier.

   Not sure why Duncan is usually considered a forward instead of a center. He'd be a Tier II guy.

4. Eddy Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 12:36 am

   You make a valid point, Johnny. I'm merely trying to differentiate between Wilt & Kareem/David Robinson simply for comparisons sake. In any case, they're all phenomenal talents. Can't go wrong with any of them.

5. wordbfree Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 12:54 am

   Minute Bowl...'nuff said!

   And also, Wilt's 100, 20,000 women, Conan the Barbarian and Pro volleyball put him that much above the rest. Props to Kareem for total points/longevity and Airplane cameo.

6. Ryan Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 8:18 am

   Players simply get better? Sorry, I don't see any centers near Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing, or Shaq (prime) these days. And the competition today's top bigs have to face? Yeah, let's not even go there. Physically and athletically, in comparative terms, Dwight is basically a mini-Wilt in this era.

   Great study, Neil.

7. Jason J Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

   I'm sorry if this is someplace obvious and I'm just missing it, but what exactly is the formula for statistical plus / minus?

8. Neil Paine Says:
   March 5th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

   Jason J: Sorry, I forgot to link to the original article on SPM. It's in this paper:

   http://www.82games.com/comm30.htm

   Scroll down to "Table 2: OLS Estimates..." and you'll find the coefficients. Then I force the weighted sum of each team's players' raw SPM to equal the team's efficiency differential (ORtg - DRtg).

9. lin Says:
   March 10th, 2009 at 8:52 am

   Derrick Rose, the Bulls’ #1 Draft Pick Rookie, wins the 2009 Playstation Skill Challenge with a double-pump reverse dunk. The 35.3 seconds he set is enough to bring him the title.

10. MCT Says:
    March 10th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Thoughts on a couple of these players –

    Dan Issel:

    If you’re inclined to discount ABA statistics, Issel is one of your poster children. He put up much bigger numbers in the ABA than he did in the NBA. Further, his biggest ABA numbers came in his first couple of seasons, when the level of competition in the ABA was likely not as close to the NBA as it would be in later years. Another reason to discount Issel is that, IINM, he actually played power forward for the Colonels after Artis Gilmore joined the team. So of his six ABA seasons, I believe that only the first and last were spent primarily at center. On the other hand, Issel had a nice run later on in the NBA, too. According to the chart above, Issel had three seasons in the NBA where his SPM was comparable to all of his best ABA seasons except his first.

    When Issel retired in 1985, he was fourth all-time in combined NBA/ABA scoring, behind only Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving. Think about that for a minute – you could probably win a few bets with that question. Even today, he still ranks seventh. Issel actually came very close to occupying third place on the above list. Heading into the 1984-85 season, Issel ranked fifth, but was within striking distance of the players in third (Elvin Hayes) and fourth (Oscar Robertson). At that point, Issel was actually ahead of Erving, who was in seventh (John Havlicek was sixth). Erving was only 378 points behind Issel, however, and at that point in their careers Erving was scoring at a much faster clip than Issel was. Issel managed to pass Roberston to move into fourth, but Erving overtook Issel before the latter could reach Hayes, bumping Issel back to fifth. Erving and Issel both passed Hayes later in the season, finishing the year in third and fourth, respectively. At both the point where Erving caught him and at the end of the season, Issel was only about 200 points out of third place.

    The Dr. J connection is interesting because Issel’s career largely paralleled that of Erving. Given a one-year head start over Dr. J, otherwise playing in the same leagues in the same seasons, Issel managed to stay ahead of Erving for almost his entire career. Yet I suspect that a lot of younger casual fans today have never even heard of Issel.

    Walt Bellamy:

    When Bellamy retired in 1974, he was third on the NBA’s all-time career rebound list, and sixth in scoring. Some today view him as a player who was unfairly overshadowed by Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, having had the misfortune to play in an era of great centers.

    I can’t speak from personal knowledge, as Bellamy’s career was a little before my time, but my sense is that Bellamy was historically seen as a player who put up big numbers but wasn’t as valuable as his stats would suggest. I think this is the main reason he has always been “underrated”. Bellamy was a vagabond who drafted from team to team, playing mostly for weak teams, never coming close to winning a championship. He put up his biggest stats early in his career, playing for an expansion team in a fast-paced time of plentiful scoring and rebounding opportunities. His numbers dropped steadily from there. The trade that sent him from New York to Detroit during the 1968-69 season for Dave DeBusschere and Howard Komives has long been on the list of the most one-sided trades in NBA history (in favor of the Knicks), and Detroit would later pretty much give him away (as would his next team, Atlanta).

    A couple of years ago, on the occasion of the NBA’s 60th anniversary, one of the networks that covers NBA games did a feature in which they sought to “unofficially” add ten players to the 50th anniversary list that had been announced back in the ‘90s (thus making it 60 players for 60 years). The discussion mostly focused on players from the previous ten years, but some players from earlier eras were also discussed, including Bellamy. I can’t remember whether Bellamy made the final cut, but the discussion around him had a “Wow! Look at his numbers! Why didn’t he make the original list! Poor guy, overshadowed by Chamberlain and Russell!” vibe to it. No mention was made of anything discussed in the previous paragraph, however.

    All in all, I think Bellamy is a fair candidate for a Top 10 centers list. He’s in the Hall of Fame, and he must have been doing something right to last as long in the NBA as he did. But he may be one of the most controversial selections on the list. I think I'd take Malone over him.

11. Raj Says:
    March 10th, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    is there anyway to get SPM for playoff performances? because though Robinson has better stats, I don't think anyone who saw the 1995 western conference finals could actually believe Robinson was better than Dream.

12. Neil Paine Says:
    March 10th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    I'll probably do a post with playoff numbers at some point. I would like to note, though, that the whole Robinson-Olajuwon debate in the mid-90s is sort of like the basketball version of this post about the Big 12 tiebreaker situation last year... There's no doubt that Robinson had better stats against the league as a whole, and there's no doubt that Hakeem was better against Robinson head-to-head. When ranking players, we tend to remember head-to-head performances like Hakeem's against the Admiral -- but who is the "better" center, Player A who matches up incredibly well against Player B but doesn't completely destroy the rest of the league on a nightly basis, or Player B who flat-out dominates everyone else in the league except Player A? It's kind of a circular argument, right? If you were having a draft and you knew you were going to have to deal with Player A at some point during the playoffs if you didn't pick him, you'd take him; if not, you'd obviously take Player B. It's actually a bit like rock-paper-scissors (which Bill Simmons compared the NBA to in his podcast yesterday)... D-Rob matched up well against pretty much everyone but Dream, but he got destroyed by Dream in a very high-profile playoff series, and that's what people remember.

13. Romain Says:
    March 11th, 2009 at 9:22 am

    Olajuwon did not just destroy Robinson in the 1995 western conference finals, he also had amazing stats of his own during his careers, look at his stats in the late 80's:
    1988-89: 24.8ppg 13.5rpg 3.4bpg 2.6spg (that many steals for a center that's really amazing)
    1989-90: 24.3ppg 14.0rpg 4.6 bpg 2.1 spg

    And more importantly Olajuwon came up really big the only years he had a real shot at winning a championship, that is during MJ's 1st retirment. During those 2 playoff runs he dominated three of the best centers of all-time (Ewing, Robinson, O'Neal).

    If I had to rank the all-time centers in tiers, I would put Robinson in tier 3 with Ewing and B. Walton because no matter what the stats say, he would probably never even have played in a NBA final if he had not played with Duncan. He just did not have the leadership.

14. Raj Says:
    March 11th, 2009 at 10:15 am

    I know it's a smaller sample size and with significantly less data available, but it seems that looking at Robinson and Hakeem's playoff numbers I guess would also lay out the case for Hakeem as the "better" player. While not having run WS/3000 (i probably should be working), I would note that it appears Hakeem has a higher rate and that his PER of 25.7 is greater than Robinson's 23.0. From all appearances it would seem Neil that using your question of whom you would build a franchise around, the Admiral would win for the regular season, but come playoff time, you'd rather have Dream. I know this raises the dilemma of whether it's better to get a higher seed and have an easier route in the playoffs with Robinson or whether it's better to simply have the better playoff performer in Hakeem, but I guess (and I should note I grew up in Houston and am a complete homer in this debate) I always come up wanting the better player and willing to take my chances on the road, which I know has only worked for Houston in 1995. Also, what do you think the huge difference in the Admiral's regular season and playoff PER says about his performance against higher quality opponents? Was he just easier to gameplan over a 7-game series than others like Duncan or Olajuwon, or maybe he just performed better against worse competition (the 71 point game was against the Clippers).

    Also, in the original regression, are the original per 40 minute numbers adjusted for pace? Naturally someone like Duncan playing at 90 possessions is going to have lower per 40 numbers than someone like Kareem or Wilt, and it seems that could unfairly skew his numbers. In general, when giving per minute numbers wouldn't it be better to scale them all to some per 40 minute per 100 possession basis?

15. MyArvydas Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Just being curious...how did you evaluate the blocks for pre-1974 players? I've got a hard time believing Russell did not block more shots than Shaq (especially since the pace of the game was higher then, so there were more shots to block).

16. Neil Paine Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    All the stats they neglected to track are estimates based a regression that uses the player's height and whatever stats they did keep as inputs. It's obviously going to drag everything toward the mean, but it does it for everybody and since the +/- is comparing players to their in-season peers, it doesn't really serve to penalize guys who played before the numbers were kept.

17. rlee Says:
    March 14th, 2009 at 11:52 am

    How can we best put the canard of Wilt facing "inferior" opposition to rest? We can pick any of his great years. For example, let's look at 1965-66. In a nine team league, each team played each other team ten times. So playing 50 games against Bill Russell, Walt Bellamy, Nate Thurmond, Wayne Embry and Zelmo Beaty is playing against "inferior competition"? You can pick just about any other year and the inference would be the same. Compare this to the "modern era" centers who played in leagues with many more teams (and thus faced the premier centers each far less frequently) and it is clear that Wilt faced "superior" not "inferior" opposition.

18. Neil Paine Says:
    March 14th, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    I'm not saying I buy the "inferior competition" argument, but isn't that kind of a circular argument? You're basically using Russell, Bellamy, Thurmond, Embry and Beaty as evidence that Wilt's competition was strong -- and simultaneously using Wilt as evidence that their competition was strong... But to play devil's advocate, how do we know those guys weren't inferior as well? It's a bit like those folks who advocated Hawaii for the National Championship Game in 2007 (before the bowls). They were the only undefeated team! They beat Boise State, who had been 11-1! Of course, they were sheltered in their own little mid-major bubble the whole time, and when they faced a legitimate team in Georgia, they got destroyed. To advocates of the "Wilt faced inferior competition" argument, he's Hawaii -- yes, he dominated everyone else, they argue, but he was sheltered in the bubble of the 1960s. Put him against Hakeem, Robinson, Shaq, etc., and see how he fares. Unfortunately, while Hawaii got their one shot against a big-time foe, we'll never know how Wilt would do against today's stars.

    And, I repeat, I do not necessarily buy into the "weak competition" argument against Wilt (I used to, but that's another story). But for what it's worth, that's the rebuttal against your comment.

19. rlee Says:
    March 14th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    Ok, I'll expand. I've been following the NBA since the 50's. I don't denigrate the "modern" players: Dream, Shaq,Robinson - no dispute as to their greatness. I don't see any way to say that Russell, Thurmond et al are inferior based on having seen them play many times. My real point was that most people who make the "inferior" comp argument say that there were only a few outstanding centers back then - what they overlook is that, in a given season, Wilt was going up against the best 10 times each not 3 times each as the "modern" superstars faced each other. It has always been clear to me that that fact is generally overlooked. I don't see any circularity in that refutation.

20. Steve Sailer Says:
    March 25th, 2009 at 12:47 am

    Having listened to or watched over 60 of the Lakers' 1971-1972 games, I would guesstimate that Wilt's blocks per game that season was between 5 and 6. The Lakers played a high tempo fast break game which gave the opponents a large number of possessions.

    Also, when you get to Jerry West's Steals per Game, you are severely underestimating him. In his mostly injured final season, he averaged 3 per game according to the official count, so it's likely that a couple of years earlier he was averaging around 4.

21. John Saucedo Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 9:50 pm

    One center has not been mentioned by any of the previous posters.

    The center that I am referring to is the only center, over the last 24 seasons, to post 22 points, 22 rebounds, and shoot 10 for 10 from the free throw line.

    On another occassion he posted 28 points, 9 offensive rebounds, 13 defensive rebounds, and 9 blocked shots.

    He also recorded six triple doubles, which is more than Shaq, Ewing, and Mourning combined.

    Three of his triple doubles included shooting perfect from the free throw line.

    One of his triple doubles was one of only two 20, 20, 10 triple doubles recorded by a center in the last 24 seasons.

    Who was this center?

22. Neil Paine Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 11:58 pm

    All I can say about #21 without giving away the answer is that I wish we had "times posterized" in the Play Index, because that guy was the all-time leader.

23. John Saucedo Says:
    August 21st, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    #22,

    Please explain how a center who was most often "posterized" was able to post statistics that Hall of Fame centers were not able to match or exceed.

    Your comment implies that you believe he had no talent.

    How does a center with no talent produce 22 points, 22 rebounds, & go 10 for 10 from the free throw line when no other center in the last 24 seasons has been able to do it? Notice that I did not even mention the 13 blocked shots he had that game.

    Hakeem, Robinson, Ewing, Mourning, Shaq... None of those All-Star centers posted a game which matched or exceeded those numbers. No center did.

    Many of them came close. So it is not like they did not try.

    Hakeem posted 2 quadruple doubles and Robinson one. Apparently 22 points, 22 rebounds, and 10 for 10 from the line was more challenging for them than a quadruple double.

    Please do not insult everyone by saying that he was just lucky.