The Greatest Player For Every Team Part 2

Mavs: Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk was the face of the franchise for about 20 straight seasons. He is a great shooter for his size and could play a stretch 5. He also had one of the deadliest shots in all of NBA history, the turnaround fadeaway. He earned one MVP throughout his career and one championship. He led the Mavs over the Heat with peak LeBron on their team. They also had peak Wade and Bosh. He is beloved by Dallas.

Rockets: Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem Olajuwon is one of the best defenders of all time. He is the all time leader in blocks and is also pretty underrated in getting steals. He was very active on defense and timed his blocks very good. He was a great rim protector with a strong defensive impact. He could also score pretty well. He led the Rockets to two championships, getting both Finals MVPs. He played nearly his entire career with the Rockets, but he had a short stint with the Raptors.

Memphis: Marc Gasol

I’m probably forgetting someone here but I’m just going to put Gasol because I don’t know who. Anyway, he plaYed for the gRiZlies for nine straight seasons. He made three all-star games. He averaged a career high 19.5 points per game in 2016-17.

Pelicans: Anthony Davis

It’s pretty obvious that AD is the best Pelican to ever play. The franchise has been around for less than 10 years, and they already have had a superstar. He made 5 all-star games in ojos 5 seasons with the Pelicans. He was an amazing rim protector and shot blocker. He was also a great post scorer. He played best as a center this season, making the team 16.9 points per 100 possessions better. When he was center, the team allowed 101.8 points per 100 possessions, which is in the 98th percentile for bigs.

Spurs: Tim Duncan

Likely the greatest power forward of all time played in San Antonio his entire career. He won 5 championships for them and got 2 MVPs. He was also an underrated passer for his size and playing style. In 2008-09, Duncan had an 18.9% assist rate, which is in the 98th percentile out of bigs. He made his team a lot better by just stepping onto the floor. Whenever he was on the floor in his second season, the point differential per 100 possessions was 16.9. He was an amazing team player and a great winner.

Nuggets: Nikola Jokic

I am open to other options than him, but I think after his extremely dominant season he is the greatest Nugget of all time. He is the first player to win an MVP while on the Nuggets and he led them to a conference final for the fourth time since the NBA ABA merger. He is a great stretch 5 and plays great in modern day NBA. He lost a lot of weight and it showed this season. He is also a tremendous passer. He is one of the best passing centers of all time. His assist rate is 1st this season out of players considered bigs. His assist rate is 37.6%. His shooting is also dramatically improved from last season. His 3 point percentage jumped 7% since last season. He has been the best player on the Nuggets for multiple seasons. Honorable mentions that you could debate are Alex English and Carmelo Anthony. In my opinion anyone else and you have no argument.

Timberwolves: Kevin Garnett

Garnett is a very underrated defender. He was relentless on the defensive end, going for every loose ball. He had to carry a bad Timberwolves team to the playoffs multiple times. While he only played there 4 seasons, he has had more success so far than Karl Anthony-Towns, who has not yet won two games in the playoffs in his 408 game career. And the one time he made the playoffs they were an 8 seed. When Garnett was on the floor in his rookie season, he made the team 19 points per 100 possessions compared to when he wasn’t. That was first IN THE LEAGUE! He was a rookie. Garnett is a very willing and underrated passer. His assist rate is 26.5% which was in the 99th percentile out of bigs. He’s also very good at not turning the ball over. No one in the Timberwolves history could get this team to win, but Garnett carried them to being pretty close.

Thunder: Russell Westbrook

This was very close between him and Gary Payton. Anyone who betrays a franchise as harshly as KD doesn’t deserve to be on this list. Russell Westbrook was the second player ever to average a triple-double in a season. He did it FOUR times. In his 12th season (he was 32 years old) Westbrook averages a 22/12/12. This is unheard of. He won two scoring titles with the Thunder and he won one MVP despite a monster year by James Harden. A knock against Westbrook is that he couldn’t win. What people don’t remember however, is that he made an NBA finals and was a key part of it. Here is a few players who never went to the NBA Finals: Steve Nash, George Gervin, and Carmelo Anthony. He has led the league in usage rate multiple times. In his MVP season, his assist rate was 57.3%. Only John Stockton has ever had better in a single season. Another knock against him is that he didn’t play defense. He plays harder than anyone ever has. In Westbrook’s MVP seaosn, when he was on the court, the team allowed 3.6 less points than if he wasn’t on the floor. That’s good for 80th percentile for guards.

Jazz: Karl Malone

Karl Malone was one of the best scorers in the history of the NBA. He was so powerful inside and one of the most durable players of all time. While he was on the Jazz, the number of games he didn’t play was just 10! The amount of games he did play: 1,434. Yes, you read that right. And in those 1,434 games, he averaged 25.4 points per game. He was nicknamed the Postman for a reason. He is one of the most consistent basketball layers ever to play.

Trail Blazers: Bill Walton

I’m gonna get a lot of hate about this, unjustly. My one ask; watch some basketball! This is the player that high school basketball players would watch tape of. He had amazing fundamentals, and drive. He was in a class of his own when it came to passing. He was one of the best outlet passers of all time. Whenever he didn’t have foot injuries, he was legendary. He had the I uncontroversially second best college career of all time. He owned Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Kareem’s prime. He won two championships and one MVP. If the Portland doctors were any good back then, you might’ve heard of him. Instead, he requested to get traded and he went to the San Diego Clippers and had a bad career after that. He won a sixth man of the year award in his second championship season in 1986 with the Celtics. His first championship season stats: 19/14/4 with 3 blocks per game. He wasn’t the flashiest player of all time, but he knew how to play with teammates and win basketball games.

Warriors: Stephen Curry

He is comfortably the greatest shooter ever to touch a basketball. He is one of the best free throw shooters of all time in the NBA and the best 3 point shooter in the NBA. He is super efficient from everywhere on the court. In 2017-18, he led the league in points per 100 shot attempts with 136.9! He’s never been below the 91st percentile out of 3 point shooting in his career! He’s never shot worse than 42% from three in his career! 3 pointers are obviously more efficient than 2 pointers and he won 3 championships while making 5 total finals because of this. He is amazing at creating space for his shot, but players can’t overplay him because then he would drive. He is one of the fastest players in the NBA and was the first unanimous MVP. Clearly, he is the best Warriors of all time. To be clear, Wilt Chamberlain played for the Philadelphia Warriors which turned into the Philadelphia 76ers.

Clippers: Chris Paul

I shouldn’t have to explain myself, but I guess I will. He is one of the best passers of all time. He is also one of the best at stealing of all time, with 3 steals titles while on the Clippers. He also won 2 steals titles while on the Clips. He got as unlucky as possible in the playoffs with injuries. He only made the second round while with the Clippers. He also has one of the highest basketball IQs of all time. He knows how to deal with tough defenses and create for his teammates. Four times has Paul shot over 50% from mid range. He was also one of the smartest players at drawing fouls in the league. 5 out of the 6 seasons that he was on the Clippers, he led the league in non-shooting fouls drawn per team possession while on the floor. He was a great leader for these Clippers teams. He and Blake made one of the best duos in the NBA in their peaks.

Lakers: Magic Johnson

This is one of the most stories franchises ever and is sure to cause some debate. Magic Johnson was one of the best all-around players of all time. For a point guard, he was a great rebounder. He was also a pretty great scorer. Kareem took the backseat to him scoring wise. He is also debatably the best passer in the history of the NBA. He made passes that no one saw coming and was an amazing leader while on the floor. His energy was infectious to everyone on the team and he led the Lakers to 5 championships in his 11 season career. He also went to 9 NBA Finals. That is debatably better than MJ’s 6-0 record in 15 NBA seasons. He won 3 MVPs while MJ was dominating that stat categories. Magic averaged 13.1 assists per game in 1984-85.

Suns: Charles Barkley

Barkley or Nash is the real debate. They are tied in seasons with the most first place votes for MVP. Barkley led them to one NBA Finals. Nash led the seven seconds or less Suns which were very entertaining to watch. Is his first season even with the Suns he led them to the NBA Finals while averaging 25 PPG and winning the MVP award. He made an all-star game all four years of his career. He was also one of the greatest rebounders ever, and inch for inch definitely. He was the size of Michael Jordan yet averaged about twice as many rebounds per game.

Kings: Oscar Robertson

Y’all probably forgot that Oscar played for them. Y’all are asking yourselves, “Wait, didn’t he play for the Cincinnati Royals?” Technically, yes he did. I’ll give you a backstory. The Cincinnati Royals wanted to move to Kansas City but Kansas City Royals was already an MLB team so they had to come up with a new name. Kings was pretty close to Royals, so they chose that. When they moved to Sacramento, they never changed back. Oscar Robertson was the original at getting triple doubles. The word triple double wasn’t even invented back then, yet he still had 181 of them. He averaged a triple double in his second season in the league because back in the day 6’4 was very tall for a guard. But here’s how close he was to averaging a triple double more than once. In his rookie season, he averaged 9.7 assists per game. He would’ve needed just 20 more assists that season to get there. In his third season, he averaged 9.5 assists per game. He needed 42 more assist to get it. In his fourth season, he had 9.9 rebounds per game. He needed a measly 17 rebounds more to get the triple-double. He would never hit the rebounding mark in his career after his third season. He won one championship as a mildly washed guard next to Kareem, er, Lew Alcindor. He won one MVP on the Royals in his career.