u/KingKAI24

Shai is ready too cook the league next season.

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How would you rank these Centers?

I personally believe Olajuwon is the Best Center of All-Time, he beat the best individually at their absolute best with the exception of Kareem and Shaq, while being able to defend high pick and roll and effected the game in a multitude of ways and could excel in any era. In addition, Olajuwon mentored...

Embiid, Wemby, Kobe, Lebron, Amare Stoudamire, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwight Howard. He is the one NBA players actively seek out for mentorship. Moses Malone is the most underappreciated and would be in my Top 5 Greatest Centers of All-Time.

Surely certain eras had more skilled players in the NBA but which had the most "competitive"

Back in the day players in the 80s really hated their opponent, didn't want to train with the enemy. Now the greatest "competitor" that I saw in my lifetime was the late great Kobe Bryant followed by Kevin Garnett. I remember him crying during an interview by the late great legendary coach John Thompson about how much he wanted to win so bad in Minnesota. I caught every single Wizards MJ game live but Jay-Z once said in an interview while talking to Jermaine Dupri that he never met anyone who had a greater "will to win" than Mike.

Jay-Z had beat Mike in a game of cards and Jay-Z proclaimed that Mike said to him, "You Know the Knicks had me down 0-2 right?"

Other players display their competitive drive, edge or motor in different ways. I personally wouldn't put the era of load management as the most competitive era.

During the 2001 NBA Playoffs between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers Danny Ainge was on sidelines reporting on Shaq calling Kobe his idol and the best player in the World.

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Kobe scoffs when the late great Craig Saber tells him that the Spurs plan on making him a passer in hopes to slow him down lol. Kobe's facial reaction was like child please hahaha

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Here are the official results of how NBA GMs around the league voted prior to the start of the 2010-2011 NBA Season

During a regular season matchup in February of 2000 Kobe Bryant held a prime Allen Iverson completely scoreless in the 2nd half of this game.

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Iverson finished with a just 16 points on a horrendous 7-of-25 shooting, including 0-of-11 in the second half. Kobe also swatted three of Iverson’s shots in the fourth. Kobe post game was humble in victory, noting he wasn’t fully aware that he was doing such a splendid job on Iverson.

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What made Iverson so hard to guard was his lightning quick first step, his change of direction and ability to move off the ball come off screens, and he could split rhe defense with his elite ball handling but ultimately Kobe did something others hadn't he found a way to shut him down.

Dr. J discussing the passing of the torch in the NBA from himself to MJ and the late great Kobe Bryant back in 2002 during the NBA Finals.

During Kobe's most underrated regular season The most technically proficient player in NBA history put on an offensive masterclass vs the Memphis Grizzlies.

​Minutes Played: 45

​Points: 60

​Field Goals (FGM-FGA): 20–37 (54.1%)

​Three-Pointers (3PM-3PA): 3–7 (42.9%)

​Free Throws (FTM-FTA): 17–18 (94.4%)

He logged only two turnovers.

Kobe could post up, turn left shoulder turn right shoulder, hit the mid-range, shoot the three, absorb and finish strong through contact, finish above the rim, split the double team score in isolation, create off the dribble, off pick and roll, and didn't have to hunt for screens, could score within and outside the Triangle, and he had absolutely impeccable footwork a testament to his upbringing in Italy playing soccer and hours of working on his footwork without a basketball. I remember Shaq mimicking the head fakes Kobe would do by himself in the gym without a basketball on the Drink Champs podcast lol. Kobe had a different level of dedication to the game on some Bruce Lee stuff.

For me the 2007 season is his most underrated when he averaged 31.6ppg his 2nd straight scoring title while being an All-World defender. 2007 marked refinement as a scorer. Its funny because Kobe himself said at the end of 2003 his game was complete and it was just about fine tuning everything. He was 24 years old then and

28 years old here. Most players at 24 don't have a complete game at 24.

Post ACL injury. An ultimate artist on the court Kyrie Irving. Beautiful basketball by Kyrie educating the youth. He could ne anywhere yet he continues to show up there.

"Kobe Bryant carrying the Lakers offense by himself." - Bill Walton

R.I.P. Kobe Bryant and Bill Walton. Two legends.

​Leonardo Barbosa, aka "The Brazilian Blur," was a lightning-quick guard who had just captured the 2007 NBA Sixth Man of the Year award with the Phoenix Suns. He averaged 43% from 3PT land on 48% shooting. He was a certified bucket, scoring by obliterating defenders on straight-line drives, cuts, and pulling up from deep.

​Heading into this highly anticipated matchup at the 2007 FIBA Americas tournament, Barbosa was utterly torching the competition, leading the entire field in scoring at a blistering 27.0 PPG. He was playing with absolute, unchecked supreme confidence.

​Knowing the threat, Kobe Bryant didn't just casually show up he claimed that he studied copious amounts of film on Barbosa leading up to the game. He demanded the assignment.

​The result? Absolute perimeter erasure.

​Kobe picked him up full-court, suffocated his airspace, and held the tournament's leading scorer to just 4 points on 1-of-7 shooting. In fact, Barbosa's lone field goal of the night came when Kobe wasn't even on the floor. The peak of the night was Kobe hounding him past mid-court to force a brutal backcourt violation, capped off by the reigning scoring champ diving flat on the floor for a loose ball.

​This wasn't a team conserving energy; this was a superstar establishing a cultural blueprint for Team USA.

​Watch the point-of-attack lateral movement on the tape. How do you rate this performance against Barbosa compared to his defense on Manu in '08?

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​When we talk about perimeter defense, people often look at generalized team stats while ignoring the actual assignment data. The nature of the sport fundamentally REQUIRES defense to be played, and Kobe Bryant (#10) exemplified this perfectly on the international stage during the 2008 Olympics.

By explicitly taking on the task of guarding the opposing team's best perimeter players, he completely shifted the defensive architecture of the Redeem Team. Kobe picked up opposing point guards 94 feet, relentlessly disrupted passing lanes, forced high-leverage turnovers, and was the team's vocal leader calling out switches and rotations.

Most importantly, when a superstar of his caliber sacrifices his body to press full-court without the burden of carrying a heavy NBA offensive system, that energy becomes infectious. It completely permeated through his teammates, elevating their collective communication and intensity on the defensive end, ultimately paving the way to a Gold Medal.

Kobe during the 2008 Olympics was 29 years old and 33 years old during the 2012 Olympics. Always was communicating on defense.

Prior to the 2013-14 season, All-Defensive teams weren't voted on by media members, podcasters, or spreadsheet analysts. They were voted on strictly by the NBA’s 30 Head Coaches.

​Coaches were legally restricted from voting for players on their own teams. That means for Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, and Kevin Garnett to pile up these massive double-digit selections, opposing coaching staffs, the ones actively constructing game plans to survive them, had to voluntarily put them on the ballot. There was no media narrative or Twitter campaign that could force an opposing coach to respect your defensive impact. It was earned strictly on the scouting report.

When people look at this list, they tend to forget the sheer physical volume required to play elite defense while dominating the offensive box score.

​Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Hakeem Olajuwon:

Kareem sat at 11 selections even with blocks not being officially tracked by the NBA until his fifth season (1973-74). If they tracked them from day one, his defensive aura looks even more mythical. While Hakeem ultimately took the all-time blocks crown and possesses arguably the highest defensive peak of any center ever, Kareem’s ability to anchor the rim across three separate decades while carrying the most unstoppable offensive weapon in history (the skyhook) is a masterclass in conditioning.

​The 2006–2010 Peak: During this specific four-year window, Kobe Bryant was the only perimeter player in the league to consistently lock down First-Team All-NBA and First-Team All-Defense simultaneously, all while carrying a historic offensive load and winning back-to-back scoring titles in '06 and '07.

There is a massive competitive value in having a superstar who wants the hardest defensive assignment. We saw it in the 2008 Olympics, where Kobe volunteered to be the defensive floor general for the Redeem Team so LeBron and Wade could run the lanes. We saw it as late as 2013, where an aging Kobe was actively volunteering to guard point-of-attack creators like a young Russell Westbrook and Kyrie Irving 94 feet from the basket just to give his team a chance to compete. Even when advanced box-score analytics (which heavily penalize perimeter players on teams with weak defensive infrastructure) don't capture it, the willingness to absorb that physical punishment is an intangible that defines championship culture.

​Scottie Pippen & The Ultimate Two-Way Utility:

Pippen might not have been a high-volume, 30-point scorer like Kareem or Kobe, but he was arguably the most impactful point-forward and multi-positional ceiling-raiser the league has ever seen. He was a smooth facilitator who could initiate the triangle offense, hit the open three, and carry a the iffensive and defensive load as seen in '94 during MJ's retirement. Defensively, he was an absolute nightmare who legitimately guarded 1 through 5, actively switching onto power forwards and protecting the rim. Despite finishing as the runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year in back-to-back years (1995 and 1996) and leading the league in steals in '95, he never took home the official DPOY trophy. Yet, opposing head coaches knew who ran the floor, making him the leading overall vote-getter for the All-Defensive team for four consecutive seasons from 1994 to 1997.

Whether it’s Tim Duncan anchoring the greatest 20-year culture of winning in modern history without needing a single flashy highlight, Kevin Garnett completely revolutionizing modern pick-and-roll coverage with his vocal intensity, or Scottie Pippen setting the blueprint for the modern switchable point-forward this list represents a standard of basketball that we may never see again.