# What four players would you put on your NBA Mount Rushmore?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-four-players-would-you-put-on-your-nba-mount-rushmore/681200>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [February 13, 2014, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-four-players-would-you-put-on-your-nba-mount-rushmore/681200 "2014-02-13T00:42:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 12

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**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-four-players-would-you-put-on-your-nba-mount-rushmore/681200/221 "2014-03-12T03:22:39Z")

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> [@Bellhorn](#):
>
> Thanks. I’ll take a look at it in depth some time. I have looked briefly at the derivation of win shares, but the problem I have with it vs baseball, is that, as I’ve mentioned, baseball players have discrete instances of offense (and defense) which are not related/influenced by his team. Hockey is similar to Basketball in that all players are two-way, switching back and forth on each possession. The Hockey =/- is far from perfect, but since a team uses 3-4 lines, and 3 pairings of defensemen, over time you have some relative measure. In Basketball, you have the same starters on the court for 35+ minutes, so it makes it harder to compare, say Russell when he’s on the floor and when he’s not, so you end up with Russell with most of the same team mates, and then you end up with the argument of whether Russell is raising his mates or the other way around.

There’s more sophistication to it than that, at least, but I don’t think Defensive Win Shares is any kind of substitute for judgment. Just wanted to parenthetically point out that some of the things that you’ve suggested can’t be captured numerically are not only captured, they agree with you. And that to the extent that there are things that cannot be captured – which we agree exist – those things can’t be captured for anyone. It is 100% the same thing for me to suggest that the numbers can’t even approximate Wilt’s offensive despotism as it is for you to say that the numbers don’t really properly measure Russell’s value. And you would probably hate it if I tried to pull that.

So what we’re left with, in terms of explaining how Russell in particular was such a “winner” compared to Wilt despite being not actually as good as Wilt at basketball – which is where this started – is a whole lot of “I would imagine” and “I would expect” and “I suspect,” which is indistinguishable from reasoning backward from the conclusion that Russell’s the best: if he’s better than Wilt, it must be because of…

And as I said, I could say much of these and similar things about Derek Fisher, Robert Horry or Rodman vis a vis John Stockton, Barkley or Malone, which is one sign of a flawed approach.

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