Good one. If they did, Phil Jackson would be the career leader.

And looking at Dantley’s career stats, they do line up surprisingly well. He wasn’t flashy, and was never marketed as a superstar, but he may be just the kind of player that quietly did everything he needed to do to qualify for greatness. Those stats, plus a championship, certainly seem to get him into the upper tier.

And not that he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Larry Bird and LeBron James but Kiki Vandeweghe had a run of seriously productive (offensive) years. High TS%, low turnover, (low everything else). Faded pretty quickly (as most people traded to the Knicks tend to do), but still had seven or so really strong seasons.

Also, I mentioned Chris Mullin in the SG thread, but as Caleb pointed out on it he really played more as a SF. He too had a really nice career, even if not quite nice enough to be considered a great.

AD is one of those guys that my brain always recalls him to be injury prone, much more than he actually was. His TS% and PER were really good (led the league in PER in 1984), but his other numbers aren’t that great. Detroit won a championship replacing him with Rodman/Aguirre. Coincidence? Perhaps. Maybe it’s my 80s brain at play, but I always thought him to be a bit overrated and one-sided. But I’m open to other interpretations.

‘Nique’s TS% was bad until he hit 30. Had he put up that TS% for the first half of his career it might have been a different story.

I guess by that logic it only took Tim Duncan one year to “figure it all out” and then he forgot what it was for 3 years, then figured it all out again. Gosh it’s amazing how that works, we only have to look at a great player’s championships to learn when they figured it all out.

You see I just look at Jordan’s numbers, and figure he was dominant in ’87, but basketball-reference doesn’t have a column for “figured it all out” (FIAO). I also thought Jordan won his first championship because Pippen was starting to hit his peak, had a good supporting cast, and the NBA is a team game. A player great enough to put up 4 straight years of 31+ PER and he doesn’t “figure it all out” until the middle of that run.

Why gosh darn it if basketball analysis was that easy, I don’t know why I spend hours making an excel chart of LeBron’s career path, when all I need is this: LeBron FIAO: 0

(Now that’s sarcasm! :-)

Only mentioned Brown because he was the coach of the Clippers at the time. It could have been Bill Fitch. Anyone. The premise is Jordan was winning the rings regardless of who was along for the ride.

“Has LeBron failed to win a title because he’s not very good?”

It took Jordan seven years too figure it all out. I guarantee LeBron starts winning them, whether with the Cavs or Knicks, and when he does it will be solely because of him, not because of some other guy fortunate enough to play on the same team as him.

“My position is not particularly extreme.”

My bad. I thought you were saying if Jordan never played with Pippen he’d be ringless, which is an extreme position.

“There’s no comparing Ken Norman to Scottie Pippen”

They both made money bouncing a round ball on a hard floor. (ps– don’t take everything so seriously. It’s bad for your health!)

I think he should be in the discussion, sure. His career is about as good or a little worse than Pierce through 7 seasons, though, depending on how much weight you put on Melo entering the league 2 years younger. Not really a better path.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=1&p1=piercpa01&y1=2005&p2=anthoca01&y2=2010