Stockton or Malone?

[air gordon]

can you even consider a player the best at his position ever if he hasn't even won a championship?

[Jackal]

Why can't you? Enlighten us.

[air gordon]

all the of nba's all time bests have championships rings on their resume. probably not a coincidence

[Sauru]

to be fair, jordan cause alot of all time greats to never get thier ring. he alone caused the likes of stockton,malone,ewing,and barkley to never get a ring. also the only reason the Dream and drexler got thier rings is cause he took a 2 year vacation. so yes i can definetly consider someone without a ring one of the all time best players ever.

[air gordon]

i think you're giving too much credit to MJ and not enough to his teammates and their opponents, as well as the houston rockets championship teams

there's a flipside to your argument. those aforementioned players had their chances at the title and they failed equally as much as the bulls succeeded. some even had mulitple chances to do it.

and in their 6 championships, their opponents in the finals and those nyk teams did have a legit shot at winning the series...

imo the ultimate goal for a player is to win the championship. can you truly consider someone one of the best ever if he never got to the proverbial top of mount olympus? i'll buy hall of famer status but we're talking about one of the BEST EVER. a glorified stat player can be one of the BEST EVER?

you know a player like stockton would trade in his assist/steal record for a ring, ewing would give all the NYk records he holds for a ring, etc

but hey, if you think otherwise, you got some more convincing to do

[magius]

in my opinion, the "greatest" players in general always have at least one mvp, one finals mvp, and a championship. Only two players in today's nba qualify as being truly great: shaq and duncan. End of story, if you think otherwise you smoke too much pot, and you should quit soon before you jump of your roof and break your pinky.

[Riot]

There are tons of players than haven't one championships that were gerat players. Barkley comes to mind but I'm sure there is more.

[Sauru]

lets just go back to what i said about stockton for a minute, he was the best pure point guard ever. thats not the best player or even the best pg ever but the best at doing what you want your pg to do.what stockton did would never earn a mvp nod, but dont be fooled into thinking stockton could not score like crazy if he wanted to in his prime.


so no i dont think he is the best pg ever but i would say without a doubt he was the best at what a pg is meant to do.

one more side note, all time great players dont win alone, give stockton and malone 1 more really good player(always been hard for utah to sign free agents) and they would have won a ring. of course when talking about all time greats and whatnot its usually all opinion anyway.