The Lakers franchise has just moved into 1st place all time with a 17th trophy. We all know the franchise has had more than its share of great players. So, if we lined up the best Lakers of all time, against a squad of the best of the rest of the NBA all time, who would win in a seven game series? I'm using 12 man squads for the comparison. Since it's my rules, I'm not using any of the Laker choices from years where they played for other teams to play for the NBA. LAKERS: Center: Kareem, Shaq, Wilt Power Forward: AD, Pau Small Forward: LeBron, Elgin, Worthy Shooting Guard: Kobe, Jerry West Point Guard: Magic, Gail Goodrich NBA: Center: Hakeem, Bill Russell, Moses Malone Power Forward: Tim Duncan, Karl Malone Small Forward: Bird, Doctor J, Kevin Durant Shooting Guard: Jordan, DWade Point Guard: Oscar Robertson, Isaiah Thomas
Malone plays PF for the Lakers. Barkley on the NBA team instead. We can put Payton at the 1 for us too for some extra depth. And Caruso at the 2, of course.
Would you rather have older Karl Malone for the Lakers than prime Pau with his passing and length? It's a close call. Barkely has an argument if we switch Malone to the Lakers. Or KG.
Honestly, if the two teams played 1,000 times, they'd both end up 500 and 500. With that much talent on either side, it sort of comes down to a coin flip really.
Is he worthy of being on the other team. Michael Jordan chose him in his all time team (but MJ may have been speaking about his own era).
I was sort of assuming they were all in their primes... since many of these guys never played against each other.
No I can’t use Malone’s Utah years for the Lakers. He was still very good for us before his injury, but I would take 2010 Pau over 2004 Malone.
Which year are we using then for Kobe? How about Kareem? In any case, Malone was a Laker, so I would add him to our team regardless as a backup to AD (starter) and Pau (off the bench). So he would not play much, but at least he'd be off the NBA roster then. Addition by subtraction.
I'd probably put in Steph to space the floor for Jordan/Hakeem/Duncan to be honest With Bird and Durant the non-Laker squad one big advantage would be shooting
George Mikan is criminally underrated in these discussions. He could only beat what was in front of him, and rules were changed to reduce his influence. Sure the three other name Laker centres were phenomenal, but Mikan is probably the reason Wilt and Kareem played basketball (and they were the reason Shaq played).
Their best year with the Lakers. For Kareem it would be 1980, or 82, or 85. For Kobe, I would probably want either 2009 or 10. So if you add Malone, who do you drop, Worthy?
Yeah, there is a strong argument for adding Steph, but then NBA would have to drop Isaiah Thomas. I agree with you about the shooting advantage for the NBA. I even considered Horry over Worthy because of that.
Mikan was certainly the dominant player of his era. The problem on a team like this is Kareem, Shaq and Wilt were all better.
