YouTube Gold: The Top Ten Big Men In NBA History

Not bad but not perfect either

Any list of Top-whatever is going to be controversial. Apple has tried to rank the Top 100 albums of all time, for instance, and managed to list Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves, Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys and OK Computer by Radio Head - but somehow didn’t list Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles anywhere. They also found room for George Michael, Lady Gaga and the Eagles but not what was arguably the most transformative record in the history of rock and roll.

As we say, lists are by their nature controversial.

So this list of the Top Ten big men in NBA history is...not bad. However, there are two and possibly three significant omissions.

First, here is the list.

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
2. Hakeem Olajuwon
3. Bill Russell
4. Wilt Chamberlain
5. Shaquille O’Neal
6. David Robinson
7. Moses Malone
8. Patrick Ewing
9. Wes Unseld
10. Dikembe Mutombo

Here are the three omissions we’d have to talk about: Bill Walton, Nate Thurmond and Arvydas Sabonis.

We’ll concede that injuries ravaged Sabonis and Americans rarely saw him at his best. And at his best he was basically a 7-4 Larry Bird. But still: the list is about NBA play, so point taken.

Bill Walton is controversial because injuries so radically reduced his time in the spotlight. He was a brilliant basketball player and when he was healthy, he was as good as any center has ever been.

Thurmond mostly played in the 1960’s so recency bias worked against him. He could go toe-to-toe with Russell, Chamberlain and Kareem though, and for a time played with Chamberlain on the Warriors, moving over to power forward.

The real challenge, of course, is who you would take off the list. What would you do?