Chuck Klosterman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Of the great NBA players — take something like the top 100, whatever you’d like — who’s the most underrated of that lot? Who’s still underappreciated? This is a strange answer because he’s very famous, but to a degree, Wilt Chamberlain has become underrated in the fact that people discount his statistics as a vestige of a previous time. But even within that previous time, the statistics he compiled are really unthinkable. The fact that you will sometimes see lists of the greatest players of all time and he will be outside the top five — I think that’s very weird. I don’t know if he would be in the top 100, but there were guys like Sydney Moncrief who were good for years and good in every way, but we would never include them in this top tier because pro basketball has also adopted this — maybe predictable but also curious — perception that winning a championship matters almost too much now. If you have not won a title, you can’t be classified as a great player. It’s strange — you’ll watch the TNT Show, and Kenny Smith will still hold this over Charles Barkley, somehow, that they are equal as veterans, as former players because Kenny Smith won two titles and Barkley won none, and Barkley’s aware of it. They’ve made this decision almost collectively. This decision has been made, that in basketball — because there are only five guys on the floor, and we can credit the best player as being the reason a team succeeds or fails — winning a title has become everything. It skews the way we understand this. It’s why you see guys trying to get titles late in their career — ring chasing or whatever. I think they believe if they can just do that, that will somehow recontextualize everything else about them. I might say Kareem — just high total value, high peaks, and high total. For me, he’s clearly top three. I’m not sure he’s viewed that way necessarily.…

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