The best NBA players of all time, by the numbers

Not a panel, not a vote, and not my opinion. These are the 37 players the game's own rating system puts at 95 or above — every one of them scored against the league he actually played in, weighted by what his position is asked to do, with championships and awards counted.

The method is written up in full on how the ratings work, including every weight and the things it deliberately does not measure. Nothing on this page was adjusted to make the list look sensible.

Why there is no number one to fifty

Because the ratings do not support one. Twenty players share a 94. Fourteen share a 95. A ranked list of fifty would have to order those groups by something, and that something would not be basketball — it would be alphabetical order wearing a number.

So the list stops at a rating boundary rather than a round number, and players inside a band are genuinely tied. Within each band they are listed alphabetically, which is honest about being arbitrary rather than dressed up as a ranking.

Rated 99 · 2 players, tied

Photograph	Player	Pos	Career	PPG	RPG	APG
	LeBron James	SF	2004-2026	29.4	7.6	7.7
	Michael Jordan	SG	1985-2003	33.7	6.8	6.7

Rated 98 · 6 players, tied

Photograph	Player	Pos	Career	PPG	RPG	APG
	Julius Erving	SF	1972-1987	28.2	10.9	5.2
	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	C	1970-1989	26.7	14.6	4.4
	Kobe Bryant	SG	1997-2016	31.8	5.8	5.1
	Larry Bird	SF	1980-1992	27.5	9.8	7.0
	Magic Johnson	PG	1980-1996	21.4	7.2	12.3
	Tim Duncan	PF	1998-2016	23.8	12.7	3.6

Rated 97 · 7 players, tied

Photograph	Player	Pos	Career	PPG	RPG	APG
	David Robinson	C	1990-2003	27.5	11.2	3.6
	Giannis Antetokounmpo	PF	2014-2026	28.4	12.4	5.8
	Jerry West	SG	1961-1974	28.2	4.8	6.9
	Karl Malone	PF	1986-2004	26.4	9.9	4.2
	Kevin Durant	SF	2008-2026	29.5	7.5	4.9
	Kevin Garnett	PF	1996-2016	23.1	13.6	5.6
	Shaquille O'Neal	C	1993-2011	28.6	12.5	3.5

Rated 96 · 8 players, tied

Photograph	Player	Pos	Career	PPG	RPG	APG
	Chris Paul	PG	2006-2026	21.2	4.6	11.2
	Dwyane Wade	SG	2004-2019	27.5	5.4	6.2
	Hakeem Olajuwon	C	1985-2002	27.0	11.9	3.5
	James Harden	SG	2010-2026	33.7	6.2	7.9
	Nikola Jokić	C	2016-2026	26.0	12.7	8.9
	Oscar Robertson	PG	1961-1974	30.7	7.6	11.1
	Stephen Curry	PG	2010-2026	26.0	4.7	7.6
	Wilt Chamberlain	C	1960-1973	44.1	24.1	3.6

Rated 95 · 14 players, tied

Photograph	Player	Pos	Career	PPG	RPG	APG
	Bill Russell	C	1957-1969	17.2	23.3	3.3
	Bob Cousy	PG	1951-1970	20.2	6.1	7.2
	Bob Pettit	PF	1955-1965	27.7	17.9	3.4
	Charles Barkley	SF	1985-2000	26.1	11.5	4.1
	Dirk Nowitzki	PF	1999-2019	25.8	9.2	3.1
	Dwight Howard	C	2005-2022	20.6	13.7	1.5
	Elgin Baylor	SF	1959-1972	35.4	17.4	4.9
	Gary Payton	PG	1991-2007	21.8	5.4	8.6
	Joel Embiid	C	2017-2026	32.5	11.0	4.5
	John Havlicek	SF	1963-1978	26.9	8.3	7.3
	Kawhi Leonard	SF	2012-2026	24.3	6.6	3.1
	Rick Barry	SF	1966-1980	33.0	8.6	3.6
	Russell Westbrook	PG	2009-2026	27.7	8.7	9.9
	Scottie Pippen	SF	1988-2004	20.9	7.7	5.6

Photograph credits

Every portrait comes from Wikimedia Commons under the licence named beside it, and each name links to the original. The photographs are cropped and resized to fit this table. They are here to show who is being ranked; being on this list implies no endorsement of this site by any player, and none by the photographers.

• LeBron James — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Michael Jordan — Joshua Massel. Cropped by en:User:Quadzilla99, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Julius Erving — Ash Carter, CC BY 2.0
• Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — Yahoo from Sunnyvale, California, USA, CC BY 2.0
• Kobe Bryant — Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Larry Bird — Kurt Shimala, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Magic Johnson — Daniel Benavides from Austin, TX, CC BY 2.0
• Tim Duncan — Geoff Livingston, CC BY 2.0
• David Robinson — Mark Neyman, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Giannis Antetokounmpo — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Jerry West — Malcolm W. Emmons, Public domain
• Karl Malone — Airman 1st Class Jacob B. Wrightsman, Public domain
• Kevin Durant — Clément Bardot, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Kevin Garnett — Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Shaquille O'Neal — TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0
• Chris Paul — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Dwyane Wade — Flickr user Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Hakeem Olajuwon — U.S. Department of State, Public domain
• James Harden — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Nikola Jokić — All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Oscar Robertson — Governor Eric Holcomb, Public domain
• Stephen Curry — Clément Bardot, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Wilt Chamberlain — Bill Allen, Public domain
• Bill Russell — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain
• Bob Cousy — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain
• Bob Pettit — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain
• Charles Barkley — Wright-Patt AFB, Public domain
• Dirk Nowitzki — Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Dwight Howard — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Elgin Baylor — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain
• Gary Payton — Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Joel Embiid — All-Pro Reels, CC BY-SA 2.0
• John Havlicek — Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain
• Kawhi Leonard — U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Mhecaela J. Watts, Public domain
• Rick Barry — Corey Carter from Fremont, US, CC BY 2.0
• Russell Westbrook — Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0
• Scottie Pippen — Sea Cow, CC BY-SA 4.0

The placings that will start arguments

Every rating system produces results its author would not have chosen. Here are this one's, and why they happen — including the one I think is a genuine flaw rather than a defensible surprise.

Julius Erving, third all time

Higher than almost any consensus list puts him, and this is the weakest result on the page. Every player is scored against the league he played in, and Erving's peak years were in the ABA — a genuinely weaker league. Being three standard deviations above the ABA is not the same achievement as being three above the NBA, and the system cannot tell the difference, because within-season normalisation has no way to compare the strength of two leagues running at once.

It is the honest cost of the era-neutral approach. The alternative — a hand-tuned discount on ABA seasons — would be an opinion inserted into a method whose whole claim is that it does not contain any.

Wilt Chamberlain outside the top ten

With a peak of 44.1 points and 24.1 rebounds a game, which sounds absurd until you remember two things the system knows. His league ran about 126 possessions a game to today's 99, so those totals are scored against team-mates and opponents who were also collecting far more of everything. And every attribute is judged against other centres, where dominant rebounding was the norm rather than the exception.

He is still rated 96, which is the top one per cent of everyone who has played. The gap between him and the top is accolades: two championships to Russell's eleven.

Bill Russell, on 17.2 points a game

The clearest case of the accolade weighting doing its job. Russell's box score is ordinary by the standards of this list, and blocks — the thing he was best at in the history of the sport — were not recorded during his career. Without championships counted he would rank nowhere at all. With them he sits at 95.

Dwight Howard in the top forty

Three Defensive Player of the Year awards, elite rebounding and rim protection, and a position whose weighting rewards exactly those things. The system is measuring what it says it measures. Whether he belongs in this company is a question about whether the weights are right, which is a fair argument and the reason they are all published.

Bob Cousy and Elgin Baylor

Both lifted by era-relative scoring. Cousy's assist numbers were extraordinary against 1950s league averages even though they look modest now; Baylor's 35.4-point peak came in a league where that still led everyone. This is the normalisation working as designed — the same mechanism that stops modern players automatically dominating a list on raw totals.

What this list is not

• It is not adjusted for how it looks. No player was moved. If a placing seems wrong, the argument is with a weight, and every weight is published.
• It does not use playoff box scores. Player-level postseason data only exists from 1996 in this dataset, so using it would quietly favour anyone peaking after that. Team run depth is used instead, which covers every era.
• It is not the order you bid in. In the game these players sit in a pool with everybody else, and a 95 you buy for eight million is a better piece of business than a 98 you pay sixty for.