50 Greatest Basketball Players Ever - 21 to 30 of the best NBA players ever
Holla! To all of our endearing readers who've followed us through the course of our progress as a significant channel for basketball news, we've got news for you - A Top 50 list of the greatest players in basketball history!
We asked 8 of our writers to name their top 50 players of all time. Giving a weightage of 100 points to the #1 pick and 51 to the #50 pick, we arrived at a list that encompasses much of the storied history of the game of basketball - with all of these players having played out the vast majority of their careers in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
In a weekly series, we will be releasing our ranks of the all-time greatest players of the game, as things stand at the end of the 2017-18 season. You can check out the countdown from #50 to #41 here, and #40 to #31 here. Here's the countdown from #30 up until #21!
#30 Allen Iverson
If you were growing up in the 90s and early 2000s and you had any sort of interest in basketball, Iverson is one of those players who you'd always remember. The Answer will always be remembered for being one of the most determined, hard-working and competitive players to ever play the game, and there's so much that he signified with his play on court through the course of his fascinating basketball journey.
Allen Iverson played in the NBA for 14 seasons and was elected as an All-Star for 11 of them. He has an MVP season to his credit, as well as 3 steals titles in consecutive years from 2000 till 2003. Despite being one of the lightest and shortest to ever play the game, Iverson was a giant of the game and often put all-time greats a whole foot bigger than him to shame.
In most people's eyes, Iverson is, the greatest pound-for-pound player in basketball history. He is the only player at his size (5'11", 160 pounds) to ever win the MVP award. The next smallest player to win the award is Stephen Curry, who has about 30 pounds and 3-4 inches on him.
He came into the league in 1996, a time when other than Michael Jordan, the league was dominated by superstar big men like Hakeem, Barkley, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning - to name just a few - and brought forth the days of point guards dominating offenses; he often acted as both the 1 and the 2-guard in different stretches of games.
In fact, it was watching him dominate and run rings around defenses every single day that inspired the likes of Steph, Kyrie, Chris Paul, Westbrook, Wall and the other elite point guards in the league today, not to mention others like Isaiah Thomas and Nate Robinson.
If there is one Finals game that was a literal David vs Goliath battle, it was Game 1 of the 2001 NBA Finals, when The Answer willed the Sixers to a win at the Staples Center having carried them on a sore hip and a bruised elbow till that point.