#37 NBA Player Of All-Time According to InsideHoops

[Suckafree]

If we were to make an all time Celtics starting lineup, who starts at the 4??

Edit: assuming russell starts at 5

[crisoner]

[FONT="Arial Black"][COLOR="Purple"]BIG GAME JAMES WORTHY[/COLOR][/FONT]



[LIST][*]3

[Boston C's]

iverson at 36 is a joke...this list is failing because of the lack of knowledge of the older era...I personally wouldn't have iverson in my top 50

[colts19]

Bill Walton gets my vote.

It's a joke that a chucker like AI is ahead of players like Walton, Cowens, E. Hayes, B. Mcadoo, K. Mchale and many others.
AI wouldn't be in my top 75.

[MasterDurant24]

Bill Walton gets my vote.

It's a joke that a chucker like AI is ahead of players like Walton, Cowens, E. Hayes, B. Mcadoo, K. Mchale and many others.
AI wouldn't be in my top 75.

I wouldn't have AI this high either but I bet you can't name 25 players better than him that haven't already been on this list.

[Kblaze8855]

Elvin Hayes was taking 25-27 shots a game and shooting 42-44% at the top of his game...as a power forward....taking 27 shots to score 29 points on .428 shooting...in his prime...but AI is a chucker.

[G.O.A.T]

Elvin Hayes was never an MVP and I dont buy that anyone from the time feels he was the Bullets leader. Feels like a 30 years later assumption based on numbers. You actually see any of those finals? Ive seen like...a game and a half. Unseld was the MVP of what I saw and if he wasnt it was a guard I wanna say was Dandridge.

Id like to know what you saw to state otherwise as if something convinced you the people watching it and voting were wrong.

Unseld was the finals MVP, he was the consensus leader of that franchise throughout the decade and it was Bobby Dandridge who played the best during the '78 Finals. In fact he was the CBS Finals MVP choice. Dandridge continued his high level of play the next season having what was probably his greatest season posting 20-5-6 on 50/83% shooting and being nmed 2nd team all-NBA, first team All-Defense and finishing fifth in the MVP voting behind Kareem, Moses, George Gervin and teammate Elvin Hayes. Dandridge was however voted his teams MVP at the end of the season by the players and coaches.

As I noted once before, Unseld and Hayes came into the league together in 1968 as the 2nd and 1st pick of the draft. Hayes won the scoring title but Unseld got the MVP and ROTY. Upon voicing his frustration over not winning the awards Unseld got despite better numbers he finally reconciled. "well, I got the title that really matters" (the scoring title)

[Deuce Bigalow]

Elvin Hayes was taking 25-27 shots a game and shooting 42-44% at the top of his game...as a power forward....taking 27 shots to score 29 points on .428 shooting...in his prime...but AI is a chucker.

1978 NBA Playoffs - Elvin Hayes: 21.8 PPG | 13.3 RPG | 2.0 APG | 1.5 SPG | 2.5 BPG | 49.1% FG
1978 NBA Champions: Washington Bullets

bold - led team

[Kblaze8855]

Oh so...im not the only one who has google? I had been assuming only I had access to such information.

Did it by chance tell you why that makes him the finals MVP when the people who watched it felt he wasnt?

Because my google isnt giving me that information.

[Freedom Kid7]

Iverson over Kidd? I'm not one of those guys that gets pissed off over these things, but Iverson over Schayes, Kidd, Cowens, etc etc? What are you guys thinking?

I'm gonna vote for Cowens here.

[Deuce Bigalow]

It's just weird that Hayes wasn't considered the better player while leading the team in those areas. Tell me what Unseld did so good?

[Kblaze8855]

Games I watched he was getting key rebounds, setting absurd screens to get guards open, scoring when he had to, passing well(and not just his legendary outlet passes) and protecting the basket well at his size. Im sure that them winning the ring with Hayes not even playing didnt help either.

Elvin Hayes is no doubt underrated because people barely know he existed. But everything you read about him suggests he wasnt liked by anyone and wasnt all that respected either. when you have longtime coaches and writers who watched his entire career saying:



"He could do three things — rebound, block shots, and shoot a high percentage on turnaround jumpers from the left box. He couldn't pass, handle, play honest defense, or hit a clutch shot to get into heaven. In addition, he paid no attention to the basketball alphabet of Xs and Os. All he cared about was "me-ball-basket." "



who am I gonna listen to? You? Because you have google? What I watched....hayes wasnt the best on the floor. Those who watched it all....didnt think eh was either. Seems everyone says Unseld or Dandridge.

But you know better because of basketball reference?

Id just like to know what you saw that I didnt.

[Legends66NBA7]

Since there is an Unseld vs Hayes debate going on, thought I would drop these 2 articles about the 2 and their lone title team:

http://www.truthaboutit.net/2009/09/...es-unseld.html

http://www.examiner.com/article/32-y...a-championship

Long, but really good reads.

[INDI]

cowens

[Kblaze8855]

Good links there. And really.....

My god.......

When Abe Pollin led the NBA’s first venture into China in the summer of 1979, not every member of the Washington Bullets shared the team owner’s enthusiasm. As players and their wives poured off a bus to take in the splendor of the Great Wall, Elvin Hayes and Dave Corzine refused to budge.
Pollin peered back and asked Hayes if he was coming. “I’ve seen a big wall before, Mr. Pollin,” Hayes told him. Wes Unseld tried to persuade Hayes by telling him the wall was the only man-made structure that can be seen from outer space. To which Hayes responded, “I’m never going into outer space.”
Pollin was so infuriated afterward he swore that he’d never take his team on another trip. “One of the wonders of the world,” Pollin said recently in a telephone interview, “and they didn’t get out of the bus.”

Hayes once told Tex Winter, “I’m an all-star. Don’t expect me to pass. It’s like asking Babe Ruth to bunt.”

Hayes, who reinforced his reputation as basketball’s quintessential choker in Game 1 by hiding in the fourth quarter while being terrorized by Silas, accepted media criticism with E-quanimity. “I ain’t talkin’ to no press,” he said. “All that stuff is history. You want history, you can go to the library.”

“Take Me Out Coach”
The famed title run wasn’t the first time Hayes was accused of being a choker. In the late 60s, but mostly early 70s, the New York Knicks and the Bullets had a heated rivalry. A particular first round series in April of 1974 that went seven games stands out to many.
The stats will say that Hayes averaged 25.9 points, 15.9 rebounds and three assists on .531 from the field against the Knicks. But the stats won’t tell you is that some guy named John Gianelli held one of the greatest players in NBA history in check during the deciding game of a hotly contested series. In the seventh game, Hayes only scored 12 points on 5-15 from the field. Gianelli, only 23 years-old at the time, was allowed to score 12 points and snag 15 rebounds, 11 of them offensive. The Knicks took game seven 91-81.
Now, you don’t necessarily have to throw around the word ‘choke’, there wouldn’t have been a seventh game without Hayes. Then again, when your best player simply does not show up in such an important game, and elects to retract into a shell instead of using his talents in other ways, something is clearly amiss.
Gianelli thought Hayes was injured because he kept asking out of the game. Afterward, Hayes told reporters that he wanted to go to the bench because he wasn’t playing well. Giving up on your teammates, your coach, and the fans like that is unacceptable.

Even talked shit on Unseld:

“Our guards get criticized for not playing defense, our forwards for not scoring, but I never hear a word about our center. Mitch Kupchak can shoot. He ought to play more.”

Wes trying to keep it civil....

“I do my talking to other players face-to-face, not through the press. I don’t dwell within Elvin. I don’t know what he’s thinking and I don’t care. The person I know is the basketball player, and right now he is one of the best in the league. What he’s done verifies that. We’ve had more than our share of run-ins off the court. But when he’s on the court he’s a professional and that’s all that matters.”