The 5 tiers of top 20 NBA players

[GimmeThat]

a 5 on 5 sport with a roster size of 12-15, and there's 5 tiers of the top 20 players

time to take away Wilt's ring for being a defensive anchor

[TheCorporation]

God Tier

LeBron

GOAT tier

MJ
Kareem

Close to GOAT tier

Russell
Wilt
Duncan
Magic
Bird
Hakeem
Kobe

All time great tier

KD
Curry
Wade
KG
Dirk
Oscar
West
Barkley
Malone
Nash
Robinson
West
Pippen
IT

Bingo

[Real14]

Lebron is tier 5 and Kobe is tier 2

[TheCorporation]

Lebron is tier 5 and Kobe is tier 2

Knicks are tier...73?

[72-10]

Steals doesn't necessarily equate to good defense. Iverson racked up a lot of steals and he was a terrible defense player. He got a lot of steals because he was always jumping into passing lanes whether it was a good idea or not and most of the time he was putting the team defense off balance and hurting them overall. As far as Magic, I just have to go by what I've heard. I wasn't born till 84 so I didn't really start paying attention to basketball till 94, but common thought seems to be that he wasn't much of a defensive player so he couldn't have been getting these steals from great defense. Chris Paul is a good example of a player who gets a lot of steals and in a good way. He has never been a player who just jumps into passing lanes nonstop, but gets a lot of his steals off careless ball handling by opposing players. He will only ever jump into a passing lane if knows the pass is going there and doesn't just because he thinks he can get a steal.

They say Alvin Robertson was often guilty of this as well; gambling on defense and jumping the passing lanes for the sake of the steal and thereby throwing his team's defense off when he missed.