Top Twenty White Guys All Time

[ortforshort]

They actually learn how to play basketball.

The NBA is now filled with raw talent that came through the high schools and players never really develop. The white Americans are in general much less athletic so they don't advance so much. It's that simple.

Guys like Kobe were saying this for years. Americans aren't taught the game.

It's not only basketball, it's all sports.
They take their sports seriously in Europe.
If you have talent in, say, tennis, or soccer, or basketball, you get placed into acadamies at an early age with professional instructors. You live, eat and sleep the sport from then on while getting your education. And you don't have to be a rich kid. It's available to anyone with the talent.

In the states, they treat it as a hobby with coaches who come in off the street generally with no clue how to teach the sport the right way. In a sense that's OK. For most kids it is a hobby and don't need to be taught like pros. But the ones who do, they're out of luck.

Kobe grew up in Italy. And even then, they had better basketball training than the states. Altho' the basketball guys learned how to set up proper programs from the soccer and tennis folks over there and then applied the basketball specifics that they learned from coaches in the States.

[OceanSpray]

They actually learn how to play basketball.

The NBA is now filled with raw talent that came through the high schools and players never really develop. The white Americans are in general much less athletic so they don't advance so much. It's that simple.

Guys like Kobe were saying this for years. Americans aren't taught the game.

And yet, Americans demolish international competition. By far. You sound less intelligent every breath you take.

[NYKalltheway]

Kobe grew up in Italy. And even then, they had better basketball training than the states. Altho' the basketball guys learned how to set up proper programs from the soccer and tennis folks over there and then applied the basketball specifics that they learned from coaches in the States.

Reminds me of how Larry Brown was genunely shocked by how much inferior he felt in terms of basketball knowledge to a bunch of "nobodies" in Italy. And this is one of the greatest NBA coaches of the last 20 years.
He had a youtube series on his experience where he really seemed down to earth and was ready to see something new. Arguably the age factor played role, but he was in a completely different mindset. From what I understand his players loved him though.

This is the it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9cJauv7CBs

Rick Pitino was recently in Greece. Seemed like a swell guy that loved to talk a lot, but his coaching was objectively atrocious. He thought he was coaching 19 year olds that could run all day. Similar kind of mistake he did with the Celtics all those years ago.

There's a huge disparity in treatment of coaches between the ocean and an even different idea of hierarchies. Coaches can still be expendable, but it's more likely to see a team with ambition stick with a coach than a good player.

[R. Johnson#3]

I'll give this a shot. My top 20 white guys.

1. Larry Bird
2. Drazen Petrovic
3. Tim Duncan
4. John Stockton
5. Jerry West
6. Steve Nash
7. Dirk Nowitzki
8. Luka Doncic (Could be #1 eventually)
9. Pete Maravich
10. Rick Barry
11. Kevin McHale
12. Pau Gasol
13. Nikola Jokic (Will probably end up much higher)
14. Chris Mullin
15. Marc Gasol
16. Manu Ginobili
17. Peja Stojakovic
18. Kevin Love
19. Bill Walton
20. Andrei Kirilenko

Edit: Added Ginobili

[valade16]

Yeah it’s a little weird to talk about how much more skilled and knowledgeable European players are than American ones when they get beaten by the Americans pretty much all the time, even under international rules.

[Redrum187]

Yeah it’s a little weird to talk about how much more skilled and knowledgeable European players are than American ones when they get beaten by the Americans pretty much all the time, even under international rules.

I agree when it comes to "skill" that clearly Americans are absolutely more skilled. However, I'm open to an argument about "knowledge" and in particular, "team concept" which is a part of knowledge. Michael Jordan is the most skilled and talented player of all time, but his "knowledge" of the game isn't the greatest.

Having said that, I don't know enough of European players/coaches to make any sort of argument that they are in fact more knowledgeable other than it appears they are more team-oriented players.

[Redrum187]

By the way Valade... we need to get a game going. It's boring af...

[zookman65]

Had a thread about this earlier, but now new information with both ESPN and Bleacher Report coming up with all time lists.

I got a lot of pushback on my top ten white guy list last time - most of it valid. However, I still like my list because I consider longevity, but I prefer skill.

A couple of things about the ESPN and Bleacher Report lists. They have short memories and they like cumulative stats over skills.

I stick to my rating for guys like Barry, Cousy, Walton, Doncic, Maravich and White Chocolate who I rate very high because at their best they were much better than guys like Stockton, Nash, McHale and Havlicek who had better long term careers, but who you would never pick to watch over my guys.

NBA Top Twenty All Time White Guys
ESPN BR Decade Hgt Player Team
01 01 01 80's 6-9 Larry Bird Boston
02 02 03 60's 6-3 Jerry West Los Angeles
03 11 13 70's 6-7 Rick Barry Golden State
04 12 11 70's 7-0 Bill Walton UCLA
05 10 xx 50's 6-1 Bob Cousy Boston
06 03 02 10's 7-0 Dirk Nowitzki Dallas
07 16 xx 70's 6-5 Pete Maravich LSU
08 xx xx 00's 6-1 Jason Williams Memphis
09 07 xx 50's 6-9 George Mikan Minneapolis
010 xx xx 20's 6-6 Luca Doncic Dallas

11 04 05 90's 6-1 John Stockton Utah
12 05 09 00's 6-3 Steve Nash Phoenix
13 09 06 50's 6-9 Bob Petttit St. Louis
14 13 10 10's 6-6 Manu Ginobli San Antonio
15 14 12 00's 7-0 Pau Gasol Memphis
16 06 04 70's 6-5 John Havlicek Boston
17 08 08 80's 7-0 Kevin McHale Boston
18 15 xx 70's 6-9 Dave Cowens Boston
19 xx xx 90's 6-6 Chis Mullin Golden State
20 xx 07 50's 6-9 Dolph Schayes Syracuse

White chocolate was better than Stockton or Luka at his best? White chocolate with a whopping 14 points and 8 assists per game in his best year. That's funny. Also Dirk was way better than Walton.

[NYKalltheway]

Yeah it’s a little weird to talk about how much more skilled and knowledgeable European players are than American ones when they get beaten by the Americans pretty much all the time, even under international rules.

Completely irrelevant if Americans beat them.

There's probably five times as man American basketball players than the whole of Europe and you're basically weighing them against countries that have less the talent pool than the state of Iowa or any of the Dakotas.

If you're telling me that the state of Kansas could easily beat Lithuania I'm pretty sure everyone associated with this sport will be laughing at that prediction.
It's the closest example you could get factoring in basketball players per capita, total population and generally passion for the sport as fans.

You are compounding states like Illinois, New York, California and Michigan that have probably 3 times as many basketball players than Europe and have another 50+ places (including Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands etc) where American talent is produced.

You don't have to be the most skillful or talented player to win or to be considered great. I think my posts on Lebron in other threads have exhausted this issue.

The problem Europeans have is that it doesn't make sense to pursue a career in basketball unless they really love the sport. In the USA for many it's a game of survival. When this was the case with Europe, you've had great players produced in Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania, Greece, Russia and other places (same applied in other sports with different countries involved or some of the same), with a trickle effect of the next generation taking the sport up because they had televised heroes. Now the talent pool is actually dwindling over here. But the knowledge level is still high.
Parents still send their kids to basketball academies when they are 6-10 years old, but most give that up because simultaneously they go to soccer, volleyball, swimming, tennis etc and they either burn out or stick to the one they like the most or are better at.
By the age of 10 a kid can do and recognize pretty much what qualifies as a complex play. The problem arises later on as they barely bother with these when they are teens and want to focus on range shooting and dunks etc. This is where the NBA influences a lot of them and they begin to lose their grip. Many coaches and scouts in Europe will tell you that they have to retrain players in their 20s to get them to remember post moves and off the ball moves, but things like triple threat moves and other fundamental stuff sink in by the time you're 7 and you never lose that if you don't stop playing the game.
And you don't focus on scoring until the kids are 10-12 or something, but even so, it's mostly offensive flow than how to actually get buckets. There's too much theory on that but since it's a hard sport to get into (height requirement), not that many keep going.

When European basketball was at its peak (late 80s to mid 2000s) you could see how top talent from the US struggled. The early 90s we had better US teams but at the same time the shock of the breaking up the two best teams in Europe was livid. Yugoslavia was never huge but it sure is bigger and a better talent pool than Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Bosnia by themselves. Lithuania is just a 2m strip of a former 250-300m empire. So these things did play their part but after a while they recovered since more top talent was coming up.

Greece has the same population as Illinois which is probably the #1 producer of top talent in the USA, and they beat a highly rated group of NBAers in 2006. Lithuania in the early to mid 2000s gave USA a run for their money. Argentina also, which isn't really known for their basketball as much as their soccer passion.
So while population wise you could argue that Argentina compares to California and Greece to Illinois, but the number of people playing basketball in these places is clearly not even close.

So yes, on average the European player is more knowledgeable and skillful than the Americans, but the numbers more than compensate that from the US. But it is really odd at how many Europeans come to the NBA while Europe is still flooded with American players. And it is odd for the USA, not for Europe, as these players used to stay over here but now they are chasing money in the NBA. The question the Americans need to be asking is, why are they suddenly so interested in this talent that's not even on the rise? We get a Luka Doncic player once every 20 years if we're lucky, but the rest aren't really that special. (Giannis is an exception as he's an outlier, political refugee offspring, not really comparable to other former Greek basketball players).

Here's a part of Kobe's position back then (2015)

"AAU basketball," Bryant said. "Horrible, terrible AAU basketball. It's stupid. It doesn't teach our kids how to play the game at all so you wind up having players that are big and they bring it up and they do all this fancy crap and they don't know how to post. They don't know the fundamentals of the game. It's stupid."

"You know what you can do and what you can't do. In America, it's a big problem for us because we're not teaching players how to play all-around basketball. That's why you have Pau and Marc [Gasol], and that's the reason why 90 percent of the Spurs' roster is European players, because they have more skill."

"They are just taught the game the right way at an early age. ... They're more skillful. It's something we really have to fix. We really have to address that. We have to teach our kids to play the right way."

[ortforshort]

White chocolate was better than Stockton or Luka at his best? White chocolate with a whopping 14 points and 8 assists per game in his best year. That's funny. Also Dirk was way better than Walton.

I can't defend White Chocolate. I just liked watching him play - one of my favorite players.

I can defend Walton. If he didn't get hurt, I don't think it would be close that he was the greatest center of all time - including the black guys.
Kareem was physically bigger and much better, but Walton had a much better attitude and was much more skilled. If Kareem didn't coast thru his career, he would have been the greatest, by far.
Wilt was physically imposing and an unbelievable athlete - probably the best ever, but didn't have Walton's attitude or skillset either. Wilt got psyched out easy and kept losing to Russell.
Russell was the best defensive center ever, but had no "O". He was also brilliant and a flat out winner.
Hakeem, in my mind, would be Walton's biggest competition as greatest center ever. He had it all, just like Walton, only Hakeem didn't get hurt and did it a lot longer. Sort of talking myself out of this as I write it.

It's hard to compare Dirk to Walton because of the different skill sets, but Bill was much greater at his position compared to everyone else while Dirk was not nearly the greatest at his.

[ortforshort]

Yeah it’s a little weird to talk about how much more skilled and knowledgeable European players are than American ones when they get beaten by the Americans pretty much all the time, even under international rules.

There's another comment that answers this, but you would really have to have all of Europe playing the US because of the population disparities.

That being said, no question that the black guys in the US are better than Europe. All you have to do is watch them play. It's the white guys in the US who, without the quality coaching, can't compete with anybody really - black guys in the US or white guys in Europe.

[ortforshort]

I'll give this a shot. My top 20 white guys.

1. Larry Bird
2. Drazen Petrovic
3. Tim Duncan
4. John Stockton
5. Jerry West
6. Steve Nash
7. Dirk Nowitzki
8. Luka Doncic (Could be #1 eventually)
9. Pete Maravich
10. Rick Barry
11. Kevin McHale
12. Pau Gasol
13. Nikola Jokic (Will probably end up much higher)
14. Chris Mullin
15. Marc Gasol
16. Manu Ginobili
17. Peja Stojakovic
18. Kevin Love
19. Bill Walton
20. Andrei Kirilenko

Edit: Added Ginobili

When did Duncan turn white?

[R. Johnson#3]

When did Duncan turn white?

Nobody plays basketball whiter than Tim Duncan.

[NYKalltheway]

Nobody plays basketball whiter than Tim Duncan.

What does that even mean?

[Jamiecballer]

Nobody plays basketball whiter than Tim Duncan.

Obviously you have forgotten john stockton but otherwise correct

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