The way we’ve been taught to identify historical greatness in sports and handle inter-era player comparisons is to rely exclusively on “performance relative to peers” as the standard-bearer metric. In a vacuum, that would make for a sound approach. However, we don’t live in a vacuum. While it can be a useful tool in certain instances, some leagues are so competitively compromised that we simply cannot take player achievements at face value. To take this concept to the extreme, let’s walk through a thought-experiment that results in Brian Scalabrine–a career NBA benchwarmer–being crowned the greatest basketball player of all-time. If, in 2001, Scalabrine opted to start a two-team basketball league in the greater Boston area–with local YMCA members filling out the rosters–instead of embarking on his NBA career, then his basketball legacy could’ve been very different. He’d be working on a two-decade streak of consecutive regular season and finals MVPs, 1st-team all-league selections, and defensive player of the year awards. If we’re simply using “performance relative to peers” to evaluate greatness, then YMCA Scalabrine would find himself listed among the greatest basketball players of all-time. This idea is silly, of course. Scalabrine averaged 3.1 points per game over an 11-year NBA career. We know where he stands in the all-time pecking order of professional basketball players, and it’s not particularly high. The obvious counter to this thought-experiment is to point out that Scalabrine’s hypothetical YMCA league would not include the best players in the world and the skill level and size of the players it did include would be lacking, therefore muting the meaning of his dominance. Exactly! This is very relevant to how we need to evaluate different eras in NBA history.

George Mikan (and, to slightly lesser extents, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell)—like hypothetical YMCA Scalabrine—dominated a competitively compromised league. NBA basketball in the late 40s and 50s resembled more a YMCA league than the product we see on the court today. For starters, the average height in the NBA during Mikan’s rookie season of 1948 was 6’3. At 6’10, Mikan was taller than every player in the league. The rules at the time did not account for players of Mikan’s height. The three-second lane was only six-feet wide and there was no shot-clock. This meant Mikan could take as long as he wanted to establish his position directly in front of the basket before receiving an entry pass over the heads of much shorter players. To suggest Shaquille O’Neal would’ve benefited from Mikan’s NBA would be a massive understatement. Mikan’s skill is often credited for forcing NBA rule changes. A more accurate statement would be to say that Mikan’s height was responsible for NBA rule changes. Height is not a skill, nor is a .404 career shooting percentage (yuck!). In an era that lacked the modern focus on skill development, being tall was the greatest predictor of success. In today’s NBA, being tall is merely a prerequisite for even being in the league.

Moreover, the NBA’s ban—and subsequent quotas—on black players watered-down the quality of the league not only during Mikan’s career but also well into the 70s. Basketball was popular in the black community in the 40s and 50s, and it produced several talented players who were every bit as talented as those who were playing in the NBA. The all-black Harlem Globetrotters defeated Mikan’s NBA Champion Minneapolis Lakers teams in exhibition games two years in a row in 1948 and 1949. By exclusively playing against white players, Mikan was able to dominate a league missing a significant portion of the best talent in America. Not only did Mikan’s NBA not include black players, but the player pool was further limited by the fact that interest in the sport was regional, and basketball wasn’t lucrative enough to attract heavy interest as a profession. This was all a far cry from the player pool we see today fueled by global interest and exorbitant salaries.  

None of this was Mikan’s fault, of course. He played the cards he was dealt, and he did it better than his peers. He was the best player in the NBA for five consecutive seasons. However, using Mikan’s performance relative to his peers is insufficient in determining his place in NBA history. He was seven inches taller than his average competitor. The league rules had not been made to account for tall people. Black players were not allowed to play in the NBA. Low pay and regional interest contributed to a tiny pool of talent to draw from. One of the most important tasks when creating a top-100 list is to establish a way to rate players from different eras against each other. The easiest way to do this is to use “performance relative to peers.” However, there are limitations to such an approach. Without acknowledging these limitations, George Mikan would have to be considered one of the five greatest basketball players of all-time, and Brian Scalabrine would be at the YMCA of Greater Boston right now posting up a 5’4, 57-year old MIT professor with heel spurs and a pacemaker.