Rating the Lakers and Celtics Greats
Drawing on research compiled by Basketball Reference, Celticsvlakers.com presents rankings for the all-time greats in the following categories: FG% (Field Goal Percentage); Free Throw Percentage (FT%); Rebounds Per Game (RPG); Assists Per Game (APG); and Points Per Game (PPG). It also presents advanced APBRmetrics (Association for Professional Basketball Research) where available including Player Efficiency Rating (PER); True Shooting Percentage (TS%); Total Rebound Percentage (TRB%); Assist Percentage (AST%); Offensive Rating (ORtg); Defensive Rating (DRtg); and career Win Shares (WS). (Click here for a glossary of APBRmetrics).
A player’s rank on the NBA career list is noted in parentheses after his stat. The Lakers’ Elgin Baylor ranks fourth for PPG, for example, and his listing appears as follows: Baylor (LA) 27.38 (4). The Celtics’ Larry Bird ranks fifteenth on the career list for WS, and his listing appears as follows: Bird (BOS) 144.81 (15).
Generally speaking, Basketball Reference ranks the top 250 players in each category; not all of the greats are included in every list. Unfortunately, important APBRmetrics are missing for older players such as Cousy, Russell, Sharman, Baylor, and West. For now basketball has no equivalent to The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract with its magisterial, or at least plausible, rankings of the great players at each position.
FG%
Abdul-Jabbar (LA) .5595 (10)
McHale (BOS) .5538 (11)
Worthy (LA) .5209 (39)
Johnson (LA) .5197 (42)
Bird (BOS) .4956 (122)
West (LA) .4737 (239)
FT%
Bird (BOS) .8857 (10)
Sharman (BOS) .8831 (11)
Johnson (LA) .8429 (44)
West (LA) .8135 (124)
Cousy (BOS) .8033 (160)
McHale (BOS) .7980 (177)
RPG
Russell (BOS) 22.45 (2)
Baylor (LA) 13.55 (9)
Abdul-Jabbar (LA) 11.18 (23)
Bird (BOS) 10.00 (43)
McHale (BOS) 7.33 (130)
Johnson (LA) 7.24 (134)
West (LA) 5.76 (186)
APG
Johnson (LA) 11.19 (1)
Cousy (BOS) 7.53 (15)
West (LA) 6.69 (30)
Bird (BOS) 6.35 (38)
Baylor (LA) 4.31 (126)
Russell (BOS) 4.26 (129)
Abdul-Jabbar (LA) 3.63 (174)
Worthy (LA) 3.01 (212)
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