When you write an NBA blog, content is never far from your mind. I spend an inordinate amount of time cruising around in my car, running errands or driving to work, thinking about this league and all the machinations that go into it. During the summer time when games are in recess, the history of the NBA and the Portland Trail Blazers preoccupies much of my musing.
Several times before we’ve done some version of Trail Blazers All-Time teams. We’ve run down the Top 100 players to suit up for the franchise, drafted 12-man rosters from Blazers history, and more.
This week, as I was driving around, I wondered what would happen if we cast the net wider. I challenged myself to come up with a really, really good NBA starting five with no limits, drawing from all the players who have ever played the game. As always, the devil’s in the details, so here are the conventions I followed:
* The best version of each player would suit up. Career averages matter too, but whatever a player’s peak was, that’s basically the incaration we’d get.
* We’re looking for an actual, functional, winning starting five. The lineup needs to make sense and work together.
* Along those lines, I want to avoid spamming with the five best players ever. Anybody could do that. We’re not looking for a Mount Rushmore +1 here. If you automatically start with the two highest candidates for GOAT, you might be kind of cheating. If you can justify them together, sure! But we want some thought behind this.
* You can position-wiggle a little, but basically players should line up at the position they actually played in the league.
With that said, here is the starting five I came up with:
My rationale was simple. I wanted rangy players with excellent defensive chops at every position but point guard. I debated long and hard about my PG, but I figured the best shooter in the history of the game would be a good choice to balance a couple of my players who didn’t shoot long-range. Steph doesn’t have to run the offense alone. Three of the four players next to him can also initiate. Hakeem and KG are a brilliant duo at the big positions, able to play inside or outside on offense, covering the floor and bringing all-world defense. I almost picked Scottie Pippen instead of Kawhi at small forward but peak Kawhi was just as good of a defender and his shooting numbers are better than Scottie’s.
I’m pretty sure if I ran this team out, they’d intimidate a lot of opponents. But the point of the exercise is to throw the question to all of you. If you were to craft an all-time NBA five-man unit, with no limits other than the general guidelines above, who would your starting five be? How many different excellent teams can we come up with? Have you got a lineup that can beat mine? Give us your team and reasoning in the comments section below!
See More:
* [Portland Trail Blazers Discussion](/trail-blazers-discussion-game-threads)