Shaquille O'Neal is furious about only being ranked 10th in a list of the top ten players of all time.
The 2000 MVP-turned-broadcaster is equally aggrieved that long-time Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, with whom he won three consecutive NBA championships, is just one place higher than him in ninth place. ESPN published the ranking, beginning in 2020, after having their "expert panel" pick a winner from thousands of matchups. Career value and peak performance were used as ranking factors.
Directly above Bryant on the list is two-time MVP Tim Duncan. He won five championships with the San Antonio Spurs during a 19-year stay with the franchise.
In seventh is Larry Bird, who won three championships with the Boston Celtics during the 1980s and was also the league's MVP for three consecutive seasons during that decade, a feat the player directly above him on the list also achieved. Wilt Chamberlain. He is a four-time MVP and led the Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers to championships during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Ahead of those two is the only other player to win three straight MVPs: Magic Johnson. He won five championships with the Lakers during their Showtime era in the 1980s while enjoying an on-court rivalry with Bird.
Bill Russell takes fourth place as the winningest NBA player of all time. He has 11 championships to his name.
The former Celtics center was named league MVP five times in the 1950s and 1960s. Russell has his number six retired by all 30 teams in the NBA.
Third place goes to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a six-time champion and six-time MVP with the Milwaukee Bucks and the Lakers in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the all-time NBA leading scorer before LeBron James broke that record during the 2022/23 season. With his four championships across the Miami Heat, Cleveland Cavaliers and Lakers, James sits second behind Michael Jordan, who won six rings with the Chicago Bulls during the 1990s.
O'Neal is not in agreement. "Y’all agree with this? I DON’T... KOBE #9 and me #10??? Hell to the nawwww," he tweeted.
He is not the only former player to take umbrage with these rankings. In February 2022, now-TNT studio analyst Jamal Crawford tweeted: "ESPN... Ima let you finish, buttt we don’t respect any list Kobe isn’t top five…"
The absence of Hakeem Olajuwon, who led the Houston Rockets to back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995, and four-time champion with the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry, are two notable omissions from the list. Naming his all-time top five in conversation with the NBA in March, O'Neal added another name to that list.
Julius Erving, who won three ABA/NBA championships with the Sixers, made his top five. So to did Bryant, with Johnson and Russell making way from the ESPN edition.
