So why isn’t Jordan the greatest?

What is the answer to the great mystery?

Last Monday’s piece, a review of long-time ESPN statistician Elliott Kalb’s book "Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball" elicited quite a response from readers of this column. Aside from commenting on the heresy that Kalb — perhaps the foremost authority on NBA data in the world, foisted—many were guessing whom his greatest player in the history of basketball was.

So who is the greatest basketball player in the world, statistically and otherwise?

According to Kalb, Shaquille O’Neal is the greatest player in the history of the game. To begin with, Kalb says Shaq has already outscored all but two dozen or so of the players in the history of the game. The qualifier being scoring or winning, Kalb stresses that O’Neal has won more than Wilt Chamberlain, and almost as much as Bill Russell or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a league that has almost twice as many teams as previous eras.

On top of all that, Kalb says that Shaq entered the league with unprecedented hype such as no other player has faced before. Kalb also illustrates how the Los Angeles Lakers center has slayed the other great centers who were his main rivals: Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Patrick Ewing. Among the four of them, they have divided sixteen of the last seventeen MVP selections in the NBA.

In addition, it has only been his poor free throw shooting that has kept him from winning five or six more scoring titles. But he also points out how, in the 1994 scoring race, David Robinson was helped in his very last game by not only his San Antonio Spurs teammates and competing Los Angeles Clippers. Robinson scored 71 points in his last game to secure the scoring crown, even if it was almost 20 points more than he had ever scored in a game before or since.

O’Neal has also been at or near the top in terms of field goal percentage, meaning he is virtually unstoppable. In fact, he has been the NBA’s field goal percentage leader since 1998, with a full 33 percent of his field goals coming via slam dunks, as computed by Harvey Pollack, author of the annual Statistical yearbook.

Shaq’s numbers also go up during the post-season, according to Kalb. In all his 19 Finals games, he has averaged 34.2 points per game, second only to Rick Barry’s 36.3. And he has taken the criticism even when it’s his teammates who screw up in crucial games, particularly Robert Horry’s disappearance in the last finals against the San Antonio Spurs.

Simply put, the book stresses that Shaquille is scoring in an era when everyone else’s scoring is going down or disappearing.

So what about Michael Jordan?

Kalb says that O’Neal of the early 2000s is much farther ahead of the league’s second-best player than Jordan was in the 1990’s. But he adds that that was one of the main reasons why Jordan was such a treat to watch: because there was a chance he would lose. And Kalb makes it a point that Jordan also gave up five years of his career by retiring twice. That would have made all the difference in the world. In Kalb’s mind, it drops Jordan to number three, behind Wilt Chamberlain and just before Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

What do you think?

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Incidentally, I would like to call the attention of the city government of Makati to the boorish behavior of one of their managers of the Makati Coliseum. As we were shooting this week’s episode of The Basketball Show (for a feature on the PBL’s applicants camp which was also going on) this fellow started berating us for not asking permission, even though we have an outstanding relationship with the PBL, the entity using the gym at the time.

We had already been shooting for more than two hours. He then violently yanked the plug from one of our expensive broadcast lights, and tossed it aside, causing damage to our property. And he had the temerity to do that and yell at our crew, including yours truly, even after we had said we were leaving.

I don’t know what Mayor Jejomar Binay’s qualifications are for his venue managers, but this fellow, identified by the Makati Coliseum security guard as a certain "Ador" was incredibly rude, and will only damage the good mayor’s reputation. By all rights, he should be punished.

If I weren’t a civilized fellow, I’d have punched his lights out. Then again, with those kinds of manners, he isn’t worth it.

Don’t worry; none of this will be on The Basketball Show today at 4 p.m. over IBC-13. We are a wholesome program.