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The conversation about who the greatest players of all time are really doesn’t need much instigation to get started. Fans of the Los Angeles Lakers will quickly talk about Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson, Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as some of the best players of all time. Fans of the Boston Celtics run off a list of ring-laden players including Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Bob Cousy, Larry Bird and Paul Pierce. Michael Jordan will come up immediately, as will players like Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Wilt Chamberlain, David Robinson and Isiah Thomas.

All of those players have one thing in common, of course, and that is that they have all been NBA champions, many of them more than once. A championship ring is the initial qualifier when talking about the greatest players of all time, but it is not the only qualifier. When the NBA announced its Top 50 Players of All Time 41 of those players had rings, so clearly the championships weighed heavily in the decisions by the panel of team personnel, former players and media members who voted for the Top 50.

Still, there were nine players who never won a championship who qualified for the list. John Stockton is the NBA’s all-time assist leader, Patrick Ewing was one of the most dominant centers of his time and defined the New York Knicks as a franchise, and Charles Barkley was one of the most dynamic rebounders in the game, and many of his teams were serious contenders. If we’re to include the arguments employed by those who chose the Top 50, career accomplishments come into the discussion.

Last week Scottie Pippen opened up a different level of discussion when he made the following comments:

"Michael Jordan is probably the greatest scorer to play the game, but I may go as far as to say LeBron James may be the greatest player to ever play the game because he is so potent offensively that not only can he score at will but he keeps everybody involved."

As you can imagine, the reaction by NBA fans outside of Miami (and in Chicago, particularly) was to blow the Coke they were drinking out of their noses and fall out of their chairs.

"WOW!" exclaimed former Chicago Bull Horace Grant, who played with both Pippen and Jordan. "Pip is my man and you know we will always be close, but I totally disagree. LeBron is gonna be one of the top players to ever play the game but Michael Jeffrey Jordan, who we bump heads at times, is, I think, in my era the best basketball player to ever play the game. … I’m kinda at a loss of words cause Michael Jordan, I mean, when you win numerous MVPs and you’ve taken the team to six championships and probably could have been eight if he didn’t retire those two years. You know MVPs and the playoffs and the championships, I mean man, he made us better, he made believe me, him, myself, Scottie, BJ, even Bill Cartwright who I still love, he made us better players. He gave us that confidence, but first we had to earn his trust and once we earned his trust, man, you know you saw championship after championship and as far as talent wise, that’s no, man. Who do you want to take that last shot when three seconds are left in the game? Who do you want the ball in their hands the last 3 seconds? He proved that he can score the last few seconds of a ball game or if he gets double-teamed that Steve Kerr or John Paxson are right there so you know I love Scottie, but I totally disagree."

Before people completely lose their minds, though, let’s look carefully at Pippen’s comment. He used the word "may" twice, and that’s important. He’s not saying LeBron James is currently better than Jordan or the best player to ever play the game. He’s saying that LeBron may, one day, be looked upon as better than Michael.

And maybe he will. If, ten years from now, we look back and LeBron has won seven NBA championships, there’s a conversation to be had about whether or not he’s better than Jordan, just as Lakers fans point to Kobe Bryant’s five rings and want to have the same conversation. There is absolutely no chance that either Kobe or LeBron will ever impact the game the way Michael did on and off the court, but can they put themselves into the discussion about best to ever play the game? They absolutely can.

To have that conversation about LeBron and Jordan today, however, is absolutely ridiculous. Just as it would be ridiculous to say Dwight Howard is a better player than Hakeem Olajuwon or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or to say that Derrick Rose is better than Magic Johnson or John Stockton. Dwight is an amazing player and easily the best center in the NBA today, but to suggest that he’s better than some of the ring-laden all-time greats is to either disrespect the past or demonstrate a lack of knowledge of the history of the game.

Want to talk about the greatest players of all time? Let’s start with championship rings and then move on to career accomplishments. Players like LeBron, Dwight and Derrick still have a lot to accomplish, and let’s give them a chance to accomplish those things before we mention them in the same breath with players who have defined the NBA for generations.

Nowitzki, Kidd Bat For Stevenson

For a team to get to the NBA Finals there have to be a lot of heroes, a lot of unexpected storylines. You know who a team’s primary players are, but those guys can’t do it alone. It’s too easy to anticipate a star player, even if you can’t completely stop them. In the case of the Dallas Mavericks, one of those unexpected stories has been DeShawn Stevenson, who was in and out of the lineup all season but emerged as a full-time starter once the playoffs rolled around. The truth is, the Mavericks brain trust expected that promising young guard Roddy Beaubois would be the starting shooting guard come playoff time, but that never panned out.

"I just relied on my experience of being in the NBA, being in bad situations and playing and not playing," Stevenson says of how he stayed ready. "I think when you get older you understand the sport and the NBA and you hear people say they’re going to come back and they don’t always come back. No disrespect to Robby, but the chance came back to me and I was ready for it and that’s the way life is. … It was hard because when I was playing I was doing well, and I had to go from that to coming to the game and being told I wasn’t going to play. That was hard to deal with, but there were no hard feelings towards the coach, the franchise. I knew they had a lot of stock in Roddy and they wanted him to become who they wanted him to be."

Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle is a very instinctive coach, especially when it comes to his starting lineup. He and his staff rely heavily on stats and match-up analysis, but he also has a tendency to do the unexpected. To his credit, he will also listen to his veterans, and when Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki went to owner Mark Cuban and said they thought Stevenson should be the starting two, Carlisle made him the starting two.

"That was a shocker," Stevenson admits. "I didn’t even know. I think J-Kidd and Dirk went in there and fought for me to be in the starting lineup and that was a shocker. I was thinking that the playoffs started in three days and I got thrown in the last game. It just lets you know how professional I was, that I came to work every day and didn’t pout. They fought for me earlier in the season, but then they went to Mark right before the end of the season. I don’t think I was going to be in the starting lineup for the playoffs if it weren’t for that."

Stevenson has always been a fighter defensively, but getting that vote of confidence from his team’s franchise players inspired him to work even harder to justify their faith.

"That’s why, when you see me out there, I’m guarding different positions, I’m focused on knocking down the open three like I do, and I don’t want to let those guys down. When you’ve got two Hall-of-Famers going to bat for you, that means something. To make it to the Finals makes is even more special."

Interestingly, the Mavericks are going to start Stevenson on LeBron James defensively, with Kidd sliding over to guard Dwyane Wade. Still, the Mavericks do a lot of switching and Stevenson will be the first line of defense against two of the league’s premier scorers.

"You know, Dwyane Wade’s a great athlete, a great scorer, but that’s what I do, play defense. I’m starting off on LeBron, and with this team we switch off on every player so I’ll have him sometimes. You just have to make him work. He’s going to get a lot of shots, he’s going to make a lot of shots, and you just have to make him work."

Of course, Stevenson is no stranger to LeBron James. His Washington Wizards lost to LeBron’s Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round three straight times before the players moved on to their current teams. There was even some bad blood between James and Stevenson, but, for DeShawn’s part, that is long past.

"That was like four years ago. It’s gone. That was a different team. They kept beating us in the first round and we were trying everything to get us past that first round. But that was a different team, different situation. I’m worried about the Mavericks and Dirk and this franchise that’s trying to win a trophy. We didn’t have anybody to guard (LeBron). That’s why they beat us three times. But this team, I think we’re well-rounded, we have a strong bench, and we support each other. I think we have more stoppers on this team than that Washington team did."

One of those stoppers is Stevenson, and that’s the role that he’s carved out for himself with the Dallas Mavericks. It’s the role that sent Jason Kidd and Dirk Nowitzki to Mark Cuban’s office to plea for their teammate, and his success in that role is a big part of why the Mavs are now preparing to compete for a championship. He won’t put up flashy offensive numbers, but if the Mavs are throwing an NBA championship parade in Dallas later this month you can bet Stevenson will have had a significant part in helping make it happen.

Presti: Thunder On Course

The Oklahoma City Thunder were widely regarded as one of the best young teams in the NBA before the start of the 2010-11 season, but few expected them to make it all the way to the Western Conference Finals just one year after making their return to postseason play. Thunder GM Sam Presti did a recent interview on The Sports Animal in OKC, and attributed his team’s surprising success to their daily work ethic and consistent approach.

"I think one thing that we learned during that year was never to underestimate our guys. Us in our building, us in our practice facility and us in our office, one of the things we’ve always prided ourselves is always just focusing on the day at hand and trying to improve. Through that season, I think a lot of our recent success was born … in the fact that the group as the whole just kept chipping away."

One thing that didn’t surprise Presti was the incredible support shown by the fledgling NBA fans in Oklahoma City.

"I’d like to be able to say it surprised me, but before moving here I had heard so many great things about this community. Moving here only confirmed that for everybody. Our fans are unbelievably supportive. They’re passionate and they’re compassionate, because I really feel as if they care about our players as people, as well. … That’s not lost on the players or the players that have played here."

Now that the season is behind him, Presti can reflect on the success he and his staff had in putting together the team. They made one of the most unexpected moves of the year when they acquired center Kendrick Perkins from the Boston Celtics at the trade deadline.

{AUTHOR_BOX}"Obviously, when you make a trade like that you’re making it for a lot of different reasons. It was a chance to not only get a player who understands the finer points of the game, but understands how high-performing teams work, especially on the defensive end. But to get someone like that, at that position, at 26 years old, was something we were very excited about. We know and we knew when we made the trade that he was on pace in his recovery but he wasn’t going to be 100 percent. You never heard Kendrick complain or make an excuse that, although he was deep into his rehab, it wasn’t completed. We like the fact that his standards never changed."

Presti also liked how resilient Russell Westbrook was despite taking a lot of criticism, particularly in the Western Conference Finals.

"You’re only human if you know (the criticism) is there. Once you get to this point in the year, there’s only a couple teams or a couple series playing and that’s part of it. One thing we really learned about Russell through that process, or one thing that was confirmed, he’s an incredibly resilient person. … I think the other thing we learned is he’s really only focused on the things that he can control. I think he deserves a lot of respect as a second-team all-NBA player, a 22-year-old point guard in the Western Conference Finals, in being self-critical."

Despite their success, the Thunder are still a young team and an evolving team. Presti is far from ready to say they’ve arrived and stand pat. He’ll continue to look for ways to improve the roster and get his team ready for what he hopes is an even deeper playoff run next year.

"Always we’re looking for ways to improve and we’ll take some time over the next weeks and months to look at all of our decisions. One of the things we’ve consistently said is we want to be a team capable of lasting success. Part of that is continuity, part of that is allowing things to take place. I think the better word is evolutional, and this team is evolving. We feel good about where we are."

That’s not to say that the Thunder have peaked, though that’s a question that comes up often in discussion of young NBA teams. When will a particular team peak? Presti isn’t prepared to put a timeline out there for his young squad.

"That’s a great question and I wish I could tell you there was a way for us to predict that. There really isn’t. One thing we know is this, the experiences that we’re accumulating over time are really helping our players in the area of recognition, recognizing the things that high-performing teams do on a consistent basis. When you have those players, I don’t necessarily think their improvement is a result of time elapsed, but it’s actually what’s been accumulated, what’s been experienced within that time."

So far, so good for the Thunder. Last year they had a strong first showing in the playoffs by pushing the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers to six games in the first round. This year they won their first two playoff series since moving from Seattle and made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals. If they can use this year’s experience to push them even further next season, the fans in OKC may have even more to celebrate next year.

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