Hakeem, David Robinson, Wilt, and Kareem were the best offensive and defensive players on their team. How can you compare Russell to them, when he was usually the third offensive option on his team? Which means that he didn't draw the double teams that those guys did and yet still put up far worse shooting %s.

Russell shot 44% for his career and never had a season in which he shot over 50%. Those numbers are not good for a center. In 13 seasons, he never led his team in scoring, and usually wasn't even the 2nd leading scorer on the team. He averaged 56% from the FT line for his career!

In Russell's best season he averaged 19 pts a game and shot 45% from the field. That would be considered a bad season for most of the great centers (Wilt, Jabbar, Shaq, Robinson, Olajuwon, Duncan, Ewing, etc). Russell and Chamberlain both played in an era in which teams averaged far more possessions per game than todays game (this led to their inflated rebounding numbers and Wilts inflated pts per game).

Russell's poor offensive numbers look even worse when considering that he had even more possessions per game to put up better numbers. Luckily he played with multiple HOF teamates and so he didn't need to score, but the reality is as great as he was defensively he was a very limited offensive player.

How can the best center of all time, be someone that you won't pass the ball to at the end of games because he can't shoot foul shots, you have 2 other better offensive options on your team and even if he did get the ball in the post the odds are that he will make it less than half the time?

I would love to see any evidence that Russell is as good as people make him out to be. All people ever point out is his championships, which is only a valid point for those who don't understand that bball is a team sport. Russell was a excellent player on by far the best team. That doesn't make him the best player in the league.

Here are additional statistics showing that Russell overall played with far more talented teamates than his peers and shows how he was statistically dominated by Wilt head to head, despite that fact that Wilt was double and triple teamed and Russell was never double teamed.

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=12024787

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=12021039