NBA Equivalents To NHL Players

[Neutrinos]

I had been toying with the idea of creating this thread for a while now, and with the recent bump of the Jordan vs Gretzky thread, I thought it might be a good time for it


So who are some NBA equivalents to NHL players?


Bill Russell/Jean Beliveau
Both were leaders on the greatest dynasties in their respective sports


Shaq/Lindros
Talented big men who dominated when healthy, though both their careers leave a lot to be desired


Jordan/Lemieux

Jordan and Lemieux both dominated, retired young, returned to dominate again, retired again, then came back again

Or LeBron/Lemieux
The greatest combination of size and skill their respective leagues have ever seen


Chamberlain/Gretzky
Dominated statistically like no other players in history

Or Jordan/Gretzky
Often considered the best ever

Or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Gretzky
The all-time scoring leaders in their respective sports


Durant/Jagr
Dominant offensive stars that are just a tier below the best of the best


Iverson/Bure
Ridiculously quick players with a knack for scoring


Duncan/Lidstrom
Consistently great players who won multiple championships


Kobe/Ovechkin
Scorers who are grossly overrated by the majority of fans


It's tough to find a comparable to Orr
Perhaps Oscar Robertson? Maybe Chamberlain?

Click to read more...

 

[Normand Lacombe]

Red Auerbach/Scotty Bowman
Both won 9 championships

 

[Neutrinos]

Steve Nash/Martin St. Louis
Players on the smaller side that were late bloomers who went on to win MVP

 

[McRpro]

Shaq's career left a lot to be desired?

 

[JackSlater]

I think that Howe and Abdul-Jabbar are very comparable. Tremendous longevity, played on a dynasty, well rounded plyaers, six MVPs each, multiple scoring titles each, a combined 35 first and second team all star appearances. Both retired as the all time leading scorer in the history of their league by a big margin.

 

[rnhaas]

Shaq had a very different career than Lindros.

 

[Neutrinos]

Shaq's career left a lot to be desired?

Shaq never reached his full potential as a basketball player

He was more focused on making movies and rap music, and less on becoming the best basketball player he could be

As a result, he was overweight throughout his career and often missed games due to injury

He played 20 seasons, yet played only 1207 games

The only time he played more than 80 games in a season were his first 2 years in the league

He played 70+ games in only 7 out of his 20 seasons

In his final 18 seasons, he played in only 70+ games 5 times!


So, yes, his career left a lot to be desired

Had he dedicated himself entirely to basketball, he may very well be in contention with Jordan and LeBron as the greatest ever

As it were, he ended his career with just a single MVP award

 

[sr edler]

Iverson/Bure

Bure should have asked Trevor Kidd "how the hell can I make my teammates better by practicing?"

 

[K Fleur]

Shaq was a 3 time finals MVP... His career takes a dump on Lindros’ career.

The NBA player that I think is the best comparable to Lindros is Derrick Rose.

 

[McRpro]

Shaq never reached his full potential as a basketball player

He was more focused on making movies and rap music, and less on becoming the best basketball player he could be

As a result, he was overweight throughout his career and often missed games due to injury

He played 20 seasons, yet played only 1207 games

The only time he played more than 80 games in a season were his first 2 years in the league

He played 70+ games in only 7 out of his 20 seasons

In his final 18 seasons, he played in only 70+ games 5 times!


So, yes, his career left a lot to be desired

Had he dedicated himself entirely to basketball, he may very well be in contention with Jordan and LeBron as the greatest ever

As it were, he ended his career with just a single MVP award

This sounds more like Shaq = Lemieux. I'm not a huge NBA fan but Shaq is always listed among the very best players ever. I guess he could have been the absolute best but it's not like he was constantly injured like Lindros was and had a "What if" career like Eric.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

Shaq was a 3 time finals MVP... His career takes a dump on Lindros’ career.

The NBA player that I think is the best comparable to Lindros is Derrick Rose.

lindros' career is what shaq would call bbq chicken.

not sure rose is really the best comp either though; much less hype coming in, and his career is more of an all-or-nothing. like, he got hurt and that was the end of that. lindros had many more years of being elite, albeit missing significant time in a lot of those seasons.

once upon a time i compared lindros to chris webber. here are those posts—

you know, it's hard to not to look at how berard's, lindros', comrie's, and to a lesser degree yashin's and heatley's careers all turned out and call it karma.

watch your back cody hodgson, hockey gods are not pleased.

i was joking with the karma thing. but here's something to think about:

i like to make the comparison between lindros and shaq, because they turned pro at around the same time, had comparable possible-GOAT hype (relative to their sports' level of media coverage), and were both the most dominating physical forces we had seen in a long long time, perhaps ever (contenders would be wilt in basketball, howe in hockey). shaq also partly due to his own decisions (conditioning, rarely working to better himself and coasting on his physical gifts, openly feuding with both penny and kobe) never came through on his potential.

but you've actually brought to my mind a better comparison. because shaq is still one of the 12 greatest basketball players of all time, and maybe even as high as 8th. he won four titles and three finals MVPs. lindros doesn't come close to that. lindros, i'd compare to chris webber.

and this is what bill simmons once had to say about webber: (i'm paraphrasing)-- "webber had a great career, borderline HOF. a defining player at his position and of all time. he made $200 million over his career and was a first team all-star, MVP candidate, etc. etc. so i have my doubts whether webber regrets any of the decisions he made in the first years of his career that could have altered the course of his career, that could have given him an ideal roster to start on and may have gotten him some rings. but if there are never moments at 3:00 AM in the morning where webber can't get to sleep and is tossing and turning in his bed wondering 'what if,' and thinking about how he could have been a top 10 player of all time, then that tells us everything we need to know about chris webber."

so that's lindros too. if lindros, as you say, isn't "too worried" about how his career turned out, then that puts his quebec decision into relief: maybe hockey and winning weren't number one for him. and maybe that's why he kept playing in the NHL the way he played in the OHL and just trying to barrel through guys even though the OHL didn't have devastating hitters like stevens or kasparaitis and someone like gretzky would have spent entire off-seasons working on adapting his game for the pro level. maybe that's why lifestyle considerations trumped going to a team many many people thought had the potential to be a future dynasty (and as it turns was a powerhouse anyway).

but all that said, knowing what i think about eric lindros the man, i'd guess that the way his career turned out eats him up inside.

cliffs notes: webber wasted four prime (and healthy) years of his career on garbage washington teams after requesting a trade out of golden state, the team that drafted him and which would have been a perfect fit for his unprecedented playmaking power forward skill-set. weber later found another great team fit in sacramento, but a number of those years were marred by injury.

the other correlation: webber also came up small in the biggest situations. but he had the talent and raw ability to challenge his contemporary tim duncan as the greatest power forward of all time.

the actual simmons article: The Sports Guy: A Webb of intrigue - ESPN Page 2

 

[Big Phil]

Joe Thornton and Karl Malone? Malone is the better player at his respective sport, but I mean guys who were great players, locks for the Hall, yet never won a championship and were often considered the types who were unable to lift their teams. Or maybe Thornton and Patrick Ewing? Same reasons.

Adam Oates and John Stockton. Both supreme playmakers and seemingly happy to be the ones to sit back while others take the credit.

I figure Orr and Magic are as close as they could be. Both retired early. Both won, both were considered the best in the league while they did it (Bird was side by side with Magic of course). Lastly, both were supreme playmakers who made others around them better.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i don't think basketball has a gretzky, and hockey doesn't have a lebron, but orr would be their jordan, imo.

i think we've had this conversation many times before, but here are the obvious ones again:

howe is kareem. big, unstoppable, unfathomable longevity, scoring records, and a four year peak that everyone forgets was just about as great as anyone ever because he played for so incredibly long as a lower but still creme de la creme level.

beliveau is russell, only not quite as good. tbh, in terms of on-court impact, russell is kind of like beliveau + harvey

lidstrom is duncan. quiet, fundamental perfect, company men, greater than yzerman/david

mario is wilt. absolutely totally dominant and borderline unstoppable, gunned for stats, obsessed with that other guy who was greater than him (gretzky/russell), threatened to quit because the refs weren't taking care of him enough

i also like bobby hull and dr. j, right down to the other league thing.

to me, crosby is kobe. nobody works harder on improving himself, nobody is as obsessed with the game, neither is at the A++++ level but they have enough rings to almost pass. not the easiest guys to play with either

here's another old one: the sedins and steve nash

i used to say, in those disappointing post-2011 years when gillis was still here, that maybe there's a silver lining to losing as heartbreakingly as we did in 2011. i used to make the comparison to the crookedly reffed 2006 NBA finals, where the dallas mavs, who were up 2-0 on the miami heat in the finals, both mentally collapsed and saw the refs let dwyane wade hurl himself into defenders and gave him free throws every time he did that. rumour has always been that the league and its higher ups had a vendetta against mavs owner mark cuban. but the mavs, and their european superstar dirk nowitzki, who had often been criticized as soft and a choker, finally won their championship in 2011, in a gloriously poetic rematch against wade, the heat, and now also lebron. i never even liked the mavs but it was a beautiful moment, and incidentally exactly what i needed to see in the week of the canucks' loss to boston. good defeated evil, and a flawed but talented team, led by its flawed but honest and hardworking superstar, prevailed over a crooked league that had rigged many playoff games against it.

but that was cloud talk.

i now understand that the real analogy should be to the steve nash-era suns. out of nowhere, a guy that nobody believed in established himself as an upper echelon superstar and won back-to-back MVPs (sound familiar?) that team, while extremely talented and incredibly fun to watch, was also thought by many commentators to be not built for the playoffs. and that team, in its best shot at the title with the mavs inexplicably bounced in the first round by warriors, also fell victim to questionable officiating and the league siding against it, when robert horry clotheslined nash, and then amare stoudemire and boris diaw were both suspended for a game for basically standing up (vancouver still <3s you, stu jackson). they had won two straight to tie the series 2-2 against the spurs, who would go on to coast to the championship, destroying utah and cleveland in the last two rounds. but that game 5 without its leading scorer and best bench player (their rotation was only seven guys that night), plus their MVP hobbled, shifted the momentum and they lost in 6.

that year, GM bryan colangelo left because he couldn't work with the meddling owner anymore, and was replaced on an interim basis by coach mike d'antoni. this was followed by a comedy of errors by new GM steve kerr (of all people). some of that was incompetence (trading shawn marion for shaq's corpse); some of it was meddling ownership, which in this case was literally selling first round draft picks to other teams (goodbye, rajon rondo); but they kept being bad but not bad enough to rebuild, and kept taking on older declining guys while hemmorhaging draft picks, until one by one all of the glory years guys left or faded away. the ugly end of steve nash's career, sorry henrik and daniel.

ugh.

 

[Neutrinos]

Shaq was a 3 time finals MVP... His career takes a dump on Lindros’ career.

The NBA player that I think is the best comparable to Lindros is Derrick Rose.

It doesn't have to be about comparing their careers, it can be about the players themselves

 

[Neutrinos]

i don't think basketball has a gretzky, and hockey doesn't have a lebron, but orr would be their jordan, imo.

i think we've had this conversation many times before, but here are the obvious ones again:

howe is kareem. big, unstoppable, unfathomable longevity, scoring records, and a four year peak that everyone forgets was just about as great as anyone ever because he played for so incredibly long as a lower but still creme de la creme level.

beliveau is russell, only not quite as good. tbh, in terms of on-court impact, russell is kind of like beliveau + harvey

lidstrom is duncan. quiet, fundamental perfect, company men, greater than yzerman/david

mario is wilt. absolutely totally dominant and borderline unstoppable, gunned for stats, obsessed with that other guy who was greater than him (gretzky/russell), threatened to quit because the refs weren't taking care of him enough

i also like bobby hull and dr. j, right down to the other league thing.

to me, crosby is kobe. nobody works harder on improving himself, nobody is as obsessed with the game, neither is at the A++++ level but they have enough rings to almost pass. not the easiest guys to play with either

here's another old one: the sedins and steve nash

I think you're seriously overrating Russell

He wasn't better than Chamberlain

Russell averaged 15 points per game on 44% shooting, and owns a career PER of 18.9

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

a dance i think we've danced before

 

[Neutrinos]

a dance i think we've danced before

Playoffs per game (through age 34 when Russell retired):

Russell
16.2 points, 24.9 rebounds, 43 FG%, 19.4 PER

Chamberlain
25.1 points, 25.1 rebounds, 52 FG%, 24.1 PER

 

[canucks4ever]

Not sure I agree with the Lidstrom/Duncan comparison. Duncan was the engine of the spurs teams on offense and defense, especially in the early to mid 2000's. Lidstrom's game is complementary by nature. Duncan crushes lidstrom in MVP voting. Mark Messier or Jaromir Jagr would be a better comparison.

Jean Beliveau is better scorer than Russell. Hakeem Olajuwon or Larry Bird would be a better comparison for Beliveau. I personally find Russell to be overrated. He is ranked high due to accomplishments in his own era. I would easily take Duncan or Olajuwon on my team over him easily.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

i think anyone who wants to map an offense/defense binary from hockey onto basketball, or vice-versa, really misses the point... about both sports. there has to be a better way to measure impact or compare congruencies between them than splitting each sport into two functions then adding them up.

Playoffs per game (through age 34 when Russell retired):

Russell
16.2 points, 24.9 rebounds, 43 FG%, 19.4 PER

Chamberlain
25.1 points, 25.1 rebounds, 52 FG%, 24.1 PER

i don't really see the point in having a statistical discussion about a player whose greatness everyone agrees can't be measured statistically

 

[MadLuke]

Looking how high O'Neal appear on those all time list (top 10 all time in points, Lindros is out of the top 100 because of is injuries):

NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Points | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Win Shares | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Win Shares Per 48 Minutes | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Value Over Replacement Player | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Points | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Value Over Replacement Player | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating | Basketball-Reference.com

Put it in a totally difference place than a Lindros imo, more like a Lemieux.

 

[Neutrinos]

i don't really see the point in having a statistical discussion about a player whose greatness everyone agrees can't be measured statistically

I don't really see the point in omitting statistics from the discussion about a player when statistics are effectively used to determine the greatness of every other player

 

[Neutrinos]

Looking how high O'Neal appear on those all time list (top 10 all time in points, Lindros is out of the top 100 because of is injuries):

NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Points | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Win Shares | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Win Shares Per 48 Minutes | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Leaders and Records for Value Over Replacement Player | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Points | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Value Over Replacement Player | Basketball-Reference.com
NBA & ABA Career Playoff Leaders and Records for Player Efficiency Rating | Basketball-Reference.com

Put it in a totally difference place than a Lindros imo, more like a Lemieux.

Again, it doesn't have to be solely based on their respective careers. The comparison can be entirely about the players themselves

Shaq and Lindros were both supremely talented bigmen who would bully their competition

Lemieux was never a physical player

 

[JackSlater]

I like the Lindros and O'Neal comparison. Yes, Lindros went through the concussion issues and prematurely declined, but there are some obvious stylistic comparisons and both players struggled with health issues and never reached their full potential, even in O'Neal's case. The comparison is especially great through their first seven seasons. Each forced a trade, led his league in scoring (basically) once, made a trip to the finals and got roundly beaten, was the intimidating physical specimen in the league, was named to a historicially significant list (THN top 100 players, NBA top 50 players) after playing for only a few years, had a greater number of unhealthy seasons than healthy seasons. As players they are very similar, but career wise everything came together for O'Neal in 2000 (healthy, wins scoring title/MVP/finals MVP/championship) and for the next few years he was the best player in the NBA. A healthy Lindros would probably have been the best player in the NHL in the early 2000s, but a healthy Lindros didn't exist at that point.

 

[canucks4ever]

The more I think about it, Tim Duncan and Mark Messier are similar. Both were very good scorers, but never the best. Both won 2 mvps, they are both good on defense and they have winning legacies. Lidstrom does not make sense, it has never been his responsibility at any point in his career to run the offense and have points created through him, he is a complementary player.

The only difference is Duncan is probably a little bit higher in his sport than Messier, but I like the similarities. Jagr just doesn't present the winning legacy that Duncan has.

 

[Neutrinos]

The more I think about it, Tim Duncan and Mark Messier are similar. Both were very good scorers, but never the best. Both won 2 mvps, they are both good on defense and they have winning legacies. Lidstrom does not make sense, it has never been his responsibility at any point in his career to run the offense and have points created through him, he is a complementary player.

The only difference is Duncan is probably a little bit higher in his sport than Messier, but I like the similarities. Jagr just doesn't present the winning legacy that Duncan has.

Duncan wasn't an asshole when he played though. He wasn't a physical player either

Both Lidstorm and Duncan were known for their gentlemanly play

Perhaps a better comparison for Messier might be Moses Malone