Former North Carolina and Houston Rockets star Kenny Smith recently revealed his NBA all-time players list and much to everyone's surprise, didn't include Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James in his Top 5. In fact, James barely made Smith's Top 10.
Smith, who said he'd ranked the late Kobe Bryant at No. 11 all-time, had this to say about James, who he believes is taking advantage offensively during a different era of basketball.
"LeBron James is in my Top 10, but he’s 10 possibly,” Smith said during this week's appearance on the Load Management podcast. “It’s so much easier to score now that it makes it hard to judge guys’ ability. It's so easy to score. I was a good scorer. I wasn’t even a great scorer. I averaged 17 points per game. In that year, I probably would've averaged 26 or 25. But for me, it's my opinion, he’s not in the Top 5 of all-time."
James, at age 35, is averaging 25.7 points, a career-best 10.6 assists and 7.9 rebounds per game this season for the Lakers, who hold the NBA's second-best record entering this month's restart at Walt Disney World.
"That's pretty wild, Kenny," one of the Load Management hosts said.
Earlier this year, fellow former Rockets star and NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley placed James outside of his Top 5, pointing to similar reasoning. The game was tougher back then, Barkley says.
“ Listen, this is my list — Michael's No. 1, Oscar Robertson is 2, Russell Wilt and Kareem, no particular order after Michael," Barkley told Kentucky coach John Calipari during a Zoom meeting. "Kobe sixth, LeBron No. 7, then Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. I love LeBron and everything about him. But I do think they way they play the game today, he didn’t want any part of those bad boy Pistons.
"Let me tell you something, those guys are out there trying to hurt people. I used to always tell people when you were going to play the Pistons, you had to call home and tell your family you love them in case you never saw them again.”
Comments
Post a Comment