When the NBA announced the top 75 players of all time, which actually became the top 76 players as there was a tie in voting, for the league’s 75th anniversary in October of 2021, some notable names did not make the cut.
Among them: Adrian Dantley. Klay Thompson, Tony Parker, Draymond Green, Kyrie Irving, Chris Bosh, Pau Gasol, Alex English, Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter, to name a few. But in many people’s eyes, the biggest top-75 snub was Dwight Howard.
You can count Howard’s former coach Stan Van Gundy among those who found Howard’s absence on the list to be “absolutely ridiculous.”
“The time I was [in Orlando], to me, the only two guys you could even talk about in [Howard’s] league at that time were LeBron, and Kobe was still playing. That was it. There was no on else to talk about in my opinion,” Van Gundy said on the Knuckleheads podcast back in March. “Because you’re talking about both ends of the floor. He was three straight years of Defensive Player of the Year. And then on offense, he’s still getting you 20 plus, and we didn’t even go to him. We weren’t throwing him the ball all the time to let him get numbers. But everything revolved around him. He would roll, and at that time suck in the entire defense, and then we had shooters around him.
“Look, for him to not be in the top 75, that was just a personality thing,” Van Gundy continued. “There’s no way. Like, I think Anthony Davis is great, but at the time the selected [the top 75], you’re selecting it on the careers they had had up to that point. I mean come on. It’s not close.
“Like, you can think a guy is better. That’s fine. That’s a subjective thing,” Van Gundy went on. “Like, I was arguing with people the other day. It’s fine if you want to tell me that Michael Jordan is a better basketball player than LeBron James. That’s fine. You can make a case for that. What you can’t make a case for is that Michael Jordan had a better career than LeBron James. You can’t make a case for that.
“And when you’re going top 75, you cannot make a case — and…
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