sort of reminds me of how bill russell refused to sign autographs for anyone, even teammates, as a principled player. but long after he retired, he would sign autographs and memorabilia at shows for money. hmm. i know he didnt make the huge money when he played, but i guess he must have needed it badly later in life.
or how guys like hank aaron and oscar robertson dwell on the negatives and seem bitter years later about ill treatment 40-60 years ago. they forget they played a game for a handsome living, benefited greatly from the unheralded grunt work of others (trainers, coaches, fans, media/PR people, etc.), and basically never had to work at a real job. and that they got far more positive treatment than negative. aaron got a lot of positive mail too in his pursuit of ruth's record. yet all you hear about are complaints about some crappy letters he got.
larry bird got death threats at the 1985 finals in LA. did he complain about it ad nauseum? no. i bet 99.99999% of people dont even know that he received the threats.

In 'When the Game Was Ours', it was stated that Kareem wanted to get into business like Magic did after their playing days. Kareem went to Magic for guidance and told Magic that he 'wanted to be like him'...and Magic told him 'no you don't... you have to be on all the time/ you have to be nice/ approachable'... then Magic told Kareem a story about one of his clients and said that the guy years earlier had come to a Lakers game with his son and asked Kareem to take a photo---which Kareem gruffly declined. Magic (who admittedly was NOTHING next to Kareem---might have been his rookie year---offered to pose for a pic. 20 years later, the man is doing business with Magic and says that his kid still has that picture in his home. Magic told Kareem this story and basically said 'that shoulda been YOU... but you're not nice to people'.

I think perhaps it was easy to bypass Kareem in favor of others and that much of the 'bypassing' wasn't rooted in basketball legacy necessarily.

Kareem is getting older, perhaps less surly and more of a sympathetic (with an emphasis on pathetic) character and now maybe they'll throw him a bone.

I think the jerk factor has delayed the statue to this point, though. It happens.

I recognize Kareem had a career before Magic, but Magic is more popular and ranked higher overall. People remember him more because he contributed the most during their dynasty.

If you force someone to have a logical discussion then things change, but people are enamored with the younger superstars in Dynasties.

They didn't start as equals. Kareem was the league MVP Magic's first year. And at the end Kareem was at the end of a career that was played half before Magic ever played a game. The guy had already won championships and MVPs before Magic was out of high school. If you just count the years they played together, Magic was overall better (from about his 4th year on). Kareem's career had a lot more to it than just the time with Magic.

He's #4 on the ELO player rater. Intelligent people know he's overrated though Neil Paine even stated how Kobe was better. Kareem was a role player during the Dynasty. They may have started as equals but they clearly weren't at the end.

Eventually the same will happen in Miami, and it happened with Kobe too. People don't even remember Shaq and his 36 PPG 14 RPG in three Finals.

A few years ago, Pro-Football Reference did a blog post about Jerry Rice that argued he could have made the Hall of Fame twice if you cut his career into halves (both Even/Odd year and first half/second half worked IIRC). They also concluded he is the only player in NFL history this is true of.

My mind now being on this track, I'm kinda curious how the same idea would work out applied to the NBA. Kareem is an obvious choice for consideration for that idea, and I think Russell, Jordan, and probably Wilt would make it, but beyond them, I'm not sure.

Any thoughts? Other than this is really more of a post-season blog topic, I guess.

Luke the youth/importance factor isn't a theory, Magic is more popular and respected than Kareem. It is mostly due to being younger, they were comparable before but Magic was simply more important in the Dynasty. Same thing with Shaq. Kobe can have more rings but he has AI stats during the 3-peat (except in 2001).

All he did was move to a team where he's the best player in the league without having to average 30/8/8 every season in order to contend.

It does have an effect on his health, and that's the priority. At that weight and playing style his career might not be as long as Jordan's and he needs to maximize these seasons. If anything he needs to use up less energy in the regular season, and Wade too. Only the playoffs matter.

There's a reason you don't see swing players at 250+ pounds.

I'm not saying that since moving to Miami that he hasn't upgraded his wish list to have him be THE man, e.g., MVP of the Finals--------like Burt Reynolds in 'The End' trying to negotiate down with 'the man upstairs' as he swam closer to safety... but to many LeBron assumed a lesser status in the unwritten code of legends as soon as he left for Miami, just as your new car depreciates in value the moment you drive it off the lot.

So LBJ assumedly accepts that he may not be 'the man' on his own team, at least at some level.

Regarding Bird's non-MVP in the 1981 Finals------Bird WAS the best/ most important player on the Celtics in that series. Maxwell was voted MVP because Bird had a tough shooting series and averaged just 15 ppg, whereas Maxwell averaged 18 ppg + (if my memory is correct) on much more efficient shooting. Problem was with that MVP vote, that Bird led all players (both teams) in steals AND assists for the series AND grabbed 15 rpg, nearly as much as Moses Malone for the series lead in THAT category. Maxwell was the nice secondary player that maybe played over his head------and thus got the sentimental vote. They also needed Maxwell to perform that well to win, but would have been in more dire straits had Bird not done what HE did.