Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players of Last 25 Years: How Shaquille O'Neal became the most DOMINANT ever

twenty five years today with number five Shaquille O'Neil. And then we also have a little game that we're gonna play off the top of the show that we stole from Uncle Colin, who runs the company here at the Volume. You guys know the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore json lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements.

And for whatever reason you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight to be doing some mail bag questions the rest of this week and potentially into the future, so don't forget to drop some mail bag questions in the comments on YouTube as well. All Right, one other things, I'm sorry about the delay starting Tuesday this week. I have not gotten sick since I caught COVID back in

late twenty twenty. I was one of the early people that got it, and I've been on this crazy hot streak of somehow avoiding getting like legitimately sick, like I'll feel under the weather here and there, but like never like truly be dead to rights like sick. And I got hit like a truck on Thursday night and so that kind of messed up the whole weekend and that was why we ended up delaying to start this week. So bear with me a little bit as well. With

my voice. I've had a pretty bad cough, so that will be something I had to deal with a little bit today. But glad to be here. We're just gonna be going Tuesday through Saturday instead of Monday through Friday. But same kind of cadence like we've been doing. So we're gonna do a game called fake Questions, real Answers. We're not gonna do it regularly. I'm just stealing it today because I think it's perfect for this particular theme, it's going to be centered around the FOBA World Cup

basketball tournament. The way this works Colin Coward does this on his show all the time. But basically, you just I'm gonna have a fake question that kind of centers around a topic with Team USA or with Foeba, and then I'll give you guys an answer from there. So fake question number one, Does Team USA losing to Lithuania mean anything for that USA World Champion debate that was going around a couple weeks ago. As you can probably guess, the answer is no. There are three reasons why. One.

Basketball is very high variant sport. There's a reason why even the greatest basketball team of all time, the nineteen ninety six Bowls, lost thirteen basketball games. That's a lot of basketball games for the greatest team ever to lose. Right, how does it happen any of you guys who've ever played pick up basketball or play in your men's league

or anything along those lines. You get into a game where you're the better team, right, but you come out and you're a little acadeiical that other team really wants to beat you, so they're bringing a ton of effort and energy. Maybe they get really hot from three and make some shots early. Suddenly you look up you're down fifteen to twenty points and you're like, oh shit, guys, we better get it together and start playing hard. And so then you start playing hard and you make a

run and you get back into the game. But by the time you get back into the game, now you're exhausted because it takes a ton of energy to get back into the game. And then maybe they hit a couple more shots because they're feeling good because they've been shooting well all game, and then suddenly you look up at the scoreboard and you're down by eight with four minutes left, and you're like, holy shit, we're about to

lose this thing. It's a very common thing that happens in the game of basketball, right, and that's literally what happened against Lithuania. USA came out really slow, especially on the defensive end of the floor. Lithuania is playing with a shit ton of force, like they were cutting hard, they were screening hard, they're running hard in transition. Everything they were doing with the basketball or without the basketball

was done with a ton of physical force. They really wanted to beat the US team and US wasn't playing The US guards in particular, weren't playing any damn defense to start this particular game. I was tracking it this morning because I've rewatched the entire game, and the sheer amount of wide open threes they gave up in the

first quarter was ridiculous. Like there was a little pick and roll off the right wing, and Josh Hard is guarding a shooter on the left wing, right on the left wing, and instead of like staying in a position where he can close out, he just sits down at the foul line and the guy just makes a simple swing pass over to a wide open shooter. It's too much help at the nail. You got to find a

sweet spot there. It's one thing that the dude's getting toasted, but you can't just completely ignore a shooter without really serving any purpose, right, And there was possession after that where Jonas Valanchuniz hit a pick and pop three on the right wing. Anthony Edwards was literally jogging around the screen. So as a result, I think it was Pala Boncaro that was in the BA screen. Pallevankara had no choice but to step up and help and ignore Jonas Valentunis,

who popped back and hit the three possession. After that, there was a Yonas post up on the right block. Anthony Edwards runs over in double teams along the baseline. This was his double team. Just kind of went over like this and was standing under the basket, didn't actually get close to Yonas, didn't disrupt the pass, literally did nothing but stand there like this, and Yonas threw a skip pass. Jalen Brunson made the rotation, but Josh Hart

didn't make the rotation to the next guy. Swing swing, wide open three on the left wing, like wide open, like practice threes that these guys were making. By the way, Anthony Edwards had a really, really nice offensive game against Lithuania, but he was terrible on the defensive end, especially in the first half. Just wasn't trying and legitimately was a

big problem in their defense. The last one I put down was there's a they ran a Spain pick and roll, which again that's where you have a shooter underneath the basket, you run your pick and roll and then they change right and Anthony Edwards was guarding the shooter underneath the basket and just ignored his man and was kind of like just floating around in the middle of the floor. I think Walker Kessler was in the game at this point.

Walker Kessler's in a drop coverage on the pick and roll and he's in position to handle everything at the rim, and Ant's just overhelp it, just floating around doing nothing. Swing pass once again, Jalen Brunson makes the rotation to the wing of Anthony Edwards, misses the rotation to the corner. Wide open, stand still practice, wide open three. He knocks it down, right, I mean, that's that's four just in the first quarter, completely uncontested threes, and they made all

four of them. And like, you know, it's funny we talk about we talk a lot about hot shooting, right, what do I always say on the show, Like when a guy makes a lot of tough shots later in the game, usually if you go back, you can find early portions of the game where those guys got wide

open shots. Because once you know all these professional basketball players, they're professional basketball players, like they do this shit every single day, and so when they feel good about themselves and they feel confident, they can make shots, contested shots. You know, at the end of the day, a basketball player as a basketball player, contested a contest as a contest, and it doesn't matter if it's brandon Ingram contesting you

or whoever the hell it is. If you're a great shooter, because you're a professional basketball player and you made three wide open threes in the first quarter and you get a late clock situation and you're getting smothered and you just throw some shit up. You're feeling good about yourself. You're gonna make those sometimes, And so I think those things are always intricately connected, right, And this is just part of the way that the game of basketball works.

And that's why you've seen your favorite NBA team lose to a lesser team in the regular season. You've probably

seen that flow happen before. That's why we call it March Madness in the NCAA tournament when it's single elimination, because good teams lose to bad teams all the time in single game sample sizes, Right, That's why the NBA uses a seven game series so that we can truly determine who the better basketball team was, because in any one game sample, a team can get hot, a team can bring better effort, an executional era, or all those sorts of things can be a wrinkle in a one

game sample size. So does the USA losing to Lithuania mean anything about Team USA and the world champion debate? No, it doesn't. Reason number two international teams experience much better continuity than Team USA does. A gold medal for Team USA is expected rather than respected, and so as a result, it's kind of a low reward, high risk proposition for most NBA players. Also, the NBA season is an extremely long season, and so a lot of guys just want to take a break. So Team USA has a wildly

different roster for every tournament. Why does that matter? Think about how much we talked about continuity this last year, the last two years with Denver and Golden State. Right, continuity matters. Players figure out their hierarchy. Your stars figure out who's kind of like where they're at in the pecking order. Right, all your role players get deeply familiar with their roles and they learn how to excel in

those roles. The coaches get a really good pulse for the team and understand the highs and lows and how to kind of like navigate that. Right, It's really difficult, and it's difficult in a large sample size, like we were talking about continuity with other teams that had significantly

more time to get together. Right now, we're talking about FEBA, and it's like you get a couple of weeks of practice, and you get like a couple of exhibition games, then you get five pool play games or three pool play games, and two second round games, and then you go right

into single elimination. And so it's a significant disadvantage for Team USA in particular that they have just different groups of people in every single tournament, whereas for these international teams, because literally winning a World Cup or winning an Olympic tournament is a gigantic achievement. I would argue, if you asked Luka Doncic, what would you rather win in your career an Olympic medal gold medal with Slovenia or a Foebo World Cup gold medal with Slovenia or winning a

title with the Dallas Mavericks. I bet you, he says Slovenia, because these for these guys, it matters so much more because if you win one of those tournaments, it's such a remarkable achievement. There's a different level of pride playing for your country that exists outside of that because of that risk reward element. I don't think it's a lack

of pride for Team USA. I think it's literally just like it's hard for them to feel the urgency that a lot of these other teams feel, and so they have better continuity in their roster from tournament to tournament. It's a huge it's a significant advantage when we get

to these tournaments. I mean honestly, like guys, like even the Team USA basketball teams that get gold medals typically like underperform, right, I mean, like they win and then you're like, man, but I mean it was kind of close there with Spain for a minute, you know, or like, man, it was close against this other team for a minute, Like yeah, they should have won all these games by thirty, right,

And it's because of that continuity. And I would argue, if you give one of those teams all, you know, nine months together to build that continuity and understanding, our Team USA teams would kick the shit out of these these international teams. But it's it's just kind of the nature of the beast. Right. Reason number three why Team USA losing to Lithuania does not mean anything for the World Championship debate a real Team USA would kick the living shit out of the rest of the world teams.

Our starters would be Steph Curry, Jason Tatum, Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis. Not only is that a ridiculously talented starting lineup, but every single one of those players in that group compliments the others extremely well. All of them know how to play off the ball and on the ball, all of them know how to play defense. All of them have a consistent reputation as guys who are willing to do the dirty work to win basketball games.

Your bench would be Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, Devin Booker, Damian Lillard, bam Adebayo, Anthony Edwards, and Jalen Brown. That's ridiculous. These are players and by the way, I just based that off my top twenty five players list this summer. Here are players who would get cut from Team USA's twelve man roster. Paul George Brandon, Ingram Kyrie Irving, Jalen Brunson, Darreon Fox, Donovan Mitchell, Trey Young, James Harden. I can go on, in, on and on. I'm sorry, but it's

just not close like the world is catching up. Yes, like three of the top five players in the world, in my opinion, are not Americans. Right, in the global sense, the game is growing significantly. I don't think it'll be long before you could make a Team World that would beat Team USA. And arguably with the top end guys like Yo Kitchen Jannis, Like, arguably Team World beats Team USA.

But there is no Team World, right, There's just these other countries, right, and each of those countries are improving little by little, but Team USA still has everybody lapped in this department. We just don't send our best players. So like again, like when we have these discussions, like I think it's important to differentiate between the health of the rest of the world when it comes to basketball. The game of basketball is growing, and I think it's so good. But that's not the same as the NBA

not being the best professional league in the world. It's still the team. It's like the NBA basketball gigantic chasm. And then you're gonna get to your euro leagues and your you know, uh, the NBL and Australia and leagues like that, right, Like that's where there's a gigantic chasm. It's not the same. And that's why, Like, I'm okay with NBA players calling themselves the best in the world and things along those lines. I think that's a reputation

that the league has earned. All Right, our second FEBA related fake question, Jason Austin Reeves got barbecued by Lithuania yesterday. He gave up twelve points and five post ups. Steve Kerr had to pull him from the game. Does that mean the hype has gotten out of control and that Austin isn't that good? No, doesn't mean anything. First of all, tam USA is a unit got their ass kicked in

that game, especially on the defensive end. I just broke down for you guys in the last segment all the little ways that Team USA wasn't sharp defensively and was giving up wide open shots. Just the four possessions I broke down where as many points as Austin gave up in post ups in that game. Right, Also, we have a large sample size that Austin is a very good post defender. Austin played sixteen playoff games this this year for the Lakers. He got posted up six times and

got five stops. That's right, he gave up one bucket in six attempts that teams tried to post him up. Austin got posted up by the opponent thirty three times in the regular season this year, about once every other game and allowed just eighteen points. That zero point five to five points per possession, when you try to post

up Austin Reeves, that's outstanding. Before the Lithuania game for Team USA, other countries tried to post up Austin Reeves nine times and he allowed just six points, forcing four turnovers. He had a bad game. He got absolutely flambayed, barbecue destroyed, cooked in the post against Lithuania. That's a fact. Sorry guys. But again, like that was, like I said, a part of that confidence, like right, Like Lithuania makes a bunch

of shots in the first half, they're feeling themselves. I mean Instagram yesterday was just a NonStop barrage of like screenshots of Lithuanian players like smirking and making faces at different American players while they were busting their ass. They didn't lose that game because of Austin Reeves. Austin Rey's played like shit. He played like shit. He got his ass kicked. But you don't erase an entire year's worth

of sample size over one basketball game. It Posting up Austin Reeves has been a bad idea for professional basketball players all year, and Lithuania having a great night does and change that. Here's the thing with Austin Reeves, and there's a reason why I brought him up today because he's getting a lot of attention this summer off of a great playoff run and off of this Tmosa experience. Right, Yes, he's been getting a ton of attention. Yeah, he's a Laker,

and Laker fans are a lot. They're a lot, right, They're loud, they're obnoxious. Like, you guys know, I'm not necessarily a Lakers fan. I just root for the Lakers because I'm a Lebron James fan. But I have a lot of interactions with Lakers fans. I understand it, like, I get it. I get what the frustration is for a lot of people. Like they get a lot of attention,

they get all the coverage. You guys got to understand the business side of it, right, Like, nobody does this for free, like except for people that are trying to get paid to do this, right, And all of the companies out there are getting paid to do this, and so they're gonna do what's in the best interest of their company. And so they're gonna talk Lakers, and they're gonna talk Warriors, and they're gonna talk Celtics, and they're gonna talk Nicks, and they're gonna talk big markets because

that's what drives revenue. And all these people got families to pay to feed, right, So, like it's just the reality. You guys see it on this show, Like we do a lot of Lakers Warriors content. We cover the rest of the league, but we do a lot of Lakers Warriors content, right because I got bills to pay, man, Like, we gotta, we gotta, you know, acknowledge the realities of that, right And so I get it. I get all the hype, and I get that that's been frustrating. But here's the thing.

Austin's also really damn good at basketball. He scored twenty plus point ins twenty plus points in the playoffs eight times this year. He averaged seventeen points, four rebounds, and five assists on sixty two percent true shooting while sharing the court. That was all in the playoffs, by the way, while sharing the court with Lebron, James, Anthony Davis, Dennis Roder, and DiAngelo Russell. Splitting touches with all those guys seventeen

four and five on sixty two percent true shooting. Think about how you guys view Desmond Bayane as a player. He has nine twenty point playoff games in his career in three playoff runs, and his career playoff averages seventeen points, the same as Austin Reeves. Think about how you think of Karl Anthony Towns. He has just seven twenty point playoff games in three playoff runs. Think about Jordan Poole. I bet every Warriors fan listens to the show thinks

Jordan Poole is a better player than Austin Reeves. I'd argue Austin Reeves is better right this second, but that Jordan Pool is going to be better because he is all this upside. He's such a freak athlete, right, Like Jordan Poole in the long run is going to be a better player than Austin. But like most Warriors fans would argue that Jordan Pool's better than Austin Right, thirty five career playoff games, He's only scored twenty plus nine times in those thirty five playoff games, and his career

playoff average is fourteen and a half. Austin did it eight times in one season. Guys in half as many games. Like Austin's legit. He's outrageously efficient. He can do it as a primary initiator. He literally closed out the Memphis Grizzlies in Game one in the playoffs this year, just spamming high picking and roll. Lebron standing in the damn corner while Austin runs the offense, like that's how freaking good this kid is. He can do it off the ball.

He shot forty six percent on catching shoot threes in the playoffs this year, forty percent for the regular season. He's a very good defensive player. He broke down the post up stuff earlier, but he always does his job. He's not an outstanding defensive player. You're not gonna put him on someone and shut them down. But if you put him in a five man unit defensively, he's going to do his job and he's gonna make plays. He's not gonna hurt you on that end of the floor.

Is he an All Star? No, I don't think so. Is he a future All Star? Probably not. I don't think he has the athletic upside, and the guard position is too stacked in the NBA. But he's firmly in that tier right below All Star and he has proven himself on the biggest stage, or at least just shy of the biggest. The biggest stage you can play in as a basketball player is the is the NBA Finals, and the dude was a reliable third option for a

conference finalists team this year. So, like, I get the Lakers hate, I do, but don't be on the wrong side of history with the Austin Reeves stuff. The kid is legit, uh, And like if you if you really watch him and just try to appreciate for him for what he is, and just stop thinking about the Lakers for a second and just envision him as a basketball player. He's just a kid who's trying to grind out a spot in the NBA and he's doing a damn good

job of it. And if you're a fan of the game of basketball, I think you guys will enjoy watching him in the long run. All right, Last one, Jason, does Team USA losing to Lithuania signify that Team USA will not win the World Cup this year. So first of all, I said before the tournament that USA should be the favorite. They still are, but that if I had to pick between the USA team and the field, that I would pick the field. Why because I had a feeling they'd be in close games. Right, we just

got one here against Lithuania. But close games can go either way. And this is not a juggernaut type of roster. Yeah, Like, if you send that, if you sent that team that I mentioned earlier, the actual team USA over there, yeah, I'd pick them over the field nine times out of ten, right, Like they're gonna they're barring in absolute freakish performance from a you know, a Yo Kitch or a Yannis or a Luca and just a heroic defensive effort from everybody.

Like it would require the most perfect set of circumstances for that team to lose a game. Right, But aside from that circumstance, you know, the time, the types of team usas that we send over there not Juggernauts. All it takes is one close game or a couple guys miss a couple of shots for your team and a couple guys make a couple shots on the other team.

So yeah, I picked the field over Team USA. That said, I still think the USA has Team USA is the best remaining team, and I still think they deserve to be the favorite, which they still are. The quarterfinals are said at USA versus Italy. I think, if I'm reading the bracket correctly, that if they win, they'll play the winner of Germany vers. Latvia and then potentially have to play either Canada or Lithuania, Serbia or Slovenia in the finals.

I think Canada should Canada should beat Slovenia is my guess. They have just a long line of perimeter defenders to throw out Luca, to fatigue him. I think that over the course of that game it's gonna benefit them. And then also just SGA's really starting to find his groove. Sga hit basically the game winner the other day versus Spain,

really impressive down the stretch defense. Dylan Brooks had a huge three on the left wing that tied it, and then Sga just textbook hard dribble, right pullback dribble knocks down basically the game winner. I think Canada is probably the second most likely team to win it, behind the USA. That's what I said earlier and I still feel that way again, single elimination can go either way, but for right now, I still lean towards the USA. But I would take the field over the USA, meaning I do

expect the bet. The more likely outcome is that US that Team USA loses at some point in the elimination round. All right, twenty two minutes later, Let's get into number five on our top twenty five players the last twenty five years. Shaquille O'Neil accolades. Four time NBA champion, best player on three championship team, second best player on one championship team, eight time first Team All NBA, fourteen time

All NBA overall. Technically, five of those selections were before nineteen ninety nine, when this list is supposed to start. Seven of his first team selections were all in the last twenty five years. Three time All Defense and two times score champion as champion nineteen ninety five in two thousand, won the regular season MVP in two thousand and he's a three time NBA Finals MVP. His claim to fame is he's the most physically dominant player in NBA history.

This is how crazy this is. We talk a lot about MJ right the other day when we did our MJ Lebron kind of mail back question and we talked about dominance, right, and had the fact that what MJ did in the nineties is kind of like unprecedented. And you know, obviously Bill Russell and the Celtics won eight consecutive championships, but that was an forever ago. The league was incredibly tiny. That Celtics team was freaking stacked. Like there was debate over whether or not Wilter Bill Russell

was better. I mean, most people would agree Bill was slightly better, but it's not It wasn't the same type of thing as what MJ did in the nineties. Right, Well, there's one other player in NBA history who has won three consecutive NBA Finals MVP Awards, and that's Shaquille O'Neill. Seven foot one, was well over three hundred pounds. Everything that shaq did came down to footwork. You talked about this a lot with Yokics, but like, being big is only half the battle, right, There are a lot of

big human beings in the world. All you have to do is look at these FEBA games and look at how many non NBA players are between six ten and seven to two that having good jump hook and can make free throws and do all that kind of stuff. Right, Like, there's a lot of big dudes in the world. But that coordination, especially as it pertains the footwork, is everything, because your footwork is what allows you to inflict your physicality on your opponent, right cause your base is constantly moving.

Right If you guys ever had that have done that test where like you stand with your feet together and then someone like pushes you on the shoulder and you like fall down or like you lose your balance. But then if you stand in like an athletic stance, like with your feet spread out to your shoulders, if someone pushes you on the shoulder, like you won't move because when you have your base wide and established, it's much

harder to move you off your base. Well, that same principle applies in every facet of basketball, but especially in post defense. Why because there's a a lot more contact in post offense defense matchups. Right, So on the perimeter, sometimes you can be off balance and a dude can nudge you, but they might call a handcheck, or they might call you for hipchecking or something along those lines. As a matter of fact, I think the league calls that too much these days. Right, But in the post,

there's a lot of contact that's allowed. So guys are constantly pushing on each other, and it's a two way battle, right, like the post players trying to back down and the post defenders trying to like Chuck with his forearm and hold his ground on the backside, right, And so who has the best leverage ends up winning that battle most

of the time. And so as the post player, you're constantly feeling on your shoulder blades where the defender is, and you're trying to change your footwork either by taking a drop step or a pivot of some kind to get to a position where then you can get separation

from the post defender for a shot. And so having really sharp footwork and being really polished with your coordination with your feet in that particular element of offense is the difference between a player being able to physically dominate a place or get pushed off of his spot. I talked about this a lot with Yokis, But Yo Kic sometimes you'll watch him and he'll chop his feet a lot. He's really good at resetting his base. He's in that

post backup position. As he's dribbling, he's constantly shuffling his feet and resetting his base. Why because he doesn't just hit you once. He's hitting you once twice, three times, four times, maybe even five times before he takes a shot, and he needs to constantly reset his base so that when he bumps you, he moves you, Whereas if he doesn't have his base set that second contact, maybe he loses that battle and he loses ground away from the basket. Right,

Shack had really really sharp footwork. His drop step was immaculate. We've all seen tons of videos of Shaq getting that drop step foot past the defender's foot and then pivoting and as he pivoting, just throwing the defender out of the way as he goes up and dunks it right like. He added a couple of basic simple post moves as well. Everything starts with the bullyball right, the footwork, the drop steps,

trying to get dunks at the basket. But when he did get stood up or when there was a defender waiting on the back line that he wanted to avoid, Shaq had two moves that he basically went to consistently from both blocks and that was a right handed hook over his left shoulder, and like Shaq would call it like a turnaround fade away, but it was kind of like a one handed push shot over his right shoulder, So he'd turn over the shoulder and instead of shooting

like a post player with two hands, he would just kind of reach up with one hand and shoot essentially like a turnaround jumper with one hand. I don't even know what you want to call it, push shot, a kind of like a turnaround floater or whatever it was.

But he was pretty good with those two particular shots, and that was enough with his physical frame to just utterly obliterate every front line in the NBA over that late nineties early two thousand stretch right and essentially, like he was so dominant over that time that like every single team had to load up with three or four centers just to commit fouls on him. The strategy around the league basically be came the same. If you were guarding Shack and he went for a hook shot or

a turnaround, you would try to contest without fouling. But if he made any sort of physically aggressive move towards the basket, it was wrap his ass up you had to because he was a career fifty I think he was like fifty three percent career free throw shooter, and so that ended up being your best opportunity to get stops. But that was what you did. You tried when he did.

When he did bless you with a crazier shot that was further away from the basket, you would sit there and pray that he'd miss, and then when he was physically aggressive, you'd foul. And then that led to his crowning achievement, which was his three peat. In the early two thousands with the Lakers, he averaged twenty nine to fourteen to four with three blocks per game over that three year span one MVP in two thousand, finished third

place in the MVP voting. The next two years averaged thirty to fifteen and three in the playoff runs they lost just that Lakers team lost just thirteen playoff games in three years. They were forty five and thirteen in the playoffs. Think about how insane that is. In fifteen NBA Finals games, he averaged thirty six points, fifteen rebounds, and four assists per game with three blocks on sixty

percent shooting. In won all three finals MVPs. It was one of the most dominant stretches of basketball by any single player in NBA history. Biggest one if of Shack's career. What if Shack had taken better care of his body. The decline for Shack came very quickly when he got to his thirties. Two thousand and three was his fourth consecutive season averaging at least twenty seven points per game. For the rest of his career after that, he never

averaged over twenty three points per game. It was like an immediate fall off of the cliff. He had this like toe issue, this like arthritis toe thing. You guys probably remember Shaq going to training camp and getting surgery in season because he got injured on company time, so he was going to recover on company time, right Like that was kind of the beginning of the end for him. Athletically. He did win an the championship with the Heat in two thousand and six, but it was more of as

more of a supporting player. He scored twenty plus points just nine times in their twenty three game playoff run, and Dallas held him to single digits twice in the finals, So it's much more of a supporting type of player. He just he was. He was a supremely gifted athlete when he was younger, and once that faded and he put on the weight, it just he just wasn't the same type of dominant force that he was when he was younger. We didn't even talk about the Orlando years.

Like I watched, I went back and watched this morning, the nineteen ninety five series with Chicago, and I watched game one of that series, and I was watching Shack and literally Chicago had to go to their third string center in the first quarter, and he was making all of his free throws in that game too, which which was which was causing problems at least at the beginning of the game. But like you watch the way he

moved up and down the floor. He's moving like a wing, and so it's just it's, you know, it's crazy because like it's you start to think about how good he could have been, because he's easily, you know, top fifteen, top ten in NBA history, regardless of position, depending on who you ask. A lot of people have him higher than that. I have him fifth in the last twenty five years. Imagine how good he could have been if

he had taken better care of his body. Very very interesting career shack and very difficult to rank him compared to his peers. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. We will be back tomorrow with number four. Don't forget to drop some mailback questions in the comments. I will see you guys. Then the volume