Larry Bird
Shaquille O'Neal
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Larry Bird at #7 and Shaquille O'Neal at #9.
Head-to-head FAQ
Who leads more shared metrics?
How do the published ranks compare?
Are these live stats?
The case for Larry Bird
The greatest forward of his era and the most complete offensive skill set of the pre-analytics age. Bird won three straight MVPs from 1984 to 1986 — a feat otherwise achieved only by Russell and Chamberlain — and three championships with two Finals MVPs, anchoring Celtics teams that won 60-plus games five times. His career line of 24.3 points, 10.0 rebounds and 6.3 assists is the classic all-around forward profile, and he was decades ahead of the sport as a shooter: two 50-40-90 seasons, in 1986–87 and 1987–88, when the feat was nearly unheard of, plus the first three Three-Point Contest titles. The 1985–86 Celtics, with Bird at his apex, went 67–15 and are routinely listed among the half-dozen best teams ever assembled. His trash-talking clutch resume — the 1981 comeback against Philadelphia, the steal of Isiah Thomas's inbound pass in the 1987 Eastern finals — and his rivalry with Magic Johnson, meeting in three Finals, carried the league's renaissance. Chronic back injuries ended his prime early; at his best, only Jordan was clearly better.
The case for Shaquille O'Neal
The most physically overwhelming player of the modern era, with a three-year peak that belongs in any conversation about the best basketball ever played. From 2000 to 2002, O'Neal won three consecutive Finals MVPs — a feat matched only by Jordan — as the Lakers three-peated, opening with a 2000 Finals against Indiana in which he averaged 38.0 points and 16.7 rebounds. His 2000 MVP was one first-place vote short of unanimous, and that season he led the league at 29.7 points per game while shooting 57.4 percent. He added a fourth ring as the co-star of Miami's 2006 title. The career totals — 28,596 points, 23.7 points and 10.9 rebounds per game, 58.2 percent from the field, the best mark of any 28,000-point scorer — undersell a player whose true effect was strategic: opponents built rosters, defensive schemes and the intentional Hack-a-Shaq foul strategy specifically for him, and the NBA's zone-defense legalization in 2001 was widely understood as a response to his unguardability. Conditioning lapses and 52.7 percent free-throw shooting are the asterisks; the peak is untouchable.