Michael Jordan
Shaquille O'Neal
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Michael Jordan leads 4 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Michael Jordan at #1 and Shaquille O'Neal at #9.
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The case for Michael Jordan
The most complete resume at the highest peak. Jordan won six championships in six Finals appearances, took Finals MVP all six times, and never allowed a series to reach a Game 7. He won five regular-season MVPs, ten scoring titles — both records for a perimeter player — and retired with the highest career scoring average in NBA history at 30.1 points per game. The two-way case seals it: 1988 Defensive Player of the Year, nine All-Defensive First Team selections, and 2,514 career steals, third all-time. His 1990–91 through 1992–93 and 1995–96 through 1997–98 three-peats bracket a 6–0 decade in which his teams beat Hall of Fame opposition — Magic's Lakers, Barkley's Suns, Malone and Stockton's Jazz twice — and his 33.4 points per game across 179 playoff games remains the highest postseason average ever. The 72–10 season of 1995–96 and the 1998 title-winning shot in Utah are the era's defining monuments. No player has combined scoring supremacy, defensive excellence and flawless Finals results at his level.
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.