The Sixers legend Dr.J shared his top two all-time NBA teams. He left out Lakers superstar and arguably the greatest player of all time, LeBron James.
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These days whenever legends of a game make their all-time list, they leave out somebody great who they played with or against or is maybe undoubtedly top-5 in the game. This not only makes their take trend on the news for a few days but also on social media for several days.
The legend we are talking about now is one of the most mesmerizing basketball players of all time, Dr. J. The ABA and NBA legend influenced the game of basketball like none other, the slang of being “posterized” was first coined to describe his moves.
The 6’7 forward, Julius Erving was the face of the ABA before it merged with the NBA. He scored just over 30,000 points, averaging 24.2 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 4.2 assists, to sit on 8th all-time on the scoring board, considering his time over both the leagues.
Recently the legend picked his Top two all-time NBA teams and excluded LeBron James from his 10 chosen players.
Dr.J leaves LeBron James out of his top-2 teams of all-time
On a podcast called “Posted Up” with Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, Dr.J revealed his top two teams of all time. If you’d look at the 16-time All-Star’s list, you can see that all the players on his list have played in the 90s era or before that. So, he has missed players like Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant to name a few, who are on most legends and experts’ top all-time list, but the most significant name he missed is LeBron James.
Dr. J doesn’t have LeBron on his 2 All-Time teams. (Oscar, West, Baylor, Russell, Wilt & Magic, MJ, Larry, Malone, Kareem.)
The Doctor penalizes LeBron for leading the charge with super-teams. He certainly popularized it with that absurd decision show.pic.twitter.com/koFFvgoCoC
— Bruce Blitz (@BruceBlitz) October 30, 2021
While Dr. J criticized LeBron for creating Superteams, and used it as a criteria to not include him on his team, he himself played with 2 more Hall of Famers in Maurice Cheeks and Moses Malone. Moses Malone is up with him in all-time scoring list at number 10, but they still won just 1 title in 1983.
LeBron James, irrespective of any era, is one of the best basketball players, arguably just second to Michael Jordan. James started his NBA career as the first pick of the 2003 NBA draft after coming straight from high school.
He brought brilliance to the Cleveland Cavaliers, winning two MVPs and carrying the team to the 2007 NBA Finals. But he couldn’t carry them to a Championship, after failing miserably multiple times and not getting any help from the management in the transfer market, he left for Miami in 2010.
The first championship for the King came in 2012, a year after switching to the Miami Heat. Many criticized the move to form the first engineered “Big Three” with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. However, the team brought home two titles, with James achieving two more regular-season MVPs and two Finals MVPs.
There are no set of rules for anyone to pick their own team. But one of the best players of all time should not be excluded from a team just because he didn’t get a group of good players in the team which drafted him. All the other greats had a Hall of Famer or multiple in their teams when they won a Championship.
