Tag: Top 100

2003 Top 50 List: No

Dan Collins List: No

George Karl was a three-year starter at point guard from 1971-1973.  Karl, Virginia’s Barry Parkhill, and Duke’s Gary Melchionni were the best players in the ACC class of 1973.  1972 was the Bob McAdoo year when the Tar Heels won the ACC regular season, ACC tournament, and made the Final Four.  But McAdoo, Dennis Wuycik, and Bill Chamberlain all departed, leaving Karl and Bobby Jones as the only experienced returning players in 1973.  Karl stepped up his play, averaging 17 points and 6 assists and leading the Tar Heels to a second place ACC finish and as high as #3 in the AP poll.  Karl finished third in All-ACC balloting behind David Thompson and Tom Burleson and ahead of other notables such as Jones, Parkhill, Tom McMillen, and Len Elmore.  By reputation, Karl was a scrapping, hustling, defending, dive-for-loose-balls, do-everything floor leader who earned his nickname The Kamikaze Kid.  I never saw him play, but he seems like the kind of player that your fans loved but other teams’ fans probably hated.

“Is George Karl really a Grade A, 100 per cent pure hot dog?  Lord knows, he looks like one on the court, racing around on those oak-stump legs with his socks pulled down and his sandy hair flying, diving for a steal, crashing into backboard supports, flying into the stands, raising clenched fists, dancing backwards on defense with his hands on his hips in what appears to be a taunting, Ali-like invitation to try to beat him.” – Ron Green, The Charlotte News, Feb 9, 1973

Reading Dean Smith’s autobiography, one thing that really struck me was how much he loved the 1971 team that won the NIT. For him, it seemed to be the team that epitomized what Carolina basketball was about – playing smart, hard, and together in a selfless way. Charlie Scott had graduated the year before, and the Tar Heels were expected to be down. Instead, behind Dennis Wuycik, Bill Chamberlain, Lee Dedmon, and Karl, they won the ACC regular season, lost a heartbreaker to South Carolina in the ACC Tournament final, and ran through the NIT.

Karl’s last ACC Tournament in 1973 was an interesting one.  Remember, at this time, only the ACC Tournament champion advanced to the NCAA Tournament.  #1 seed NC State was on probation and ineligible for the postseason, but they were still playing in the ACC Tournament.  So assuming the Wolfpack made it to the final (they did), the team that faced them would advance to the NCAAs, win or lose.  UNC and Maryland were far and away the best teams after the Wolfpack, and everyone expected them to meet in the semifinals to determine who would advance.  But last place Wake Forest, whom the Tar Heels had twice beaten handily in the regular season, upset UNC 54-52 in overtime in the first round, due in part to a critical late-game mistake by Karl.  About halfway through the overtime with the score tied at 52, UNC went into the four corners, intending to hold for the last shot.  But Karl took (and missed) the shot too soon, leaving Wake just enough time to go down and score the winning basket.  It was one of only two times in Dean Smith‘s 36-year career that the Tar Heels would lose an opening round ACC Tournament game as a one or a two seed (the other was in 1970).

If you were making out an UNC all-time greats 1^st/2^nd/3^rd team by position, who would the guards be?  OK, first team is pretty easy, Ford and Jordan.  Second team is Charlie Scott and probably Kenny Smith.  Who’s on third team?  I say Joseph Forte and George Karl.  Other possibilities: Tommy Kearns, Larry Brown, Rashad McCants, Raymond Felton, Ty Lawson, Ed Cota, Marcus Paige, Joel Berry II.  (Bob Lewis, Larry Miller, Jerry Stackhouse, and Vince Carter are considered forwards.)

2003 Top 50 List: No

Dan Collins List: Yes

I’m an unabashed fan of his. When I get into arguments with younger guys talking about backcourt guys I tell them, ‘Give me Molodet and you can have anybody else but Phil Ford.’ Give me the two of them, and I’ll beat everybody. — legendary North Carolina sportswriter Irwin Smallwood, as reported in Legends of N.C. State Basketball by Tim Peeler

As I was working on this list, one of my guardrails was trying to ensure that I had players ranked reasonably with respect to other players who played at the same time.  In a list of 100 players, it’s easy to lose sight of where Player A ranks relative to Player B who was contemporaneous with him.  In looking at it from that angle, I was surprised how often there were “clusters” of players who played at the same time and were very hard to differentiate.  The Class of 1956 provides a good example.

Vic Molodet of NC State, Joe Belmont and Ronnie Mayer of Duke, and Lefty Davis of Wake Forest were all part of the first class to play all three years in the ACC.  Ronnie Shavlik of NC State was in that class as well, but Shavlik was clearly a notch above the others and will be considered later.  But look at the records of Molodet, Belmont, Mayer, and Davis, and see if you can figure who was the best?

It’s complicated by the fact that this group belongs around the Top 100 cut line; my first inclination was to either put them all in or leave them all out.  But ultimately I think Molodet has a slight edge over the others, for three reasons.  First, he was the MVP of the ACC Tournament in 1956; second, he was the only player of the four to receive serious ACC Player of the Year consideration; and third, he was the only player of the four to ever be named to any All-America team (NABC Third Team, 1956).  It seems that the level he reached in 1956 was just a bit higher than the level reached by any of the other three.  It’s splitting hairs, but that’s what this list requires.

Molodet had tremendous floor speed, the kind of guard who would take advantage of the slightest relaxation after a made basket to push the ball up the floor before the defense could get set. Think of him as a 1950s version of Ty Lawson or Raymond Felton.

The wife of Vic Molodet, NC State basketball guard, was telling an interviewer how the Wolfpack conference title drive traced back to a secret squad meeting a month before season’s end.  “The boys,” quoth the noble missus, “vowed right then and there to quit smoking, late hours, and women… (pause)… wild, wild women, that is.”  — Burlington (Vermont) Daily News, March 15, 1956

2003 Top 50 List: Not Eligible

Dan Collins List: Not Eligible

Kyle Guy, as much as anyone on this list, is here because of his postseason accomplishments.  His regular season accomplishments and accolades alone wouldn’t be good enough.  He did make first team All-ACC twice, but both times he was the 5^th-leading vote getter and finished behind a number of other guys who won’t sniff this list.  But, he was Most Outstanding Player of both the ACC Tournament (in 2018) and the NCAA Tournament (in 2019).  Only six ACC players have won both those honors: Art Heyman, James Worthy, Christian Laettner, Shane Battier, Kyle Singler – and Kyle Guy.  I still thought hard about whether he should be here, and I’m not totally convinced.  I’m not sure he deserved the MOP from the 2019 tournament; he had some poor games along the way.  But he was money in the final.  Ultimately, I think it’s enough.

It’s probably a good time also to talk about the decade of the 2010s in ACC basketball.  I mentioned in the introduction that there would be less representation from that decade on the list. Let me elaborate on why.  There are three reasons, which I will list in order of importance:

1. The best players do not stay long enough to build up career accomplishments that are comparable to players from earlier eras.
2. The overall level of college basketball is down because so many of the best 19, 20, and 21 year-olds are in the NBA.
3. The quality of play in the ACC relative to other conferences has slipped in the 2010s.

Number 1 is self-evident to anyone who is paying attention. Players leaving early is not a new phenomenon, but the 2010s are really when the one-and-done or two-and-done became so prevalent.  Here are some of the players who could have accomplished, well, who knows what, had they stayed:

2011: Kyrie Irving (Fr.)

2012: Austin Rivers (Fr.), Harrison Barnes (So.)

2014: Jabari Parker (Fr.), T.J. Warren (So.), Tyler Ennis (Fr.), Rodney Hood (So.)

2015: Jahlil Okafor (Fr.), Terry Rozier (So.), Justise Winslow (Fr.), Tyus Jones (Fr.)

2016: Brandon Ingram (Fr.), Malik Beasley (Fr.)

2017: Luke Kennard (So.), John Collins (So.), Donovan Mitchell (So.), Dennis Smith (Fr.), Jayson Tatum (Fr.), Jonathan Isaac (Fr.), Dwayne Bacon (So.)

2018: Marvin Bagley (Fr.), Wendell Carter (Fr.), Josh Okogie (So.)

2019: Zion Williamson (Fr.), RJ Barrett (Fr.), De’Andre Hunter (So.), Coby White (Fr.)

2020: Vernon Carey (Fr.), Tre Jones (So.), Cole Anthony (Fr.)

2021: Matthew Hurt (So.), Justin Champagnie (So.), Scottie Barnes (Fr.), DJ Steward (Fr.), Day’Ron Sharpe (Fr.)

I am not the first person to make this observation, but this is really hurting college basketball.  The primary cause of the situation is clear – the NBA’s 2006 imposition of the 19-year old minimum for draft eligibility.  This rule, I would argue, is the worst possible one from the perspective of how it affects college basketball.  It would be better for college basketball to have one-and-done players skip college entirely, because it would create more program continuity.  Major college basketball programs have a roster identity crisis.  I’d be willing to give up the occasional Zion Williamson to have college basketball get back to some sense of continuity.

Of course, the NBA is looking out for its own interests, not the interests of college basketball, and not necessarily the interests of individual players.  In order to solve the problem, there has to be an alignment of interests among the different parties.  I’m not particularly hopeful that such an alignment is going to happen.  But it’s immensely frustrating, because there are obvious solutions to the problem.

I’ve always felt that baseball has it right.  Their rule is very simple.  If you want to turn pro out of high school, go right ahead.  If you choose to enter a four-year college, then you’re not eligible for the draft until you turn 21 or complete your junior year.  It’s good for the players, who have the freedom to turn pro out of high school if they want.  It’s good for the college programs because players have to stay for three years, so you get the continuity.

I’m not an expert on the business of basketball and NBA collective bargaining, so I don’t know how likely it is that solutions are on the horizon.  There has been some serious talk about the abolition of the 19-year old minimum.  This would drive some of the one-and-done players straight to the NBA, but it’s hard to know how many.

Duke has clearly built their entire recruiting approach around the one-and-done rule.  It will be interesting to see if Jon Scheyer continues that approach.

The second point is a different effect of the same cause.  It is that the overall level of competition in college basketball must be down in comparison with prior eras, for the simple reason that the best players of that age group are in the NBA.  As a result, we have to adjust our evaluation of modern college basketball players in comparison to players from earlier eras.

I’ve previously done a detailed study on this effect by creating hypothetical All-America teams based on a fictional scenario where every player goes to college and stays for four years.  But if you want a quick example, consider Tyler Hansbrough.  Hansbrough was a Consensus 2^nd Team All-American in his freshman season in 2006, which is very impressive.  However, let’s note the following players who were college age that year but were already playing in the NBA: Carmelo Anthony, Andrew Bogut, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, Charlie Villanueva, Raymond Felton, Luol Deng, Dwight Howard, Andre Iguodala, Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James. Now – is anyone prepared to maintain, in the face of that list, that Tyler Hansbrough would have been an All-American, if even half of those players had been in college?

The third point is that, aside from all the effects of early departures and one-and-done, the ACC has slipped relative to other conferences.  There are several ways to look at this – kenpom conference rankings, conference RPIs, sports-reference.com Simple Ratings System – but however you look at it, the Big 10 and Big 12 were better than the ACC in the 2010s. 

So, without giving too much away, don’t expect to see a lot of players from the 2010s on the list. But Kyle Guy did just enough to make the cut.

I’ve been working on a project to rank the 100 best basketball players in ACC history. It started a couple of years ago with an idea. I thought it might be fun to create a Top 50 ranking. I emailed my friend Todd, who quite honestly knows more about ACC basketball than I do. We both created an initial list and then exchanged them, after which he started telling me which players I was wrong about, which was most of them… anyway, I put it aside for a while, but I’ve been working on it again. I decided to expand it out to the Top 100, I guess for two reasons. One, 100 is a nice round number; two, I’m not aware of any other ACC Top 100 list, so I feel like I’m blazing a trail.

I know of two other lists of Top ACC players in the public domain. In 2003, in celebration of the ACC’s 50th anniversary, the conference released a list (unordered) of the Top 50 players, as voted on by experts. Then, in 2013, Dan Collins, a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem Journal, wrote The ACC Basketball Book of Fame, which was also a catalog of the best players in ACC history (also unordered). Collins’ approach was different; he used a point system based on certain achievements (All-ACC, All-American, etc.), and did not deviate from it. He was not going for any particular number of players; I think he wound up with about 75.

I really like Collins’ book, and I recommend it if you’re interested in this topic. In many ways, it’s similar in concept to what I intend to do. But I wanted to take a crack at it myself, for a few reasons. One, I thought it would be fun. Two, I want to rank (order) the players. Three, time has passed since those two earlier efforts, and the list now will be different. Four, while I appreciated Collins’ approach based on a point system – I used a similar system as a starting point – my opinion is that a point system should be the beginning of the conversation, not the end. Ultimately, I wanted to make a subjective judgment and invite discussion and debate. And finally, I thought it might work well as a series of blog posts, rather than being released all at once. Selfishly, this approach also allows me to get started posting while I continue working on the list.

I have no special qualifications here. I’m not a sportswriter, or a player, or a coach. I’m just an ACC basketball fan who enjoys sports history and likes to make lists. My only qualification is that I’ve spent a lot of time considering the question of who the 100 greatest players are, and how they should rank. In fact, I doubt that anyone in the world has spent more time considering that particular question than I have. I’ve pored over their statistics, their accomplishments, and their accolades. I’ve changed my mind a thousand times, and I’m sure I’ll change it a few more before I’m done. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll ever be done. With a list like this, you’re never more than 51% sure.

I won’t bore you too much with my methods, but I should say a few things. First, I relied heavily on awards, specifically All-ACC voting, All-American voting, the Everett Case award (MVP of the ACC Tournament), and any awards received during NCAA Tournament play. The reasons for this are obvious, I think; I haven’t seen all these players play, so what can I really go on, other than the opinions of their contemporaries, those whose job was to recognize the best players?

Having said that, I do not slavishly follow where the awards lead. Not every award is equal. I tried to look deeper – was the vote one-sided, or was it close? Who was the competition? Is there reason to believe that the vote was biased? For tournament awards, was it a truly memorable performance (think of Randolph Childress in the 1995 ACC Tournament), or was it more a case of “you have to pick someone”?

I also tried to consider the quality of ACC basketball in each player’s era. ACC basketball in 1954, 1974, 1994, and 2014 are not the same. There are several reasons for that. First and most important is the rise of players leaving early or skipping college entirely. This started to increase in the mid-1990s and is now the accepted way of things. There is no question but that this has negatively affected the quality of college basketball in general, not just the ACC. Prior to about 1995, the best 19-, 20- and 21-year old players in the world were playing college basketball. That is no longer the case. I think we have to make an adjustment for that. As a result, you’ll see relatively fewer players on my list from the 2000s, and even fewer from the 2010s.

In addition, the quality of ACC play relative to other conferences has not been constant over time. This is admittedly difficult to measure and requires some degree of subjectivity, but I think it’s true that the ACC was the best basketball conference in the country in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and probably the 2000s as well. The ACC was not the best basketball conference in the 1950s, 1960s, or the 2010s, and it certainly isn’t right now in 2022.

Another difference between eras is that players in the modern era have some advantages with respect to postseason accomplishments. Prior to 1975, you had to win the ACC Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. So relatively few players had the opportunity to achieve greatness in the NCAAs. In the modern era, several ACC teams have won national championships who didn’t win the ACC Tournament. They get that opportunity. Players from that earlier era did not. That’s not their fault, so we have to take that into consideration when comparing players from different eras.

The other major consideration was how to balance peak value with career value (borrowing terms from Bill James). An example will make the difference clear. A player with a very high peak value is Zion Williamson. He was the best player in the country in 2019; you can’t get any higher than that. But he played only that one year. The opposite kind of player is Travis Best. Very good player for four years, one of only 42 players with 2000 career points, 13th all time in career assists, made All-ACC three times. But he was never considered one of the best players in the country, or even the ACC (he never finished higher than sixth in All-ACC balloting). So who ranks higher, Travis Best or Zion Williamson?

Ultimately this is a matter of opinion. You’ll have yours, and I have mine; but the decision can’t be avoided with a list like this. Zion Williamson is an extreme example, but there are several other one- and two-year players who accomplished a great deal in their short time, and there are several other players like Travis Best. Even with four-year players, there are some like Best whose accomplishments were steadily accumulated over time, while there are others (Josh Howard comes to mind) who had one great year. I think overall I leaned a little more towards valuing peak accomplishments over piling up career numbers, but you be the judge.

I tried not to consider NBA performance at all. This is about accomplishments while in the ACC, for obvious reasons. It’s harder than I thought it would be not to be influenced by NBA performance; when you stare at these lists as long as I have, you’re searching for something, anything you can use to differentiate these players, and their NBA performance can seem like a confirmation of what you believed to be true about them but couldn’t prove. (“See, I knew Buck Williams was better than his ACC record shows!”) But as much as I could, I tried to ignore everything but what happened while they played in the ACC.

With each player, I’ll provide a brief write up. Usually I’ll explain my thinking in ranking the player where I did. Sometimes I’ll use that player as a launching point for discussing some other question about ACC basketball that interests me. Sometimes I’ll share an anecdote or quote about the player. In terms of frequency, I’m thinking I’ll try to post one player per day. That would put me finishing around the end of April. But I may double up a few times and try to finish by the time the college basketball season is over.

It is absolutely my intent to spark debate and discussion about this list. In fact, I’ll be disappointed if that doesn’t happen. Please, tell me where you think I’m wrong, or share with me a memory about a player. The discussion is really the fun part. And if you know anyone else who loves ACC basketball, forward it to them and get them involved. And with that, let’s get started.