Where do Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant rank among all-time best duos?

With Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry leading the Warriors to unprecedented heights, let’s take a look at some of the best duos in NBA history to see where Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant might rank.

Debating the relative greatness of players across different generations is a favorite topic of conversation among basketball fans.

Is LeBron James better than Michael Jordan? What about Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird? Who is the greatest player in NBA history?

The success of Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry on the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors has created a new debate: who is the greatest duo in NBA history?

For Los Angeles Lakers fans, there are a lot of options to choose from, but Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant might be the best.

What makes a debate like this fun, or frustrating, depending on how you want to look at it, is there are no absolute answers. Ok, we know that Michael Jordan is greater than Iman Shumpert. But how do we know that Michael Jordan is greater than Kobe Bryant or LeBron James? There are statistics and video representation of how well a player, or group of players, performed on the court; but the final judgment — the one made on talk radio shows, bar stools, and living room couches — is subjective.

Lakers fans might say that Shaq and Kobe are the best duo ever. Bulls fans will say it’s Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Warriors fans will tell you it’s Curry and Durant.

Beyond subjectivity, comparing players is difficult because fans often don’t use the same parameters in making their arguments. One fan believes the number of NBA championships is the most important barometer of greatness; another believes average points per game is most telling. This is why creating a baseline is important.

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This article does not attempt to definitively state who the best duos are in NBA history; it is simply defining a possible ranking based on one way of looking at the question.

Let me walk you through my thought process.

In thinking about the best duo in NBA history, I needed a place to start. How would I sort through the rich history of NBA teammates and find the best examples? I wanted to use the myriad of statistics available to me, while also considering the opinion of people who watched these players play. I have been lucky to see Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and Kevin Durant play in my lifetime. I wish I could have seen Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell.

I decided to begin my research with the All-NBA First Team. This would give me a subjective list of names that NBA writers voted as the best players in the game in each respective season. I figured if I could identify teammates who made the All-NBA First Team in the same season, I would have a pretty good start at identifying the all-time best duos.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. Kevin Durant did not make the 2016-17 All-NBA First Team, mainly because he missed a lot of games from injury. That being said, LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard are tough competition at the forward position, so it’s not a lock that Durant would have made the team if he had been healthy. There is always debate on who should have qualified for an All-NBA team. Nonetheless, by setting my first parameter, I created a list of names that excludes the genesis of this exercise, the Warriors duo of Kevin Durant and Steph Curry.

Los Angeles Lakers

There are 29 teams in NBA history who had at least two players on the same All-NBA First Team. The Lakers have had multiple players selected to the First Team 11 times over the course of their history. That is four more times than the next closest team, the Celtics.

That brings me to my next parameter for identifying the best duos in NBA history: championships. There have been 29 teams with multiple All-NBA First Team players, but only seven that were champions in that same season.

Close your eyes purple and gold fans. The Lakers had four teams that arguably carried two of the best five players in the sport lose to different Celtics teams in the Finals. The 1961-62, 1962-63, and 1964-65 Lakers with Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor couldn’t get past Bill Russell, Tommy Heinsohn and Bob Cousy. Even the Magic and Kareem duo in 1985-86, coming off All-NBA First Team honors, could not beat the Celtics.

When the Lakers won their first Los Angeles championship in 1972, they did so with Jerry West as the All-NBA First Team point guard, but without a second player since Wilt was beat to First Team distinction by future Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. When Kareem was on the Showtime Lakers in the ’80s, he was still a great player, but battled Moses Malone for First Team honors.

It was not until the 2001-02 season, with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, that the Lakers won a championship with a roster that contained two All-NBA First Team selections.

After using All-NBA First Team selections in championship seasons to find a narrowed down list of all-time great duos, I use win shares to compare those duos. Win shares are calculated using a mix of player statistics available from 1946 to present day.

This allows us to compare players across generations in one tidy number. Win shares are also reflective of team success, as the total number of individual player win shares on a team should roughly equate into the team’s total number of actual wins.

Bulls fans so can go home happy with Jordan and Pippen atop this list of all-time great teammates, and Warriors fans can define a new set of parameters to make room for Durant and Curry.

While the Lakers have had multiple all-time great duos over their illustrious history, and teams with more than two great players, such as those 1960s and 1980s teams, only the 2001-02 Shaq and Kobe duo made the All-NBA First Team in the same season that they won a championship together. They rank sixth among the seven duos identified in this analysis.

More hoops habit: NBA: 50 Greatest Players Of All Time

So perhaps not the best, but still part of an elite group.