It prompted Cryanide to question who the best white player ever was. I suggested it was probably Bird, with Pettit as the second choice. With West, Stockton and Nowitzki rounding out a top five. (Not necessarily in that order.) And realized that looked like a pretty good All-White All-Time First Team.
Then I thought of some other "great whites" and decided to ask what if you made a team out of only white guys? I noticed there were a lot of really good players who only occasionally get brought up, so I thought it'd be fun.
I've generally accepted the common idea league history needs to be seperated into three distinct periods when making "all-time" teams: pre-shot clock, pre-merger, post-merger. (Although lately I've been thinking more about pre-shot clock, pre-three pointer, ABA interregnum, post-three pointer. And don't get me started on splitting it even more, like down to the season or something wacky.)
Now, pre-shot clock, your list of the "All-White Team" is a list of the twelve best players in the league. It's the other two I was interested in. Now, I've taken a few liberties with these, i.e. Dan Issel played both before and after the merger, but the bulk of his career comes after. Also took tiny liberties with positions. Like usual, I'm looking for a longevity vs. quality balance.
We'll start with post-merger since more people on here will be familar with them and it's most likely to drive any debate. I'm only including some basic stats, you're on the internet, you can go find the rest.
| Pos. | Player | P/36 | R/36 | A/36 | PER | Playoff PER |
| C | Kevin McHale | 20.7 | 8.5 | 2.0 | 20.0 | 19.4 |
| F | Dirk Nowitzki | 22.4 | 8.4 | 2.6 | 23.8 | 24.4 |
| F | Larry Bird | 22.8 | 9.4 | 6.0 | 23.5 | 21.4 |
| G | Paul Westphal | 22.0 | 2.7 | 6.2 | 19.4 | 16.4 |
| G | John Stockton | 14.9 | 3.1 | 11.9 | 21.8 | 19.8 |
| 6 | Jeff Hornacek | 16.6 | 3.9 | 5.6 | 17.7 | 16.5 |
| 7 | Detlef Schrempf | 16.9 | 7.5 | 4.1 | 17.2 | 14.7 |
| 8 | Steve Nash | 16.7 | 3.4 | 9.3 | 20.0 | 19.5 |
| 9 | Dan Issel | 23.7 | 9.6 | 2.5 | 21.4 | 20.1 |
| 10 | Arvydas Sabonis | 17.8 | 10.9 | 3.1 | 21.2 | 18.0 |
| 11 | Chris Mullin | 20.0 | 4.5 | 3.9 | 18.8 | 15.7 |
| 12 | Jason Kidd | 13.4 | 6.5 | 8.9 | 18.6 | 18.1 |
Others to consider:
| Pos. | Player | P/36 | R/36 | A/36 | PER | Playoff PER |
| C | Jack Sikma | 16.8 | 10.5 | 3.4 | 17.3 | 14.7 |
| C | Bill Laimbeer | 14.6 | 11.0 | 2.3 | 16.1 | 14.4 |
| C | Vlade Divac | 14.3 | 9.9 | 3.8 | 17.7 | 16.6 |
| F | Pedja Stojakovic | 18.6 | 5.1 | 1.9 | 17.6 | 15.1 |
| F | Tom Chambers | 21.3 | 7.1 | 2.4 | 16.5 | 14.1 |
| F | Kiki Vandeweghe | 23.5 | 4.1 | 2.4 | 18.4 | 16.4 |
| G | Dan Majerle | 13.0 | 5.1 | 3.3 | 13.8 | 13.1 |
| F | Bobby Jones | 15.9 | 8.0 | 3.5 | 18.1 | 16.5 |
| F | Pau Gasol | 19.0 | 8.8 | 3.2 | 21.8 | 20.9 |
| G | Manu Ginobili | 19.2 | 5.3 | 4.6 | 21.5 | 20.4 |
| C | Bill Walton | 16.9 | 13.4 | 4.3 | 20.0 | 18.6 |
| G | Mark Price | 18.3 | 3.1 | 8.1 | 19.6 | 17.2 |
| F | Andrei Kirilenko | 14.5 | 6.7 | 3.3 | 19.5 | 14.9 |
| C | Zydrunas Ilgauskus | 17.8 | 9.8 | 1.5 | 19.2 | 16.5 |
| C | Jeff Ruland | 18.7 | 11.0 | 3.3 | 18.7 | 17.8 |
| C | Brad Miller | 14.4 | 9.3 | 3.6 | 18.1 | 15.2 |
| C | Gheorge Muresan | 16.2 | 10.5 | 0.8 | 18.1 | 3.8 |
| C | Rik Smits | 20.1 | 8.2 | 1.9 | 17.9 | 18.4 |
| C | Mehmet Okur | 17.0 | 8.8 | 2.1 | 17.6 | 14.3 |
| F | Toni Kukoc | 15.9 | 5.8 | 5.1 | 17.3 | 16.5 |
| F | Christian Laettner | 15.5 | 8.1 | 3.1 | 16.9 | 14.7 |
| G | Sarunas Marciulionis | 20.5 | 3.6 | 3.6 | 16.7 | 17.9 |
| G | Brent Barry | 12.9 | 4.2 | 4.4 | 15.7 | 12.0 |
| G | Drazen Petrovic | 20.9 | 3.1 | 3.3 | 16.4 | 10.2 |
I'll get to the pre-merger team if there's enough interest in the thread, but I won't complain if others get there first. Here's where you start: Bob Pettit and Jerry West. Some names you'll want to consider include Bob Cousy, Dolph Schayes (iffy, I know, but he plays his best after the shot clock probably), Rick Barry, Pete Maravich, Billy Cunningham, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens.
Oh, and I order you to ask, prod, poke and criticize.
on you.
