SLAM Magazine is just asking for trouble. If you’ve ever discussed any top-3, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, whatever-list online, you’re going to get some heated discussions.

(Check out Interbasket’s Top-Five NBA Players of All-Time as voted on by reporters)

Well, SLAM went ahead and listed their top 500 NBA players of all time.

Ranking the 500 greatest players in NBA history? And listing all of them with their years played, teams they played for, career averages, a photo and a sharply written mini-bio? Who would take on such a project? Your friends from SLAM, of course. Credit for the idea, and the rough list we built off of, goes to a gentleman named Al Stark and his cousin, Rick. Al is a SLAM subscriber and hoop fanatic while Rick works for our parent company. Together, they approached me about doing a list of the top 1000 (!) players of all time. That was too much, so we compromised on 500.

You think that Shaquille O’Neal as the fourth best player ever is causing a stir online? Wait until you see that Joe Graboski (#487) is listed seven spots ahead of P.J. Brown (#494) – you’ll blow your top.

O.K., raise your hands if you’ve ever heard of Tom Gola (#164) or Andy Philip (#169). O.K., so you’re a basketball-reference guy, keep your hands up if you’ve seen either play (either in person or grainy footage).

And is Carlos Boozer really the 206th best player ever?  Without going through the list entirely, that just feels wrong.

Props and respect for SLAM for putting this together – it must have been as fun as it was difficult.

Here’s the full list:

TOP 500 NBA PLAYERS OF ALL-TIME:

Growing up a Detroit Pistons fan, I could be biased, but Bill Laimbeer is severely underrated in this list (#235). He’s rated behind Jason Richardson, Orlando Woolridge, Darrell Griffith, and Rip? I don’t think so. Lambs was an impact player.

And whether he is or isn’t the 420th best player…. I’m happy to see James “Buddha” Edwards (#420) on the list.  What do you think?  Who is missing?  Who doesn’t deserve to be on the list? Discuss the top-500  in our forum, add your comment below, or if you haven’t had enough of lists; you can look at ESPN’s ranking of the Top 100 NBA Players in NBA History from 2016 and SLAM’s updated list of the 100 best NBA players of all-time their March 2018 issue.