The NBA's best player year-by-year: Wemby's historic age, a new GOAT contender and 80 seasons of debate

Victor Wembanyama is the best player in the NBA, the distinguished holder of that mythical belt argued more in this league than perhaps any other.

By my count, he's the 25th player in league history to hold that distinction. Perhaps most significantly, he's also the youngest. Wemby's arrival, flanked by budding young stars in their own right, marks far more than just another changing of the guard.

As part of The Sporting News' year-long celebration of our 140th year of publishing, I went through 80 years of NBA history to unofficially pick the best player in the world at the end of every season. It was methodical, though not formulaic. Here's how I did it:

• It's not simply picking the MVP. Steve Nash won back-to-back awards and yet not a soul on the planet thought he was the world's best player.
• I factored in playoff performance ... without adhering to a ring-or-bust mentality. The best player doesn't always win, often times through no fault of his own.
• I considered head-to-head results. Toss out regular season stats and records, Bill Russell beating Wilt Chamberlain over and over again matters. 
• Tie goes to the incumbent and track records matter. For someone to take the throne the title as NBA's best player, they have to go snatch it. 
• "You know it when you see it." Simply watching games, every so often one player clearly levitates above everyone else beyond box scores or even winners and losers.

In other words, as much art as science (though I'm a huge data nerd so make no mistake, the math needs to math).

To tease the entire set, here are the five legends with the most seasons as the NBA's best player. 

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Bill Russell and Michael Jordan at 9? LeBron James only at 8? Wait, George Mikan?

Without further ado, here's a look through all 80 years of NBA history with special attention focused on the key debates and torch passers. We'll save debating every single year — along with my top-3 players in every season — for another day. 

Enjoy.

(Oh, and don't be shy in telling me what I got wrong.)

SKIP TO: 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s

SN 140: Greatest individual NBA seasons | Greatest teams in NBA history

Best NBA players of the 1940s and 1950s

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Joe Fulks was the NBA's first king until George Mikan arrived and as a rookie, instantly became the league's top dog.

If you were making an All-Time Historically Underrated Team, Mikan might be the team captain. The league's first true superstar, Mikan won five titles in his seven-year career. The MVP award didn't exist yet otherwise be likely would have won five of them. There's a case to be made that no player — not even Michael Jordan in the 90s — dominated a decade relative to his peers quite like Mikan in 50s.

Mikan's retirement ultimately gave way to Bob Pettit, the league's first MVP who gave Russell's Celtics absolute fits. Tied 2-2 in the 1958 Finals, Pettit went for 33 and 21 in a Game 5 win before exploding for 50 points and 19 rebounds in Game 6.

Pettit holding off Russell just one more year in the end kept Russell from having the most seasons as the NBA's best player. 

Best NBA players of the 1960s

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There's no better individual battle than Bill Russell vs. Wilt Chamberlain in the 60s.

Judging solely by statistics, its hard to argue against Wilt. Three straight MVPs. Seven scoring titles. The most 1st-team All-NBA selections.

And yet seemingly every year, Russell just kept beating him when it mattered the most, including Chamberlain's otherwordly 1961-62 season when he averaged 50 points per game... and scored just 22 in a Game 7 loss to Russell's Celtics.

Chamberlain snatched the belt with a title in 1967, finally getting past a banged up Russell who came back the following season to reassert his claim.

Although Jerry West may have lost the 1969 Finals to Russell, he did win Finals MVP and remains the only player from a losing team to win the award. Fifty-three points in Game 1, a 42-13-12 in a tight Game 7 loss, to this day the only Finals MVP from a losing team... as we'll see with LeBron James later, sometimes the eye test lends an obvious answer that supersedes any singular result.

As for Willis Reed in 1970, he won the MVP, dispatched a rookie Lew Alcindor and toppled the Lakers in the Finals with the heroic Game 7.

Best NBA players of the 1970s

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's decade and you could make the argument to give it to him in every season.

Here's why I didn't.

Rick Barry dragging the Warriors to the 1975 title might be the single-greatest carry job in NBA history. Seriously, look at this team.

Meanwhile, Kareem's Bucks missed the playoffs in large part because they went 3-14 in the 17 games he missed after breaking his hand while punching a stanchion. The combination of Kareem's injury along with Barry's solo mission title was enough for me.

Bill Walton was good enough to grab the belt for two seasons, including a year that Kareem won the MVP. Not only did Walton win Finals MVP in 1977, he also swept Abdul-Jabbar's Lakers in the WCF. The very next year, Walton won MVP despite playing just 58 games.

One player who didn't hold the NBA belt? Julius Erving.

Over in the ABA, Dr. J very may have been the world's best player for stretches in the 70s. 

Best NBA players of the 1980s

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The 80s are a fun ride. Magic Johnson taking the baton from Abdul-Jabbar. Moses Malone's two MVPs on two teams in two years. The Magic vs. Bird rivalry.

And yet this exercise specifically sheds light on two interesting ideas:

• Was Magic Johnson only the NBA's best player one time?
• When did Michael Jordan officially take over as the league's best player?

Johnson's first season with a real belt claim is probably 1984-85. Second in MVP to Bird, beats Bird in the Finals... but it's Abdul-Jabbar who wins Finals MVP.

By 1987, Johnson's the best player but Jordan is coming. 

By 1988, MJ is here. MVP. Defensive Player of the Year. Scoring title. Sure, the Bulls lost to Detroit but his second-leading scorer was Sam Vincent.

Waiting to crown MJ as the world's best player is an oversimplification of rings culture when the entire body of work suggested that by the late 80s, he was clearly on top. 

As such, the 80s ends in a tie, but not between Magic and Bird.

Best NBA players of the 1990s

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Its Michael Jordan and everyone else.

The biggest calamity is that we never got the Jordan vs. Olajuwon NBA Finals. It's hard to overstate just how dominant Olajuwon's two-year run was in the mid-90s during a golden era of centers with Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning. In fact, we recognized Olajuwon's 1993-94 season as the 2nd-best ever by a center.

The post-Jordan lockout year presents a tricky one that boils down to Karl Malone vs. Tim Duncan.

Malone won the MVP, Duncan won the title. And while Malone's production fell off in the playoffs (along with losing in the second round), Duncan not only swept the team that knocked out Malone, his production went up across the board.

At just 23 years old, Duncan tied Bob Pettit for the honor of becoming the youngest best player in the league. 

Best NBA players of the 2000s

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Three straight belt-holder 3-peats:

• Shaquille O'Neal from 1999-00 to 2001-02
• Tim Duncan from 2002-03 to 2004-05
• Kobe Bryant from 2005-06 to 2007-08

The only player you can really make a case for breaking that up in the middle is Kevin Garnett in his masterful 2003-04 campaign.

Like Jordan in the 80s, the other interesting idea is identifying exactly when LeBron James assumed the throne. The earliest you can make the case is probably 2006-07, punctuated by his 25 straight in the ECF vs. the Pistons en route to reaching his first NBA Finals. 

And yet Bryant — in that post-Shaq, pre-Gasol window — was still every bit as masterful.

Even though Bryant won the first of back-to-back titles in 2008-09, James put on an offensive display in the 2009 playoffs that by some advanced metrics is the best one ever. 

SN ARCHIVES (2007): LeBron just had his first MJ moment

Bryant had Gasol and Lamar Odom. James had Mo Williams and Delonte West. 

Perhaps even more than Jordan vs. Olajuwon, Bryant vs. James is the Finals near-miss the world so deserved.

Alas, a second straight title brought the belt back to Bryant one final time in 2010.

Best NBA players of the 2010s

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Of all 80 years in this project, 2010-11 might be the most confounding.

• Bryant clearly took a step back after winning that second title.
• Derrick Rose won the MVP but nobody thought he was the league's best player.
• James suffered his quasi-Finals meltdown with Dwyane Wade looking like the better of the two.

And then there was Dirk Nowitzki. 2nd-team All-NBA and 6th in MVP voting but then a remarkable postseason: sweeping Bryant, knocking out the young Thunder with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, then vanquishing the Heatles. An unlikely one-year run at the belt.

From then on, it's just LeBron.

With apologies to Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, nobody touched The King for seven years. Ironically, its a game he lost to Durant and Curry — Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals — that best articulated his all-around dominance.

Kawhi Leonard's one-year load-managed tactical run with the Raptors sits alongside Rick Barry as one of the best relatively out-of-nowhere brief claims to the kingdom.

Best NBA players of the 2020s 

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Three years of Giannis. Three years of the Joker. And now once more time for a changing of the guard. 

We arrived at an inflection point in the 2026 WCF with two players — SGA and Wemby — dueling for the throne. 

Throughout the series, even on the nights Wembanyama didn't have it offensively, you could feel his omnipresence disrupt OKC's entire flow. The two-time MVP unable to find a groove. Chet Holmgren turning into Ben Simmons. Jumpers rushed, floaters launched from awkward angles, drives to the basket second-guessed. 

When he does have it going? Thirty-five-footers, cross-overs, step-backs, alley-oops to himself, hard rolls, lobs caught 12 feet in the air. Utter hopelessness.

Looking at every season in league history, the average age of the NBA's best player is 28.3.

In all 80 years of NBA history, never — NEVER — has a 22-year-old ascended to become the league's best player.

He's not simply ahead of schedule, he's six years ahead of schedule. 

Incredibly, Wembanyama now faces the same NBA Finals opponent Duncan once did in his first trip to the biggest stage.

I'm making a promise not play the results. Win or lose against the Knicks — and the Spurs could absolutely lose — I won't back track from the declaration that this is now Wembanyama's league. 

JUMP BACK TO: 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s

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