phunwin
The name's Bond...James Bond.
Wow, someone dug this one out of the mothballs. I'll give my $0.02 anyway, though, because I love these debates.
If I had a vote, I'd vote for Mourning. (The first ballot distinction is utterly meaningless; a guy is an HOF'er or he's not. He's not going to get better in retirement.)
You've got to judge how much he benefitted from playing in an era where there were very few good centers. Olajuwon and Ewing were fading when he was hitting his stride, which meant that his only real contemporaries were O'Neal and Mutombo.
But, if we're going to account for the era in which he played, let's not forget that he played most of his prime on a slow-paced, thug-ball team (the 96-00 Heat), which probably depressed his raw offensive stats.
Fortunately, PER, Player Efficiency Rating, takes that into account. And it shows us that Mourning was awesome from 96-00. By way of comparison, that five season stretch was just a shade below Moses Malone's BEST five season stretch (79-83). And no one in their right mind would call Malone anything less than totally dominant in his prime. To say that, at his best, Mourning was "good but not great" completely misses the mark.
If you look at Mourning's PER stats from 1993-2000, they're pretty damned impressive. In fact, they compare favorably with Bill Walton's. Walton is probably a fair comparison to Mourning in terms of his career: Walton's career was cut short by bad wheels, Mourning's by a bad kidney. But Walton only had two seasons where he played more than half the season and posted above a 20.0 PER. Mourning had eight. To me, that's a dominant performance. And of course, he won a ring last year, and contributed mightily to that championship (just as Walton did with the 86 Celtics).
The fact that Mourning was a jerk throughout most of his career doesn't matter. The HOF is littered with unsavory personalities and is no worse for it. And while Mourning was a jerk, he also never beat up his wife or had a drug problem (widespread drug problems nearly sunk the NBA in the pre-Bird/Magic Era). What counts is what he did on the court. And what he did on the court, even missing about 3 1/2 seasons to his kidney problem, is more than enough. I believe he should get in, and ultimately, he will.
If I had a vote, I'd vote for Mourning. (The first ballot distinction is utterly meaningless; a guy is an HOF'er or he's not. He's not going to get better in retirement.)
You've got to judge how much he benefitted from playing in an era where there were very few good centers. Olajuwon and Ewing were fading when he was hitting his stride, which meant that his only real contemporaries were O'Neal and Mutombo.
But, if we're going to account for the era in which he played, let's not forget that he played most of his prime on a slow-paced, thug-ball team (the 96-00 Heat), which probably depressed his raw offensive stats.
Fortunately, PER, Player Efficiency Rating, takes that into account. And it shows us that Mourning was awesome from 96-00. By way of comparison, that five season stretch was just a shade below Moses Malone's BEST five season stretch (79-83). And no one in their right mind would call Malone anything less than totally dominant in his prime. To say that, at his best, Mourning was "good but not great" completely misses the mark.
If you look at Mourning's PER stats from 1993-2000, they're pretty damned impressive. In fact, they compare favorably with Bill Walton's. Walton is probably a fair comparison to Mourning in terms of his career: Walton's career was cut short by bad wheels, Mourning's by a bad kidney. But Walton only had two seasons where he played more than half the season and posted above a 20.0 PER. Mourning had eight. To me, that's a dominant performance. And of course, he won a ring last year, and contributed mightily to that championship (just as Walton did with the 86 Celtics).
The fact that Mourning was a jerk throughout most of his career doesn't matter. The HOF is littered with unsavory personalities and is no worse for it. And while Mourning was a jerk, he also never beat up his wife or had a drug problem (widespread drug problems nearly sunk the NBA in the pre-Bird/Magic Era). What counts is what he did on the court. And what he did on the court, even missing about 3 1/2 seasons to his kidney problem, is more than enough. I believe he should get in, and ultimately, he will.
