Who is the most influential player in basketball history?

Some players won. Others changed what the sport looked like afterwards — the rules, the shot selection, the business, the place of an athlete in public life. Whose influence runs deepest?

1. 1
   Michael Jordan

   Turned the NBA into a global product and set the template every marketed athlete has followed since.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Bill Russell

   Won eleven titles, became the first Black head coach in a major American league, and spent the rest of his life on civil rights.
   744pts
3. 3
   Yao Ming

   Opened China to the NBA and turned the league's biggest growth market into a basketball country.
   604pts
4. 4
   Larry Bird

   Half of the rivalry that pulled the league out of tape-delayed finals and into prime time.
   447pts
5. 5
   Dirk Nowitzki

   Proved a seven-footer could win a title as a jump shooter and opened Europe's pipeline to stardom.
   446pts
6. 6
   Lisa Leslie

   The first player to dunk in a WNBA game and the face that made the women's league a fixture.
   446pts
7. 7
   Stephen Curry

   Moved the game's most valuable shot back several feet and every offence in the sport with it.
   378pts
8. 8
   Wilt Chamberlain

   Forced the league to widen the lane, ban offensive goaltending and make free-throw shooters keep both feet behind the line.
   378pts
9. 9
   Shaquille O'Neal

   So dominant that rules and defensive strategy were rewritten around keeping him off the rim.
   378pts
10. 10
    LeBron James

    Rewrote how players control their own careers, from the decision to leave to the businesses built around it.
    298pts
11. 11
    Allen Iverson

    Made the league's dress code a cultural argument and carried hip-hop into the arena.
    298pts
12. 12
    Bob Cousy

    Invented much of what a point guard does and founded the players' union while doing it.
    298pts
13. 13
    Julius Erving

    Brought the ABA's playground game into the NBA and made the dunk a reason to buy a ticket.
    298pts
14. 14
    Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

    Twenty seasons, an unguardable signature shot, and a second career as a writer on race and history.
    203pts
15. 15
    Magic Johnson

    A six-foot-nine point guard who made positional labels optional, then changed the public conversation about HIV.
    89pts
16. 16
    George Mikan

    The first dominant big man, who forced the widened lane and the shot clock into existence.
    89pts