# 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?

*By YPB Team · Published September 5, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/who-is-the-most-influential-player-in-basketball-history*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Michael Jordan** — score 1000/1000
   Turned the NBA into a global product and set the template every marketed athlete has followed since.
2. **Bill Russell** — score 744/1000
   Won eleven titles, became the first Black head coach in a major American league, and spent the rest of his life on civil rights.
3. **Yao Ming** — score 604/1000
   Opened China to the NBA and turned the league's biggest growth market into a basketball country.
4. **Larry Bird** — score 447/1000
   Half of the rivalry that pulled the league out of tape-delayed finals and into prime time.
5. **Dirk Nowitzki** — score 446/1000
   Proved a seven-footer could win a title as a jump shooter and opened Europe's pipeline to stardom.
6. **Lisa Leslie** — score 446/1000
   The first player to dunk in a WNBA game and the face that made the women's league a fixture.
7. **Stephen Curry** — score 378/1000
   Moved the game's most valuable shot back several feet and every offence in the sport with it.
8. **Wilt Chamberlain** — score 378/1000
   Forced the league to widen the lane, ban offensive goaltending and make free-throw shooters keep both feet behind the line.
9. **Shaquille O'Neal** — score 378/1000
   So dominant that rules and defensive strategy were rewritten around keeping him off the rim.
10. **LeBron James** — score 298/1000
   Rewrote how players control their own careers, from the decision to leave to the businesses built around it.
11. **Allen Iverson** — score 298/1000
   Made the league's dress code a cultural argument and carried hip-hop into the arena.
12. **Bob Cousy** — score 298/1000
   Invented much of what a point guard does and founded the players' union while doing it.
13. **Julius Erving** — score 298/1000
   Brought the ABA's playground game into the NBA and made the dunk a reason to buy a ticket.
14. **Kareem Abdul-Jabbar** — score 203/1000
   Twenty seasons, an unguardable signature shot, and a second career as a writer on race and history.
15. **Magic Johnson** — score 89/1000
   A six-foot-nine point guard who made positional labels optional, then changed the public conversation about HIV.
16. **George Mikan** — score 89/1000
   The first dominant big man, who forced the widened lane and the shot clock into existence.

Tags: sports, basketball, players, nba, legends