Bird scored 21,791 points in 13 seasons with multiple 50/40/90/20 seasons.

Nowitzki has passed Bird in points during his 13th season, has 1 50/40/90/20 season, has a legit shot at another one this season and shows few signs of slowing down.

I think he can finish in the top 10 of all-time scorers and maybe higher if he avoids major injury. Old slow 40 year old Dirk can stand around shooting jumpers all day as a 7th-8th man on a championship team.

He has averaged about 2,000 points per season since 2005. If he has 3-4 more years of prime, plus a gradual decline then he will shoot up the list.

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NBA
Rank Player PTS
1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar* 38387
2. Karl Malone* 36928
3. Michael Jordan* 32292
4. Wilt Chamberlain* 31419
5. Shaquille O'Neal 28445
6. Moses Malone* 27409
7. Elvin Hayes* 27313
8. Hakeem Olajuwon* 26946
9. Oscar Robertson* 26710
10. Dominique Wilkins* 26668
11. Kobe Bryant 26514
12. John Havlicek* 26395
13. Alex English* 25613
14. Reggie Miller 25279
15. Jerry West* 25192
16. Patrick Ewing* 24815
17. Allen Iverson 24368
18. Charles Barkley* 23757
19. Robert Parish* 23334
20. Adrian Dantley* 23177
21. Elgin Baylor* 23149
22. Kevin Garnett 22669
23. Clyde Drexler* 22195
24. Gary Payton 21813

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And Durant will probably be the 3rd member of the 50/40/90/20 club.


[This message has been edited by InternetFan02 (edited 12/21/2010 10:57p).]

I still don't see how Dominique Wilkins could've been snubbed from that Top 50 list. SMH.

I am ignorant:

What is the 20?

The OP was very scatterbrained. First we're talking about 50/40/90/20 (BTW, what's the 20 for?), and for some reason comparing Dirk to Bird. Then we're talking about all-time scoring, and there's a list that includes neither Dirk nor Bird.

What's your point?

50/40/90/20
50% FG
40% Three
90% FT
20 points per game?

Ahh, yes. That's probably correct.

I think the OP has just cut off the cut/paste incorrectly.

Larry Bird was 25th all-time scorer. Dirk just passed him.

I see Wilkins in the top ten, but I don't see a top50 list anywhere.

Here he is:

Dirk is 3rd in scoring in terms of whites, and has a realistic shot at getting to 1st

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50/40/90/20
50% FG
40% Three
90% FT
20 points per game?

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Correct. Only Bird and Nowitzki have done it.

So now Dirk is 25th in scoring and will pass the Glove soon. I'll make a new thread for that - The "Superstars that have been eliminated by an 8 seed" club has a new leading scorer.

How about MVP winners who got their trophy via Fed Ex...

here's tim again!

nash has done 50/40/90 without the 20+ ppg right?

Yeah Nash is an automatic 50/40/90 these days

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The 50/40/90 club:

Rk Player Season Age Tm FG% 3P% FT% PTS
1 Larry Bird* 1987-88 31 BOS 0.527 0.414 0.916 29.9
2 Larry Bird* 1986-87 30 BOS 0.525 0.4 0.91 28.1
3 Dirk Nowitzki 2006-07 28 DAL 0.502 0.416 0.904 24.6
4 Reggie Miller 1993-94 28 IND 0.503 0.421 0.908 19.9
5 Mark Price 1988-89 24 CLE 0.526 0.441 0.901 18.9
6 Steve Nash 2005-06 31 PHO 0.512 0.439 0.921 18.8
7 Steve Nash 2007-08 33 PHO 0.504 0.47 0.906 16.9
8 Steve Nash 2009-10 35 PHO 0.507 0.426 0.938 16.5
9 Steve Nash 2008-09 34 PHO 0.503 0.439 0.933 15.7
10 Jose Calderon 2007-08 26 TOR 0.519 0.429 0.908 11.2
11 Steve Kerr 1995-96 30 CHI 0.506 0.515 0.929 8.4

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Dirk is a great player. He will be in the HoF. He does not belong in the same conversation with Bird, not even close. Bird was a lot more than just a great shooter, he was the definition of basketball IQ while being one of the greatest competitors ever to play in the NBA. Bird would pull up from 20 feet on a 3 on 1 fast break and not even watch the ball swish through the net. He was a bad, bad man.

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He does not belong in the same conversation with Bird, not even close

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When it comes to shooting efficiency, he does belong in the same conversation. He and Bird are the only 2 players to accomplish 50/40/90/20. When it comes to long term durability he will likely play many more seasons than Bird did. When it comes to just about every other facet of the game, he does not belong in the conversation with Bird, and no one is claiming that he does on here.

Dirk gets credit for being the most durable superstar of this generation, and that is a direct reflection of his dedication to preparation, conditioning and training. Kobe is right there with him. Therefore he will have a shot to climb into the top 10 of all-time scorers, and maybe top 5.

[This message has been edited by InternetFan02 (edited 12/24/2010 1:31p).]

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Old slow 40 year old Dirk can stand around shooting jumpers all day as a 7th-8th man on a championship team

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He'll have to leave the mavs if he ever wants to be on a championship team. The spurs might have room on the bench for him after he's washed up, then he might be able to be a champion...

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Dirk gets credit for being the most durable superstar of this generation, and that is a direct reflection of his dedication to preparation, conditioning and training. Kobe is right there with him.

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If you put Kobe there, you have to put Duncan there, too.

Duncan has played 95% of his team's games so far in his 14th season.

Kobe has played 92% of his teams games so far in his 15th season.

Dirk has played 95.6% of his teams game so far in his 13th season.

Dwight Howard has played 99.4% of his games for his career.

Nash for the last 10 years has been super healthy, especially considering his bad back.
Garnett has always been healthy until the last two years.

When they get more games under belts, Bron and Durant have been really healthy.

I didn't realize Duncan had missed so few games. I would factor in that his game has been negatively affected for long periods of time by nagging injuries even though he kept playing. Kobe as well, but probably not so much as Duncan. I can't recall any extended period where Dirk was playing with a nagging injury that hurt his effectiveness on the court.

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He'll have to leave the mavs if he ever wants to be on a championship team.

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Yeah I think he'll force a trade when the Mavs are in rebuilding mode or leave as a <MLE level free agent to one of the elite teams, and I will fully support him.

[This message has been edited by InternetFan02 (edited 12/31/2010 12:50a).]

Duncan had that plantar fasciitis that really slowed him down. If you have ever had major foot pain, you will know how much of a ***** that is. I broke the same bone in my foot that Yao did a few years back. It was horrible. Still gets inflamed from time to time.

Then Duncan has had meniscus problems (bone grinding on bone in his knees). I think the inflamation there has slowed him down a bit, and he tore his meniscus in 2000 - so for pretty much his entire career. Then the ankle sprains and all that that comes with playing 100 games of basketball a year.

It probably looks worse for Duncan because he isn't a stats guy, and he is a guy that does a lot of the little things that don't show up on the stat sheets. So while he has his worst statistical season of his career right now, his PER is still over 21, which shows he is still contributing a lot.

Kevin Love is looking like he has an outside shot at being the first 50/40/90/20/10 guy.

As of today:

FG%: 47%
3P%: 44%
FT%: 88%
21.6 PPG
15.7 RPG

Looks like Bill Simmons saw this thread and elaborated on my work in his Friday column

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Nowitzki: I can't decide if he's moving into the Barkley/Malone discussion (for best modern power forward not named Tim Duncan or Larry Bird) or the Larry Bird/Rick Barry discussion (for best offensive forward ever), but there's definitely been some moving. It's a junior version of the Kobe/Michael thing: Nowitzki's peak can't come close to matching Bird's peak, but his freaky consistency and legendary summer work ethic makes a Bird/Nowitzki career comparison closer than you'd think.

For 11 straight seasons, he's been the best player on a contender. Grab any Dirk season from 2001 to 2011 and it will look something close to his career numbers (22.6 PPG, 8.3 RPG, 48 percent FG, 38 percent 3FG, 88 percent FT, 23.8 PER, 0.213 WS/48, 27.0 usage rate, 58.1 true shooting). And he hasn't slipped even a little. I asked ESPN's Marc Stein, the Gayle to Dirk's Oprah, whether 2011 Dirk looks any different than 2001 Dirk or 2007 Dirk. His response: "He's a little creakier, but it's not like his first step was ever the key to his game. He's shooting the ball as well as he ever has. He's like a surgeon now, he just carves up anything you throw at him. [Erik] Spoelstra told me that, too -- he said the stuff [Miami] did in 2006 just doesn't work anymore."

Quick tangent: For whatever reason, basketball fans don't care about career NBA numbers like baseball fans care about baseball numbers. I see four reasons for this: (1) baseball has been around almost twice as long as basketball; (2) baseball's signature threshold numbers are famously identifiable (500, 3,000 and 300), as are the players who broke its major records, whereas your average sports fan would struggle to answer questions like "Who leads the NBA in career scoring?"; (3) statistics matter more in baseball because it's an individual sport; and (4) we need to throw ourselves into baseball statistics because the sport itself is so f------ boring. If we were eating lunch and I told you, "Johnny Damon has 2,571 hits right now," that would mean something to you. If you're a true baseball fan, you would process that information in 0.008 seconds and think, "He needs 429 for 3,000, that's doable!" But if I told you "Dirk Nowitzki has 21,925 points right now," you wouldn't think anything other than, "That's a lot."

Well, only 19 players have ever topped 25,000 points. Only 10 players (I'm including Kobe, who will get it next week) have topped 27,000. Only five players have topped 30,000. Only two (Kareem and Mailman) have topped 32,500. And then there's Dirk, who should be close to 23,000 by the end of this season and grinding out 1,700-1,900 points for at least three after that ... and we haven't even covered the final phase of his career, his late 30s, when he hangs on for an extra four years as the greatest version of Sam Perkins ever. Barring injury, we'll have our first foreign-born player in the 30,000 Point Club. Throw in longevity, durability and eye-popping shooting percentages (for his career, he's a 48-38-88 guy right now) and suddenly we're talking about one of the best 15-18 players ever and the best foreign-born player other than Hakeem. Pretty high stakes. Twenty years ago? He'd already be in the Fat Sam Perkins stage. With equally horrible hair.

Last footnote on Dirk: With advanced metrics slowly taking over basketball for better and worse, Dirk should be one of the big retroactive winners historically, a little like how the sneaky-great Tim Raines dropped the "sneaky" about two years and 550 homicidally impassioned pro-Raines sabermetric essays ago. I was there for Dirk, and I was there for Bird. It's no contest. (These three YouTube clips explain everything: "Why You Don't Mess With Larry Bird," "Larry Bird 47 Points vs. Portland (the Left-handed Game)" and "Larry Bird Greatest Passer of All-Time." But Nowitzki's PER, win shares and true shooting percentages are better, and as long as you throw out MVPs, titles and overall impact, and you skew longevity, you can make a great case that Dirk Nowitzki was better than Larry Bird. I will now light my game-worn Bird jersey on fire with me in it.

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[This message has been edited by InternetFan02 (edited 1/31/2011 1:07a).]