Football Reference has a method of ranking players in terms of all time greatness called weighted Approximate Value. You weigh the player's best season 100%. You weigh the player's second best season 95%. You weight the player's third best season 90%. You get the idea. Its basically a way of balancing longevity with peak. I was interested in applying this method to NBA all time rankings so I pulled up RAPTOR WAR data from 538 and used the same methodology Football reference uses to calculcate Weighted WAR. The 2023 season wasn't included in the file so I couldn't use it in creating this list. The rank order ended up being very similar to the list published in 2019 which used the JAWS method of blending Peak+Longevity https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lebron-or-mj-raptor-picks-the-best-nba-players-of-the-past-40-years/. Main difference is that Harden has risen to number 14 on the all time list which is obviously controversial. This is my personal top 100 list to be clear. I would use other stats and film in conjunction with this kind of analysis. Yes I know Stockton at 3 is weird. Itโ€™s just a product of how much RAPTOR loves Stockton and doesnโ€™t have anything to do with weighted WAR inherently

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