Did Dennis Rodman Deserve To Be A Top 75 Player?

Was Dennis Rodman really a Top 75 NBA Player? He played with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen for the Chicago Bulls. But was he really that good?
Lets first take a look at what many people consider dennis rodmans biggest weakness, his offensive skillset.
When dennis rodman entered the nba he became part of the detroit pistons. a team that had 5 players that could average 15-20 points per game.
Isiah thomas, joe dumars, Bill Laimbeer, Adrian Dantley and vinnie johnson.
So Dennis Rodman did not get as many touces as he would have had on other teams.
What many people seem to forget is that rodman avg 12 points in his second season. And not only of rebounds. He had a soft touch from mid range and also would run the breaks to finish with a dunk. In his first 10 years in the nba rodman would shoot 53 % from the field and also would be good for an occasional 3 Pointer. He was never in the position to be one of the first 3 scoring opions on his team, but he also was no liability on offense.
Again another thing that many fans dont know is that rodman also had games where he scored more than 25 points. and he even once had a game where he had 34 points and 23 rebounds. so he was capable to score but that was never his primary job.

Now while we were talking about offense. Another thing that often gets overlooked was dennis rodmans passing skills. Here we have to go a little bit more into detail. When you look as dennises assists per game you would think that he was not a good passer. but this is far away from the truth. dennis had a very good court vision, but his passes where not the assist itself, but more the pass that leads to the assist. May it be the long outlet pass to start the break or in other cases it would be finding the open man in the triangle offense. espeically in his bulls days you could really seee that dennis was a good passer. he had a good eye for backdoor cuts. better than any other player on his team. so i just wanted to make clear that this is a quality that we should not overlook.



Now from Denises so called weaknesses, to his strong points. defense. I mentioned it countless times on my show but here we go again.
dennis to me is a top 3 defender of all time. not only his ability to guard position 1-5. yes you heard right. pos 1-5 but also the way how he would
always get his feet infront of the ballhandler. He would always get down in the perfect defensive position and make your life miserable on the basketball court.
I mean how many guys do you know that could guard john stockton on night, and shaquille O’Neal the next day. In this regards rodman was a unique talent. And please dont tell me that lebron could also guard position one to 5. In the 1990 lebron would not be able to guard a shaq or a patrick ewing. Different times, and therefore not compairable. If the 1980s and 1990s werent so blessed with many incredable defenders i am sure rodman would have won more defensive player of the year awards, but in those days it was just super hard. Still rodman was twice the defensive player of the year.

The next thing we I would like to talk about is a quality that you wont find on your stats sheet. the hustle plays. dennis rodman next to larry bird was the guy with the most hustle plays in nba history. and again the interesting part is that not many nba super star would hustle after loose balls in a regular season game. but again here rodman and bird were the execption. why was that an important quality? well it helps your team to keep the posetion as well as energycing your teamates.If you played basketball yourself than you know how important these kind of players are for your team.

The next category will be a short one, rebounds. dennis had 5 seasons where he avg more than 15 rebounds. even 18 rebounds per game.
to. mehe is the best rebounder of all time, because you also gotta put into concideration that he was only 6ft7.
dwight howard best season was 14.5 so not even close to denises 18 per game. r




As i already mentioned dennis rodman had qualities that you would find on your stats sheet but they were just as important.
dennisis ability to get into the head of his opponent. he could take guys out of their game and help his team to win.
then another factor was that dennis was always able to get the crowd involved. again something we should not underestimate.