by Ronald Millsaps

Created on: October 07, 2009

Who are the top power forwards in NBA history? Excellent question, as there indeed have been quite a few of them, and though the NBA over the last couple of decades has seen guards influence the tempo more than they have in years past (due to expansion and the off-balanced ratio of guard-forward talent, not to mention fundamental reasons, as in guards not feeding the post well enough), we have seen some of the greatest power forwards in league history in recent times, too.

Karl Malone, the muscular, speedy, physical forward, who could post up like a center and run the court like a small forward, has to be the benchmark, pun intended. He simply outplayed his competitors as this position, in the present and historically, as he attacked the basket with wild abandon, rebounded with insane intensity, and played stifling defense. He spent his offseasons working tremendously hard to be the best player he could be, and as usual, hard work is undefeated. He broke onto the main stage in 1988 with a powerful performance against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, a series that L.A. ultimately won en route to fulfilling Pat Riley's guarantee of consecutive championships, and the defending and would-be champions had no answer for him throughout the series, and they were not alone in this regard. Did he at times look uncharacteristically decisive against the Bulls in the 1997 and 1998 Finals? Yes, he did, but this reality is probably more an attribute to that historic defense than a slight against him.

Kevin McHale, whom Charles Barkley regards as the best player he ever played against, cannot be excluded for this conversation if it is going to be legitimate. No one... repeat-no one- had more moves than he did in the low post. He could shoot fade-aways, hook shots, the mid-range jumper, occasionally the long jumper, pass, defend, drill free throws basically automatically, draw fouls smartly, and play strong defense while not committing fouls (though you can put a Boston Garden-sized asterisk by this one since Boston got the benefit of the whistle a lot, though this story is for another day), and he could rebound with the best of them while passing fundamentally well. When did you ever see McHale make dumb, fundamentally-unsound plays? You did not. He simply was one of the most-skilled, most-reliable offensive and defensive threats in NBA history, and he accented perfectly well Boston's famed starting five of the 1980s. Not only did he complement

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