USC Basketball: Former Trojans All-American Demoted From All-Time Player Rankings

The writers of HoopsHype recently curated a new list of the 77 best players in NBA history, a truly arbitrary tally if ever there was one.

The three (current) Hall of Fame USC men's basketball alumni who conceivably could have made the cut -- Bill Sharman, Paul Westphal and Alex Hannum -- did not.

Sharman, an eight-time All-Star shooting guard and four-time league champion while with the Boston Celtics in the 1960s, made the cut for the NBA's official 75th anniversary list celebrating the 75 best players in league history.

Sharman wasn't the only classic Celtic great to be demoted. His fellow Hall of Famers Sam Jones, Billy Walton, Dave DeBusschere and Dave Bing were all demoted, as were Lenny Wilkens, Jerry Lucas, and Billy Cunningham were all demoted from the NBA 75, while several more contemporary players made the cut.

While with the Trojans, Sharman was a consensus first-time All-America selection (they weren't called "All-Americans" yet), and a two-time First-Team All-PCC conference pick in 1949 and 1950. His No. 11 jersey was later retired by the team.

The 6'1" Sharman was selected with the No. 17 pick out of USC in the 1950 NBA draft by the then-Washington Capitols. He would spend just one season in D.C., and would log the other ten as a player with the Boston Celtics, from 1951-61. He got to ride shotgun on a lot of excellent Bill Russell-led Boston teams, winning titles in 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961.

For his career, Sharman averaged of 17.8 points on 42.6% shooting and 88.3% free throw shooting (there was no three-point line back then), 3.9 rebounds and three assists.

Reigning Finals MVP Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets, six-time All-Star big man Pau Gasol, eight-time All-Star center and three-time Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard, 11-time All-Star and two-time champion power forward/center Chris Bosh, six-time All-Star and four-time San Antonio Spurs champion point guard Tony Parker, eight-time All-Star wing Vince Carter (who played a league-record 23 seasons), eight-time All-Star and 1983 scoring champion small forward Alex English, four-time New York Knicks/Washington Bullets All-Star Bernard King, and eight-time All-Stars Tracy McGrady and Kyrie Irving all made HoopsHype's list, though none had been included in the NBA 75.

Should Sharman et al., some of whom were legacy inclusions since the NBA's 25th anniversary, have made the cut over the aforementioned luminaries? Obviously if you put that iteration of Sharman into a time machine and made him play against even peak Alex English, it's hard to imagine that Sharman would have had much of a chance. But if he was born two decades later and raised with the technology and training methods available to those players, or if he was born seven decades later and was a contemporary of Irving's now, who's to say he wouldn't have similar levels of productivity to those greats? He, like everyone else, was a product of his time, and relative to that time he was a clear standout talent.

Will any of this year's Trojans eventually join the next era's HoopsHype list? Time will tell. Isaiah Collier has the best shot at cracking an all-time ranking, but it's a formidable group of all-timers.

As far as modern USC alumni in the NBA go, Chicago Bulls All-Star small forward DeMar DeRozan will probably become a Hall of Famer, but will he be able to crack the NBA 100 in a few decades? We shall see, but he may need to log a few more years at this level of performance, and ideally to play a key role on a title team or two (which would need to be done outside of Chicago, a team that's headed nowhere fast).

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