Top 50 NBA players from last 50 years: Gary Payton ranks No. 41
Editor's Note: As part of a new series for his podcast, "What’s Wright with Nick Wright," FOX Sports commentator Nick Wright is ranking the 50 best NBA players of the last 50 years. The countdown continues today with player No. 41, Gary Payton.
Gary Payton's career highlights:
- Nine-time All-Star
- Two-time first-team All-NBA, five-time second team, two-time third team
- 1996 Defensive Player of the Year
- Nine-time all-defensive first team
- 1991 All-Rookie team
- 1996 steals champion
If Gary Payton had been average on defense, he’d still be a Hall of Famer. But then he wouldn’t be "The Glove."
"He’s one of the greatest defensive players ever," Wright said.
It’s hard to argue that Payton isn’t the greatest defensive point guard ever.
Before this season, he was the lone guard of any kind to win Defensive Player of the Year since the 1980s. His nine All-Defensive first-team selections are tied for the most in NBA history with Michael Jordan, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant. Payton is the only one of the four to pull that off in nine consecutive years, highlighting a decade-long prime in which he was also a nine-time All-Star and nine-time All-NBA selection.
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The former Seattle SuperSonics star was the only guard to win Defensive Player of the Year between 1989-2021. Payton's other accolades include nine-time All-Defense and nine-time All-NBA. Payton's less impressive playoff résumé is Nick's biggest question mark when it comes to ranking "The Glove."
At 6-foot-4, 180 pounds, he was more than comfortable tracking down speedy small guards and bodying up bigger shooting guards. Sometimes, he was even tasked to stick swingmen. Opponents of all sizes were careful to not get caught up in Payton’s web of verbal warfare.
His reputation as a genius trash talker and defender have perhaps overshadowed his offensive excellence. Numbers don’t tell the complete story, during what was a markedly slower-paced era. The best player in Sonics history was a pass-first point guard often tasked to finish possessions since he didn’t play with a single 20-point scorer over his final 11 years in Seattle. Payton led those teams in scoring eight times.
From 1994-2003, he averaged a little less than 21 points and eight assists per game. It’s a stretch that includes a third-place MVP finish and five sixth-place finishes. The ironman also hardly ever took a day off, missing just 13 games over his first 16 seasons and playing 80 games 13 times. He sits 35th all time in scoring, 10th in assists and fifth in steals — he’s the only player in NBA history to rank that high in all three categories.
"Those accolades … and the fact that, statistically, he’s always going to get a bit of a short end of the stick because so much of his impact was on defense, you would think [he] deserves to be a little higher than what he is," Wright said. "Some would certainly argue he should be ahead of [Steve Nash]."
Payton isn’t there because of his modest playoff résumé. His various teams were eliminated in the first round eight times. The Sonics won the third-most games in the 1990s but made it out of the second round just twice.
Payton certainly did his part, averaging 21.5 points and 7.1 assists over his eight best postseasons. In 1996, he led the Sonics to the NBA Finals, where he held Jordan to 23 points on 37% shooting over the final three games while falling to the 72-win Bulls in six. GP would play in two more Finals, finally winning a title with the Heat in Year 16, but was a role player in both of them.
"He was good in the playoffs. It’s hard to argue he was great in the playoffs," Wright said. "He’s not higher because there’s not a lot of great, iconic playoff moments we could point to."