FanHouse Larry Bird

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Sunday, there are 30 days remaining.

Most of the NBA records, the most prestigious ones, are held -- and rightfully so -- by the greatest players in history. Names like Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson are peppered throughout the record book.

It only makes sense.

It's why gritty Scott Skiles sticks out like a dark stain on a white carpet.

Every Tuesday this summer, two of our NBA experts will go at it with a Debate in the Paint. This week, the topic is Michael Jordan and his upcoming induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Is Michael Jordan the best player in all of basketball history?

Hey, I drew the short straw. So, I don't want to hear it. It's come down to me to argue that Michael Jordan isn't the greatest player in NBA history.

Don't get me wrong, I can do it. It's just that I don't go out of my way to pick a fight and this would seem to be doing just that. No, I don't think Jordan's the greatest. But I also know it's tough to win. Hence, the short straw. Nevertheless, here goes ...

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Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Tuesday, there are 63 days remaining.

There have been 31 regular season games in NBA history in which a player has scored 63 points or more. There has been only one in the playoffs, an indication of how much tougher it is to do. And it's no surprise who did it.

In a career that is nothing but highlights and accolades, titles, trophies and triumphs, Michael Jordan had his most impressive individual scoring performance when he scored 63 points for the Chicago Bulls in a double-overtime playoff loss to the Boston Celtics in 1986.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 season. On Sunday, there are exactly 79 days remaining.

If you're a hoops fan, 1979 is an easy one: Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

That was the year most of us were introduced to the future of the NBA, although we didn't know it at the time. The 1979 NCAA championship game between Indiana State and Michigan State was only the Bird-Magic appetizer.

Bird and Magic would play in the NBA Finals against each other three times as pros. Together, they rejuvenated pro basketball and help bring back credibility, class and competition to a league that desperately needed it.

Tip-Off Timer counts down the days until the first game of the 2009-10 NBA season. On Saturday, there are exactly 87 days left.

In the NBA, 1987 was a tough year.

That's when it became official the Celtics were never going to be the same again, and neither was the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. Meaning it was also the end of Bird-Magic.

It was the third time in four years that Boston and L.A. had met for the NBA championship, a kind of Finals familiarity that hasn't happened since then. It also was the series Magic Johnson missed a wide-open Kareem Abdul-Jabbar underneath and instead took a tough skyhook in the lane that wound up being the game-winner in Game 4.

As expected, the Indiana Pacers allowed Jarrett Jack to go to the Toronto, refusing to match the Raptors' four-year offer sheet for the emerging point guard.

"It was a very difficult decision because Jarrett proved last season what he can bring to a team," Pacers President of Basketball Larry Bird in a statement. "We thank Jarrett for his contributions to the Pacers, both on and off the court, and wish him the best in Toronto."

ORLANDO -- The last time Tyler Hansbrough played a game, there were 70,000 people in attendance and a national television audience watching the NCAA Championship.

This was a little different.

Hansbrough, the Atlantic Coast Conference all-time leading scorer from UNC, made his professional debut Monday for the Indiana Pacers at the Orlando Pro Summer League.

There were 300 people in the gym when the Pacers beat a Nets/Sixers combo team. He played in a reserve role – he said for the first time since his freshman year of high school.

"It was a change. There weren't a lot of people in the stands yelling at me, telling me how bad I was,'' Hansbrough played. "I had kind of gotten used to that. It always motivated me.''

In four years, Danny Granger has gone from the 17th player picked in the 2005 draft – behind such notables as Martell Webster, Fran Vazquez and Yaroslav Korolev – to the NBA's fifth leading scorer, trailing only Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dirk Nowitzki.

His neighborhood has changed dramatically.

Granger spoke with FanHouse Tuesday afternoon, proud of his new association with EAS (Energy-Athletics-Strength, a nutrition/supplement product), but even more proud of the NBA player he is becoming.

He won the league's Most Improved Player Award in 2009, when he averaged 25.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.7 assists for the Indiana Pacers. He has become a franchise foundation, thriving in Indiana while a major housecleaning commenced around him.

Here are parts of the conversation:

LOS ANGELES -- Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw played alongside Boston's Larry Bird in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Shaw also was a teammate of Kobe Bryant during the Lakers' title days in the early 2000s.

FanHouse had a chance to talk with Shaw about the similarities and differences between two of the greatest players of all time.

If a rivalry between LeBron James' Cavaliers and Kobe Bryant's Lakers doesn't come to pass, it's not going to be because the two have formed an off-court relationship in recent years.

It will be because one of those teams -- and likely one of those players -- faltered on the way to the NBA Finals. And not just faltered this year, but next year and the year after that and so on.

There's no doubt the NBA fraternity of players has gotten more close-knit over the years, and nobody likes the excessive glad-handing and embracing before games. But so what if James and Bryant are friends?