Daniel Myers, the creator of Box Plus/Minus (BPM), has recently released a new and updated version of BPM. This, along with the completion of the 2015 playoffs, led me to updating the BPM All Time list. The new version included big improvements to defense and underrates perimeter defenders far less. For the methodology, I kept it far simpler, and used hall rating, which is derived from baseball. Basically, it takes into account longevity (wins over replacement) and peak (wins over average). I computed this for the regular season and playoffs for each player and added them to get a player's total hall rating. Although I suppose one could give playoff hall rating higher weight, it is unclear what the weight should exactly be -- so I didn't bother trying to do that for now.

For players for whom BPM was not available (seasons before 1978), I used an approximation of BPM based on a formula provided by Neil Paine of Fivethirtyeight.com -- 0.15*(PER - 15) + 30.5 *(WS/48 - 0.1). Also, Lebron has made the jump to 2nd all time and is now the greatest playoff performer ever. It will be interesting if he can catch Jordan and will largely depend on how much longer he plays along with how many elite years he has left.