Every player gets a score out of 100 for each decade he played in. It comes from six categories, each worth a slice of the total:
25%MVP votes — a player’s share of the MVP vote each year, added up. A unanimous winner earns 1.00 for that season, a close runner-up around .60 — so a decade of near-misses beats one lucky trophy.
20%All-NBA teams — 5 points for 1st team, 3 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.
20%Winning — 1 point per playoff series won, plus 2 bonus points per championship. Only counts in seasons the player was a star (All-NBA, All-Star, or 1st team All-Defense) — no credit for riding the bench on a champ.
15%Win Shares — a stat that estimates how many of his team’s wins a player personally produced, added up across the decade.
10%Finals MVP — the best proof a player carried a title instead of tagging along for one.
10%Defense — All-Defensive teams (2 pts for 1st, 1 for 2nd) and Defensive Player of the Year (3 pts).
In each category, the decade’s leader sets the bar: everyone else is measured as a fraction of his total. That keeps eras honest — a 1960s score and a 2020s score mean the same thing, even though the league played different schedules and gave out different awards.
When an award didn’t exist yet (no MVP voting before 1956, no Finals MVP or All-Defense before the 1970s), its weight is spread across the categories that did exist — those sliders appear crossed out on the early decades. NBA and BAA only; ABA numbers don’t count. Decades run by season start year, so “the 1990s” means 1990-91 through 1999-2000.