{"id":88118,"date":"2025-08-22T18:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88118\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T18:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T18:29:08","slug":"the-four-players-that-span-the-entire-history-of-the-nba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88118\/","title":{"rendered":"The Four Players That Span the Entire History of the NBA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Four Players That Span the Entire History of the NBA<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I <a href=\"https:\/\/kottke.org\/25\/08\/0047369-i-love-stats-like-this\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">posted<\/a> an incredible fact about LeBron James: he has played against 35% of all of the players that have ever played in the NBA. Wondering about <a href=\"https:\/\/kottke.org\/tag\/The%20Great%20Span\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Great Span<\/a> of the NBA, I looked for the oldest player from LeBron\u2019s rookie season, then for the oldest player in that player\u2019s rookie season, and so on.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/nba-great-span.jpg\"   loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1800\" height=\"571\" border=\"0\" alt=\"photos of four basketball players: Bob Cousy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Willis and LeBron James\"\/><\/p>\n<p>What I found is that just four players span almost the entire 79-year history of the league: Bob Cousy, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Willis and LeBron James.<\/p>\n<p>The NBA was founded in 1946<br \/>\nBob Cousy, played 1950-1970 (14 seasons)<br \/>\nKareem Abdul-Jabbar, played 1969-1989 (20 seasons)<br \/>\nKevin Willis, played 1984-2007 (21 seasons)<br \/>\nLeBron James, played 2003-present (22 seasons)<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s more, all four are still alive: James is 40 years old, Willis is 62 years old, Abdul-Jabbar is 78 years old, and Cousy is 97 years old. Collectively, the four of them have either played with or against almost all of the players that have ever played in the NBA. Incredible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Four Players That Span the Entire History of the NBA Yesterday I posted an incredible fact about&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-88118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}