Additionally, I had to go back in time and give an estimated 3.5 MVP vote shares to George Mikan; the league didn’t give out the award until 1955–56, when Mikan’s prime years had passed.

Muhammad Ali is widely credited with first injecting the Greatest of All Time into the mix. When he went by Cassius Clay in the early 1960s, he recorded a comedy album anchored by the title poem ...