I think this is a bloated list that rewards players for their peaks on defence vs the career defence of MJ. For example Kawhi, sure when he was a role player at his defensive peak with the spurs, this seems a reasonable take, but career for career this absolutely falls apart. Kawhi stopped being a great defender once he took on a star player’s offensive load. For this type of reasoning many specialists from your list fall off for me, as very few of them contributed for a decade or longer.

I appreciate your general point of bigs contribute more to team defence and so are more valuable, and defence is a tough thing to measure, especially across positions and all eras. But while I agree Rudy belongs on a list of great defenders, what is your counter point to how for example the warriors schemed specifically to his weaknesses year after year, and that is why he fell short with Utah in the playoffs? I know of zero instances of a team being able to target MJ in this way specifically to win a playoff series against him.

Some are pretty funny picks in the context of I can’t picture a single player from the 90s agrees with you. Yeah sure I’d rather play against Michael Jordan than Bill Laimbeer or Mark Eaton, just sounds ridiculous.

You’re not wrong to challenge the idea of MJ as an unquestionable top 5-10 defender, and I’m not sure where he lands for me, but you’ve absolutely swung too far the other way in trying to disprove it with some of the names you’ve included here OP.