The 1996 NBA Draft has long been hailed as one of the holy grails of basketball talents, producing Hall of Fame talents like Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, Steve Nash, and many others who stuck in the league for 10 or more years.

Ray Allen knows he was drafted amid basketball royalty, but he won't quite call it the best draft class ever.

Transcript via BasketballNews.com:

“I don't really rank. It's one of those things, and I heard Kobe [Bryant] say this, God rest his soul, how you compare yourself to someone and it's hard to say you're better because that person you grew up watching helped you get to where you are,” Allen said as a guest on James Posey's Posecast. “So it's almost like biting the hand that fed you, in some aspect. You get from one draft class to another and one player to the next but you can't get to the next one without the prior class.”

Other classes like 1984 and 2003 are also lauded as gold mines for basketball talent, producing All-Star talent with a winning penchant.

Ray Allen argued that latter NBA Draft classes  must learn from the former, making it a somewhat unfair comparison:

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“So when '03 comes along, a lot of these guys were influenced by '96 and even classes in-between. So I will never compare which one is better because it would be hard to think of a comparison you would be making.”

“I just urge people to not do us any favors by saying the '96 draft class is the best ever because I can't discount '84. I just respect the lineage of NBA players and where we come from. It's just a dishonor, disservice to each player because they're all good in their own right and their own generation.”

An argument could be made for each of these draft classes. Putting the 1996 NBA Draft class above or below another doesn't take away from the players' achievements, nor does it rob other classes of its own shine.

Ray Allen is choosing not to compare and that's a fair stance to take, so long as he's still able to admire the illustrious cornucopia of achievements his draftmates were able to secure during their NBA careers.