January-Basketball on Paper Style

the alternative is Larry Hughes.

Can we outlaw the +/- stat on this site now? And while we are at it, every other stat that makes Nocioni look like a halfway decent player.

Doing research w/ hopefully no bias, and then drawing conclusions from what one got (or allowing others to draw their own conclusions) is always excellent. It was the implication (or explicit statement) that using statistics to back up a point is bad thing because it leads to digressed arguments made me literally shake my head.

Correlation does not equal causation! :-)

His career was nothing short of legendary. He was great, hall of famer, and a magical/tender lover in the bedroom too.

But ask yourself this, If you were drafting an “all time” team who would you take ahead of him? Probably not many players, but I’d take Magic in a heartbeat.

FYI, there are very few universal truths when discussing anything with a qualifier of “greatest” before it, but you seem to think otherwise.

I’m not trying to start a fight with you, but Isiah Thomas was a very solid player (easily the best Piston) on a very solid championship team. And before you say anything about my age, I was definitely old enough to remember the “bad boys” era.

look it up— Isiah led his team in scoring during those championship years. Isnt that what a first option is? Isiah was also the first option for crunch time. Watch the 88 finals and see how the Pistons all defer to Isiah even though he was running on one leg. look at them during their time outs and see how, even with his injury, they implored him and only him to take over. Thats your first option.

been the best of all-time. That team won 55 games without Jordan. Jordan, Pippen, and Grant in the heart of their prime. Jordan would have been 30. Grant and Pippen would have been 28. Now you add Toni Kukoc to backup all three, allowing those guys to rest more during the season. At point guard there is the hyper efficient duo of Armstrong and Kerr. And the usual collection of big men-Cartwright, Williams, Wennington, Perdue, Blount, and King/Longley. Like I said that 93-94 team won 55 games with Pete Myers playing over 2000 minutes, and they took the eventual Eastern conference champion Knicks to 7 games without Jordan. Get Grant to resign, and the same team basically comes back the next year. When I started writing this I assumed the extra playoffs games would have eventually taken their toll, but I don’t see how the Knicks,Pacers, Magic, or Hawks would have been beaten the talent and team the Bulls would have had. And most of the East was already atrocious so there would have been a ton of easy regular season blow outs.

Now Olajuwon and the Rockets. I think the Bulls beat the Rockets without question. The Bulls were uniquely suited to beating teams with great centers. Olajuwon benefited from getting to go against teams that featured a great centers-Robinson, Ewing, and Shaq. All these teams relied on their center to be both the defensive anchor and the team’s leading scorer. That allowed Olajuwon to almost completely take other team’s defensive anchor out of help defense and forced the other team’s leading scorer to expend a ton of energy both defending Olajuwon and trying to score against arguably the best defensive center in history. The team that gave the Rockets the most trouble during those two seasons was the center-less Phoenix suns who took the Rockets to 7 games in the semis both seasons.

The Bulls could always throw 4-6 always fresh bodies at any great center. It didn’t matter how many fouls a Bulls center got as long as they made Olajuwon or another center work for their points. Would any of Otis Thorpe, Robert Horry, Mario Ellie, Vernon Maxwell, Kenny Smith, Sam Cassell, and Clyde Drexler give the Bulls a serious problem. I don’t what would have happened further down the line in this scenario, but I’m pretty sure that the Bulls get those two championships, and maybe they do get all eight.

for the greater minutes he played and the much higher pace back then, Wilt’s numbers already start to look like Shaq. I think Wilt could have been just as dominant as Shaq. That’s still an a top ten all-time player.

and in this case (unlike tim thomas) he’s actually traveling with the team and such. cause in that case it looked like there was 0% chance he would ever suit up for the bulls. and i’m not saying don’t work to trade him because obviously that’s more beneficial, and i fully advocate keeping him on to try to trade him up until the trade deadline… the thing that annoyed me with tim thomas is they waited literally until the last possible day to cut him that was allowed.

And there’s also the fact that he believes he can help the team win more now if he plays. Reasonable minds may disagree that this is the case, but I have no doubt Larry thinks that.

Khalid, the fact that it’s millions isn’t especially relevant to Larry’s state of mind. That was discussed ad nauseum wrt Ben’s contract negotatiations. These guys live in a world of millions of dollars, so it’s no different to them than the salaries we earn are to us. Maybe I’m just a total oddball, but I’m more comfortable feeling like I’ve earned my salary. Would I take a million dollars in the lottery? Absolutely! Would I be comfortable being paid a million dollars to sit around? Nope, I’d be looking to do something to feel like I deserved to earn that money.

I rec. I rec.

If we play hack a Shaq.