LOL are you crazy? Just pick the worst players on a roster and start naming him like he didn't have Lamar Odom or Andrew Bynum on that team. Sure it wasn't the best team, but its probably still better than the 2007 Cavs team Lebron took to the finals. Probably just as good as the team he took to the finals this year... Ilgauskas Gooden Hughes Pavlovic GIbson Varejao Marshall Snow Jones Name me one other player league history dragging those scrubs to the finals. There is a reason they won only 21 games after he leaves.
Who again? The great Andrew Bynum? Oh wait this guy.. Big Z was a allstar. He had a better career than Bynum did lol. Not everybody on that is a scrub
Andrew Bynum was also an all star. Bynum's career got cut short by injuries so of course Big Z had a better career year. But that doesn't take away from the fact that you said Lebron would never play on a team like that. What do you think he did for the first 8 years of his career before he finally realized no star wants to play in Cleveland and Clevelands ownership and GM sucked. So he took matters into his own hands. If Lebron played in LA his whole career he'd probably have 10 rings. No player has ever had a bigger impact on team success. Cleveland goes first to last and gets 3 number one picks. Soo called Miami super team misses the playoffs without Lebron. Watch him leave this year and Cleveland gets the first pick again. He's been the best player on every team he has been on, no questions asked. Kobe played second fiddle for shaq then chased him away only to realize he really needed Shaq. People knock him cuz he plays basketball the right way. He didn't force up a terrible shot and passed to an open teammate, and yet that's Lebron chocking or shying away from the moment. Yet he makes countless game winners. Scores his teams like 26 points and drags them to finals. List goes on and on.
This is a stupid myth ppl keep rehashing. Shaq was the man after the 1st championship. But the last 2 it was CLEAR the team belonged to Kobe. Don't believe me? Shaq said it out his OWN MOUTH in the interview with Kobe. Shaq was coming into camp out of shape while Kobe was working on his game getting better. Eventually it became Kobe's team. So technically Shaq rode Kobe's coattails the last two championships
kobe had a really nice 2001 playoffs and had a 25 PER in the playoffs. shaq was the beast no one could match up (28.3 PER) with but at least kobe had all-time great numbers. but in 2002 he had only a 20.5 PER in the playoffs. not that much better than his 2000 playoffs when he was still improving. the myth is that kobe was the man in the western conference playoffs. in the west, kobe had a 16.6 game score with a true shooting percentage just below 50 (even by the standards of the early 2000's that's still poor) and shaq had a 20 game score. and in the most important series against SAC where kobe was supposed to have been really important, kobe's game score and TS% basically didn't change but shaq's went up to 22 in a series where he averaged 30/14. i won't put up the finals stats. shaq was very much the man on the 3 title teams.
So why did Shaq get the finals MVP? Just cuz he didn’t try in regular season doesn’t mean he wasn’t the best player in playoffs. Tons of players save it for playoffs, if it was about regular season Harden is the greatest player ever. Dude averaged over 35 15 5 3 in finals and he rode Kobe’s coattails. LMAO. Numbers don’t lie man go look at their stats for those championship runs no one ever said Kobe shoulda got MVP. Pretty sure what he said was the last two years in LA not last two championships. Which happened to be the two years the Lakers did not win the championship. Lost to Spurs then Pistons. Go Kobe lead the team to nothing!
OK gotta try to reply to the key points raised in post 2991. Duncan went through all "ups", no "down" days with the Spurs. I guess there are no universal definitions of what "up" and "down" means. Like I mentioned in the previous post, by "down" I meant their first round exits, and being swept. I don't think it's unfair to consider them "down" days. Also it can be relative. For example many clearly consider Cavs being swept in the finals being a "down" (enough to make him leave) while TMac being swept in the 2nd round could possibly be an "up" lol. Duncan almost left for Orlando. But he did not leave, not only he did not leave, he played for them 19 years and got 5 championships. Think about it "We almost got married" and "we got married" are completely different results. Houston "almost" won a championship this year you know. Every team is in "win now" mode when they are good, Cavs had 7 years chance, Duncan always had great teammates. Duncan's teammates were not "great" from the start. Like you said Parker, Leonard were not high picks and Ginobili was a late 2nd round. They played and grew together as a team and elevated each other's games to build a dynasty. in 2012 nobody thought a Curry and Klay lead Warriors team could win 73 games but look how far they've come. If you have individual talent but is not able to elevate the people around you, you are not really a great leader. Guys like Wilt, McGrady, Westbrook had the individual talent but their leadership was too sub-par to achieve higher greatness. Like you mentioned Cavs got lots of players that were making solid contributions on other teams at trade deadline this year, approved by the management, majority of media, fans and Lebron himself, but of course they instantly or overtime turned into "trash", just like many of Lebron's teammates from before. If people want to blame this on all those players themselves, fine, but evidence certainly does not show Lebron's ability to "make teammates better". Irving, Wade, Bosh and Love had great/good stats playing with Lebron. Wade, Bosh and Love's stats all went down since started playing with Lebron. They make sacrifice to fit into Lebron's system. You can argue those sacrifice were necessary but their teams ultimately ended up underachieving and they have been blamed for holding Lebron back because of these sacrifices. Irving was a super young 1st pick (he's still only like 26 today), it's expected for him to have good rising stats. And of course don't forget he decided to not play with Lebron anymore. Pop wasn't there coach before Duncan except the end of the tanking season that got Duncan. and the spurs won 62 and 59 right before that. OK sure? He still got no rings before Duncan. (on another note Dwayne Casey got fired after a 59 win season). Hakeem wasted his career. I wouldn't say Hakeem wasted his Career (unless you want to call everyone who played against Jordan's Bulls in the 90s career wasted lol). He has proven he was the 2nd best player in the 90s just behind Jordan, which is about right to me. As for getting himself traded, people in general do not have problems with players leaving their team when they have passed their prime. It's cases like Lebron and KD's that gets people burning their jerseys. Lastly I'd like to bring up something I noticed about Lebron's supporters (actually a lot of people in general). A lot of times they would like to use hypothetical guesses as their "facts" to help them reach their conclusions. While some those guesses can sound reasonable enough, and can be interesting to have in a conversation, ultimately you do not know whether it would be true or not cause it never happened. So please do not confuse them with facts. For example: McGrady could've won multiple championships if he instead of Kobe played with Shaq in the Lakers instead. Maybe. Wilt would've won all those championships if he instead of Russell played for the Celtics. Maybe. Rockets would've won this championship if we didn't miss 27 3pts in a row in game 7. Probably lol. This should've been a terrible possession and a choke job if he missed and they lost. Probably lol. Anybody can have tons of these should/would/could questions in their lives (including you and me). You can use them as excuses all you want, but end of the day you either deliver or you don't deliver. In reality McGrady never made it out of the first round. Kobe achieved much more in his career. Russell won 11 rings, Wilt won only 2. Rockets are not 2018 NBA champions. Durant made that shot and it was a great moment in finals history. Duncan played for the Spurs for almost 20 years to form a successful and respectful dynasty with 5 championships, and the core members in or going into Hall of Fame. Lebron brought Cavs 1 championship but this era is remembered by many as Lebron dragging a trash franchise with trash teammates and trash coaches.
