Jason Terry says Kawhi Leonard and Klay Thompson are B-side players compared to James Harden.

perfect comparison..

 

What are you talking about? My very first post said that Harden is way better than Thompson, you were the one who told me it's better to get subpar guys like Westbrick and Lillard over Thompson and I was just telling why you were wrong. You act like every other player on the planet can carry a team and that's just wrong only a few guys can do that even Kobe and Wade couldn't carry teams by themselves but nobody would say they weren't superstars. You need players of different skillsets to win a ring even if your team has multiple players who can carry a team your team will lose if they don't have lockdown defenders or deadly shooters or closers.

Also you probably didn't realize it but I've been a member of this forum way earlier than you, and even then I spent 2 years lurking on this site before I made my account. I don't even why you're talking about "your" Rockets fan forum this is a thread talking about Jet's comments about Thompson being a B side player.

 

Not everyone needs to be an alpha in fact most of the time you just need one Alpha on the team, if you have more than one there's a chance the two Alphas will clash.

I don't think being an Alpha is the be all and end all of becoming a superstar, guys like Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki are quiet and chill guys but they got the job done multiple times. What's important to me is you always walk the talk in terms of expanding your game every year and Klay Thompson has done that, his shooting has steadily increased and he can now make plays for other players whereas before all he knew was just off-the-ball scoring. Harden's isn't the only superstar in the league and Harden isn't the worst superstar in the league, just because Klay Thompson is inferior to Harden doesn't mean he is not a borderline superstar. If you consider Thompson an elite Ariza then he is already borderline superstar, Ariza is a defensive star already if you make his offense elite he's a superstar.

Why does it always have to be Harden vs Thompson? Just because Thompson is recognized as a superstar in his own right doesn't mean Harden is belittled wtf they have no relation to each other.

 

Hall of fame side? Does every single one of your posts HAVE to be ridiculous? I get it. You got schtick.

 

I don't think you're quite grasping the difference.

Dennis Rodman = alpha with average skills
Scottie Pippen = beta with fantastic skills
Tim Duncan = ALPHA
David Robinson = all world beta
Hakeem = more alpha in his toe nail than most nba players
Dirk Nowitzki = ALPHA
Kobe Bryant = Perhaps the most alpha player in NBA history, yet not the best player in NBA history

Being an alpha is a mentality. You can be calm or loud. You can be smart or dumb. You can be technically brilliant or not.

To win a championship, you absolutely need more than one alpha. Alphas might clash, that's why Phil Jackson and Popovic and Riley are legends. They know how to make alphas work together. They know how to manage over the top alphas and sleeper alphas.

Klay Thompson is NOT recognized widely as a superstar. Not even by the Warriors-loving mainstream sports outlets. It's stats guys that really love Thompson, and most still don't consider him a superstar in the top tier like James Harden. Klay is recognized as an All Star, but the popularity contest driven by teenage basketball fans isn't an indication of whether you're an alpha or superstar. You know what would be a great indication? The winningest coach in Team USA history with a roster full of stars anointing Harden as a leader.

It's always Klay vs Harden because Harden is the best SG on planet earth and that's boring to the media and fans of other teams. There needs to be a rivalry, a villain, some conflict to generate clicks. Thompson is a great basketball player, I would take him on this team and have him guard the best swingman and get open shots from the attention Harden gets. But these two are not comparable. Thompson is closer to Derozan than he is to Harden. I'm happy for Thompson, but I reject the notion that Harden is a superstar and so is Klay in his own right. If Klay is a superstar, Harden should have a better title than superstar.

 

You know what happens when you take a Klay Thompson and try to make him into the alpha dog?

Spoiler

see 2010-2011 Kevin Martin

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/martike02.html

 

We've got to work on your math, but my sincere apologies for not reading all your posts within this thread. That would have been more fair to you and I was mostly just starting my retorts based on statements comparing Klay and Harden only. Please also realize that when you defend the team that has been putting us out of the playoffs recently, you sound like you like them more than us.

2006 - 2 years = 2004

I've been on this site since it was called clutchcity.com. That's when I started lurking. Clutch actually had people start over with new account names in 1999. I was around before that. Does that make me anything special? No. I'm likely just older and more bitter and hate teams and players on teams that beat us.

Harden >>> light years >>> Klay

Houston Rockets Zindabad!!!

 

No doubt Klay is a heck of a player with such an amazing shooting stroke. When he's hot, there's no stopping him. I think what Terry is trying to say is that as good as Kawhi and Klay is, they can't carry a team the same way Harden can. Both Kawhi and Klay thrives in their system with the supporting cast to spread the pressure all around.

One of the things why I think James Harden is incredibly underrated is because of what he has to do by himself. Klay Thompson may be on a championship team because he's fortunate to have great players around him, never have to deal with the pressure of having to carry the team on a nightly basis. The Warriors have so many weapons that the defense never focused directly on Klay. Now with Kevin Durant, Klay will have even more room to succeed because defenses are focused directly on Curry and KD.

Kawhi is a great player. Defensively he is special. His offense has come along nicely. But again, he is fortunate to play for one of the best coaches and system ever. The Spurs have a system where it maximizes every player on the court. It allows Kawhi to have more freedom to operate and defenses can never focus directly on him.

James Harden is the least fortunate out of those two. He don't have elite teammates, elite coaching, or elite system. Harden doesn't have someone to take the pressure off of him so defenses can just focus solely on him. The Rockets in the past few seasons don't really have a system also. Because of how great James Harden is, the Rockets just rely on him to do everything. He may have Dwight Howard in the past few years but Dwight doesn't take the pressure off Harden. The fact that Harden was able to put up insane numbers nightly even when defenses are focused purely to stop him just shows how great of a player he is.

Harden gets criticized for his defense plenty of times. Yes, his defense needs some work but lets remember James Harden isn't physically gifted like Lebron James. Its physically demanding to have to carry an entire offense and play defense at a high level. Stephen Curry on the other hand, has teammates to take up tough defensive assignments so he can cruise on that end. During the Finals when the Cavs singled out Curry on a lot of possessions, forcing him to play defense and he ended up struggling.

 

if Anderson & Gordon can get b's i can assure u that there will be more dancing

 

i know less after reading this

 

LOL then you're not really saying anything here anymore. There's no difference in your statements an alpha can be long or short, big or small, happy or sad, black or white, red or blue, talented or ordinary, skilled or unskilled, rookie or veteran, talented or ordinary, basically whatever it is as long as you say he is an "Alpha" then he is an alpha. Do you even know what the word means anymore?

You also said being an all star is just fan perception but then you say Klay Thompson is not widely recognized as a superstar, and only stat geeks love him. Talk about double standard here, you take popular opinion discrediting him but then reject popular opinion saying he's great. In your post the only argument you can say why Klay isn't a superstar is because he's not better than Harden and he can't carry a team like Harden. That's just absurd, why is Thompson not a superstar just because he's not better than Harden and can't carry a team like Harden does? Kobe has never been able to carry a team by himself, why is he the most alpha of the alpha? Apparently in your eyes Scottie Pippen and David Robinson are not even considered superstars when these two guys would absolutely dominate today's league and are among the 50 best players ever.

I normally like your posts but I think you really lost it on this one, it's like a carbon copy of the stuff Jet is saying in FB in the first place which is all hearty feely kumbayah crap you can't even describe properly and have inconsistencies and contradictions all over the place. If being an alpha is all that matters and automatically makes players better than players who are not Alpha then GMs would just design a personality test and draft players based on how much "Alpha" they score wtf.

 

I agree on this point, in fact I think Harden is neck and neck with Curry for the 3rd best player in the league, if he only played defense I'd say he's up there with KD already.

But I also watch a lot of teams and I don't like how fans tend to pigeon hole other players just because they aren't Houston rockets players, it results in a circle jerk and doesn't lead to anything productive when you start interacting with fans of other teams who do the same thing regarding their own players. There's a lot of misguided notion of what being a superstar means and it's all because of people growing up watching Michael Jordan play basketball, apparently if you aren't hitting buzzer beaters and fade away mid-range step back Js with two defenders in your face like he is you aren't a superstar.

But reality isn't like that no matter how good MJ is he couldn't even reach the NBA finals until Pippen and other "Type B" players arrived and if these type B guys were so common and so inferior why did MJ spend 9 years in futility? I think it's time for people to start being smart about the whole thing and realize the teams who win have the right mix of "Type A" and "Type B" players, and your type doesn't really prevent you from becoming a superstar, it's your overall production level. Even if you're only a glue guy but if you end up guarding the best player on the other team and shutting him down while hitting your share of 3s then you're a superstar, no ifs and buts about it. OTH you might have the largest balls in the room but if you can't shoot straight then I'm sorry but you're just a blackhole chucker. Give me a type B like Klay or Kawhi over an alpha dog like Westbrick any day of the week.

 

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not anything. An alpha is a personality type. It has little to do with what you can do, and everything to do with how you think and how you do things.

Klay is not a superstar because he does not have an alpha mentality. Bradley Beal, for example, is more of an alpha than Klay although Klay is a better player. That's why Bradley Beal doesn't accept the notion that John Wall - another alpha - is a better player. Klay Thompson accepts that he is a role player on the Warriors. Draymond Green does not. Steph Curry does not. Teams need role players like that. There's nothing really wrong with betas except that you can't build a team around them.

Klay is not widely recognized as a superstar. His stats are amazing and those who pay attention to stats rightfully love him. That doesn't make him an alpha, that makes him a great player. He is not a superstar because superstars can carry franchises. He can not. A superstar can single handedly win 30-40 games for a team. I've been over this part, you get it, but it doesn't suit your thinking maybe.

James Harden is a great player and an alpha. That makes him a superstar, a franchise player. Klay Thompson is a great player.

The most telling part is your last sentence, which makes me understand why you don't get it, because you probably happen to have never come across these things. They do bro. They do have tests for it. And they use them. And they make judgement calls about which alpha is likely to become nothing and which beta is likely to become something and the reverse. These are advanced versions of the MBTI test, which show several types of personalities, some strong leaders, some not, some in between maybe. That's not all, coaches and GM's have been singling out these personality traits since the beginning of time. The ideal team is not a team full of alphas. The ideal time is as many skilled alphas as you can find surrounded with as many skilled betas as you can get. Unfortunately things are not perfect and sometimes you have to sign a great beta when you need a great alpha. You work your way up from there. Same with role players, sometimes you get what you want, and sometimes you don't.

Look, everyone here knows, in a draft of NBA players, any team would be ecstatic to pick James FIRST on their team. If a team gets Klay Thompson as their first pick, they're going to be pretty f'in annoyed.

 

Wait wut? Are you saying that Klay is a better player than Beal but Klay is not a superstar while Beal is a superstar because he is an alpha? The definition of being a superstar is being the best players in the NBA, period. Being an alpha may be seen as a good trait, but its not the be all and end all of player evaluation, it's like leadership. Sure you want your player to be a natural born leader, but even if the guy turns out to be selfish and egoistic who made all his teammates afraid of him that didn't stop MJ from dominating the entire NBA.

I perfectly understand that Alpha is a personality type, what I can't understand is you somehow making Klay Thompson a second class citizen because he's not an alpha personality. Personality is important, but at the end of the day your personality can only take you so far, it's the same thing with work. You might have the best mentality and alpha "I'm the big dawg" here mindset but if you can't do simple financial analysis or have no actual skills to back yourself up you're just a blowhard.

What I'm saying is Klay Thompson is better than 99% of NBA players whether they are alphas or not, that makes him a borderline superstar player. If your definition of superstar player is like only 4-5 players long then I can see what you mean, Klay Thompson isn't a superstar if your standards of superstars are just LBJ, KD, Harden, Curry....guys who have proven themselves as the best of the best and can carry teams. But you seem to be mixing up Alphas between guys who can carry teams, just because you are an Alpha doesn't mean you can carry a team or you are good enough to build around on, have you seen Bradley Beal carry a lottery team to the playoffs? What about John Wall? Westbrick? There is no correlation between being Alpha and being a superstar when you consider some of the most Alpha players turned out to be crap or overhyped so you shouldn't put Klay down just because he's not an alpha personality. Like with all things, it should be based on the overall player ability and when you consider that its hard not to say that Klay is one of the best players in the league.

And LOL at putting down players accepting their role in order to make the team succeed like its a bad thing. Oh yeah, look at Klay Thompson not being an egoistic chucker and destroying the team chemistry by demanding shots. Westbrick is so much better, every single metric and evidence shows that Kevin Durant is the best option but since WB's so ALPHA, let him take 30 shots and make 12 so he can score over 20 pts and show everyone how ALPHA he is. Klay Thompson playing within the system= Tier 2 player, role player, total side kick, not a player you can build around. Westbrick = 100% Alpha, Superstar.

If you actually watch the GSW play you'll notice Klay is more than Kyle Korver with defense, he can score in isolation and he can make plays for other people so honestly if he had a primadona complex it wouldn't be hard form to take 30 shots like what WB does and score 20+ every single game and hit game winners now and then. It's just that GSW has much better creators in KD and Curry and even Draymond, so like what Iggy does he focuses on filling the gaps on the team instead of demanding more ball time because "he's the man". Honestly I don't like it when people have such inflated egos they see themselves as the best no matter what, when it's Lebron or Curry or Harden or KD thinking that, fine. But when it's some no name like Swaggy P or WB not realizing his shot needs fixing being an alpha is not a good thing, in fact it limits them because instead of them working on their game because they realize other players are so much better they just continue doing their **** because they think they're the best. You need ambition, confidence and humility all in good proportions it's not as simple as being Alpha or not being an Alpha, evaluating players solely on Alpha or not is very amateurish and shallow and ignorant IMHO.

 

If kawhi is a finals mvp like other mentioned alphas or A side players does that make him A side?

 

Simply put, Harden can see the floor and get to the line.

These two skills allow him to dominate even when his shot isnt falling, like a Jordan, Magic or Bird.

Klay isn't there.

 

Andre Iguodala was also finals M VP but he's not a player who can carry team just because he can play defense on le Bron here and there

 

Klay is a sissy.

 

Been through it too much, I'll just say this:

Beal is not a superstar. Beal is an alpha. He has superstar personality, but not the superstar game to go along with it.

Klay Thompson is not a superstar. He is a beta. He has many superstar skills, but not the superstar personality to go along with it.

James Harden is a superstar. He is an alpha and he has superstar skills.

To be a superstar, you have to be a lot of things. Neither the skills nor the personality on their own makes you a superstar.

Being an alpha is not necessarily a good thing, and being a beta is not necessarily a bad thing. There are bad alphas and good betas.

However, there is no superstar beta. Superstars are all alphas. Klay Thompson is an pretty great player, but he is no superstar. For that reason, you place him around a superstar. His response to Terry's comment is indicative of the fact that he is a smart guy who understands his role and committed to winning. However, that would not be Michael Jordan, or Kobe Bryant or even James Harden's response to the comment. You can bet that the alphas on Klay's team heard his comment and were happy to hear that their best beta said that.

 

klays only superstar skill is shooting.