I thought it was a real good article. ooooh i didn't criticize a Richard Justice article... i'm a crazy rebel dissenter.
Actually, he might not have been starting, but he was finishing games in the 4th quarter, while Payton sat on the bench.
last year, fisher shot a terrible 29% on 3's. i'm not sure how that happened as the 4 seasons before that i believe he was never below 38% and topped out at 41%. i'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on being an above average shooter. of course, even last year he still turned it up in the playoffs and started draining shots again. on not beating out payton. there were plenty of people, me included, who saw the lakers as better with fisher on the court than payton. as codell just mentioned, there was a reason payton had a rather large streak of not even sniffing 4th quarter PT in the playoffs. fisher is not a bad defender. he's not great, but he's not bad. again, as has already been pointed out, he gets killed because shaq won't show on pnr's and phil jackson in general seemed to like that strategy as the lakers coach (whereas he trapped the hell out of stockton in the finals with the bulls). pg's just took all the jump shots they wanted or were set up for easier chances to drive. now, it won't be much different here. we still have amazingly unathletic big men like we did last year and the pnr killed us last year too. i know francis wasn't a great defender, but he was better than he looked too b/c both rudy and jvg allow the guards to get abused on the pnr. we either don't show or are too slow to do anything about it when we do. pg's rack up jump shots and easy assists as the D tries to compensate. so while fisher will still be letting pg's put up big numbers, at least he'll be used to it. if fisher hadn't just shot 29% on 3's last year, i'd say he was the perfect solution for our pg spot. a guy who can guard all but the very quick pg's (and still does an average job there) and who can hit the open shot and seems to become an assassin in the playoffs and at crunch time. i'm still willing to say losing his starting job and the whole lakers circus contributed to the bad season and take him on, probably even make him my first choice. even though he's the better all around player, brent barry's D against pg's has me a little worried (whereas if he was our 2 and tmac the 3 i'd love him) and who knows if he's as deadly in the playoffs as fisher. i didn't even read the article, but richard justice is still an enormous idiot when it comes to basketball and his writing on the subject is so simplistic it makes H.O.O.P by kelvin cato look pulitzer worthy.* *damn, did i just get in a H.O.O.P reference?
Fisher SUCKS! He is the WORST choice for the Rockets. He can't shoot, his wheels are coming off, he's small, he's slow and missing any real court vision. HORRIBLE.
Justice writes well. I don't get how people bash sports columnists...they are paid to give their opinions. Justice makes good points...similar to the Duhon comments as Sam pointed out, but very accurate in both cases. DD
He didnt say otherwise, only repoted what the present situation is. You are too quick to jump on his case!
Sam Fisher is a Jazz fan, don't know why he even bothers coming in the GARM. Guess he just likes to piss and moan a lot. DD
Yetti, what in the heck are you babelfishing about? As a fellow Jazz fan, you should know that we need to keep Carlos Arroyo out of play by way of diversionary tactics.
