Yeah. At least McGrady didn't quit on his team during a <a href="http://www.nba.com/games/20060506/LALPHX/recap.html">decisive playoff game 7</a> after being up 3-1, despite not having the excuse of injury or constant double teams. He was decent enough to do it during the regular season. I wonder what the reaction would have been if T-Mac had decided to shut it down in the 2nd half of game 7 against the Jazz, refused to do anything and afterwards told the press that everyone else on the team wasn't doing their job.
LMAO. Pass some of that stuff your smoking. Kobe doesn't bring us any rings in place of TMac. MAYBE he gets us past utah the first time. Maybe.
okay sure. the stuff i'm smoking is called reality. talent wise tmac and kobe are similar. maybe tmac is actually better. but work ethic wise and desire to win? wth are you smoking to think kobe wouldnt do much better than tmac did? you dont think yao wouldve been more effective with kobe playing? theres a difference between playing with scrubs on the rockets and playing with scrubs on the lakers. the rockets dont have the self-entitlement. definitely, we couldve won it last year with kobe. maybe, we couldve won it in 2007 with kobe. maybe, we couldve won it in 2005 with kobe. tmac is more talented but kobe is a winner. an annoying winner, but a winner nonetheless. effort and results are worth more than words.
Tracy McGrady is not the player Kobe is. There are only two players in the league I think come close and they are Lebron and Wade. Kobe, while his team was losing came out and asked to be traded. He didn't go behind closed doors and ask to get some talent to the club, he had a hissy fit, went to the media and demanded he be moved. The Lakers did for Kobe, what the Magic did not do for Tracy. They bent over backwards to please Kobe. They brought back Fisher and got Gasol. Sure he didn't give up on a play, but he did something that was equally as bad. He sent a bad message to his players and his fans. The only reason we made it past the first round last year without Tracy is because we had insurance. We didn't have a guy who could step up when Yao or Tracy went down. So pointing out Tracy not getting past the first round is ****ed. He was unlucky he was the injured guy and not Yao when we had insurance. Face it boys and girls, untill last season we had bad teams carried by Yao and Tracy.
Kobe certainly quit on his team in that first round game seven against Phoenix and in the deciding Finals game against the Celtics. That "effort" he gave during the second half of the Phoenix game was as bad as the T-Mac game against Toronto, except it was a playoff elimination game.
did he quit in the game 7? did he launch the hwole first half and it wasnht his shot, phil Jackson is a hall of fame coach and has enough power to sit down kobe, just like he did when he outscored the mavericks and had 62 points in 3 quarters....could've set a record(it was more than he had in the record breaking toronto game after 3rd quarter), but phil benched him....I would think that if he wasn't following game plan so obviously and wouldn't shoot, phil could tell him to take a seat...maybe that was just a different game plan bc he couldnt find his shot so they were working around it, just like against the suns, he went from averaging 35 points per game and cut his shots in half, bc taht was the game plan, which the coach controls
Kobe tried to quit on the team. Instead of trading him or shutting him down, they got a trade of the century and Kobe started playing again. Similar result would be if last year after the Toronto game, we traded Brian Cook and Dorsey for Bosh and had a lineup of Yao, Bosh, Artest, Tmac, Brooks and then Tmac suddenly plays hard again and forgoes surgery and Houston makes the finals. Would people remember Tmac quitting after that?
The Lakers were had the 1 seed pre Gasol pre Bynum injury. What Kobe did is leverage the organization to pay for a winner and Laker fans thank him every day for doing so. If Kobe doesn't make his demands do the Lakers pay Bynum, Gasol, Odom and Artest? I doubt it. The Suns game was a message to management that Luke Walton, Smush Parker, Kwame Brown and Lamar Odom are not able to create any offense on their own and that something needs to change.
He did quit on the Lakers. Multiple times you can say. The PHX series and the offseason with the infamous youtube video comes to mind. But they made him happy and ended up winning a title. Winning will make people forget about the worst things.
Dude, are you serous? Its the LA Lakers. One of, if not the biggest NBA market in the league. They will pay to get good players. Sorry, but there is no way you can justify those actions. He didn't have to quit on the team to send that message. Like others have mentioned in the GARM, no player is bigger than the organization. Not even god himself, Kobe Bryant.
I'm willing to admit that I only care about on court production, some people aren't. All is forgiven with Kobe, and I mean ALL, simply because he is a dominant player and has led his team to championship contention throughout the years (and a championship). Most fans will forgive any player for anything if they are really good. What a coincidence, as McGrady begins to be less and less effective the fans sour on him.
So the Lakers were at a disadvantage in 03 because they didn't have homecourt, even though they had better talent? Their two best players were better than anyone on the Kings roster, and no matter how you try to change history no one expected Sacremento to win the Game 7 in their building. The Lakers were the favorites in that series, even without HCA. Anyone who watched that season knew the only reason they didn't have it was due to injuries. If you are saying HCA is a bigger advantage then better talent then I think you will stand alone on that one. And why have you ignored my question. What playoff series has Kobe won where his team didn't have at least equal talent as the other team? What series has he won that most didn't expect him to, or said he had the better team?
Is there an objective way to compare talent as a team? It's easier to compare individual talent. So Lakers had 2 positions better than Kings but every other position was worse including the bench, does that make Lakers more talented at all? I was trying to use 2004, not 2003, against Spurs. Against defending champion, without HCA, sure there're 4 HOF, but does that really make you more talented? Spurs added Jefferson this year and it didn't really make them better. How about Cavs with Shaq? If anything, regular season wins (barring major injury) is a reflection of your team talent. I am going to stop this bull**** conversation. So far you're all talk, all subjective speculation and no concrete numbers to back it up. So the team with HCA have been winning at a much higher rate, and every single game the team with homecourt is winning at a high rate. And that's something you can simply ignore? Expectation was Kings would dethrone Lakers that year, many articles said so, you can find it on google if you wish, does that count? You are entitled to your opinion. But HCA has advantage in it for a reason. And You don't have any numbers to counter its statistical significance.
In his defense, and i am not a Kobe lover, but he did totally dominate that game in the first half and they were still losing by 15 points at half-time. There was not much he could do. Continue to take over the game and lose, and he's selfish, defer and lose, he's a quitter? No, doesn't work that way. In the Toronto game last year, Tracy literally quit. Not he played less aggressively, or bypassed shots he should have taken. He quit. He stood in the center of the court, near halfcourt, multiple times, his teammates, playing 4 on 5 were forced to kick it out to him multiple times where he would proceed to either do nothing and pass back to a teammate (to continue playing a 4 on 5 charade) or do even less, let the other team get the ball and embarrass himself and his organization in a mockery of an attempt to "defend" a fast break. See, there's differences between quitting and quitting. There's T-Mac quitting, which is shocking, uncalled for and an embarrassment. And then there's Kobe Game 7 "quitting" - which is trying to find another way for your team to get back in the game, that not working either, and then getting criticized for not being a superstar. And there's different kinds of players "quitting". There's T-Mac quitting, which involves a guy who has now repeatedly been unable to close out teams in the playoffs, who has had relationship struggles with two different organizations, who is bigger than the team, but isn't bigger then the team, but wants to be bigger then the team, but it's on him, but it's not on him, but he is injured, but he isn't injured, but etc., etc. And then there's Kobe quitting, which is a fiercely competitive player calling out his teammates and organization for not winning. As I said earlier in the thread...I DO think Kobe quit (or at least attempted to). I do NOT think the specific in game quitting is really "quitting" - but I do think his calling out of Bynum, of his GM and organization and his trade demands are pretty damning. But I also recognize that Kobe is one of the best of the best, whose lost some series, sure, but also has closed out many more, and basically can "quit" in the manner he has because, frankly, it works.
Right or wrong is irrelevant. Check out the results. Maybe Bynum doesn't work as hard if Kobe stays quiet. Maybe the Lakers GM doesn't take on Gasol's contract once Bynum went down. Maybe they take their chances without Odom and Artest. Maybe if Garnett would have pulled a Kobe before wasting most of his career Timberwolves fans would have been able to see him win his ring with them instead of the Celtics.
Actually there is. Usually a superstar player like Shaq or Kobe makes a huge difference in basketball. Are you saying that they don't? If you have a star player (or two), then your role players don't need to be more talented than the other teams because you already have a big advantage. You already have two guys that can't be held without help, so you only need others that can play within a team and hit open shots...and defend. And are you really arguing that you would rather have players like Peja or Christie over the LA roleplayers like Horry, Fox or Fisher? But to answer, I don't think anyone from the Kings is going to get consideration as top 10 all-time, or agruably top 5 at their position. Both Shaq and Kobe will. See how objective that was? Need more? Better players usually get more $$. The highest paid players for the Kings were Webber ($13M), Vlade ($11M) and Christie ($5M). Shaq made $21M alone. Kobe made $11M. Horry made $5M. Not to mention the Lakers thought so highly of Kobe that they shipped Divac out for him. Sorry, but if you are really trying to argue that Sacremento had as much talent as LA then that makes no sense. Which roster would you prefer? Which roster do you think a GM would prefer? The Lakers were the proveribal favorite to win the title once they added Malone and Payton. And as far as not having HCA against SA, they finished ONE GAME behind San Antonio. This, in spite of Kobe missing 17 games, Shaq missing 15 games, and Malone missing 40 games. What matters is the state your team is in come playoff time. That same season, they played the T-Wolves (without Cassell), a team they finished 2 games behind for HCA. Are you saying HCA matters more than the T-Wolves having a healthy lineup? I can ask the same question about the Finals vs Detroit, where the Lakers had HCA but Malone was hurt. It's absurd to point to HCA as a team being an underdog, because it doesn't take into account what happened over a full 82 game season. If I miss a key player for half the year then I won't have as high of a seed, but if I get him back come playoff time then my team is clearly better than my record, so just because I don't have HCA doesn't mean I have a worse team. It also doesn'tt ake into account mid season trades (see the 95 Rockets or 06 Pistons), which can dramatically change a team. The fact is the Lakers did not go into any of those series expected to lose. I don't know how to pull old betting odds but I bet if we could they would show LA as the team expected to win, and that data is more relevant than you listing statistics to other series that have nothing to do with the matchup that was played. Typically the team with HCA has the better team, or better talent. I have shown you how that wasn't the case in any of the examples that you keep listing. LA didn't have HCA due to injuries. Your numbers, concerning other series, somehow relate to LA being an underdog against Sacremento simply because the final game wasn't in LA? Want some concrete numbers? These are the years that a championship was either won without HCA, or clinched on the other teams court, in the last 20 years: 2009 2007 2006 2004 2002 2001 1999 1998 1995 1993 1991 1990 1989 That's 13 times. In other words, if you have the better team, it typically doesn't matter where you play. Great teams can win anywhere. You overrate HCA. It's vital when two teams are equal or close, but if I had the choice between better team and no HCA, to HCA and worse team, then give me the better team every time. Kobe is great enough on his own merits. There is no need to fabricate to enhance his legacy. It's fine to win with help, but that't not what this comparison is about. This is about how he did in T-Mac's situation. The answer is never succeeded.
I just wanted to note that you basically described what Kobe did in the 2nd half of that Game 7. He wasn't assertive at all, and really wasn't being an active playmaker. He was getting the ball and kicking it back, and his body language had "F it" written all over it.
