Those are regular season teams. If we're talking playoffs and championships, then I stand by what I said. Big men, then closer wings, then clutch point guards. That's the recipe to success in this league and in that order. Look at how Memphis almost owned in the playoffs due to their big men. Dallas won a ring due to their interior D and Nowitzki. The Heat owned teams with Point guard led teams like the Bulls because they are easier to contain offensively.
Unless Griffin turns into a force defensively, they are not winning a ring anytime soon. Again, just a great regular season team due to great point guard play. But when it comes playoff time, it won't be the same. Pgs can't be as depended on and post plays and interior D become significant.
That's because they ran the triangle. Teams that run offenses like the triple post or princeton offense don't require dribble penetration. But practically everyone now goes pick and roll, pick and roll, pick and roll in the half court.
See you did it again. You put PGs in their own category proving how special they are. Bigs are two positions and wings are two positions. Either a PF or C will do...and either a SG or SF will do. But only one skill set can be the PG...so you are left comparing PG to categories contain 2 positions, each. You illustrate how specialized the PG position is by doing that.
At the end of the day, it's not about position. It's about do you have the best players on your team? It's becoming a more perimeter oriented league. Dallas won last year by a hot-shooting Dirk/Terry. Didn't they break a record for 3pt makes/% or something, or close to it? Lakers and Magic own the best big men in the game. And they're not contenders. The 2 best teams in the league have the 2 best perimeter duos (Heat and OKC). But at the end of the day, you have the best players in the league, you have a great shot of winning, regardless of position.
Yeah I'm not following your logic heypartner. I think you're just nitpicking at my argument. Sf/sg and pf/c are interchangeable because they can provide the same thing. Pgs have a different role on the court, yeah, but my point is there is an abundance of pgs already in this league who understand that role. And that you don't need to have an elite one to compete in the playoffs.
Uh, so you are saying there are offenses that don't require PGs. You are actually making his argument. And the point about Princeton is it is an offense designed in college to beat teams with big men by pulling them out of the lane....it really isn't about how to use big men...it is about how to beat big men. The Laker argument is ... The Lakers won because they were stacked at 3 positions with the best 6th-man in the game. When you are stacked like that, you don't need every position filled...nor does the salary cap allow you to fill all the positions. That's the counter argument. And even still, Fisher is a clutch shooter. He has pulled out wins for them at the end game when they were on the brink of crucial losses.
Word we needed a PG forever but never really had one when they built around Yao and T-mac. Either way we are talking about the Cleveland Cavs. They already can't attract free agents so building around Kyrie Iriving is their best shot considering he is the best player in his draft class so far. I don't even get how this argument started up this thread is about his potential as a player.
No, his argument is that PG is the least important position on the floor. And sure, if you can run the triangle with Kobe and Shaq or Jordan and Pippen in the post, or you have high post passers like Vlade, Webber and Brad Miller (plus smart cutters), you can get by without a dribble-penetrating PG. But how often do you find the personnel to make those half court offenses work? The triangle failed miserably in Minnesota under Rambis and Dallas under Jim Cleamons. Eddie Jordan's Princeton offense never really worked in Philly. I also mentioned earlier that you can't run a flex, screen roll, or high stack offense without a good PG. I said that having a great center affects the game more than any other position, but you can still have success without one. But you have to specialize your offense to compensate, and you have to do the same thing if you don't have a strong PG. Simply put, great bigs and great floor generals give you the most options and its easiest to maximize their abilities and have success.
Also I think the Detroit Piston fans disagree about PG play being the least important position. That franchise went down the drain as soon as Chauncey Billups was traded.
They won only one championship. That team was extremely balanced. They did follow my formula of having bigs with interior D (sheed/ wallace) , closer wings (prince / hamilton) and finally clutch play from their finals mvp Billups.
Also regarding the Pistons, they were not "led" by Billups. The offense did not center around him, and he was not being paid a max contract. Because if he were, they would not be able to have those great players on his team. Which leads to my point about Irving, who is bound to be offered a max.
You can't compare PGs to two other categories that include two positions each. You are just proving how special that skill set is versus the other 4 players. And as far as the abundance of PGs...that wasn't always the case ... and it has a lot to do with the revolutionary rules change preventing hand checking. The whole put of no hand-checking was to allow more penetration...thus a strong PG position was made more possible. No way Lin gets into the lane as much in the '90s. And, notice how many teams will play 2 PGs together. How many times do we see twin towers work? How many times do 2 wing scorers work who need the ball in their hands to be successful, yet don't know how to get other's involved. When you have one elite PG, or two like Lowry and Dragic, it allows coaches the flexibility to run many different offenses. You can't say that about any other position. oh, and Magic and Isiah won 7 championships in 11 years in the renaissance era of basketball, Stockton, Payton and Deron beat Hakeem and Yao a combined 6 times in the playoffs, but Hakeem with Cassell never lost to them, except when Cassell was facing Payton and, surprise, we got swept. It took Hakeem, Drexler and Barkley to finally beat Payton, and we still lost to a Stockton. And don't give me an argument about Karla Malone proving your point; if you swap Stockton with any wing player of that era (except MJ), and make Matt Maloney the PG of Utah...seriously, how successful would Utah have been.:grin: So, yeah, PGs haven't won many titles since '90, beat they have a proven track record of stopping C-dominant teams who don't have a good PG of their own.
The j*zz were never destined for a championship. If you had Jordan on that team they would not win a championship :grin:
Tell that to Dallas against GS. SWEEP. A freaking 8th beating a #1 seed...I suppose they were both running teams. The Kings ran as well. The Kings were a fluke Divac-tip to Horry for 3 away from a ring. You are so freaking wrong about this. And we could argue that Dallas won last year as a fairly high octane team relative to the rest of the league, albeit not to their past. Showtime Lakers...and the 2nd Team of the Fo Fo Fo 76'ers ran ... and the Celtics were awesome at face-breaking, too...in both the Bird era and the Russell era. I suppose you will alter your point to say it doesn't win a ring and restrict that to only since 1990. I hate these arguments that hinge solely on the final winner -- when in reality that whole argument is best describe as the best player in the league is the biggest reason to who wins the ring...nothing else is as historically significant and proven. bottomline: You still have said how you voted in the poll. You're just here to derail the thread and argument. Prove me wrong and tell us how you voted.
Umm I've said over and over he has a chance to become elite, even in other threads I have said he has become my favorite player - search it. It's just his future that in my opinion does not bode well. I don't see what your problem is with me discussing his future in this thread, it is still abou Irving. Many threads divert into different discussions. It's not as if mine is random and has no relevance. As for your argument, we can just both agree to disagree. I can wager that for the next 10 yrs, no team paying their star pg a max contract with an offense that revolved around that pg and depends on his shooting will ever win a championship.
