I seriously doubt the lakers beat them at every position I'm not talking on paper. . I'm talking in games Rocket River
Let me ask you this then, if we grab those late rebounds against Utah, and beat them in game 7, would you then say this was a good trade? Same players involved, just one loose ball we get and suddenly everything changes? Thats why you cant judge the trade on one playoff series, especially one that was so close. Another example is Scola. He was clearly brought in to help get us far in the playoffs. Say he has a good season, but we get beat in the first round. Does it make the Vspan for Scola trade a terrible swap? Lastly, you can say what you want about Gay insuring future success, but I personally dont think he has done anything to instill confidence that he will be a star. He looks lazy and uninterested on the court at times, doesnt have a great jumper or passing ability, and didnt have a monster year on a terrible team that was missing their superstar, in a run and gun offense.
Smart teams play to their strengths, rather than try to win every individual match up. Why should the Rockets play Francis in a real game if his defense is horrible and he has to dominate the ball and take a high volume of shots just to "cancel out" what his man is doing on the other end? Winning at every position means you out perform the man your matched up with, not cancel them out.
and we did not OUT PERFORM last year in the playoffs We got DOMINATED at the Guard Position Rocket River
you can't say that. deron driving on rafer, which led for yao/hayes to pick up deron, had boozer open, lots of time. rafer is not good at recovering after he gets crossed. his only hope was to pick pocket behind deron, but it usually didn't work.
We had no one on the team that was better than Williams at the guard position, so I don't know why anyone would have expected us to out perform them at that spot. Utah was EXPECTED to dominate there, just like we were EXPECTED to dominate at the center spot. Williams perhaps played even better than expected going in, but he carried that level of play thru the later rounds of the play offs. Unfortunately we did not dominate at center to the extent that Williams dominated at the guard spot. So then the arguement in relation to this thread topic turns to whether Steve Francis would out perform Williams, and the answer is still no. actually according to JVG the opposite is true. Van Gundy considered Rafer one of his best team defenders, and said our big men's inability to pick up players on pick and rolls (which is how Williams scored most of his points) was more of a factor than poor defense by Alston. I mean Rafer isn't Gary Payton in his prime defensively by any means, but he rarely gets beat straight up or is put in ISO situations by opposing teams.
