To be considered a "Superstar" does your team have to make the playoffs?

Evidently! :grin:

But yeah, I was only arguing as devil's advocate, it's not like a player's superstar card is revoked and reinstated after various seasons.

It is something extrinsic to playoff performances, that's for sure, although the playoffs often present the greatest stage on which a superstar may perform.

 

I'm with you, I think superstar is thrown around too lightly - when I think superstar I think Hakeem, Bird, Magic, Jordan, LeBron, Durant.

Although, that Kareem point is interesting...so I guess...I don't know, but I tend to associate superstars with winning.

e.g. The year before bird joined the celtics they finished the season with a 29–53 record. In Bird's rookie year, Bird took them to 61–21 (League's best record that season (this was without Parish and McHale)). The same can be said of LeBron carrying his scrubs in cleveland.

So, I voted yes.

 

This. I hate it when people use team accomplishments on players. They're nice bonus arguments you can make but they shouldn't be the sole reason.

For example, Tmac gets hated on for not making it out of the first round but if you looked at it he faced Dallas that had Finley, Dirk and Nash+the Utah Jazz that featured D-Will, Boozer, Okur. That's not exactly your typical first round opponent especially when you had an injured Yao Ming and guys like Juwon Howard and Luther Hea to rely on.

 

I think people are just stupid and don't know what they're talking about, so you need a ring to make them shut up. If team success was the real indicator then Horry should be seen as the GOAT as he played an important role in almost all of his rings.

When Lebron lost in the finals the performance he had was only slightly worse than last year but if you looked at people comments after it seemed he was the worst player on the planet.

 

While I don't disagree with the sentiment that it's a team game and one player does not make a team, the Horry example isn't a very good one as he's an exception to the rule rather than the rule.

There is a correlation between rings and the greatness of players.

List of people with the most rings:

Bill Russell with 11 rings - Considered by some as GOAT or at least in the conversation.

Then a whole bunch of Celtics inc. Sam Jones, Havlicek etc. (who won a large portion of rings with Bill).

Next non-celtic is Horry

Then KAJ with 6 rings, MJ with 6 rings, Mikan with 5.

Anyways the point is: all these guys are superstars and legends and furthermore, Horry was not the leader or the best player on his team - he lucked out really.

 

This is basically my philosophy, especially in baseball where you get only 1 out of every 9 plate appearance and football where you only play half the game and are out there with 10 other guys when you do. I never gave Schaub too much credit when he'd won 15 of 16 starts because a lot of other people had to play really well for that to happen. And if the Vikings don't make the playoffs, it's shouldn't be a knock on Adrian Peterson in the MVP voting. He's done all he can do, it won't be his fault if Minnesota doesn't get in.

It's easier for one person to carry a team in basketball but you still need help. Even when it was the norm for teams to have only one superstar, good teams always had great role players.