Pippen is more of a supporting #2 player on a great team or a top player on a mediocre team than glue guy I think. Maybe he's not a player that can lead a team but I think he's more than a glue guy. Although I suppose on another team, Green could become a second option on scoring and elevate his game to be that #2 guy a la Pippen. But he would need to score on average in the 18+ppg to do that.
Except for in '94 when they lost to the Knicks in 7 in the 2nd round. Carried them pretty well. That was the same Knicks team that the Rockets had to take to 7 games to beat. They had won 55 games that year: they were still a contender with Pippen as the lead man. But yes, he was a "do-it-all" forward.
Batum was the quintessential glue guy in Portland for years but now he gets paid like a star so you might have to bump him off the list..but this dude is a dream in fantasy leagues, gets stats across the board..never "flashy" but is fundamentally sound
Just to add some new names - AK 47 and Derek Fisher. Gosh, I hate both of them when they are at j*zz.
I think there's a difference between being a "glue" guy and being an "intangibles" guy. Being a glue guy doesn't mean your effect can't be measured. It means you do all the things, outside scoring, to help win games. Draymond Green definitely qualifies. He guards all positions, rebounds, facilitates the offense and helps bring the ball up the floor.
Chuck Hayes. @durvasa, my definition would be a bit different. It's a guy that, when he's on the floor, somehow the offensive and defensive schemes work better than you'd expect given the stat line he produces. And yet, when he played on the Rockets with Dream and Barkley he sucked. He couldn't manage to find a way to simultaneously defer to our big inside threats and still find a way to be helpful. When he wasn't the focus of the offense he didn't do anything, and when he was he couldn't manage to include others. Pippen was a good player for the Bulls, but his inability to adapt makes me dubious of a description of greatest glue guy. Shane Battier, for example, could literally be put on any roster in the league and he would find a way to be worth having around. He wasn't as productive as Pippen could be, but he was also never as useless as Pippen sometimes was.
Patrick Patterson Patrick Beverley Weren't they like #1 and #2 in the NBA for ORtg well into December. Take a look at Toronto's record since PPatt got the knee injury. And, of course, we know what happened when PBev joined the team after missing first 15 games.
I've always thought "glue guys" are not so much how they play but how they "glue" the team together. It's more off the court, lockerroom kind of guy, but also on the court where he makes the team more cohesive.They get their teammates to sacrifice and play for each other, not for themselves. In other words, in my definition, a glue guy is a chemistry guy. Shane Battier and Chuck Hayes are that kind of players, maybe Scola too. Too bad, back in the days, we had a bunch of great glue guys on the team, but they couldn't glue the broken bodies of our stars. For our current team, Beverley definitely fits the bill. An no, Pippen was not a glue player. You can't be a glue player and refuse to enter the game for an endgame play just because the play wasn't called for you. That just reeks of selfishness. Selfishness and glue are diametrically opposite.
One thing I wonder is whether being a glue guy means basically a swingman/tweeter type. For example, are there any centers or PGs that are glue guys? Almost all the glue guys I can think of are tweeter types.
The first glue guy was discovered in 4000 BC, named EnEn, He did not rack up mammoth kills, but was well known as the guy that warned the others where piles of Ca-ca were before the hunt, as those piles indicated where the beasts were to be found, and because no one wanted to step in a big pile of ****.
