This is like saying Hakeem's play as a Toronto Raptor made you a fan of the Toronto Raptors. Chris Webber never played a full season as a King due to injuries, the most severe of which forever changed him as a player and made him a corny midrange shooter and high post facilitator rather than the athletic, awe-inspiring talent he was as a Warrior and while playing for Washington. This sounds like the version you are what you call appreciating: post-injury Webber. Shameful. I feel like somebody just farted in the room while telling me that the new Star Wars movies were better than the original ones.
He was ridiculous, as an athletic specimen. Strong and fast, which is such a rare combination. I don't think Blake Griffin is a bad comparison. Credit goes to Webber for reinventing himself as a less physical player during and after his injury periods. If he hadn't, his career would have been essentially over. But to say that passive, battered, jump shooting and deferring version of him was who he really was as a player? That's just silliness.
KG was a different situation. He had those skills to begin with. KG came into the league as a skinny stickman who shot three pointers. I even have some original footage somewhere of Kevin Garnett participating in a three point shooting contest. This is hard to explain: Basically the league was going through a sort of fad where they thought big men of the future would all be "stretch 4" types who shot threes as well. And players like Garnett represented that suposed future. It seems kind of dumb in retrospect, but this is what the league was like in the mid 90s. As Garnett matured and bulked up, he gained the ability to defend the post and bang inside, but that outside jumper never went away. If anything, it got even deadlier after he took a few steps closer and turned it from long range to midrange.
If I had one wish, would it be for a billion dollars? No. World peace? No. It would be to see a sumo battle between Oliver Miller and Eddy Curry. May the fattest man win.
I'm not that high on Webber, so pretty dang low. Garnett, Duncan, Dirk, Barkley, Malone, McHale, Bob Pettit, Willis Reed, and Gasol to me were better, and maybe Dennis Rodman as well. Webber lost his athleticism, had problems with coaches (yes, it was Nellie, but still), never drew fouls, and wasn't a great rebounder.
I was convinced Bias would be great and I was pissed that he was going to the Celtics for two reasons: I hated the Celtics at that time and I really liked the way Bias played the game, so I was going to have to be at least a Celtic agnostic. Anyway, he was damn good in college. So good that a lot of folks thought he would be damn good in the NBA.
Mark Price went to my high school and we played pick up games together on occasion, so I am probably influenced by that experience, but he was a very good guard. Remarkable FT shooter, at his best he was an 19pts/9 Asts per game on a good Cleveland team. Steve Kerr quote: “Mark really revolutionized the way that people attack the screen and roll. To me, he was the first guy in the NBA who really split the screen and roll. A lot of teams started blitzing the pick and roll and jumping two guys at it to take the ball out of the hands of the point guard. He’d duck right between them and shoot that little runner in the lane. Nobody was doing that at that time. You watch an NBA game now and almost everybody does that. Mark was a pioneer in that regard."
Not really. He was advertised as a 3/4. Some of his early coaches were afraid he had length but not bulk. And even then, Flip Saunders didn't officially move him to small forward until 2001. The experiment worked poorly and he was quickly moved back. What was your point? Are you trying to bust balls because I said "stretch 4 type" because it conveys the idea of a big man shooting long jumpers, and you're really going to push up your glasses and tell me nuh uh, small forward? Come on now.
Mark Aguirre is an anomaly. I dont think there has been another player since him with his skill set. Unique is the only way to put it. He is, sadly, basically unremembered because he was on some pretty awful Mavs teams but was an INTEGRAL part of 2 Pistons titles. In fact I would say he was the most important player on those teams...yet no one really knows him. He was a small forward who basically played like a back to the basket center. Bull nosed post up player. Wasnt the best outside shooter but he could drill them when needed. He averaged 25 in his best season, a feat hard to do. He was the number 1 pick after all. I wish there was another player like him, really. I missed out on him but my cousin had a lot of old Mavs game tapes bc his dad worked on the scouting department for the Spurs during the 80s and was obsessed with Aguirre.
Maybe speaking in superlatives ain't the way to go when comparing hall of famers to other hall of famers, but McHale was probably the best post player to ever play the game after Dream. Kevin McHale possessed little in the way of strength or athletic gifts, yet played in a physical era when the rules allowed such a player to get impeded and pushed out of position by defenders. What to do? McHale solved the problem by being so quick and crafty on the blocks that he would have his opponents confused 7 ways before he would score. A great player and an even greater basketball mind.
It should be noted however that McHale was a legendarily bad passer and wasn't exactly a great rebounder, and also had the misfortune of never really showcasing himself as a true #1. Don't get me wrong, McHale is a great, great player, and everything you said was true, not to mention that he really did care about the team. But power-forward wise, there are five of them who to me are in a class of their own - Duncan and Garnett are in one tier while Dirk, Malone, and Barkley are right below those two. After that, while McHale and Bob Pettit are close-ish, you really can't compare them to the previous five.
