Neither King or McGrady are HOF worthy, imo. The reality is that most fans of the NBA today are ignorant people, they see PPG, Points scored, and offensive stats such as PER as the end all and be all of any player comparison. This is why frauds such as Wilt Chamberlain and Kobe Bryant are considered better on the all time player list than real talents such as Hakeem. Which is a ****ing shame. This thread only futher illustrates to me that my love for basketball has never died. But what has died in me is my love for the NBA and the media, and more importantly all of the simple minded fans that keep giving them money.
That's too much Homerism for me.... I understand Hakeem is one of the greatest ever, but to say that Wilt is a fraud is just unacceptable. Look at the stats, tape, they will tell you that Wilt is one of if not the most dominate centers of all time
His teams were all horrendous because of him. Certain players make you better and he is not one of them. Case in point, Lebron in Cleveland. The Clevelend teams he always took deep into the playoffs were not any better then Stacie's teams. Only 5 players of a basketball team. Baseball, Football, and Football have twice as many players and you can say, "he was on a bad team uah uah uah". Good players make others look like all-stars when they are not. If Matt Maloney is on a McGrady team he doesn't get that contract. :grin:
Could broken down old 6'4" Houston Rocket Charles Barkley score in today's NBA? Its one thing to dismiss guys who played 30 years ago, but Chuck was doing it a decade ago. But why is Chuckie relevant to this discussion? Go find video of Adrian Dantley. If King's post game looks weak by to today's standards, AD will positively make you LOL. There is no way you'll think he could get away with it. And the truth is that Barkley had no post offense when he entered the NBA. He was basically a perimeter player who scored on penetration, slashing, and putting back offensive boards. Chuckie's entire post game was lifted wholesale from Adrian Dantley. He developed his entire post game by watching and copying AD verbatim. At 6'4" Chuck could score in the post on anybody in the NBA with a rudimentary set of moves. What King and Dantley did back then that people mostly don't do anymore was to force the defense to react to an initial move exploit the resultant holes. This is actually the same thing that makes Harden so deceptively effective. Players today, for the most part, commit to their move before the defense even reacts. People expect scorers to jump out of the gym over the defense, because that's what you have to do if you can't be bothered to tailor your move to what the D is doing. Watch any modern NBA player - when they start to move you can see they know exactly what they are doing before they start. Compare it to the old guys, who string together three or for post components to score. You can see in most readily in King's spin move back to thr right, which he deploys when people over committed to stopping his turnaround to his left. AD/Barkely used to have a set shot where they'd put the ball in position to shoot a set shot. If the defender would commit to challenging with a hand, they would loose their low center of gravity, and Chuck/AD would drive and draw contact every time like clockwork. No hand to challenge and AD/Chuck would hit a 6 foot set shot with no defender in their face. That sort of offensive game is not sexy as jumping out of the gym on a turnaround. If you are used to the latter, you don't believe the simplicity of the former could possibly work, but it does. Back in the day, post players absolutely weren't athletic enough to do what people do today. But they made up for it with a surfeit of guile. They worked smarter, not harder. You use whatever advantage you have. A slightly similar situation occurred with Shaq after Hakeem. Shaq didn't use guile, but rather pure size. There was backlash against Shaq not being a 'real scorer' because dunking on people was so much less impressive than a Dream Shake. But 2 points are two points, and Shaq's ugly dunks, while visually less impressive than a Dream Shake from the stands, count for just as many points. The legal zone would hurt the old guys, mostly with the entry pass, but it wouldn't shut them down. Most of those guys were used to working around double and triple teams.
NBATV is having this Bernard King documentary He's way better than McGrady and when he came back as a Washington Bullet to play the Knicks at MSG, the Knicks fans cheered him after he dropped like 50 on them. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/s5XqzFDWkeg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198412250NYK.html <PRE> Basi Player MP FG FGA FG% 3P 3PA 3P% FT FTA FT% ORB DRB TRB AST STL BLK TOV PF PTS Bernard King 19 30 .633 0 22 26 .846 7 60 Rory Sparrow 4 12 .333 1 4 4 1.000 10 13 Pat Cummings 6 7 .857 0 1 3 .333 13 Darrell Walker 3 9 .333 0 3 4 .750 9 Louis Orr 3 7 .429 0 0 0 6 Trent Tucker 2 3 .667 0 0 0 4 James Bailey 1 6 .167 0 0 0 7 2 Butch Carter 1 2 .500 0 0 0 2 Ken Bannister 1 2 .500 0 0 2 .000 2 Eddie Lee Wilkins 1 2 .500 0 0 0 2 Ron Cavenall 0 1 .000 0 1 2 .500 1 Team Totals 240 41 81 .506 1 31 41 .756 41 23 37 114 </PRE>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/JxUCTeR0klY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
At 34 years old he was averaging 28-5-5... What is McLady doing at 34? c Take a guess at who was more willing to set screens, play defense, run the wing, and get to the hole?
Yes his knees were jacked. All it takes is a little research , but mcgrady fans don't care about other players. I'm not surprised none of them researched king. Because they fear he was better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_King At the peak of his career, however, King suffered a devastating knee injury - a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.[1] He suffered the injury while planting his straight leg before jumping, causing the knee to bend, against the then-Kansas City Kings' Reggie Theus as Theus was driving to the basket in Kansas City, Missouri on March 23, 1985. It required major reconstruction, causing King to miss all of the 1985-86 season and denying his explosive speed to the basket. Despite averaging 22.7 points per game during his first six games back, it was clear that King's explosiveness was diminished, and this prompted the New York Knicks to release him at the end of the 1987 season. However, King would have a very successful comeback with the Washington Bullets, improving his scoring average each year with the squad and returning to the All-Star Game one last time in 1991, his final full season in the NBA. After a year-and-a-half hiatus and a brief 32-game stint with the New Jersey Nets at the end of the '93 season, knee problems forced Bernard King into retirement. King retired with 19,655 points in 874 games, for an average of 22.5 points per game during his career. At the time of his retirement, King ranked 16th on the all-time NBA scoring list.
Tmac didn't just have knee problems he also had shoulder and back problems. He had arthroscopic surgery on his knee and shoulder. He had microfracture surgery too. And after all hes not gonna be the player he once was.
I'm guessing the 88 meaning you were born in 1988? If so, how embarrassing for you to make that kind of statement, wow!!!
