I don't know, Pat Garrity, Hedo Turkoglue, Grant Hill, Dwight Howard might have just a little bit to do with their success as well. People forget that Garrity was a key part of that team, and was injured last year. I think a Nelson/Tmac backcourt with Hill, Dwight, and Battie would be even more devastating. It pains me to say it, but Weisbrod made 2 good moves in signing Turkoglue and trading Gooden for Battie. He also did a good job with the draft.
Eh...most of them sway with the wind. If the Lakers win the next game they will be back on his bandwagon. I however thought Rudy would be a bad fit here before he even signed with LA. The man has no balls to stand up to Kobe. He's basically a formerly great man now reduced to being Kobe's puppet. Rudy ain't got no balls. Hey but at least he's making 5 mil a year, maybe he can swallow his pride for that amount of jack, I know I could.
By MARK LONG, AP Sports Writer November 12, 2004 AP - Nov 12, 8:33 pm EST More Photos ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Steve Francis scored a season-high 32 points, and Grant Hill added 27 points and 12 rebounds to rally the Orlando Magic to a 122-113 comeback victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night. Comebacks are something Hill knows all about, having been severely hampered by an ankle injury during his first four seasons with the Magic. So trailing by 18 points against the Lakers was no big deal. The Magic were behind 39-21 early in the second quarter but used an impressive performance from Francis and another encouraging outing from Hill to get back in the game. Kobe Bryant led the Lakers in scoring for the seventh consecutive game, finishing with a season-high 41 points on 14-of-31 shooting. He was 11-of-12 from the free throw line. Bryant's three-point play with a little more than five minutes to play cut Orlando's lead to 107-103. But Hill hit a 3-pointer as the shot clock expired with 1:38 to play, giving the Heat a 116-106 lead. He added another one with 28 seconds to play that sent the crowd into a frenzy and got him a well-deserved standing ovation. ADVERTISEMENT Hill guarded Bryant much of the night and kept him from taking over the game, another sign that Hill's latest comeback from a series of ankle injuries the past few years could be his last. His offense was even better. He scored eight points in the second quarter to lead the comeback. He hit two outside jumpers and drove to the basket at will. His best play came when he grabbed a rebound on the baseline, spun to the center of the court and hit a shot as he started falling to the ground. Then Francis took over, scoring the final nine points in the half. His 18-foot fadeaway jumper put the Magic ahead, 50-49, with about two minutes to play in the half. The Lakers reclaimed the lead early in the third, but Orlando used a 13-0 run to pull away for good. The Magic led 93-80 after three quarters. The highlight of the run was a no-look pass on the fastbreak from Hill to Hedo Turkoglu. Hill finished with four assists and four steals, and had his first double-double of the season. Entering this season, a stress fracture in Hill's left ankle limited him to 47 games since joining the Magic in 2000. In that time, Orlando never advanced out of the playoffs' first round in three tries and last year finished an embarrassing 21-61. Turkoglu finished with 23 points, and Jameer Nelson added 23. Chucky Atkins had 21 points for the Lakers. Lamar Odom and Caron Butler chipped in 16 and 15, respectively. Bryant's night wasn't without incident. He started jawing with a fan sitting courtside late in the first half, yelling obscenities and finally responding by saying, ``You woke me up now.'' Notes Orlando coach Johnny Davis inserted guard Stacey Augmon into the starting lineup in place of DeShawn Stevenson. Augmon had two turnovers in the first three minutes and started the second half on the bench. ... Magic rookie Dwight Howard finished with a career-high 15 rebounds. ... The Lakers' closest game this season has been eight points. Updated on Friday, Nov 12, 2004 9:57 pm EST link - http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/recap?gid=2004111219 Is it only me Kobe is acting more and more like a thug???
Depends what your definition of a thug is. Seems to me that he's just being the prick that he's always managed to hide from the general public.
Jesus, can we just have a sticky in the Dish for Francis and the Magic, instead of 3 threads poppin up everytime he breathes?
damn I miss the guy..... He looks damn good again, here I thought it was the zone defense that was killing his game. Guess it was JVG. Damnit....that guy is a stud.
For real man...you don't have to click on the topic. If you don't wanna read about Steve then don't read about Steve.
Actually, it was Yao that was killing his game. Yao cannot keep pace with Francis and a lesser extent mobley. Yao would have a heart attack by half time if he had to run the court like Orlando is doing. slow big men can't run the uptempo game. Look at how bad Deke looked in New Jersey. So JVG had to make a choice between the two, and he picked Yao. Steve like Kidd needs a big man that can run the court with him like Howard or Garnett.
Not if he wants to win. Even running teams that have won championships...which, in recent history, would only be the Lakers of the 80's, didn't have a great fastbreaking center, but a great half-court center. Steve needs to either learn how to control the game so that he knows how to run and when not to with a great big man, or do the impossible, and lead a team to the championship without a dominant big man AND without a dominant half-court offense. I don't think it will happen, but I do think he will be happy making the playoffs every year (doable) while being a stat monster.
why do guys still hate on steve. The bulls ran a lot so do the spurs and the rockets with hakeem ran at times too. A running does not preclude a team from being great.
that's been my thought as well. i think i looked and around 10 teams were averaging over 100. it seems there have been tons of 100 point games going around and this 122-113 doesn't even seem that surprising. maybe it's all the additional free throws from the new hand-checking, no contact on drivers rule. that has to be adding 5 or 6 points a game. also, the amount of blowouts has been amazing. there are 25 and 30 point beat downs every night. seattle has blow people out left and right, denver lost about 4 games by 20 plus, you've got nj and atl losing huge every night. utah blew about 3 teams out. the lakers have been blown out and blown one team out. golden state just lost by 29 tonight. maybe it's all the roster turnover but it's been crazy. while nothing conclusive can be drawn from 6 games, it is amazing that he was a 20/6/6 type guy before jvg got here, proceeded to have his worst shooting and scoring year ever, looked uncomfortable all year, and couldn't even hit layups after mid season once jvg got here, and now 6 games removed from jvg he's playing just as well as ever. he's hitting tough layups, not just normal ones, the jump shot is back to respectable, and he's making highlight reel plays again. so based on these games, either he was purposely throwing games and hurting his stats on purpose to spite jvg or it was jvg. i swear every time he comes in the game he's terrible. i don't remember him being this bad here. actually, once you get past odom who seems to love getting in foul trouble every night, there team sucks horribly. well butler is nice but after that it's an enormous fall off. brian cook shoots every time he touches it (mostly because he's so damn open b/c no one is foolish enough to actually guard him) and shoots terribly. brian grant can't jump over a rope, and then you've got guys like brown, atkins, and walton sucking it up nightly. they say you're supposed to trust your teammates but i cringe every time kobe passes it to one of them. it's almost like kobe would just be better off shooting til his arm fell off over double teams than giving it to anyone not named odom or butler.
ummm, i thought he did a good job doing what cuttino did last year in the playoffs, not going for kobe's pump fakes, but umm, kobe had 41 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists, and he had 16 points and 4 assists in the 4th quarter alone while keying a comeback that got them within 4 (i didn't see the all of the 4th but i know they were down 13 to start and i saw him hit 3 shots before i left). that's not exactly stopping someone from taking over. in fact it seems quite the opposite.
Since when was it necessary for centers to run fast breaks? Francis couldn't make the right pass on a fast break to save his life. So it really doesn't matter who runs it with him. He'll always just take it in himself, which isn't too bad since he is a good finisher. Yao did have a huge negative effect on Steve's game. But that was in the half court offense. Francis looked absolutely lost half the time on offensive sets, and never found the shots he liked. He just had a ton of trouble as the PG for JVG. Something that Ward and T-Mac certainly improved upon this year.
a stevie fast break consists of him being on one side against 2 people and dribbling the ball out of bounce. but seriously. how can you have a fast break in which the PG takes the ball on the wing? its middle school basketball you run in the middle and have people to pass it to on the wings.
JayZ's point is that a good running team don't need a running center. Yao was not the reason why Francis couldn't run in Houston.
That's pretty damn harsh, you are accusing him of not caring about winning a championship. Based on what?
