2 Franchise players and a partridge in a pear tree

Yes, that's the team I'm talking about. Extreme talent leading to wins does not mean that talent is being used properly. You could have played Slowtime instead of Showtime with the 80's Lakers, or played a running game with the 80's Celtics, and each would still have won a ton of games, simply because of thier talent. But it would still have been a waste of said talent, because it didn't maximize it's effectiveness.


We are, barring a miracle, going to have at most 2 stars. DO you really think that having them both need the same spot on the floor to be most effective is the best way we can distribute our talent? I agree that if we had a Drexler et al elsewhere it would lessen the waste, but we don't.

 

I think that you win with great players. If we win while we're "wasting their talents", then so be it. Waste away!

Our primary goal is winning, not maximizing talent.

 

I think one leads to the other. I think that a better talent distribution would have led to more wins, as a team with 3 of the 50 best players of all time might be expected to have won more than 57.

And in this case, the talent would be much lower, and thus the correlative negative effect on winning, as brought about by the inefficient talent distribution, would be even more telling.

Brand's an excellent no. 2 player, IMO. Just that having 2 stars, both of them needing the low left is not the best use of the assets we possess.

 

No, it wasn't, which I explained pretty clearly.

The only thing I said was similar was that an offense built around a post player can accomodate a player who drives to the basket.

I never said they were the same "types" of player. If you want to argue that, since they're different" "types" of player it won't work, fine. But don't accuse me of saying something as stupid as Yao's game is 100% the same as Hakeem's since that's not remotely what I said.

Whatever, I'm done derailing this thread.

 

I think one leads to the other. I think that a better talent distribution would have led to more wins, as a team with 3 of the 50 best players of all time might be expected to have won more than 57.

If those 3 hall of famers would have been 3 or so years younger, then I'd agree. But at that stage of their careers, they were alot like this year's Laker team minus Kobe. Just based off their careers, one would also have thought that the current Laker team would have won alot more than 56 games too, wouldn't you? Problem is that while those guys are still good players late in their careers, they aren't elite any more. The Rockets not winning more than 57 games was due more to our total lack of a PG and the fact that our 3 stars were getting up in age.


And in this case, the talent would be much lower, and thus the correlative negative effect on winning, as brought about by the inefficient talent distribution, would be even more telling.

What negative effect on winning? Do you think an offense with Yao and Brand would be worse than what we had this year? I don't. Don't you agree that we'd be better in the shot blocking, rebounding and passing areas? In my opinion, we're better pretty much across the board. So, I'm back to the bottom line that we'd be a much better team and I don't really care if either of their talents get under utilized because they do some similar things.


Brand's an excellent no. 2 player, IMO. Just that having 2 stars, both of them needing the low left is not the best use of the assets we possess

Neither Brand or Yao is as locked into the low left block as Hakeem or Barkley were.