And aren't we lucky we have two of them... http://dimemag.com/2008/12/ten-softest-players-in-the-nba/ I don't know if I would agree with all of his picks, but I thought it was fodder for commentary.
We playing the games like gentlemen, even contains Ron, he also become a good guy. No temper, now is not like a beast...
well, at least he's not biased. i haven't followed hibbert's nba career that much (and maybe i should go do a little research before posting), but what has he done so far in the nba that he could already be labeled soft less than a fourth of the way through his rookie campaign. that and the guys opening paragraph leads me to believe he's a hater. and probably a poster here.
I guess it's how you define "soft." Dirk plays about as soft as anyone but has a high threshold for pain and misses very few games even when he appears to sustain serious injury. He comes back from sprained ankles as fast as anyone in the league. Tmac plays aggressive at times. In my opinion he is not one of the 10 softest in terms of his game but his threshold for pain is clearly low for a professional athlete. I guess the guy who wrote this has several definitions for soft?
Yeah it depends on whether "soft" is playing style or persona. KG is tissue soft in playing style but has a "hard" persona that he gives off. Duncan plays tough in the post but is considered soft because he doesn't jam and beat his chest all the time.
the author is pretty disrespectful in my opinion. who the **** is he anyways? let's see him going to an nba game and bang with big men, never mind, just let him bang with even point guards in nba, he will get killed. And he is calling out real nba players SOFT? i bet he wrote his article cuz his wife called him soft on the bed.
LOL Moes getting right to the point. You should read some of the other stuff this same guy writes, so sad that these people are paid for their analysis.
? That makes no sense...... You cannot be soft and win defensive player of the year, or lead the league in rebounds..........
If the Rockets ever win a championship this era it will be DESPITE of Yao Ming rather than because of him . . . . no other words needed.
T-Mac being out, and Luther Head shooting 1-7 are perfectly good reasons to explain the loss. But he pins it on Yao instead. I have never understood the notion that the top performer on the team is responsible for its losses. When the Lakers sucked a couple seasons ago, it was because Kobe wasn't a team player, not because he was playing with losers like Chucky Atkins, Tierre Brown, or Kwame. KG didn't win before joining the Celtics because he didn't have it, not because he was surrounded by garbage. What, did KG suddenly become a much better player when he went to Boston and got to play with Paul Pierce and Ray Allen? A player's quality is determined by who he plays with? Yeah whatever. At least this idiot admits he has an anti-Yao bias. "Nene outworked him." Let's examine that assertion by going into the actual numbers: -Nene grabbed 10 rebounds (5 on offense as this guy said), in 35 minutes and 19 seconds. -Yao got 11 rebounds (3 on offense) in 31 minutes and 12 seconds. -That's right, Yao outrebounded Nene while using 4 minutes less of playing time. Adjust for minutes and Yao comes out even better on the boards this game. This guy clearly likes to go for the anomalies. Go to 82games.com to see what Yao's rebounding performance is day-in and day-out. That's right, on average Yao edges out the opposing center on the boards. Go back into past seasons and he has had similar rebounding advantages over the opposition. Yao may not be an exceptional rebounder like Dwight Howard or Marcus Camby, but he is an above-average one. It's not a weakness as this clown writer makes it out to be. And is rebounding the only thing that figures into how hard or soft a player is? What about their playing style? Yao is one of the last real post-up players in the league. He's banging bodies on every play, backing his massive weight into defenders for close shots. For everyone who criticizes Yao for not being prime Shaq (who really is?), watch Yao and then watch someone like Tim Duncan play. Even Duncan with his acclaimed post game will settle for more jumpers than Yao. Sometimes it really makes me mad that idiots like this Dime guy are paid to write sports commentary like this. What makes him qualified, when he can't even get basic facts straight? Me, a nobody regular fan, can write better than this.
I just went to the article and looked through the comments section, which includes a few posts by the article writer himself: Herrmann averaging only 13.7 minutes of playing time might have something to do with that. This guys is hater, and a joke.
There needs to be a new rebounding stat called something like "contested rebounds" or something like that. I guess all offensive rebounds could automatically be counted as "contested rebounds." But on defensive rebounds, I notice that Yao gets a lot of rebounds with nobody else around because everyone on the other team has already decided to run back on D. It's like he gets those by default, the kind you or I or your little kid brother could get. To be considered a "contested rebound," it would have to be, you guessed it, contested by at least one other player from the other team, or it could be uncontested and still count as "contested" if it requires a lot of effort on the part of the rebounder, maybe if he has to save it from going out of bounds or something. That would be the true measure of a rebounder. In baseball they make judgment calls when they decide whether to score some infield hits as an error or a hit. They judge pitches that hit the backstop as either a pass ball (catcher's fault) or wild pitch (pitcher's fault). Why can't they do likewise in basketball w.r.t. rebounding?
