I'm thinking maybe you really were 12 years old during those years. Okur averaged 11/8 vs Yao in the playoffs while Yao averaged 25/10 As to Boozer, it was a bad mismatch when they put Yao on him. Yao was big and slow, perfect for guarding centers, terrible at guarding quick, athletic power forwards which is what a 25 year old Carlos Boozer was. Now again, You might be too young to remember how good a young Carlos Boozer was, a lot of people seem to forget due to how his career fizzled out when he lost a step but at his peak he was an all star and all NBA caliber player. Even with the bad mismatch, the two had nearly identical averages meaning they canceled each other out the only time they faced each other in the playoffs. It's interesting though that you pick Yao to dump on for that series when TMac played even worse. He averaged the same 25 points Yao did, but he did it even more inefficiently (.422 eFG% yuck) AND his poor defense that series didn't make up for his inefficient offense like Yao's did. Yao managing a +3 player rating to TMac's -4. It's almost as if there are other reasons you want to bash Yao and prop up TMac. Weird.
Man people love to make excuses for T-WAC Harden made the talent around him better .. . T-Wac simply did not In fact he may have diminished some . . . like YAO Rocket River
That's true for the most part both for TMac and Yao. Shane Battier was the 3rd best palyer on the team FAR too often. It's like they thought that getting Yao and TMac was all it would take. Before they started to get any real talent around them, both were broken to pieces.
Bump anything you want. I wish you could bump up your common sense. When teams tank, they try to act like they aren't. That's why they'll give updates on injured players. Look at Wood's first game back, and take note of the players who missed that game. Do you really think we were playing to win?
How is t-mac suppose to make Tyron Lue, Scott Padgett, 35 yr old David Wesley, 38 year old Mark Jackson better?
Because the team doctors wouldn't let him. Seriously, try to use some common sense. Also, when you hang out at half-court and force your team to play 4v5, that's not playing with "heart".
then why did all of hardens teams have extremely high team offensive ratings when he was here. Obviously his style of play led to cp3 and us winning 65 games and then led to westbrick averaging 27. The westbrick and harden duo was the highest scoring duo in nba history
TMac's career peaked in 2003 and his last really productive season was 2007. After that he was mediocre to terrible for the rest of his career. We have to remember that it was a time before the embrace of advanced metrics, but he was always a highly inefficient player, he was sort of like a Russell Westbrook style player in that he'd fill up a stat sheet, but he'd do it in a way that doesn't truly elevate his team the vast majority of the time. When you are scoring 24 points a game with a .422 eFG%, you aren't really helping your team.
The level of dumb on both sides is maddening. That take is just as dumb as is this take Which is just as dumb as people in the Curry debate blaming Curry for not making the playoffs when he was hurt all year in 2020. Which is just as dumb as people trying to claim that what Harden was doing this season was being carried to a title when he had clearly been their best performer. Reading through Harden threads and that Curry thread. Some of the dumbest **** I have ever read…..On both sides.
It was a damn shame, if Yao doesn't go down there, the Rockets win the championship that year. I mean, sure, he came back into the game and saved the day.....but he was a shell of himself in the next two games then missed the rest of the series. It's not as certain as the Rockets winning the championship if CP3 doesn't go down with a hamstring injury, because the Lakers were really good that year, but it's close to that certain. The Rockets had their number with a healthy Yao.
