You're crazy. Bogans is a shut down defender while Richardson is a terrible defender. Offensively, Bass just shoots jump shots. Deng is one of the top 3 defensive players at his position and is a much better scorer than Turkoglu.
defensively richardson that much better than bogans? u do know jack ramsay put bogans as his DPOY right? deng is >>>>>>>>> hedo bar none period. point blank. hell, deng is better than any other player on the magic other than howard. he plays the MOST MINUTES for the bulls, that should tell you how valuable he is to thibs. courtnee lee is a very good player for us. but why did the nets let him go? or orl? depends on the circumstances. maybe b/c of his porous offense?
So you're really basing your opinion that Dwight Howard isn't an MVP based on one game? I don't have an issue with Rose being the MVP because the award is controversial year in and year out, but without Howard on that Magic team, it would be on par with the Milwaukee Bucks...AT BEST. He's their only rebounder and their only real defensive player. If Otis Smith had a choice, I'm sure he would deal JRich, Bass and Turkoglu for Bogans, Boozer, and Deng any day of the week.
what I'm saying is richardson, turkeyglue, and bass aren't scrubs that some people try to make them out to be we can do all these hypothetical what ifs all day.. IMO if the magic had dirk, they would probably still be 4th seed in the east at worst 5th seed..
They're not scrubs BUT they're not going to stop anyone on defense any time soon and the reason why they were brought on board (JRich, Turk, Arenas, etc.) was to hit the open 3 Dwight Howard's post presence provides and they did not do that with much success Are you sure about that? Because you're treading onto the "MVP: best player vs. MVP: Most Valuable" territory. Dirk might be the better player than Howard in terms of what he brings on offense but a Dirk-led Orlando team would have ALL FIVE Orlando Magic players behind the 3 point arc at all times with zero rebounders in the middle. I'm not even going to imagine what their defense would be like.
yeah you act like all 5 of them poor rebounders.. what are their career rebound numbers? and I'm not talking about winning the championship.. it's not like never in the history of the NBA a team with a very strong offense and weak defense ever become 8th to 10th best team in the league
You DO realize that Howard is accountable for 1/3 of Orlando's rebounding and 2/3 of their blocked shots right? And why would we want to look at their careers rebounding numbers when their performances as an Orlando Magic this year has been worse than any of their other significant seasons minus Bass? You might want to romanticize and think that JRich, Turkoglu, etc. are all still high quality players like they were a few seasons back but, in reality, they are all average players this season...and that's being generous.
howbout they're all decent rebounders based on their career but just happens to play with the number 1 rebounder in the league? as a team, what are they ranked in terms of rebounding? is dirk a bad rebounder? yeah they're bad this season.. don't know why smith just made their team worse than what they were last year with all these trades.. but the current magic team will still be the top 8th to 10th team in the league with dirk instead of howard.. MVP has always been Most Valuable Player not Best Player or Jordan should have won every year
Aside from him putting Lebron and Wade above Rose for MVP, I don't have a problem with any of his picks. Darrell Arthur as MIP seems to be a bit of a head scratcher, but I don't really care about that award anyway, it's cursed.
He wasn't a bad rebounder but his numbers has been on the decline the past SEVEN seasons. Just because you play with the number two rebounder in the league doesn't mean you call it a day and not box out and get rebounds. Granted their offense relies on too many long shots but I fully believe that they wouldn't be able to adjust without Howard in the equation. He didn't make them bad. 1. Lewis fell off a cliff in terms of production this year. He was their 2nd best player the past 2-3 seasons until this year. 2. Smith made that Arenas trade to get out of #1 and had hopes Arenas had something left in the tank. Unfortunately he bet incorrectly. 3. Trading for JRich's production was his next bad gamble. Sure Richardson was playing great basketball in Phoenix but that didn't translate too well in Orlando where they don't have a playmaking point guard. As far as Dirk keeping Orlando as a top 10 team in the league, we'll agree to disagree. Dallas had a great season due in part to Chandler's stellar defense and rebounding, Kidd playing real well in the first half of the season and other factors. Dirk's a valuable cog in their machine, for sure, but I doubt he can score enough points as a Magic to offset the matador defense they would deploy with him in the lineup at center.
the people trashing hollinger are ridiculous. he's written articles on most of his decisions so writing "this guy has an agenda" or "this guy just wants attention" makes no sense. try actually providing an argument against him. my thoughts on rose: chicago is #1 in defense, tied for 12-13 in offense. conversely, orlando is #3 in defense, #10 in offense. dwight howard has a lot more to do with the magic being a good team than rose because most of his value is from defense. no matter how good rose is, he can't affect the game defensively as much as the bigs on that team and the coach. even if you say that rose carries the bulls offensively, he carries them to a mediocre offense.
Most of the people bashing him for his MVP pick are not bashing him because of Dwight being over Rose. They are bashing him because he has LeBron and Wade over Rose.
I don't know why people get so worked up about LeBron-Wade ahead of Rose. It's very debatable. It's not like Rose is hands down above them so that whoever thinks otherwise is crazy. Hollinger himself has said that much. The Heat as a team is not too far under the Bulls. And the individual performances of LeBron and Wade are arguably more impressive than Rose. For the record, I am a certified Heat hater. But I recognize what those two guys have been doing on the court. BTW, I always laugh when people scoff at statistical analyses whenever the facts don't agree with their media-hyped opinions. Stats aren't perfect and it's fine if you can point out the flaws of their methodology. But dismissing them just because they don't agree with your subjective opinion just shows your ignorance, especially when you haven't even read the article in details.
Boozer's missed 20+ games and Noah's missed 30+, yet Rose has still led the Bulls to the best record in the Eastern Conference (they were 41-41 last season). I can understand LeBron being ranked ahead of Rose, but Wade has no business being that high. Hollinger purposely places increased emphasis on PER in a desperate attempt to make it relevant in the basketball community... he makes head-turning statements/predictions/rankings to attract consideration to PER. Darrell Arthur as MIP is a cry for attention, and he know that by labeling a 2nd-yr bench contributor that hasn't even broken the double-digit PPG barrier will drop some jaws. Wade checks in at #3 and Rose at #9 in his PER rankings... it's the sole criteria he uses to judge players. Down right absurd.
Maybe one of these days Hollinger will understand that the game of basketball is not all about stats.
The funny thing is his pro-Dwight argument has nothing to do with stats. It has to do with team defense. But obviously, reading more than a paragraph is very difficult for most members on the internet. He doesn't use PER that much. He's never used it as an end all for debates.
Duh, he's a stat junkie and PER is his index. Of course he relies on it, it's the very reason he's relevant at all as a writer. That's like saying the only reason Kenny and Charles are on TNT is because they crack jokes at each other, and that other analysts make better arguments. And to that, much to your post, I'd say, "No crap, Sherlock." Hollinger is an enjoyable writer. Yeah, not enjoyable enough for me to pay for Insider, but darn enjoyable enough for me to read his stuff anytime someone else posts it here. If its not your bag, move along. His analysis appeals to enough people that they fork over for Insider, so don't go attacking something just because it's not your preferred style of journalism. Attack the arguments that he makes from the stats, not the fact that he relies on the stats. Over-reliance on stats is not persuasive unless you show us how he missed something or got something wrong.
I'm not referring to the Dwight for MVP debate. I think there is merit in that. I'm referring to Hollinger's methodology as a whole. He is way too much into stats.
Labeling Arthur MIP based on PER, or skyrocketing Wade to the top of the MVP race due to his calculations... those are the arguments he's formed that I'm attacking. Last year, Arthur averaged 4.5 points and 3.5 boards in 14.3 minutes/game. This season, he's putting up 9.1 and 4.2 in 20.0 min/game. His FG% also jumped from .43 to .50. According to ESPN, he's converted only 49.2 percent of his basket-area shots over the past two seasons, which is an unacceptable rate for a power forward with no 3-point shot. Here's another humbling stat from Hoopdata.com: For his career, Arthur has had 55 shots blocked and has drawn only four basket-and-ones. But, his PER did jump from 10.54 to 15.97, and Hollinger has a deep-rooted bias toward Memphis (4 out of the 16 players in his "Most Improved" article that he put out last week were on the Grizz -- he went as far as to select Mike Conley ahead of Kyle Lowry... c'mon). You can't honestly tell me that D. Arthur is more deserving of MIP when players like Kevin Love, Dorrell Wright, Eric Gordon, LaMarcus Aldridge, Kyle Lowry, Derrick Rose, and Russ Westbrook are in contention. Also, John Wall's averaging 16, 8, and 4, Greg Monroe's putting up 9 and 7, yet Monroe's #2 in Hollinger's ROY rankings due to the fact that his PER of 18.07 is superior to Wall's calculation of 15.85. Ludicrous. Back to my point, which you clearly failed to understand, he places far too much emphasis on PER.
