Probably when he stops having fun. It's a game, ultimately being played for entertainment purposes, you know.
You have such an impressive command of the English language but your cognitive reasoning appears to lag behind it. I have no clue what possible gender connotations you have extracted from my post. And frankly, I'm here to discuss basketball so sexual orientations have absolutely no relevancy to me. As far as your tongue-in-cheek comment about not continuing to recognize Francis' flaws, you sure don't waste any lack of effort in defending him. I'm sure you have you're reasons and they're valid in your world view. I am making an assumption here but at an intuitive level I draw a conclusion that the point of Clutch City is to discuss basketball in general and the Rockets in particular. If there is a continued effort to discuss the "pro's" about Francis, I see no logical reason to not provide a counter-balancing "con". Again, you don't hesitate to defend him. The bottomline to me is I don't enjoy watching how Francis plays the game of basketball....style sans substance. As a Rockets' fan, I personally would have been satisfied with far less than a McGrady trade. Barring Dwight Howard becoming one of the best PF's to ever play the game, a Steve Francis lead time will never win an NBA Championship. The common denominator in all of my Francis critiques is that he doesn't make his teammates better. Given the level of many of your other postings, I have the optimism that you'll someday have an ephiphany to that end.
Steve Francis makes his teammates better. You can say what you want about not enjoying his style of play. The substance of his game makes him a difference maker. Is he good enough to be the lead guy on a championship team? Maybe, maybe not. Is he good enough to be one of the main contributors on a championship team? Yes. You just have to look at the 2001-2002 Rockets, when Steve missed a good portion of the season. Rockets had like a 15 game losing streak and were lottery bound. You have Steve for the entire season (i.e. the 2000-2001 or 2002-2003 season) and you have the Rockets playing 6 games above .500 and challenging for the playoffs. Steve makes his teammates better.
If the Lakers lose a bunch of games now that Kobe is out with an injury, does that mean Kobe makes the players around him better? I rest my case.
Just to discuss basketball? Really? Because it seemed like you enjoyed personalizing things as much as the next person when you took especial pains to call myself and PG out, much like I had predicted you might, a few seconds beforehand. Maybe mi ingles really is better than yours because I don't understand this paragraph, You're saying: I'm not continuing to recognize my wasting any lack of effort in defending him? Or You're not continuing to recognize his flaws and I'm surely not wasting any lack of effort defending him? You'll have to rephrase. But anyway, if your point is that I'm all over the place defending him all the time, I disagree. If I responded to every asinine cheapshot about him, I'd have 80,000 posts, not 8,000. Most I let go, sometimes, when it suits my fancy, I edu-ma-cate people and drop some science to the contrary, you know, like when people come up with truly ridiculous criticisms. Remember last year after the trade when a thread about his ad in the paper thanking the fans of Houston turned into a bashfest about what a selfish douche he was? Or when a thread about his charity basketball game did the same thing? Jesus H. Christ, if I wasted my time on every silly bash, like you imply, I'd have less of a meager existence than I already have. Obviously, it happens to some degree to every player, just like all the silly "trade yao now!/FiRE GUNDY!!11!/D1TCH 3WING" threads that pop up; it's the internet, everybody's a critic and the haters run the henhouse (one of which has consistently been you, at least in this instance) See above, I hesitate more often than not. Anyway, most of the threads started these days are started as cons, so balance isn't required, and a lot of the cons are not objective and based in fantasy rather than reality or are excessively illogical: examples ex1: somebody started a thread last year saying that now Francis was gone, we would finally be able to beat bad teams, when in fact the Rockets were among the top 2-3 teams in the league at beating up on lottery teams ex2: somebody started a thread commenting how Marbury was selected for the Olympics because he wasn't an "and1 streetballer" like Francis, when he is literally the And-1 spokesman/signature endorser and the coverboy for "NBA Ballers" streetball game ex3: your continual cluck-cluck, tsk-tsking about a vastly improved Magic squad which reeks of sour grapes; What do you care that they're only 19-16 or whatever? "sans" means "without"; I'd say if he were wholly without substance, he wouldn't score 20 points, grab 7 boards, and toss 7 assists a game every night, roughly. But at least you admit a lot of your arguments are based on subjective personal preferences, credit at least goes to you for that. That has been my case all along with respect to the bashing and it often causes distortion and inaccuracy. I know, we had geniuses claiming that we should just cut him and sign Charlie Ward or trade him for Jason Terry, or do all sorts of stupid things. Thank god you weren't the Rockets GM is all I can say about that. Thank you Kreskin, as something on the order of 90% plus of all NBA players don't do that over the course of their careers, you are really going out on a limb. I will file that next to the "Chauncey Billups is not a championship PG" critiques and other fabulous predictions. He makes his team better, if not his teammates, that much is reflected in the records when he is gone. So, I recognize him for what he is, and appreciate him for that, warts and all, and don't start pee-ing my pants and going nuts when he has the gall to dunk the basketball and not do a two handed set shot or play like Bob Cousy or Kirk Hinrich or whatever.
Just for all those that say T-Mac wouldn't try anything like that: last year McGrady had an off-the-backboard alleyoop to himself in traffic. I believe it was against the Heat. I live in Florida, so I catch a lot of Magic games. Also, T-mac did the same off the backboard dunk in a preseason game against the Celtics just for reference.
Good God there's a lot of hot air in this thread. I'm still trying to figure out where someone said Francis doesn't care about winning.
That Steve Francis with his hustle, determination, loyalty to teammates, and occasional highflying dunk is KILLING THE NBA.
Steve will never be great. Ban him from the NBA and make sure he never touches a basketball ever again. Hows my sarcasm?...I've been working on it.
what is bad for the nba is the piston and thug ball I will take francis,mcgrady, any day rather than see coaches take over.
Says the SOF: "What was so brilliant about it... Stevie knows that Rasheed Wallace is behind him, but not close enough to foul him for the "and 1"... so he thinks, I'll do something so blantantly illegal that Rasheed will blow his top and get a T. Three point play the Stevie way... Yeah, that's the ticket..."
How a Houston Rocket could be so hated around here is something I'll never understand. The guy is so hated that anyone that trys to defend him is hated on too! HAHA! Sad.
