Let me clear something up: T-Mac deserves blame. I'm not trying to not blame him for those series losses. Just look at the roster we had when we played the Mavs and the Jazz for a minute. We had guys like C. WEATHERSPOON and RYAN BOWEN and SCOTT PADGET and JUWAN HOWARD and not enough warriors like BOB SURA. T-Mac AND (I stress and) YAO together led this team as far as it could go with crappy talent. Mavs series was inexcusable for both Yao and T-Mac. Terrible series. Abysmal. Jazz series Yao SUCKED. He got killed by Mehmet Okur on offense and he couldn't handle Boozer at all on defense. I can cut him that slack though he was injured and recovering and not fully healthy. He was dominating before that injury. Oh well what can you do? T-Mac was swarmed again. Both our guys tried, we just fell short. No talent. Did it suck? Yeah. But the Mavs series was FAR worse. Now we have T-Mac and not even Yao and we still don't have good enough players to win. Are Scola and Battier and Jackson and all good players? HELL YEAH. They're NBA players. World class. Problem is they are up against better players. My only problem is WHY are some trying to compare T-Mac to Kobe? If you hate T-Mac that much just come out and say it like some do and that's fine. It's your opinion and you're entitled to it. Why are you going to compare T-Mac to Kobe, when Kobe is pretty much 100% the better player and he definitely 100% has better teammates? And why do people make Kobe out to be some great NBA God? Is he freaking talented? YES. Better than T-Mac? Yes. But he didn't accomplish anything without the best center in the league (far better than Yao is) on his team during his prime. Now Kobe has some talented teammates again and he is winning. Big freakin' coincedence. T-Mac quits on his team? So did Kobe. T-Mac blows a 3-1 series lead on his own? So did Kobe. Blah blah blah. Now Kobe has talent and they are winning. T-Mac doesn't have enough on his team to win it's as simple as that. We could have beaten the Mavs but we messed up. The Jazz series, we had no talent to take off pressure from our stars who got MAULED (and Yao wasn't even in his best shape. We could have killed the Jazz if he was) and we finally broke down in game 7 after shaky game 1, 2, and 5 wins. Kobe has talented teammates and he's going to win again. You can think up all the shortcomings you want about T-Mac and most of them are going to be legit but it doens't matter. No one wins without a talented team. So instead of trying to get rid of the only good player we have playing, why don't we focus on getting Yao back strong and ready to go and getting some TALENT around them? It doesn't matter who you have. If Yao's not playing we're never going to win. Especially not against a team like the Utah Jazz.
We quit that game, we didn't play Battier and BJax. (and sure Yao wasn't in playing either) BTW - T-Mac is ave. 24-5-5 shooting 45% on the previous 4 games vs Denver. And with the only game he played next to Yao vs Denver he drop. 35point on a 56%. If we played the healthy Rockets Squad vs current Nuggets and is a 4 game series wining by and average 12+ point. Thats how bad the nuggets are, they are a complete joke in defense.
Nothing but shoot the ball? And make it, right? In clutch situations? On teams where we was ALWAYS the best player? And they didn't have ANYONE ELSE around near his caliber? Yea. You right. He did NOTHING.
He shot himself all they way to how many championships? Just joking. But I'm sure you know this Almu, that in the very end if T-Mac doesn't win a ring, it doesn't matter if Reggie was better than him, they will be in the same general category. That 1 ring makes a huge difference when you're talking about how good a player is. There is no doubt in my mind Reggie is better than T-Mac, but at the very end, they will be the same unless T-Mac wins. Then he will be considered about the same level just because of that ring. In fact, Reggie Miller is a perfect example of what happens when you can't surround a great player with good enough talent.
Even if you just swap Kobe and T-Mac and put T-Mac in that game, T-Mac won't be able to put a Kobe type of performance.
they treat him like kobe because in his orlando days and his first year in hou he played like kobe.His playoffs stats before his back injury was 30.5ppg,7asts,6rebs.
This isn't even all about offense. You know Kobe has t-mac beat in terms of shooting, getting to the line AND MAKING THEM, or finishing at the basket. How about defense? T-Mac lets Ronnie Brewer run all over him, wide open looks all day. Kobe is actually a good defender, he would probably take Deron Williams if he had to. Rebounding...t-mac doesn't really jump when he gets rebounds, not a lot of our players do, that lets the Jazz players just outfight us even if we have good position.
T-mac doesn't really jump when he rebounds? Have you watched the games, guy snags rebounds sometimes during the game.
Reggie was surrounded by solid players, but not spectacular. But Reggie is a different type of shooting guard than T-mac. Reggie is more like Ray Allen than T-Mac. Richard Hamilton says his biggest influence on his style of play is Reggie. Reggie is a coming off the pick type of shooter. He can't create offense like T-mac can. So while Reggie gives you much better scoring, just look at the assists and rebounds. T-Mac is a better all around player than Reggie. You could never put Reggie at the point. And my favorite team aside from the Rockets in the 90's was Reggie and the Indiana Pacers. I was jumping out of my chair when Reggie beat the Bulls in game 6 in '98. I couldnt believe what I just saw in 95 when Reggie scored 8 points in 20 seconds to beat New York in game 1. Was kinda ticked off that when Indiana finally got out of the east they had to run into Shaq and Kobe.
Are you sure you are that big fan of Reggie Miller? If you were, how could you be so off on that？ He did it in 8.9 seconds, not 20, huge, huge difference.
this has being said before and will be said again: don't put tmac and kobe in the same sentence please.
tmac has dominated the 4th quarter in the playoffs before. it isn't like he NEVER does it. he has done well in the 4th quarter 1/4 games in this playoffs. lebron has done it 2/4 (he disappeared tonight). tmac was great in the 4th in games 1 and 2, 5 and mostly 7 last yr. so he does well. if you take the fg% of every great player, their fg% in the 4th generally also tends to go down. this yr, he has struggled though.
There is no question that going down the stretch, Kobe would take Deron Williams on defense and would probably do a fantastic job on him.
kobe's defense in the playoffs has been very subpar. jr smith has destroyed him individually (and that's why he's been trash talking). he couldn't guard iverosn without getting in foul trouble. and he would never guard melo. lakers are winning purely with experience, discipline, and more importantly, their offense.
Stats from last year's Jazz series: Yao: 25.1 ppg .56 true shooting % 10.3 reb (3.3 offensive) 4.7 to ~1 ast ~1 blk Boozer: 24.6 ppg .54 true shooting % 11.0 reb (2.4 offensive) 2.6 to ~3 ast ~0 blk The only advantage Boozer had was 2 less turnovers and 2 more assists a game. It's interesting that we consider that to be the difference between getting killed (Yao) and killing (Boozer). I agree that Yao had a sub-par series. Van Gundy thinks he wasn't over his leg injury; I don't know whether that's true or not. Regardless, I would have expected him to do better if he were playing this series. But I think the fact that he shot a low field goal percentage (.44) masks the fact that he actually scored more points at a higher true shooting percentage than Boozer last year (due to shooting over 10 free throws a game at .88). I have no real argument for this thread; I just think its interesting how perceptions can be skewed by expectations and style of play.
