My interpretation: LeBron will put up better stats, but there are/will be many more more [guards/small forwards] like him. Great centers are much rarer than guards. Most basketball dynasties are build around a great Center. The Pistons' and the Bulls' are the exceptions which prove the rule. And only after the league introduced rules(3 pt shot, 3 sec violation..) to give the "little" guys a fighting chance. On a related note, will you take Kobe(at his prime) over Shaq(at his prime) to build a basketball championship? Kobe is having better stats than Shaq now, but... what if oppsing coaches can take out one player from the Lakers' roster in the playoffs, would it be Kobe or Shaq? Not even close...
All of this regardless, why do I get the feeling that if they did a 02-03 draft, Bron would be #1 pick? I really think the average person thinks guards are more valuable to a team watching so much Jordan in the 90's. The media hype is incredible. Who sells more merch?
honestly i think it would be pretty much divided. even though LeBron sells out games and sells a lot of merchandise, yao ming isn't a slouch in terms of marketability either. and i'm pretty sure there would be teams that would pick yao first if they had gotten the chance. to break it down, if a western conference team got the first pick they would pick yao. if it was an eastern conference team they would pick lebron. well no sh*t you say. but think about it. in order to compete in the West (or ultimately the whole league), you can't survive w/o a big man or a good big man presence. you can play small ball all day long in the east and come out on top.
Yeah but think about it like this, if an eastern team were to pick Yao, then he would only have to battle the likes of j. oneal and rasheed to get to the finals. Yao would absolutely run roughshod over the East teams. All in all you still got to take the great big man over the great guard.
