All I ask for is a little credit for my "astute" observation. Your kindness Mr. Dakota will not soon be forgotten.
Smits wasn't as effective a defensive player a Yao Ming, and McGrady is a far superior player then Reggie Miller. 4 COMPLETELY different players.
I don't understand why people even consider Smits in the same league as Yao...no comparision whatsoever. Yao is already in a different league with his height and he's just so big that he can do anything he wants inside the paint. And his defense is just too good compare to Smits. Yao will always make the Rox team a great defensive team...so that's why i said all the Rox have to do now is find a bunch of great shooters surround Yao and TMac and they're ready for Championship run because the Rox WILL BE a great defensive team with Yao...don't worry about wheather Barry is able to play defense or not..it don't matter because opponents won't be able to penetrate the interior defense and they're going to force a lot of outside shots which is not going to beat many teams playing that way.
Re: Miller vs. TMac - Miller was good at scoring and great at scoring in one way- the outside shot. He couldn't go to the basket off the dribble, but could probably challenge Larry Bird as the greatest shooter of all time. TMac scores in so many different ways- he's best going to the basket but can still bury jumpers. When you break down Miller vs. TMac, here's the difference- Miller scores, but he doesn't do much else. Look at the rebounding- Miller's career high was 3.9 a game. McGrady averaged better than that in 18 minutes a game as a scrawny 18 year old in Toronto, as he has in all 7 seasons of his career. Look at the assists- Miller's career high was 4.0 a game. McGrady has done that all four of his year's in Orlando. For their careers, McGrady has a better AST/TO ratio, Look at the steals- Miller's career high in 17 seasons was 1.51, a number McGrady has matched or bettered 3 of the last 4 years. As an added bonus, McGrady blocks shots- his career low came this past year, at .63 a game- Miller's career high was .39 a game. Miller was a fantastic scorer for a long time, but as a complete player, he doesn't begin to approach TMac, and considering the damage that TMac has put up in the ppg column the last few years, he may not end up in the same category as TMac as a scorer. McGrady is 25, and has had 1 less all-star appearance than Reggie did his entire career. McGrady is 2 time 1st-Team All NBA, and 2 time 2nd-Team All NBA; Miller is 3 time 3rd-Team All NBA. Re: Yao vs. Smits. a.) I disagree with the assertion Smits was one of the top 5 big men of his era. Even if you meant centers, he played in generally the same era as Dream, Ewing, Robinson, Mourning and O'Neal. There's 5 centers unquestionably better right there...if you extend to other big men (who played like big men), guys like the Seattle Shawn Kemp, Malone, Barkley, etc. Smits played in arguable the greatest center generation ever. Yao was 3rd team All-NBA this past year- a feat Smits never accomplished. b.) I will take my odds on Yao becoming the better offensive player than Smits. The rebounding edge is already significant. Smits blocked shots similar to Yao, but fell off significantly when he had foot problems- if healthy, Yao will surpass him there. The last factor is fatigue- as much as we think Yao suffers here, Smits never averaged more than 30.5 mpg in his career. Last year, Yao averaged 32.8 mpg.
NIKEStrad, excellent post, as usual. Not sure if I see the point of this thread...T-Mac is obviously very different from Miller - NIKEStrad has broken it down nicely. The question whether Yao Ming will end up closer to Hakeem or to Rik Smits when all is said and done has also been re-hashed a million times...
I actually think this is a great thread because it's provoked some interesting discussion and is an interesting comparison. I can see it to some extent but my opinion is this- Personally, I'll be satisfied if they are just the second coming of Rik and Reggie. Were there no Jordan's Bulls, that team would have won a championship. They were serious contenders for many years. However, I honestly think that's the amazing part of this team. As I see it, the absolute worst they can be is to be comparable to the Reggie Millier/Rik Smits lead Pacers. If that's the worst they can be then what's the best? LOTS of Championship banners hanging from the rafters in Toyota Center!
well this is a good discussion going on here.... first off yao and tmac are better defensively than smits and miller. yao may not be the shot blocker that we want him to be but its rare that you see someone not named shaq have a big game against him. even against shaq yao has the ability to keep him under some control by using his size. yao is not gonna be a guy who averages 4 blocks a game and thats perfectly fine because yao is a good defensive player in the sense that he holds his defensive position well and uses his size well enough to intimidate people. tmac is also one of the top defenders in the league and his defensive abilities should be even better now that he has someone like yao patroling the paint. second....yao and tmac are both better rebounders than smits and miller. i mean i know people get on yao for not being as good of rebounder as he should be, but he is still considerably better than smits. with tmac there is no question that he is a much better rebounder. third...tmac can create his own shots and run the offense. reggie wasnt that type of player where he could create his own shots and create other people shots. further reggie simply was not the scorer tmac is. reggie was never even close to leading the league in scoring and tmac has already done it twice. fourth...yao is starting to show some of the skills that we want to see from him by becoming more aggressive in the paint and using his size to create easy baskets. also i feel yao has the ability to be the go to guy once he starts to feel more comfortable with getting the ball everytime. this has been a slow process with him but he is starting to get it. further, yao has shown the ability to be a clutch player at times. i don't know of any statistical way to prove it but it seems like yao has the ability to step up his level of play when the game is on the line by coming in with key rebounds or a block or a 3pt play. maybe i only notice because yao also has stretches where he seems to disappear. fifth...yao is not injury prone like smits was. if smits was able to be healthy for his whole career then maybe we would have seen something different from him, but he simply could not keep those feet healthy. yao has not shown any signs of having injury problems even though people worry about it because of his size. i'm sure i could keep naming stuff, but in my opinion miller and smits are a poor man's version of yao and tmac. i mean i can see some sort of a comparison there, but not much of one.
The main differences, IMO, are evident... Miller never got his own shot. He was reliant upon the system to give him open looks. He was a solid athlete but not the gifted athlete T-Mac is. Miller could shoot lights out, but beyond that his game was limited. He was one of the great clutch players ever. McGrady can get his own shot whenever he wants and even against a zone. He carried a HORRIBLE team on his back for several seasons. Though he isn't the shooter Miller was, he is a much better scorer than Miller ever could be. And comparing his athletic skills to Miller is like comparing Kobe's athletic skills to Jeff Hornacek. Smits was never super athletic. He could run but he had virtually no lateral quickness at all. He had a good shooting touch, but nothing like we've seen from Yao and he had nowhere near the passing skills of our big man. Smits was NEVER a guy you ran the offense through. His game was high post. Yao had low post moves coming into the league and is still developing them. Yao's athletic ability has already far surpassed Smits. He is much lighter on his feet and his court awareness is good for guards let alone centers. Most important, as was pointed out, these guys are significantly younger than Miller and Smits when they reached their prime. It could be argued that T-Mac is near or at his prime already at 25 and Yao is probably a couple years away at 23. It is completely realistic to assume they could have between 5, 6, 7 years TOGETHER playing their best basketball. HUGE difference.
At the beginning of the season, there was a time when Ronald Murray averaged about 25 ppg. I didn't think that it was prolific, spurts of offense, do not make one prolific.
As much as I love Reggie, he was never quite the overall great offensive player that Mcgrady is now. Reggie was a great scorer, but only what I would call a "prolific" scorer when he really got hot and couldn't miss. The biggest difference between our duo is the big men. Yao is <b>already</b> better than Smits was. Smits had the jumper and the hook, that's it. He might've been a better player, but injuries to his knees and feet killed his potential. Yao is already more dominating when he wants to be, plus he has just about as good a jumper as Smits did. My guess is that T-Mac and Yao will be somewhere in between Reggie/Smits and Shaq/Kobe. With the right players surrounding them, multiple championships can be won.
How 'bout a TMac-Magic Johnson and Yao-Abdul-Jabbar comparison? So what if Tmac isn't a PG like Magic, he will be handeling the ball a lot, so his assists should go up. Not close to Magic's assist totals though. He will score more than Magic and should play better defense as well. Will he be a leader like Magic was? We shall see. Yao has no "Sky Hook" like Jabbar had, but he does have a nice outside shot, something Jabbar never had. Jabbar used to "rest" on defense, often not even crossing the center court line. Yao is already as good a defensive player as Jabbar ever was, and he will get even better under Van Gundy/Ewing coaching him. All we need now are James Worthy, Byron Scott, A.C. Green and Micheal Cooper
AB... I'm not sure about your parallels, but for the sake of argument, let me say this: IF Smits had been, as Yao will be as soon as Shaq retires, if not earlier, easily the best center in the game in his prime, those Pacers would have won a hell of a lot more than they did. Miller was an excellent albeit one dimensional player, whereas McGrady can virtually do anything out there.
Correct, I agree with MacBeth. Reggie was one of the greatest clutch performers, but really relied on the 3-point shot quite heavily. I don't think he ever had the rebounding, passing, or shot-blocking skills or the sheer athleticism McGrady possesses.
I can't believe this was even brought up, they're not even close. T-Mac and Yao are way better, come on now.
