Ric Bucher: I dont see a Tmac-led team winning a chip, EVER

Kobe blew a 3-1 lead to the suns two seasons ag. remember that?.. even last season he's lakers got pushed around like a bunch of rag dolls by the suns. kobe without shaq = nothing special in the playoffs.

 

putting any of those players on our team...with the exception of MAYBE kobe. I'm gonna go ahead and say we'd lose. we were not better than utah despite your opinion.

 

Kobe would have taken over in the final minutes of game 7. He damn sure would have gone to the rack hard. I never said Kobe doesn't lose games. I did say he doesn't fade away or get "tired" at the end of the most important game of his life.

 

kobe had a 3-1 lead v. a team w/o amare stoudamire and all the hype on HIS side. so isn't that a "choke"? and if u live in LA, kobe said to a a radio guy basically like this, "we'll lose game 5 but we'll beat them in game 6." what kind of "killer" mentality is that?

duncan? dude had avery johnson, drob, and sean elliot in his first 2 championship runs. avery johnson hit the GW for the first one v. new york.

please, nash has amare/marion/diaw/barbosa, basically he doens't have to do everything ok. tmac has more responsibilities than tmac.

the only guy i'll concede is wade. but before this year, every other team feared shaq more than wade => hence the double teams on shaq for the first 4 games by dallas in the finals.

and tmac has no fire? he stepped up in the 2nd half to give us the lead. he hit the clincher over giricek in game 2. he totally dominated striaght up in game 5. he dominated for the most part in game 7.

sure tmac doesn't dominate EVERY game like we all want to, but who the hell can? kobe? wade?

only MJ can dominate 90% of the games he plays in dude.

even hakeem depended on horry, cassell, maxwell and clyde for some clutch shots.

who the hell hit a clutch shot for us v. utah?

luther? dude was still in his pajamas for the babyish performance.
alston? sucked major and shot EVEN WORSE than he did during the reg. season to a tune of 33%.
howard? well dude played like he played v. dallas 2 yrs ago => basically no appearance.
yao? he was supposed to be a bigger mismatch than tmac was to utah and boozer ended up outplaying him overall.
battier? he showed up in 2 games.

so REALLY.

i blame tmac as much as anyone. but u call those guys talent???

hell, even kobe had lamar putting up stud-like statsi n the playoffs and providing playmaking duties.

tmac has himself to do everything except for post-play.

hell he was our go-to defender instead of battier, who couldn't stop harpring for jack.

 

how would u know that? why didn't he take over in game 5 => a close game v. phoenix. why didn't he take over game 6 2 yrs ago? another REALLY close game. then game 7 kobe basically gave up on natinoal TV.

so REALLY, i don't say tmac is better, but please, don't just diss tmac just to diss tmac.

 

Why did the Rockets have the better record despite losing the best center in the league for 1/3 of the season? Why were they picked to win the series by most analysts?

Was it all some conspiracy to make the Rockets and Tmac look bad? Doubtful.

It's funny. I don't remember anyone claiming that the Rockets would undoubtedly lose the series or that Utah was better BEFORE the series started. A lot of hindsight reasoning going on here.

 

hell, kobe didn't even look to shoot in game 7 v. phoenix. so i don't see your point for being tired or doing fadeaways. kobe wouldnt shoot.

 

we had the best defense. our offense always was average to mediocre at best.

when u have a great defense, u win in the reg. season bar none b/c it helps mainain your consistency if defense is your calling card.

but in the playoffs, u need to be more well-rounded.

we shut down utah for the most part. we played them the best defensively. but our offense was as pathetic as it got.

we can get away w/ A LOT of things during the reg. season b/c of our defense, which bailed us out. but when u have 4 players scoring in a playoff game, something is TRULY wrong.

better record doesn't mean you're the better team. was dallas better than the spurs? suns?

was the pistons better than the cavs? NO.

 

It's no coincidence that everyone outside of a few Tmac homers realizes that the guy has no heart and talks more than he delivers. There is not a GM in the league that would take Tmac over Kobe, Duncan or Nash so perish the thought of him being on the level of those guys.

Again, the whole team played poorly but when you brag about being the guy and get paid like a franchise player it is indeed all on you when you don't deliver in the final minutes of a game that you should have taken over and won for your team.

 

again, can u retort my kobe response? no u can't. he did give up in that series too.

duncan and nash have HAD some of the best teams in the league bar none.

and i'm not surprised ur comparing tmac to the best 3-4 players in the league either.

 

uh, I'm sorry that regular season was an anomaly. there's no way they should have lost as many games as they did. half of their players would hands down be the third best player on our team if we had them. harpring came off their freaking bench and probably would have been starting for us.

did I think we were going to win? yeah I did. we definitely were not better than them. I don't think you know as much about basketball as you seem to think you do.

 

It is not about Tmac's heart, fellas.

Exactly, same as Tmac. Kobe and Tmac are more similar in their impact than different, it is not like Kobe would be out of the 1st round without Shaq, and it is not like Tmac wouldn't have had titles if he had managed to drafted or traded for by the Lakers in the late 90s.

How far did Nique Wilkens carry his team?

All these guys are great, but none have the kind of impact to carry a team deep into the playoffs if they have to carry too much burden for the half court offense. They are not the kind of guys who can consistently carry a half court offense through their own scoring as well as raising the play of their teammates and keeping them involved--very few non-bigs have been able to do that.

And the Spurs would have zero titles without Duncan. Let's not get confused. Even this year, Parker may have got the MVP, but Duncan was the key guy. Duncan was the guy why they had a chance to advance versus Phx, after that Parker played great but it really was no contest and the championship was already decided. Without Duncan that Spurs team is a non playoff team or 1st round fodder. Without Manu or Parker this year they don't win a championship (hell, without Bruce Bowen or Cheap Shot Rob they would not have won this year), but still one of the 6 or so best teams in the league.

 

not that I agree with all of your opinions on t-mac, but I do concur that he did not play with the same intensity on the offensive and defensive end that he did in 05 against dallas. I would think most people agree with that.. but what do i know.

 

Desert Scar probably made the most objective post in this topic.

Fact: No perimeter scorer not named Michael Jordan have or could ever carry his team all the way to a title by himself.

 

i agree with just about everything you said other than kobe would not have gotten out of the first round with last years team. there is NO WAY IN HELL kobe would have shot as poorly from the field as t-mac did, it just wouldnt happen. kobe would have ripped that defense a new one with his relentless attacks and clutch shooting.

now other years, i agree he would not have got out of the first round in t-macs place, but last year i think he would have.

 

Even Michael Jordan had one heck of a hard time during the 80s. He had to wait until the 90s before he had a team strong enough to support him.

Basically, it takes 5 plus 4 on the bench.

 

it took MJ 5 years to get out of the first round. and 7-8 years before his first final.

and MJ was blessed w/ scottie pippen.

maybe for tmac, it'll take 11 years to go to the finals and win it directly?

again, if tmac doesn't lead this team next yr (now i do admit we have the pieces to compete against the best of the best - bench, guard play, playmakers, PF...), then i'll give up on tmac.

but not now.

 

it's ALL circumstantial. we can all "assume." kobe had 3 other HOFs w/ him in 04 and shot 36% in the finals v. detroit.

i can then assume tmac would not shoot this bad in the playoffs ever again.

it's all assumptions.

everybody said before the phoenix series this yr kobe would have gone bezerk and avg 40 pts / per game. he avg 31 points, which is not that much in a fast-paced playoff series.

so kobe "might" have shot better, we "might" have won w/ kobe. but how "might" we know?

 

yea you are right i have no proof of that, i just can't see it when i look at utahs defenders. i think T-mac got alot of good looks, shots he would normally hit, they just werent falling. if kobe got the same shots, i think more would have went in, and i think we can all agree no one "imposes their will" more than kobe. not to really bash t-mac though because i ride and die with him. i trust an ill advised pull up jumper from t-mac more than i do throwing it down in the post to Yao to be honest.....i always feel like hes going to get his shot blocked or just turn it over some overw way

 

again with the "will." if kobe had more will, he wouldn't blow a 3-1 lead, a close game in games 5 and 6 (and i mean they were close like it was during our series). so if kobe was such a good closer, lakers would have won that one.

but it's easy to see kobe's will when he played with shaq and shaq carried the burden for 3.5 quarters.

like i said, kobe's team success w/o shaq = same as tmac.
kobe's individual success w/o shaq = same as tmac => 2 scoring titles.