I would like to say that. in my opinion, if the other great centers, at their peak, were to play the game of basketball under the present rules, and against the quaity & strength of to-day's players, there is agood chance that they would not even be as good as Yao Ming is to-day.
Well, hard to say. Shaq, Hakeem, Kareem will be definitely better, I am not sure about Ewing, but his rebounding will be better, David Robinson should be better rebounding wise. Mourning's blocks definitely would be better. Who else is a great center from the 80s? I thought they grew on trees.
somewhere in that piece Rosen admitted that Yao is the best center today, so at least he's a better analyst than Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, and most of the idiots on ESPN.
Rosen is an idiot, but he made some decent points. "T-Mac is generally considered overrated by the league's coaches and scouts" is not a decent point though. If anything, the coaches and scouts are the ones that have been overrating him, not the ones thinking he's overrated. T-Mac hasn't attacked the basket and dominated a game at the line in years. In fact, this last game was his best game in 2 years in my opinion, before he got knocked out that is. He made jumpers in rhythm, and drove hard many times setting up Yao and Deke for easy buckets/freethrows, and was on pace for a tripple-double night. But before that game, T-Mac hasn't been the same for over a year, in terms of his jump shot and driving ability. Yet, coaches constantly closed the lane on his drives and doubled him off screens. Defenses set up by coaches and scouts have been treating T-Mac like they're worried about him going off for 50 points every night. Personally, I don't think T-Mac is ready to score 50 yet, and so it's a folly in my opinion to be worrying about him the way teams worry about D-Wade and Iverson. So in reality, it's because coaches and scouts are overrating TMac's scoring ability that has allowed Mac to become such a great playmaker. And Rosen furthers his idiocy by claiming that Mac is not a great decision-maker. That's pretty much the only thing that T-Mac is currently great at. His decisions on mismatches, when to drive, when to kick, where to kick...he's superstar at that, moreso than LeBron right now in my opinion. Once the coaches stop overrating T-Mac's scoring ability, that's when he'll have a real good chance at scoring 50, and when that time comes, I hope T-mac is ready (especially if Yao is having one of his off nights).
since you make the distinction of "old" for Ewing and Robinson, please do the same for Sabonis, one of the greatest centers of all time... I mean...he was already 35yo in that season...the guy was originally drafted in 1985
Exactly what I was thinking. If T-Mac is so bad right now coming off his injury season, why do other teams ALWAYS double team him? Cause they know. He can go off any minute, and single coverage on him will just allow for that. And that whole playmaker-touches argument is just r****ded, doesn't make sense at all and not worth answering. If he watched a few games this season and knew something about teamwork and finding the open man at the right time, then I'm pretty sure he wouldn't say that.
Yao is still improving, and will continue to improve until he's 30. I think he will be a great Center!
Yes, Rosen is a moron, and coaches don't watch the Rockets enough. Honestly, if I were an opposing coach, I would really want to see if T-Mac can score 50 pts nowadays. I wouldn't double team him, I wouldn't trap him off the pick and roles, and I wouldn't leave 3pt shooters. It would be very interesting to see if T-Mac can score 50 points and lead the Rockets to victory by carrying the scoring load. Can T-Mac get 14 freethrows? Can T-Mac score 20 points on layups and dunks? There are many reasons why the Mavs beat the Rockets 2 years ago in the playoffs. One of the big reasons was because they stopped rotating off 3pt shooters and forced Yao and T-Mac to carry the load. Yao has gotten better, but can T-Mac return to that form? And can we get a 3rd scoring option to help them?
Interesting question. CAN he really score 50 now? I don't know. It's an interesting question thankfully though it doesn't matter. T-Mac is on a team good enough where he doesn't have to average 32ppg just for the team to have a fighting chance in the playoffs. T-Mac was playing the best ball of his career his first season in Houston, he meshed both passing/scoring perfectly. But now he has this crazy guy named Yao Ming on his team who he can feed every play and come out with a W pretty much most of the time. Maybe he should kick it up a notch himself to see if he's still got it for a couple games. Even though he's doing just fine (if not good) as a playmaker, the minute Yao's having an off game, he should try and be the Orlando T-Mac to see if he still has it. Interesting. Still, 04-05 T-Mac was one of the best IMO.
All his commentary about Yao is a rehashing of talking points that are 3 years old. All his commentary about T-Mac comes from 16 games into this season where he's coming off an injury and obviously isn't playing the best ball in his career. (Though I would like to know how anyone who has been the NBA scoring champ TWICE could ever be considered "overrated.") This is a man who won't stop bashing the rockets until Yao and T-mac win 3 championships.... and then he would say "If they are so good, how come they didn't win 6 like Jordan?"
Barkley is an entertaining moron who admits to not watching any games until the playoffs. I haven't listened to Reggie enough to have an opinion. I'm not so sure about this. Yao has become a better scorer than 2 years ago, but if TMac has regressed than the Rockets still won't win. If the Rockets play the Mavs again and they don't rotate off the 3pt shooters, Yao AND TMac will have to score big. Actually, they might even need a third scorer. Rafer and Luther aren't going to be contibuting their 3pters if they're not open enough to shoot them.
Totally agree, I don't know why many people can't see this. The fact that Yao is getting his numbers with the new rules is amazing. The zone defense and being able to double a player without the ball would have completely changed even the great Hakeem's game. (Yao is no Hakeem and never will be). But can u remember when hakeem would have it going on, the other team would run the double as soon as the pass was on it's way to him. It was to the point that even a faked pass would get a player halfway to him and they would call illegal defense. Can you imagine how good Yao would be in those days? This is one of the reasons it's so hard to get Yao the ball at the end of the game, where Hakeem could get it at anytime.
I'm a fan of Yao...but... How well do you think he'd hold up riding on commercial airplanes instead of private jets? Or with training and medicine that was as arcane as the American Medical Association supporting cigarette smoking as being good for ones' health? When you're using your time machine to roll the players of past decades into 2006, don't lose sight of all the advantages in medicine and training that exist for the athletes of today. I'm no MD but it's doesn't strike me as inconceivable that todays' medical technology may have added years to Ralph Sampsons career. On the other hand, an athletic specimen like Amare would have been out of the league alot longer if he'd have been an 80's player...microfracture surgery wasn't around until the late 80's.
I'm not sure if T-Mac will score 50 once this season, but to me that's not really the point. The thing about T-Mac now is that he has a lot of quiet 30-point nights, where you don't even notice it until he's above 25 already. To me, that is enough for teams to rightfully go on worrying about him. Averaging twenty in an off year is still pretty dang troublesome to other teams.
